Honor's Paradox

XVII Out of the Pit

The days to Summer’s Eve melted away.

It was full spring now, the wind-combed grass on the hills a vivid green speckled with bluebells and dancing golden campion, the apple orchard a drift of sweet blossoms. Birds sang and bees throbbed drunkenly through the air, sometimes bouncing off inauspiciously placed tree trunks. After classes on the afternoon of the fifty-seventh, Jame walked through a high meadow beyond the northern wall, idly gathering wild flowers and watching butterflies for Jorin to chase.

With three black tokens and two white, she was failing Tentir. Only one day of potential tests remained—tomorrow—if she meant to ride north to the hills on the fifty-nineth of Spring in time for Summer’s Eve.

Moreover, she hadn’t yet been tested in the Senetha or the Sene, the two related disciplines besides the Senethar where she could hope to excel. What if they came on the last day, the most important of her college career, when she was gone?

Should she go at all? Where did her responsibility lie, in the hall or in the hills?

On the face of it, the answer was simple. Tori had placed her here against all advice, against even his own common sense, with the sole requirement that she not make fools of them both. If she failed, would anyone care why? They would say that she was and always had been unfit, also that Torisen was a fool to have proposed her in the first place. If a fight with the Randir was coming, even possibly a civil war, did she dare weaken his position in any way? She wasn’t just any Kencyr, either, as Ashe had once pointed out, but a potential Nemesis. Someday one third of the Kencyrath’s destiny might depend on her.

She considered what would happen if she did indeed fail Tentir.

The Women’s World certainly wouldn’t take her back, nor did she want to go.

Nonetheless, lords would fight for her contract, the Ardeth and Caineron hardest of all. Dari with his rotting teeth and breath of a rotten eel, Caldane himself, perhaps . . .

G’ah, think of something else.

The cool wind, the sun hot on her face, a froth of white bells at her feet, and Jorin crouching behind a tuft of grass insufficient to hide him, ears pricked to the drowsy drone of a bumblebee. His hindquarters wriggled, one paw came up, and he pounced, barely missing.

“You wouldn’t have liked the taste anyway,” she told the ounce as he plumped himself down and began to wash as if nothing had happened.

Tori could still take you as his consort. How would you like the taste of that?

Jame felt her cheeks flush.

Yes, she loved her brother, but in that way? Scraps of dreams returned to her, the sort that Timmon favored but could never control, the sort that left her abashed but tingling.

Is it so bad, after all, to be a woman?

Perhaps not, but in the context of property? For a Highborn lady, there was no other way.

Then there was Rathillien.

Ultimately, the Kencyrath’s fate might depend as much on its relationship with this world as on the coming of the Tyr-ridan. The Four had started out hostile to her people, with good reason given that they saw the Kencyrath as invaders. The Eaten One might be content with her Kencyr consort for a season, but the Burnt Man favored no one except perhaps the Dark Judge, and Mother Ragga still had doubts. Nothing would turn her against the Three People faster than Jame’s failure to attend Summer’s Eve, not to mention the consequences if Chingetai failed again to close his borders against the Noyat and other tribes farther north under the Shadows’ sway.

Maybe there had been some way for Jame to escape her northern entanglements, but if so, she hadn’t found it.

Face it, she told herself glumly. Your loyalties are divided, and you have no one to blame for that but yourself.

On top of all that, she also had to meet Gorbel’s challenge on Summer’s Day. That morning at assembly the Caineron Lordan had formally issued it before the entire cadet body while the Commandant had looked down expressionless from his balcony.

“Run away,” Fash had advised with a grin while Higbert snickered behind him. “Now.” Both obviously expected an easy fight. “D’you think you stand a chance against even one of us on horseback, much less eight?”

Jame had ignored him.

Her own house had been harder to snub. Reactions there ranged from horrified shock to a gallant if somewhat desperate defense from her own ten: the lordan had pulled off miracles before; now—somehow—she would do so again.

Brier had given her an appraising look. “Is this fight to the death?”

“Not so far as I know”—with a passing thought to her uncle Greshan’s fate. “More likely to the shame, which is quite bad enough.”

In the end, though, their anxious chatter had driven her away into the high meadows, to be alone and to gather her thoughts, so far without success.

. . . run away . . .

What if she went to the hills and failed to return in time to meet Gorbel’s challenge?

