CHAPTER XVI
Tests
Spring 48–54I
The horse eyed Jame warily, no less so than she did him. He was a chestnut gelding with a white star and white legs, tall enough so that she could hardly see over his withers. As she saddled him, he shifted restlessly in the crossties. When she slipped off his halter and attempted to bridle him, he backed up in the box stall and raised his head out of her reach.
“Here.” The horse-master entered, clouted the horse on the jaw to settle him, then forced the bit between his clenched teeth.
“This one had a wildcat land on his back once. See the scars? Mind you, it didn’t exactly attack, more like fell out of a tree on top of him. Try telling a horse that there’s a difference, though. He’s hardly a mount that I would have chosen for you.”
“It was the instructor’s idea.” Jame glowered at the Caineron randon watching from outside the stall.
“Huh,” said the officer and moved on, shouting, “Get a move on, you bed of slugs!”
The horse-master tightened the chestnut’s girth.
“Remember,” he said under his breath, “you may be able to ride a rathorn and a Whinno-hir, but to the average horse you’re a predator, to be gotten away from as fast as possible. If you’re scared—and I can see that you are—try not to show it.”
Fine for him to say, thought Jame as she led the horse up the ramp with her ten-command and their Caineron counterparts clopping around her. The rathorn Death’s-head obeyed her, if unwillingly, but she was only able to ride him because the bond between them allowed her to feel his shifts an instant before he made them. As for Bel-tairi, anyone could ride that sweet-tempered mare if they had her consent, never mind that only Jame did. All other horses to her were large, powerful, unpredictable creatures—and to them she was a thing with claws.
Outside the northern gate, the cadets swung into the saddle. They were paired this time with Gorbel’s ten-command. Gorbel himself sat on his dun gelding to one side, not meeting Jame’s eyes. He still hadn’t spoken to her since his return from Restormir nor attended the Falconer’s class. She wondered what his father had said to him.
“To begin with, once around the college,” said the instructor. “Walk, trot, canter, gallop. Keep in formation. Off you go.”
The others walked off. Jame’s mount backed up, shaking his head.
The randon slapped it on the haunch and it bolted to catch up, barging between Fash and Higbert at the far end of the line from her own ten. Their horses snapped at hers. Fash, laughing, gave her a not-so-playful shove.
The instructor caught up on the far right next to Brier.
They rounded the front of Old Tentir and began to trot. Jame could sense the pent-up energy in her mount, or was it his terror? Whichever, it felt like bestriding something on the verge of explosion. She tried to relax. The chestnut lurched sideways into its neighbor and began to buck, throwing Jame forward on his neck. She rapped it on the head. Instead of quieting, it bolted ahead of the line to a shouted curse from the instructor. Her own ten picked up the canter to keep pace.
They swung around Old Tentir to its southern side. The right flank hugged its wall, the left veered into the wild moraine area where the egging exercise had taken place. Jame’s horse dodged trees and leaped over rocks. An outcrop of the latter separated her and her stirrup mates from the others.
Fash rammed the chestnut, lifting it half off its feet. On the other side Higbert lashed at her with his whip. Suddenly she was in a running battle through undergrowth, over treacherous ground. What in Perimal’s name . . . ? The other horses crowded in on her. Fash grabbed her jacket and jerked. Already off balance, she fell between his mount and her own, down among the pounding hooves.
They thundered over her head.
Jame lay very still for a long moment, waiting for the stab of pain. In its place came a dull ache across the shoulders and down the back. All of her limbs still seemed to work, her brain as well (or ill) as usual. Only when she sat up did she remember the phantom touch of a tree trunk at the back of her neck . If she had fallen a moment later, it would surely have broken her neck.
“Hoom.”
Jame looked up at the sound of someone nearby clearing his throat, but no one was there.
Before her lay a steeply ridged, wooded landscape sprinkled with spring flowers, patches of vivid green, and a few pockets of late snow in the deep kettles. In the distance, Perimal’s Cauldron fumed and muttered.
