that he was being so friendly and talkative. I had to force myself to look interested in his words.
“So I come to the city. Took up begging on the street corners, but no one believes a fat man who says he’s starving. I would have starved, too, if I hadn’t taken on this duty. It’s not that different from the cavalla, some ways. Get up, do your shift, eat, go to bed. Watch each other’s backs. Stick together. That’s what they say about the cavalla, isn’t it? That we always watch out for one another. Right, trooper?”
“Right,” I said uneasily. I felt he was building up to something, some declaration of brotherhood that I didn’t want to hear. I needed to leave, now. “I have to be on my way now. I’m supposed to be looking for my cousin.” The words came to me with a sour taste of guilt. They were merely an excuse, and a stark reminder to myself that I had completely forgotten about Epiny and Spink and the danger she might be in.
“Yeah, right, he has to go.” The Fat Lady spoke from her divan. From somewhere she had drawn out another box of candies and was untying the blue ribbon that bound the creamy yellow box. She spoke without looking at either of us. “He knows you’re gonna touch him for some coppers. ‘I was in the cavalla, gimme a coin.’ Bores me to tears. I heard it too often.”
“Shut up, you fat old slut!” the man told her angrily. “It’s true! I was cavalla, and a damn good soldier once. Maybe I was a ranker, but I’m not ashamed of that. Every promotion I got, I earned. It was never give to me because I was some noble’s son, nor bought for me. I earned it. Earned these lieutenant’s bars. Looky here, trooper. You recognize the real thing, don’t you? And you wouldn’t mind giving an old comrade-in-arms a few coins so I could buy me something a bit stronger than a beer? Gets cold working in here in the wintertime. A man could use a good stiff drink after what I go through.”
The fat man had managed, by much effort and with several grunts, to haul himself back to his feet. Now he took a folded cloth from his trouser pocket. He opened it carefully, to show me the lieutenant’s bars that shone inside it. I stared at them, knowing they might not be real, knowing that, like the jewelry that many folk wore for Dark Evening, they might be paper or enamel over dross. The fat man unpinned the gleaming bars from the rag that wrapped them and polished them a bit. Then, as he refastened them to the rag, he made the “keep fast” charm over them. I felt a chill up my back. True, he might have learned it from watching others, as Epiny had, but there was something so habitual about the way he did it that I doubted it.
He glanced over at me and saw the dismay in my face. He smiled, and it was a cruel smile, one that mocked himself. “I’m just an old ranker, son. Never sent to the King’s Academy like you; never had the guarantees that you have. If the plague hadn’t done me in, I’d be serving out near the far east still. But it did, and here I am. I get food, and work, if you call this work-parading around half dressed in a drafty old tent so young blighters can look at me and laugh and stare, so sure they’ll never be me. I get a bed and blanket every night. But that’s about all I get. No extras in this life. But once I was a cavalla man. Yes, sir, I was.”
I found my hand thrust deep in my pocket. I pulled out my money and pushed it into his hands and then turned and fled. He shouted his thanks after me, and added, “Don’t you let them send you to the forest, boy! You find yourself a nice post in the west, counting sacks of grain or keeping tally of horseshoe nails! Stay away from the Barrier Mountains.”
I could not find the exit from the tent. I pushed through a crowd of people packed around a girl juggling knives, not caring how they stared at me, nor even for the one woman who cursed me roundly for stepping on her foot. My path led me back past the Specks’ cage, but there was no crowd round it that I could see. The male Specks were there, wandering listlessly about the enclosure. The woman was gone. I estimated the time at midnight, and guessed that Rory and Trist had returned for her.
I made my way to the tent door. I didn’t want to think of them with the wild Speck girl. The fat man and his tales of being a ranker had soured the circus for me. The weight of my recent misfortunes descended on me once more. I was to be culled, for no more reason than to keep the Academy in political balance. It would be seen as shameful, no matter what they wrote on my papers. I doubted my father would buy me a commission. He’d probably sternly tell me that I’d had my chance, and that now I’d have to enlist as a common soldier, alongside all the other common sons of common soldier sons. There would be no arranged marriage for me, no officer’s commission, and no glorious future commanding troops for the king. I wondered if I would run back to Maw tomorrow and beg to be a scout.