Fash would laugh and Gorbel would be disappointed in her. So would her own people and all the unlikely friends she had made during her sojourn at Tentir, the Commandant not least. Would even her brother’s honor survive such a blow? He had tacitly supported her by letting her stay at Tentir for the past year. She owed him for that . . .

And was about to fail him unless she earned at least one more white token. If she didn’t win one tomorrow, despite everything, maybe she should try again the day after and let Chingetai enjoy whatever mess he was sure to make of things.

She wished she could ask the Commandant for advice. Once before, he had made it clear that her duty lay with the Merikit, but this time he had said nothing, and much more hung in the balance.

A thought struck her: was this her personal Honor’s Paradox? True, Torisen hadn’t ordered her to do anything dishonorable, nor was he likely to unless through ignorance of her true situation. However, she was being called on to exercise personal responsibility, and what was the paradox if not a test of that?

So her thoughts rolled, back and forth, between the hills and the hall, one last time for each.

“Huh,” said Jame, squinting up under a hand at a sun now in decline. Her face felt tight and hot from so long in its rays. Night creature that she had been before, she should have remembered how easily she burned by day, especially at this altitude.

She whistled up Jorin, who was happily engaged in batting an ants’ nest to pieces, and they went down to the college for supper. On the way, Jame detoured through Old Tentir and left the bouquet of flowers outside Bear’s door. She could hear him snuffling at them through the bars as she retreated.

The next morning Jame was roused early by the college stirring.

“What’s happened?” she asked Rue, who brought her a mug of ginger water in a state of high excitement.

“They say that Bear has escaped. Search parties are forming.”

Everyone scrambled into his or her clothes and down into the square where dawn set aglow the eastern sky, and breath smoked on the crisp air.

The Commandant walked before them, his long coat swishing at his heels, his hands clasped tightly behind him.

“You have all heard the news. This is our business, we of Tentir. Here it started, here it ends. One of our own is lost. He must be found.”

The cadets were sent by squad to search the school, focusing on Old Tentir. Ten-commands inched into the labyrinth bearing torches, keeping within sight of one another. Some tied themselves together with strings that all too often snapped. Others marked the walls with chalk. Soon the plaintive cries of the lost began to echo hollowly.

“What if he’s turned savage?” whispered Rue, creeping on Jame’s heels, giving voice to a fear that haunted them all. “I mean, who could blame him? But we’re the first people he’s likely to run into.”

Jame didn’t answer. It seemed to her altogether possible that Rue was right, that the man had again become a monster, but oh lord, what then?

Her ten was assigned to a spot not far from Bear’s quarters, deep within the old college. They passed his door; it had been smashed open from within, its shattered boards spattered with the blood of broken knuckles. Shredded flowers lay strewn across the threshold.

Beyond, the walls closed in around them, innocent but empty, lined with doors. Most were unlocked, yielding to rooms vacant except for dead spiders trapped in their own webs and white, scurrying things that shunned the light.

“Watch the floor,” said Jame.

They were farther in than most went and the boards beneath them were furred with dust.

“Here,” said Brier.

They saw the prints of large, bare feet and fallen petals leading up to a wall, disappearing into it.

“Now what?” said Brier.

Jame fumbled around the skirting, looking for the catch. A panel gave, a hidden door opened.

Graykin had only revealed a few of Tentir’s secret ways to her, of which this was one. Bear presumably knew them all from his time here as commandant, so long ago. The cadets gingerly descended the narrow, dark stair, batting at cobwebs, and found themselves in the public corridor that led between Old and New Tentir to the north gate. Here the footprints disappeared, but surely that was only one direction in which they could have gone.

“You can return to your quarters now and get some breakfast,” Jame told her command. “Don’t tell anyone.”

Brier loomed over her, frowning.

“Are you sure about this?”

“I had better be, hadn’t I? Bear is Shanir, aligned with That-Which-Destroys. So am I. If we can’t deal together, who can? Besides, he’s my senethari.”

Brier grunted. “So be it. Good luck to you.” She led away the rest of her puzzled squad.

Jame slipped out the side door and crossed the training fields. Beyond was the wall and the apple orchard, adrift in white blossoms. Above was the meadow where she had gathered the wild flowers.