“a-HOOM.”
Pebbles and dirt clods rattled down the nearest slope, expelled from a hole under a stone ledge. Boulders on either side gave the impression of puffed up cheeks. Shifting her position, Jame could make out two deep nooks above that might almost have been sunken eyes.
“Mother Ragga?”
“Hack, ack . . . ack . . . pu-toom!”
A family of hedgehogs, unceremoniously expelled, tumbled down the slope, unrolled at the bottom, and hastily shuffled off single file.
“So, this is the sort of game you cadets play.”
The Earth Wife’s voice came from the back of the hole, muffled, as if it spoke within close-set walls.
“Not usually,” said Jame. She started to rise, but realized that with her change of perspective the earthen face had disappeared. When she subsided, it was back.
“Humph.” More debris spat out. “I have a warning for you, missy: don’t forget Summer’s Eve in the hills.”
“That’s only twelve days away. What’s so important this time?”
“Remember last Summer’s Eve? That idiot Chingetai tried to claim the entire Riverland by laying bonefires up its length instead of using ’em to close the boundaries of his own land.”
“Surely he’s not going to try that trick again.”
The hillside rumbled. Stones rattled down it. “I should hope not. This time he’s got to do it right or stay open to more raids from both north and south. But the Noyat are already on Merikit ground, waiting. He’s going to need help.”
“Will he accept it from me?” For that matter, Jame thought, given past experience, was it wise to ask her for anything short of an apocalypse?
“He’s a fool if he doesn’t take all the help he can get.”
Of course, they both knew that Chingetai was a fool; how big a one remained to be seen.
Voices called her name through the trees. Jame rose to answer them. In so doing she lost sight of the Earth Wife although a subterranean mutter pursued her:
“Remember Summer’s Eve.”
Brier and Rue rode toward her leading her horse, in a high lather with wild eyes and a limp. Rather than mount him again, Jame swung up behind Rue. The randon instructor was waiting for them by the north gate where they had started their chaotic run.
“So there you are,” he said to Jame while the other Caineron snickered.
Fash and Higbert looked at Gorbel as if expecting him to speak, but he continued to glower into space, jaws clamped shut.
“I think you Knorth have had enough excitement for one day,” said the randon. “Here. You’ve earned this.”
Jame stared at the black pebble that he had dropped into her hand.
“What was that all about?” she asked as they led their horses back down the ramp to the stable.
Brier regarded the stone with lowered brows. “So. The final testing has begun.”
Seeing that Jame was still confused, Rue rushed to explain. “The first time we competed against each other, remember?”
“Oh yes. Vividly. I barely earned enough points to enter the college.”
The horse-master shook his bald head at the state of her mount and felt his hock, but didn’t comment. She led the horse into his stall and began to rub him down. He still quivered whenever she touched him.
“Then the Randon Council cast the stones,” continued Rue, busy in the next stall.
Another near miss, thought Jame. If she hadn’t redeemed the Shame of Tentir in the person of Bel-tairi, even the Commandant had been prepared to throw her out.
The chestnut continued to fret. Losing patience, Jame slapped him on his sweat-slickened barrel. “Behave!” He bounced nervously and settled down somewhat.
“Then there was the Winter War.”
“But that didn’t count, did it?”
“Not officially. It should be good for something, though, shouldn’t it?”
Rue called to the other cadets for confirmation. No one knew for sure, but it only seemed just: after all, the Knorth team had won, if through a series of maneuvers on Jame’s part that still perplexed most of her house.
“So,” said Rue, finally getting to the point, “this time the instructors have most of the say.”
“Each senior randon is given six pebbles,” cut in Dar from across the aisle. Trust him not to be able to keep quiet. “Three white and three black, for the best and worst performances in their classes. They can give them out all at once, but more likely one at a time. The Commandant has a set too.”
“Randon aren’t supposed to give white tokens to their own house,” Mint added from her other side, “but they can give black.”