I emerged from the trapped smells and still warmth of the tent into the cold night air. As the night deepened, the crowds were thickening, not dispersing, and I suddenly knew that I had no chance at all of finding Epiny or Spink or anyone else in such chaos. Even if I found Epiny, there was no saving her reputation now. Best to go back to the dormitory and pretend I had never found Spink’s note. The whole world was sour and cold and dark, without a single friendly face. I looked up at the night sky to try and get my bearings, but the lamplight and torchlight overpowered the feeble and distant stars. No matter. I’d just go back the way I’d come. Somewhere at the edge of the Great Square, I would find a cabstand and get back to the Academy.
CHAPTER 22
Disgrace
It was late. After the confines of the lighted tent, the cold outdoors and the endless sky overhead made me feel oddly exposed and alone despite the milling people. The Dark Evening festival felt tired and finished to me. I just wanted to go home to a quiet and familiar room. But all around me, the crowd shouted to one another and jostled me from my intended path as they rollicked through their festival. I thrust my hands deep into the pockets of my greatcoat, sank my head into my collar, and shouldered my way through the throng as best I could. I had given up on trying to spot Epiny or Spink. The odds of my seeing anyone I knew in a gathering this large were ridiculously small. Almost as soon as I reached that realization, an opening in the crowd revealed several young men in Academy overcoats, their backs turned to me. I veered toward them, thinking they might be my roommates. If they were, I suddenly decided I’d go whoring with them. The tawdriness of carnival had won me over. I had nothing left to lose to it. One yelled out, “Come on! Finish! Down it like a man!” Three others took up the chant, “Down it! Down it!” They didn’t sound like my friends.
I waited until a gaggle of merrymakers tooting horns had passed, and then crossed the crowded space toward them. When I got closer, I instantly recognized them as the new noble cadets I’d glimpsed earlier. Jaris and Ordo were among them. I turned aside hastily. Then, behind me, I heard one woeful voice raised. “I can’t! I’m sick. That’s enough for me!”
“No, no, my lad!” Jaris was hearty with good cheer. “Drink it down. Finish it, and we’ll get you a woman. Like we promised.”
“But first you’ve got to prove you’re a man. Drink it down!”
“There’s not much left. You’re more than halfway there!” I recognized Ordo’s voice.
The chorus of voices encouraged him. I knew he’d do it. Caulder could never withstand the prospect of approval. The boy was going to be horribly sick tomorrow. Served him right.
I wanted to keep walking. But something made me halt and turn a little, to witness this as if I had not seen enough grotesque spectacles for one night. A brief opening in the crowd showed me Caulder standing in their midst, bottle clutched in one hand. He was weaving on his feet. But as I stared, he obediently lifted the bottle’s mouth to his and upended it. His eyes were clenched as if in pain, but I saw his Adam’s apple bob repeatedly. “Down, down, down, down!” the chant rose around him again. And then more people walked between us, obscuring the scene. I started to walk away again. There was a whoop, and a roar of approval from behind me. “That’s a man, Caulder! You’ve done it!” They applauded him but it was followed immediately by derisive laughter. Jaris laughed and cried out, “That’s done it, lads! He won’t be following us anymore tonight! Let’s off to Lady Parra’s. She’ll let us in now that we don’t have the puppy trailing after us.”
All five of them hurried away, jostling through the crowd, whooping and laughing as they went. I didn’t see Caulder among them. He’d probably passed out. It was none of my doing, and I wanted nothing to do with it. I was sure that blame for this would fall on someone tomorrow, and that it wouldn’t be Caulder. The farther away from him I stayed, the better for me. Nonetheless, I found myself pushing back through the clusters of people to the spot where Caulder lay flat on his back on the ground.
His one outflung hand still clutched the bottle’s neck. It was cheap, strong drink, not wine or beer, and I flinched from its harsh stink. Caulder was lying still. His face in the uneven light of the square was the same dirty
