So it passed, until Raphael tired and the line of also-rans dwindled. I set down the papers, waved the page away, and lay on the cot. Pouring myself half a glass of wine, I took a short, relaxing sip and stared at the ceiling.
There was a knock at the door.
'Raphael, I haven't the time or the patience for another applicant. If you'd-'
'It's me, brother,' a quite different voice replied.
'Alfric!' I said, sitting up on the bed. 'Come in, please.'
It was not the brother I remembered from my childhood in the moathouse or even from the early events of my squirehood-the blustering and bullying seemed to have gone right out of the fellow, and it was a quiet sort, bent and chastened, who seated himself in my chair and looked at me across the expanse of my chambers, disheveled and shy.
Once before, on battlements far from here in miles and in years, my brother and I had struck the terms of blackmail. At that time, it had been something silly: a simple boyish prank of mine, which Alfric's threats had magnified into the greatest disaster since the Cataclysm itself. I was only nine at the time, and gullible. I had believed my brother's dire bodings, and set myself at his beck and call for eight years- cleaning up after him, translating his Old Solamnic and Qualinesti, doing his mathematics, and taking blame for every enormity he managed at the moathouse or in the surrounding lands.
Eight years of such schooling had taught me caution.
My brother cleared his throat.
'Does this bring back memories, Galen?'
'I'm not sure what memories you have in mind, Brother dear,' I dodged, alert to his most subtle movements through a long and sorry brotherhood. 'Why is your hand on your dagger?'
Alfric uttered a surprised little laugh and raised his hands.
'I'm sorry, Weasel. I guess it's an old habit.'
'Galen.'
He frowned at me.
'From this day forth, I shall be known as Galen,' I pronounced, then noticed how pompous and foolish and Solamnic the words sounded as they echoed sourly in the chamber.
Alfric nodded. 'Whatever you like,' he agreed. 'I guess that's an old habit, too.'
Alfric stared at his knees, then scowled at me.
'Father wants me to be a squire, no matter what it takes and who has to do it.'
'And I appear to be what and who for the time being, since I'm expected to obey Father and gladly dangle a millstone around my neck for the next ten years or longer. I'm sorry, Alfric.'
In a way, I
Slowly, his eyes fixed on his hands, my brother began to speak. Listening, I rose and walked toward the window.
'I expect I cannot blame you, Weas-Galen. No, I expect I cannot blame you at all, seeing as I have not been a good older brother and all.'
It was hard to argue with him.
I opened the shutter. The thick air of the afternoon rolled into my quarters, bearing the smell of mud and of distant rain.
'So I cannot ask you as your brother, but for our father, Galen. On account of he sits up there in the moathouse and looks at my future, which he cannot figure out. He says it is a dark one, if there is any future at all.
'And I believe him.'
My brother's head sank into his hands, and his shoulders heaved.
'But what's the
He looked up, expressionless and dry-eyed, a bit surprised that after a long absence I still knew his tricks.
'Why are you willing to be my squire and borrow trouble,' I asked, 'when you can inherit the old man's castle and spend the rest of your years squandering his patrimony?'
For the first time in years, my brother looked at me directly, with a gaze free of guile and meanness and malice and brutality. I almost failed to recognize him.
'Girls, Galen. I will become a squire to meet girls.'
With a sinking feeling, I knew where the conversation was heading. Far better than his customary threats or blackmails, my brother had stumbled upon a ready way to squirehood-to appeal, simply and forthrightly, to my sense of the ridiculous.
'You see, the last of the serving girls left Coastlund a month before we came here. The peasants hid her… told me they'd rather die than tell me her whereabouts. The moathouse gets kind of lonely without women around. And I get to thinking… thinking, what would be more respectable than Knighthood, and all of them ladies like Enid and Dannelle and Marigold-'
With the last name, he shot me a sly look, then continued.
'With all of them flocking about you? So I think to myself, what is squirehood, anyway, but a time that you have to wait before the girls are a sure thing? And who would be easier on his own squire than my own brother?'
I looked out my window, over the wall into the bed of the huge moat Bayard had ordered dug around the castle to allay the pressure of the huge artesian well from which the castle drew its water. It was not yet completed, but the rain had half-filled it, and for a moment, I thought of jumping, of hitting the ground running and continuing to run to a country far away from ambitious fathers and philandering brothers and Marigolds of all sizes and stripes and appetites.
I suppose that land lies somewhere. Somewhere near the best of all worlds, no doubt.
The breeze picked up, warm from the west. There was the faintest hint of smoke upon it, like you might catch in the depth of winter from the chimneys in a town miles away, the whiff of dark evergreen and warmth taken up by the wind and passed your way by chance. But this was midsummer- terrible midsummer, with its morning heat and the dry days that promised to stay forever-and the smell of smoke at this time of year was the odor of unchecked fires.
To the west, the Vingaards rose out of a bed of dark smoke, as though they floated on the backs of thunderheads.
'Very well,' I said, my words surprising me more than they did my brother. 'Your squirehood begins this moment.'
Chapter V