“Anyway,” said Rue, “how many white you get by Summer’s Day determines where you go on graduation.”
“If you graduate,” muttered Damson.
“True, some don’t,” Erim agreed. “Next worst is to have to repeat your first year here at the college.”
Which Tori would never let her do, Jame thought.
“Kothifir is for the best,” said Mint. “Next best is some other foreign post. Then there are the cadets who are sent home to join their house garrisons.”
“How many white pebbles qualify you for Kothifir?” asked Jame.
“It varies from year to year. Usually one white will do it, or one black for failure. There are some twenty randon with six tokens each. Most of us never get one at all, which means that we get sent wherever we’re needed. That could be good or bad. Ten-commands may also get broken up as in the second cull, say, if the commander gets a black, or a commander’s white might pull through his or her entire ten-squad intact. Then too, black cancels white and vice versa, so you’re already one behind, Ten.”
“Lovely,” muttered Jame.
It wasn’t until she and the others were on their way to the next lesson that it struck her: if she was going up into the hills for Summer’s Eve, she would miss the last day of classes with its potential tests. Well, never mind, she thought, setting her jaw; she would just have to earn enough white tokens before then.
IIFrom then on, each lesson taught by a randon became a test of nerves, if nothing else. Would the instructor award a pebble or not? Which color, and to whom? Some handed out all six immediately, based as much on past as present performance. Others seemed to be waiting until the last minute. A few with particularly strict standards had the reputation for only distributing as many as they truly believed to be earned, black or white.
The Falconer’s class eyed each other, wondering. Tarn and Torvi seemed clear winners, and so they proved, to some good-natured grumbling from the others. After all, one expected a dog to obey. Gari and his various insect hordes also received a white. So did Shade and Addy.
Jame sighed and ruffled Jorin’s fur. Her link with the ounce had improved, but not as much as she and (clearly) her instructor would have liked. Trust a cat to go its own way.
The Falconer only handed out one black and that, in absentia, to Gorbel, who since his return from Restormir had never reappeared in the mews.
“Pleased?” Jame asked Shade as the latter fingered her white stone.
“Moderately. I see through Addy’s eyes now but so, I suspect, does my grandmother Rawneth.”
Jame had noted that Shade had been restraining her changer tendencies ever since her own house had put her down the well. Perhaps that was safest, but it seemed like throttling a natural talent.
Kindrie had stopped by on his way back to Mount Alban and told her about Kenan’s presumed impersonation of Holly at Wilden. What a horrible time her poor cousin had had. Really, the three of them had to take better care of each other.
However, there was no longer any question in Jame’s mind where Shade had gotten her changer blood, and little where Kenan had gotten his. Did darkness come with it? Not intrinsically when innocently got, as far as Jame could tell. She was closer to the shadows herself due to her past behavior but also closer to their despised god thanks to her basic nature. On the whole, she felt herself to be more compromised than an innocent victim like Shade. The Randir, however, still seemed to have doubts.
Shade looked up. “Gari. When do the crown jewel-jaws migrate north?”
“Any day now. Why?”
The Randir only shrugged, but Jame could guess. Migrating with the “jaws” would be the Randir Heir Randiroc, whom Rawneth had been trying to assassinate for years. The Randir at the college loyal to the Witch would be watching for him. So, apparently, was Shade.
Classes continued. Jame got another black in swordsmanship, not unexpectedly, even though it came from a Jaran instructor. Then she and Brier both got whites after fighting each other to a draw at the Senethar in a match that took the entire class period and left both barely able to stand. Another white came into Jame’s hands for her skill with the scythe-arm. That made two of each, already a surprising number for any cadet but not an advantage in that they cancelled each other out.
Among her ten-command, Erim received a white for archery, no one apparently having yet realized that he could only hit inanimate objects. Niall also scored for field surgery after Killy pinned a randon to the ground with a lance through the leg, thus earning a black for himself. Jame suspected that Damson had rigged the accident since the plump cadet liked neither Killy nor that particular instructor. Moreover, she was fond of shy Niall, whose battlefield experience at the Cataracts was well known.