She didn’t see Bear at first because he was kneeling in the deep grass, but a wisp of silvery gray caught her eye and below it she discerned his craggy profile. When she cautiously approached, she saw that his lap was full of early daisies. Clumsily, with blood-scabbed knuckles and his great claws clicking inches from his fingertips, he was trying to make a daisy chain. She knelt before him.

“Here. Let me try.”

Jame had never woven flowers before, but she quickly caught the knack of it. One braided the stems, so, with the petal-fringed faces outward, then added another and another. When the chain was long enough, she twisted its ends together into a frail crown and placed it on Bear’s head. He sat back on his heels with a grunt. She had never before seen him look so serene and almost noble, the cleft in his skull hidden, gray hair and white petals tumbling together over his brow in the warming breeze.

Then he lifted his head and sniffed the air. Following his gaze, Jame saw the Commandant sitting still on his great warhorse Cloud at the meadow’s lower edge. He wore gray hunting leathers. Sunlight glinted off the head of a long-shafted boar spear.

His lord had only given him two choices: to imprison his brother or to kill him. Here was Honor’s Paradox at its most stark.

Bear rose to his feet. The two randon regarded each other across the waving grass. The wind blew. Bluebells nodded. Jame held her breath.

Sheth inclined his head in a salute. After a moment, Bear returned it as if the gesture had stirred a long-buried memory. The daisy garland slipped down rakishly over one eye. He removed it and absently dropped it over Jame’s head where it first caught on an ear and then settled onto her shoulders. He turned to go, then paused and swung back. In his palm was something small that he gave to her, folding her hands over it. Then he turned again and shambled off toward the distant tree line.

Jame watched him go.

Then she looked at what he had given her. It was the wooden cat, recarved so that its broken hind legs curled under it as if in a crouch. She could trace claw marks like chisel strikes, clumsy but still with a mind behind them.

The Commandant watched his brother’s departure without moving until Bear disappeared into the trees. Then he rode up to her and lifted the garland with the tip of his spear as if for inspection, incidentally presenting the blade to Jame’s throat.

“Huh,” he said, flicked off the daisy chain, sheathed the spear, and offered Jame his hand, She accepted it and swung up onto Cloud behind him. They rode back to Tentir without exchanging a word.

Evening came at last, at the end of a long day. Thanks to the Bear hunt, everyone had missed their first two classes. Then Jameth had scored another black in writing.

Rue thought the last grossly unfair. No one wrote better or faster than her lady, nor with a finer hand, but the instructor in this case had been a Randir, and the Knorth could expect little justice from that house.

As she mulled a cup of cider for her mistress, Rue glanced over her shoulder at her.

Jameth sat on her sleeping pad with crossed legs, elbows on knees, chin on her clasped hands, frowning into the fire under the bronze basin. Having proved for the umpteenth time that he couldn’t fit into her lap, the ounce Jorin curled up beside her with his chin on her thigh. Flickering light picked out the shadows on her fine-drawn face, the curve of her body. She had unbound her hair but had laid the comb aside after a few absentminded sweeps. Rue handed her the cup, picked up the comb, and knelt behind her.

Surely Jameth had proved herself over and over again during this last year, the cadet thought, running the tines through a swathe of heavy, ebon silk. The time was long past when Rue saw anything strange in the presence of a Highborn lady at Tentir. Most cadets felt the same way. It was the randon—some of them, at least—who couldn’t see past bloodlines to genuine if rather strange ability. True, one day of tests remained, but Jameth would need at least two whites just to break even, and what hope was there of that? Rue herself had as yet earned neither white nor black, but that was common among the average Kendar. If it occurred to her that the future of her ten might depend on their commander’s fate, she pushed it to the back of her mind.

Jameth stiffened.

“Sorry,” muttered Rue, struggling with a snarl.

“There, in the fire. Rue, fish that cinder out for me. No, that one.”

It was hard to see which she meant, so Rue raked half of them out onto the hearth. Jameth picked one up.

“Damn,” she said. “Mother Ragga just won’t let me forget.”

Rue peered at the small, black knob veined in red that Jameth juggled from one gloved hand to the other.

“What is it, lady?”

Jameth’s smile was lopsided. “For once, not a finger bone. It’s a Burnt Man’s knuckle. That settles that.”

“What, lady?” But Rue received no answer.

Soon after they rolled up in their blankets to sleep. When Rue woke in the morning with Jorin curled up beside her, Jameth was already gone.