congratulation I could offer. “It’s a punishment, isn’t it?” I finally asked hopelessly.
“It is and it isn’t. They need me there. The building of the King’s Road has come to a virtual halt there and I’m to move among the Specks in their forest and find out why. Ostensibly, I’m well suited for the task. Good at languages, good at engineering. I should be able to scout out the best route for the road and make friends with the wild people. Maybe I’ll find out why we can’t seem to make any forward progress. Everyone gets something they want out of it. I get work I like and I’m good at. The administration gets me out of the way and in a position where I can never hope to rise to any appreciable rank.”
I found I was nodding to his words. They made sense. Reluctantly, I told him, “Earlier this year, Captain Maw said I’d make a good scout.”
“Did he? Then I expect you will. He said the same thing to me when I was a first-year.”
“But I don’t want to be a scout!” The words burst from me. I was horrified at his prophecy.
“I doubt that anyone does, Nevare. When the time comes, try to recognize that Maw means well by intervening in that way. He’d rather see promising cadets serve in some capacity of worth, rather than being culled or sent to useless posts to count blankets or buy mutton for the troops. It’s his way of saying you’re worth something, even if you are a battle lord’s son.”
The silence that followed his words hung between us. Finally, he broke it, saying, “Wish me luck, Burvelle.”
“Good luck, Lieutenant Tiber.”
“Scout Tiber, Burvelle. Scout Tiber. I’d best get used to it.” He saluted me and I returned it. Then he walked away from me into the cold and the dark. I stood still, shivering, and wondered if I was doomed to follow in his footsteps.
CHAPTER 18
Accusations
Winter deepened and we drew ever closer to Dark Evening. At my father’s house in Widevale, Dark Evening had been a night for prayers and meditation and floating candles on the pond or the river, followed by a celebration the next morning of the lengthening of the days. My mother had always given each of us a small but useful gift in celebration of the turning of the year, to which my father added a yellow envelope containing spending money. It had been a minor but pleasant holiday each year.
Thus I was astonished to hear my fellows speak of Dark Evening with enthusiasm and anticipation as it drew near. The Academy itself would offer a feast to us on Dark Evening’s Eve, followed by two days of liberty for all cadets in good standing. There were also plays in the playhouses, and the king and queen gave a grand ball in Sondringham Hall in Old Thares, to which the senior cadets were invited. For the younger cadets, there would be carnival and street performers and dancing in the guildhalls. We were sternly admonished that we could attend such events only in uniform, and thus must be on our best behavior, not just for our own reputations, but also for the honor of the Academy. I looked forward to it as something I’d never experienced before.
Caleb was shocked to hear that I knew so little of Dark Evening. I thought he was teasing me when they told me that on Dark Evening all whores went masked and gave away their favors for free, and that some ladies of good houses sneaked out into the streets on that night, and pretended to be women of pleasure so that they might sample the favors of strange men without danger to their reputations. When I challenged the truth of this, he showed me several lewdly illustrated stories in some of his cheap folios of adventure tales. Despite my better judgment, I read the accounts of women seduced by one wild night in the city and thought them as appalling as they were unlikely. What sane woman would leave her safe and comfortable home simply to indulge in one night of licentiousness?
Privately, I asked Natred and Kort if they had ever heard such a thing. To my surprise, they assured me that they had. Natred said that his older cousins had told him of it. Kort added that his father said it was a vestige of one of the old gods’ celebrations. “It’s mostly a western custom. The temples of the old gods are still standing in a lot of the older cities, and people remember a lot more about those gods and their customs. Especially the celebrations they had. Dark Evening used to belong to a women’s god. That was what I heard. My mother used to tell stories about Dark Evening to my sisters. Not about running around acting like a whore, but old tales, of girls meeting masked gods at Dark Evening celebrations, and being granted gifts by them, like spinning straw into gold or being able to dance two inches above the floor. Just pretty stories.
“Then one year my father caught my three sisters dancing in the dark in the garden in just their knickers. He was very upset about it, but my mother asked him what harm could it do, so long as there were no young men about. He said it was the idea of it, and forbade them to ever do such a thing again. But”-and Kort leaned closer to us, as if fearing that someone else might hear-“I think they still keep the holiday that way.”
“Even my Talerin?” Natred asked intently. I could not tell if he was scandalized or delighted.
“I do not know for sure,” Kort cautioned him. “But I have heard that many women have rituals and rites of their own for Dark Evening. Sometimes I think that there is much about our women that we do not know.”
Such talk made me wonder about my own Carsina. For an instant I imagined Carsina dancing near naked in a darkened garden. Would she? I suddenly did not know if I hoped she did or didn’t. Were there rites and rituals that women observed and we men knew nothing about? Were they all in the service of the good god or did women secretly still worship at some of the old altars? Such questions whetted my curiosity for Dark Evening in Old Thares. To be turned loose in the great old city with my fellows, a man among men on a wild festival night, was something I had never imagined. I counted up my allowance that I had hoarded and felt that the holiday would never come.
In the middle of that week, what began as a good-natured snowball fight with the old nobility first-years from Drakes Hall turned into a nasty pitched battle, with ice and rocks replacing the earlier missiles. I had been at the library, and only learned of it through Rory’s retelling when our patrol gathered at the study table that night. Rory had a black eye and Kort a swollen lip to show for it. The skirmish had dissolved when several older cadet officers had come upon the scene. Even so, Rory was rejoicing over making an antagonist “bleed some of that fine old blood out of his fine old nose.” Trist had also been a participant, as had Caleb. Oron had only witnessed it and yet seemed more upset than Rory. Twice he said aloud, “I just don’t understand it. We are all cadets here. What could have made them hate us so suddenly?”
The second time he said it, Gord shut his book with a sigh. “Don’t any of you read the newspapers?” he asked, and did not wait for the reply before adding, “The Council of Lords just voted about taxation for the King’s Road. The old nobles opposed it, arguing that they need their moneys for roads and improvements in their own territories rather than ‘the road to nowhere,’ as Lord Jarfries called it. The old nobility had expected to easily defeat the proposal to channel a portion of their tax income to King Troven’s coffers for the road. I even read that some of them laughed aloud when a new noble named Lord Simem first proposed it. Yet when the ballots were counted, three times and no less, the vote was in favor of taxation for the King’s Road.”
He said this as if it were of immense importance. We all stared at him silently. “Puppies!” he said at last in disgust. “Think about what it means. It means that enough old nobles crossed the line to vote with the new nobles, secretly, that the king is regaining a stronger hand in the country. The old nobles who thought that power was coming slowly but surely into their hands have suffered a major setback. They resent it, and because of it, they and their sons resent us all the more. They thought they were on the path to running this country, with the king as little more than a figurehead. But for our fathers, it would have come true. The old nobility would have continued a slow march upon the monarchy, taking more power and control for themselves, retaining more taxes, building more wealth…Don’t any of you see what I’m talking about?” Sudden frustration broke in his voice.
“The good god put King Troven over all of us, to rule us justly and well. All of the Holy Writ tells us that the lords should serve their king as a good son serves his father, in obedience, respect, and gratitude for his guidance.” Oron said this so solemnly that I nearly bowed my head and signed the air with the good god’s sign. He sounded more like a bessom at that moment than Gord ever had.
Gord snorted. “Yes. So we have all been brought up to believe, every soldier son of us, every son of a new noble father. But what do you think the old nobles have told their first sons and their soldier sons? Do you think they have been taught their first duty is to the king, or to their own noble fathers?”