“How about you?” Jame asked Timmon when they crossed paths between lessons.
“A white for diplomacy,” he said proudly.
She laughed. As practiced at Tentir, diplomacy and debate were closely linked, with the hitch that one truly had to convince one’s opponent. “You’re a charmer. What could be easier?”
“Well, there is that. I hope to get another white for the Senetha, though. Shade has.”
Jame wasn’t surprised, given what she had seen of the Randir’s skills. She hoped she would also score in that discipline, but so far the class hadn’t appeared on her daily roster.
“And Gorbel?”
“A white for strategy, of all things.”
That didn’t surprise Jame either; people always underestimated the brain behind that bulging brow and sullen expression.
“Too bad they don’t test for hunting skills,” she said.
Timmon looked at her askance. “You want him to pass, don’t you?”
“Well, yes. I’m annoyed that he keeps avoiding me, but otherwise, for a Caineron, he isn’t half bad.”
“And me, for an Ardeth?”
“You’re shaping up into something interesting; and no, I don’t mean sexually.”
“Damn.”
The next time Jame’s ten was paired with Gorbel’s, it was for a race, starting at the swimming hole, ending on top of a cliff across the Burley.
“How you get there is up to you,” said the Coman randon in change.
The cadets looked at the cliff, which rose a good one hundred feet above the water. Some gulped and turned pale. Most turned and trotted downstream toward the bridge, meaning to cross and approach their goal the long way around, from its more accessible far side.
Jame eyed the cliff face. It was rife with slanting crevices and had an inviting ledge two-thirds of the way up.
“Well?” she said to Brier, who had stayed by her side as if waiting to see which way the cat jumped.
The Southron squinted up against the afternoon sun. Like most Kendar cadets, she suffered from height-sickness, but had nearly mastered it.
“I’m game if you are, Ten.”
“See here.” It was Gorbel who also, unnoticed, had stayed behind. “I need to talk to you.”
“Oh, do you, at long last? Then follow.”
Jame circled the swimming hole, darted out onto the spit that separated it from the Burley’s next level, and jumped from rock to rock across the rapids to the opposite bank. From this narrow, gravelly margin, she leaned back to judge her ascent, then unsheathed her claws.
The cliff face was most accommodating, offering many grips for hands and feet. It was a pleasure to climb. Halfway up she glanced down at Brier who was making steady if not quite as rapid progress.
“All right?”
The dark features turned up toward her, rigid with determination. “Just don’t fall on me.”
They reached the ledge and pulled themselves up onto it for a brief rest. The wind was sweet on their sweating faces, the cliff’s shadow cool. Swift water chuckled below. Downstream Perimal’s Cauldron rumbled deep in its throat. Across treetops and New Tentir’s outer wall, they could see the roof of their barracks.
“Nice place for a picnic,” Jame said.
Brier grunted and closed her eyes.
They opened again at a rattle of stones below. A pallid, sweaty face scowling with concentration glared up at them. Gorbel had climbed halfway to the ledge and was fumbling for a new grip.
“He really must want to talk to you,” said Brier.
“Go on when you’re ready. I’ll wait for him.”
After a moment, Brier rose to her feet and resumed her ascent. Jame leaned over the edge.
“To your right. Now reach up. Good. Not so good.”
Gorbel had stepped on loose shale and for a moment hung by his fingertips, feet scrabbling at the rock face. All the Caineron Jame had ever met were deathly afraid of heights.
“Come on. A few more feet. Now, reach for my hand.”
His weight nearly pulled her off the ledge, but after a fierce struggle she managed to haul him up.
“Now,” she said, panting, “what’s so urgent . . . that you had to follow me . . . up a sheer cliff?”
“Please.” He gulped and leaned back, looking sick. As if with a life of their own, his hands still clung white-knuckled to the rock slab on which he sat. “There’s no privacy at the college, and I was running out of time.”
“Ancestors preserve us. For what?”
“To warn you. If I don’t challenge you to armed combat before the end of the school year, my father is going to disown me.”
“Oh,” said Jame. This was bad, much worse than simply being replaced as Caineron Lordan. “Would the randon let you graduate without a house?”
“I’m not inclined to find out.”
“So we fight. Huh. Maybe I should have let you fall.”
“That wouldn’t help: Fash would be glad to take my place. By the way, the challenge includes all the Tentir Highborn cadets of both houses.”
Jame counted on her fingers. “That’s one against . . . five?”
“Eight. My command doesn’t include all the Caineron Highborn. Speaking of the randon, if you pass, Father has also threatened to demote the Commandant and reassign him so far into the hinterlands that it will take him a month’s hard ride just to get there.”
“The randon would allow that?”
“In house, they have no say. Worst of all, though, Father can strike at Sheth’s nephews and nieces in the service, some of them Bear’s children.”
“All this to stop me from graduating Tentir? Thal’s balls, I won’t even be a fully collared randon until I’ve spent two years in the field.”
Gorbel snorted. “Father has finally grasped that you aren’t easy to stop. The same may have occurred to your brother.”
“Still, to threaten innocents . . .”
“I know. It won’t make Father popular with the Randon Council, but then he never has been.”
They both contemplated Caldane’s little tests by which he established the loyalty and ambition of his officer core, pushing hard against the bounds of Honor’s Paradox.
“Hey!” the randon officer called over the cliff’s grassy edge, from a cautious distance. “Are you two setting up house down there?”
Gorbel groaned and rose. “What did I say. No privacy. There is this, though: I can challenge you however I like. Well, it’s to mounted combat with your choice of weapon. Think about it.”
Jame did as she followed his agonizingly slow ascent the rest of the way to the top. Hmmm.
They found the two ten-commands waiting for them.
“Last up,” said the randon, and dropped a black pebble into Jame’s hand. She looked at it.
“Well?” the Coman demanded, with a note of challenge in his voice.
It was unfair. He was waiting for her to say so.
“Nothing, Ran.” She pocketed it.
IIIThat evening, though, after supper, Jame lined the black pebble up with its mates on the dining hall table and regarded them. Two white river rocks and three dark gray ones, all about an inch long and half an inch thick, all smoothed to perfect ovals. They might have been markers in a game of Gen; perhaps some had been. The game she played now, however, was much more serious.
“You should complain to the Commandant,” said Rue, scowling at them.
“Have I ever, about anything?”
The towheaded cadet wriggled, uncomfortable. “Well, no. And yet . . .”
“And yet I shouldn’t have to.” Jame tapped the latest black stone with a fingertip, saw that she had extended a claw, and retracted it. “The Coman knew that I held back to make sure Gorbel didn’t fall. He can’t have thought I deserved this. So where is honor here?”
Brier deposited three mugs of cider on the table and swung a long leg over the bench to join them.
“We aren’t tested for one lesson alone but for all,” she said, “and for each randon’s opinion as to our general fitness. Did you think, lady, that you’d won all of them over?”
“Well, no. Given who they are and what I am, that would be impossible, but still . . .”
“But still you hoped that you had.”
Jame considered this. Maybe she was na?ve. Where honor was concerned, did she see it as black and white as these pebbles on the table before her? But then they were actually natural shades of gray. Wasn’t she herself similarly shaded, caught between Perimal Darkling and her own Three-Faced God? Yes and no. If her own honor were compromised, surely she would know it. Thanks to Tori, she hadn’t yet personally faced Honor’s Paradox. Perhaps neither had the Coman randon. If he didn’t think she was fit to be an officer, it was his duty to say so; and he had, however unfair the pretext.
“You think it’s all politics,” she said to Brier.
The Southron shrugged and drank. As a former Caineron, ancestors knew she had seen more than her share of unfair dealings between Highborn and Kendar.
“Yes,” said Rue, “but would the Commandant see it that way?”
Black stone, white stone, touchstone.
Jame considered Rue’s faith. Did she share it even as Sheth confronted his own crisis of Honor’s Paradox with his brother?
Even then, she thought, regarding Brier Iron-thorn’s stoic, teak-dark face and Rue’s flushed, rebellious one. Especially then.
IVDuring these last days, Jame had her last lesson with Bear.
As usual, she was pulled aside after assembly and instructed, almost furtively, to report to the Pit. Surely secrecy was no longer required, she thought as she made her way deep into Old Tentir. The other cadets were already aware that she took lessons from the former monster of the maze, and everyone knew about her claws.
It seemed like a lifetime ago that she had considered them such dreadful secrets. Jame extended her nails through the slit tips of her gloves and flexed them. Click, click, click. Ah, how good that felt.
But don’t get too comfortable, she told herself. Whenever you use them, especially in anger, you draw closer to the Third Face of God.
So the Arrin-ken had warned her, and she felt it to be true. The last time she had nearly flayed Vant alive, something of which she was far from proud. But to use them rationally, naturally, in self-defense—that ought to be different.
Here was the Pit, as desolate as ever with its splintered walls and lingering aura of spilt blood. A shadow passed before the torches in the observation room above. So. The Commandant had once again come to watch her train with his brother.
The opposite door opened and Bear shambled in, prodded from behind. He wheeled to confront his keepers, but they shut the door in his face. He wedged his massive claws into the crack, gouging out new splinters but failing to wrench it open, then turned to scan the room. Jame donned the mesh helmet and saluted. He ignored her. Firelight flared on the crevasse in his skull through the tumble of gray hair. Had it closed further? Jame couldn’t tell. His clothes were more unkempt than ever, his aspect both more aware and more desperate. He saw his brother in the balcony and mouthed at him. One word broke through the babble of sound: “Why?”
Jame dropped her salute and, after a moment, removed the helmet. She touched his arm. He swung around, gigantic in the flickering light, looming over her.
“Why what?” she asked him.
He struggled with articulation, mangling words, then thrust her aside in frustration. She fell back against the wall, rapping her head sharply against the panels.
Bear raised his fists, not against her but against the silent, still figure above.
“Why? Why? Why?”
His voice cracked, then broke into a roar. In answer, the lower door opened and sargents swarmed in to subdue him. He flung them about as if their padded armor were tenantless until Jame got in his way again. She put her hands on his broad chest, ignoring the frightful sweep of his claws as they slashed the air around her head. Though he surged back and forth, he didn’t again strike her and she managed to stay with him as if in some uncouth dance, her agile feet against his lumbering ones. At last he stopped, panting, leaning into her until her knees nearly buckled.
“Why?” he asked his brother again, almost plaintively.
Why am I a captive? Why doesn’t my mind work properly? Why have you done this to me?
Sheth didn’t answer. What could he say?
Bear’s shoulders slumped. He allowed himself to be herded out of the room without a backward glance.
Jame and the Commandant were left regarding each other. After a moment, Jame tendered him a sober salute which he acknowledged with a slight nod. Then she left the Pit by the opposite door.
VIt had been a disturbing incident and Jame thought a great deal about it, without reaching any solution. It especially bothered her that she was about to leave Tentir, one way or another, while Bear remained a prisoner within it. Still, what could she do?
In a dream that night, she found herself arguing with her brother.
“Where is honor in all of this?” she demanded of him or rather of his back as he paced, long black coat swishing, hands clasped behind him. “Bear was a great randon before he fell in battle. His condition isn’t his fault.”
“You’ve seen how dangerous he can be,” said Torisen over his shoulder. “We owe our cadets, our people, protection.”
“Of course he’s dangerous,” she answered, exasperated, also beginning in her agitation to pace. “He always has been. With those claws, he’s clearly aligned to That-Which-Destroys. Would you lock away all such Kencyr?”
“Such Kencyr are Shanir.”
“So are those who create and preserve,” said Kindrie, passing them with his white-thatched head bowed in deep thought. “Should they also be cast aside, as I was?”
“I can’t answer for them,” Torisen snapped. “Don’t you see? I can barely answer for myself.”
“And who are you?”
“Highlord of the Kencyrath, guardian of a flawed society.”
“Then let me smash the flaws out of it.”
“What else might you destroy, eh?”
“I won’t know until you trust me to try.”
“Yet there is good,” mused Kindrie. “Honor’s Paradox can break us, or make us stronger while honor itself is our strength. And we are strong, despite everything.”
So they argued back and forth as their paths crossed and recrossed, never quite bringing them face to face.
Jame woke with some unanswerable retort on the tip of her tongue, and lost it to returning consciousness.
Her quarters were dark and quiet except for Jorin’s gentle snore on the pallet beside her.
Where is honor? she thought again.
All this fretting had made her thirsty. As she rose to fetch a cup of water, however, her bare foot brushed something coiled on the floor that hissed in warning.
“Addy?”
She reached down and carefully picked up the swamp adder. Phantom light seeping down the smoke hole gleamed on restless, gilded scales.
“Were you sent to me for protection again?” she asked the snake. “What is Shade up to this time?”
No answer, as usual, except for a flickering black tongue and a mad, orange glare.
She settled Addy a safe distance from Jorin in the warm depression left by her body, dressed, and slipped out of her chambers. One floor down, the cadets slept in their canvas-partitioned quarters. Below, the common hall lay empty and silent. Out onto the boardwalk . . .
Jame shrank back. Against the northern side of New Tentir, the Randir barracks were stealthily astir where a number of cadets waited in the shadow of the arcade’s tin roof. The moon in its last quarter caught Master-Ten Reef’s sharp features as she turned toward a figure darting across the square. Whispers followed, and a hand pointing southward. The waiting Randir streamed out of the shadows like a pack of direhounds running mute on the trail.
Jame followed them out the southern gate. There to her relief they turned east toward the river instead of into the treacherous moraines. Downstream lay a bridge and across it to the south a woodland backed up against the toes of the Snowthorns. If the cadets hadn’t been so intent on their prey, they might have heard her following them for the wood was dark and full of snares for the hasty foot, but no one looked back. When Jame caught up with them, they were crouched behind a rank of bushes under a spreading maple newly leafed out. Jame climbed the tree and edged out onto a bough over their heads. The limb creaked under her weight. One Randir glanced up, but didn’t see her among the broad leaves. The others’ attention was fixed on the glen before them.
Moon and starlight glimmered on two figures there—a hooded man astride a pale horse and a dark, slim girl, one hand on his bridle, earnestly speaking to him. A breeze rustled through the clearing and the rider’s outline seemed to flutter. The mare’s ears pricked toward the bushes. She shook her head and mouthed her bit.
The branch creaked again and slightly gave way.
The Randir drew their bows.
“ ’Ware arrows!” Jame cried, a moment before the bough broke, dumping her and its leafy weight on top of the Randir.
Many were knocked flat. Some, however, let fly. Most of their arrows went wildly astray; others, however, streaked across the glen. The mounted figure seemed to disintegrate into a swirling cloud of jewel-jaws, moon- and shadow-hued. A sword flashed, cutting all but one of the missiles out of the air. The remaining shaft ripped through the hood between head and shoulder, snatching it away from Randiroc’s pale features and white, shaggy hair. He had swung Mirah to cover Shade. The mare danced in place for a moment, then sprang away before the Randir could notch another flight. Whatever happened, Randiroc would not fight the children of his house.
As Jame struggled out of the tangle of limbs, human and arboreal, she thought she saw the Randon Heir still standing there across the clearing. Then he turned and fled. Some Randir fought free to pursue him. They had barely sped away when a second wave of cadets barreled into those still on the ground. Rawneth’s supporters and her opponents fought fiercely, in silence, while Jame wriggled free, only to find herself in the grip of the ten-commander who had put Shade down the well.
“They’re after him,” she gasped.
The commander released her. “Then go.”
Jame ran through the trees toward the sound of fighting, to find the supposed Randir Heir in the hands of his enemies. Jame dropped two cadets with fire-leaping kicks and a third with earth-moving before they realized they were under attack. The other three turned, blades in their hands. Their prey, released, crumpled to the ground.
“This is no business of yours, Knorth,” said Reef.
Jame maneuvered for position, noting their stance and weapons as they spread out to surround her.
“You’ve struck down a fellow randon in unequal combat after an ambush,” she said. “That should concern everyone at the college.”
“Would you tell, then? Go away, little Highborn. Quickly. Before we deal with you as we have with this renegade traitor.”
The one behind her lunged at her back. Jame slid aside in a wind-blowing move, caught the other’s wrist as it shot past, and broke it. The attacker’s momentum sent her stumbling into her mate. Both went down as other Randir began to stagger to their feet. Reef feinted, then slashed, ripping Jame’s jacket as she leaped backward.
Voices called out behind them. Reef backed off, turned, and fled, followed by her companions.
Jame rushed to the fallen “lordan.” Not to her surprise, the latter’s features were in painful flux back to Shade’s. The changer clasped her stomach, trying to hold back a tide of blood. Her hands and the ground beneath her glistened darkly in the moonlight. Jame held her.
“You should be changer enough to close this wound.”
“What does it matter?” Shade spoke through clenched teeth, and gasped as a spasm of pain shook her. “Ah! I would have bound myself to him, but he refused.”
“He didn’t refuse because you’re tainted. I’ve told you: you aren’t.”
“Why, then?”
Trinity, much more of this foolishness and the Randir would bleed to death through sheer stubbornness. Jame scrambled after her wits.
“Think about it,” she said urgently. “The way he lives, in hiding, always on the run—how could he accept a follower?”
“I could serve him at the college, in the field, anywhere.”
“He would still be responsible for you, and he can’t be. Look at all the trouble I’ve had supporting Graykin, and we’ve been under the same roof all winter.”
Shade stared at her. “That scruffy little Southron is bound to you?”
“Yes, but for Perimal’s sake don’t tell anyone. It was an accident. You said once that you didn’t need to be bound to anyone any more than I do, but you can still serve him without that. Look how useful your skills were to him tonight, and may be again in the future. Some day he and Rawneth will clash. Then he’ll need all the allies he can get. Will you consider that, and please stop bleeding?”
Shade was still for a moment. “All right,” she finally said. Her face contorted with effort. Then she sighed and removed her hands from the former wound.
Jame looked up to find that they were surrounded by a circle of silent, watchful Randir.
Two of them stepped forward and helped Shade to rise. Weak from blood loss, she sagged in their steadying grip.
“This is our business now,” said the ten-commander, “and our sister. We will care for her.”
They left, bearing Shade with them.
“I’ll send Addy home,” Jame called after them. “Shade?” But they were gone.
Jame sat back on her heels and considered her torn, blood-soaked clothes. More work for Rue, if she could even save the slowly rotting fabric. Perhaps the changer’s blood wasn’t corrosive enough yet to dissolve steel, but it had certainly ruined yet another bit of Jame’s limited wardrobe.
But oh, what had she said? Now the Randir knew that Graykin was bound to her, and no lady was supposed to bind anyone, never mind that Rawneth did. That settled it: whether he wanted to hear or not, she had to tell her brother before someone else did.
VIThe next morning at assembly, a wan Shade appeared, in company with many battered faces and some broken bones. However, it seemed that no one wanted to report the night’s events to their house. That, thought Jame, was just as well, given their lady’s reaction the last time an assassination attempt on the Randir Heir had failed.