Honor's Paradox

VII The Day of Misrule

Jame woke to a familiar sense of heaviness on her chest. The blanket there stirred with more than her own breath. Lifting up a corner of it, she found herself nose to nose with a triangular head and a flickering, black, forked tongue. Golden coils shifted sleepily between her bare breasts. At least the swamp adder’s eyes were their normal fiery orange; when they turned black, Jame suspected that the Witch of Wilden was peering through them.

“Rue,” she called, keeping her voice calm and low. “Is this a practical joke?”

Her towheaded servant came to an abrupt, wary stop in the doorway.

“It’s no joke of mine, lady. Hadn’t you, er, better get rid of it?”

“Not until I find out why Addy is here.”

Either Timmon’s jealous Narsa was getting repetitious, or Shade was in trouble.

She slid her hands under the serpent’s coils, feeling muscles ripple beneath the warm, gilded skin, and shifted Addy to the bed beside her.

“No one should come after you here.” Rue sounded indignant. “In your own quarters, you’re out of the game.”

Last night had been Spring’s Eve. Tomorrow was Spring’s Day. Between them lay a span of time unmarked on any calendar, separating the old year from the new. In Tai-tastigon, it was called the Feast of Fools, when the gods were mocked to their servants’ content. Here at the randon college, authority suffered a similar fate. Possibly similar upsets occurred all over Rathillien.

“You are going to stay here, aren’t you?” Rue demanded. “If not, I have to call up your ten-command to act as your bodyguard so that no one scalps you.”

Jame smiled. Mindful of her lordan’s dignity which Rue associated with her own, the cadet didn’t want her pulled into any foolery. From what she had heard about Tentir’s Day of Misrule, Jame didn’t especially want to participate either. She had intended to wait until Rue left and then slip out the window to spend the day training with Death’s-head. Now she had to find Shade. Damnation.

“I imagine that the Commandant is going to keep to his quarters.”

“Certainly. Why would anyone want to play silly tricks on him, or he to spoil anyone’s fun? Mind you, it did happen once, with Ardeth’s war-leader Aden.”

Jame remembered the haughty Highborn from his visit earlier that spring and from the last cull when he had served on the Randon Council. Nothing, not even redeeming the Shame of Tentir, made a Highborn girl worthy in his eyes to be a randon cadet. “What happened?”

“He was commandant here then and not at all popular. Didn’t think that the randon were strict enough, that they coddled us all rotten, that nothing was as good as in his day. That sort of nonsense. Well, the cadets rounded up a troop of captured sargents to serenade him and when he stuck his nose out to complain about the noise, somebody grabbed his scarf. They made him serve everyone at the day’s end feast out of his own hoard of delicacies. It got messy, a proper food fight as I hear tell. He’s never forgiven the college.”

Good enough reason, Jame thought, for the less popular officers to make themselves scarce. She had heard that others, better natured, often participated, assuming that roving bands of cadets caught them and managed to nab their scarves, thus ensuring their obedience. Sargents and master-tens would also be fair game for anyone below those ranks.

A light knock on the door heralded Brier’s arrival with a sheaf of papers. Jame tossed the blanket over Addy and rose to dress.

“The duty roster for next week,” said her acting master-ten when she was admitted, and handed it over.

Jame scanned it, noting dozens of spelling errors but not commenting on them. “This looks good.”

The big Southron relaxed marginally.

“So what are your plans for the day, Brier?”

“I’ve more paperwork to do. Let the children play.”

“Hey!” Rue protested. “I’m no child.”

“Close enough.” Jame could see that her servant was fretting to get away. “What mischief are you up to, Rue?”

The towhead grinned. “We’ve set a guard on the strategy instructor’s quarters—you know, the one who always throws his wooden hand at us to keep our attention. If he comes out, let’s see how he likes being on the receiving end.”

“Don’t hurt him,” said Jame sharply.

“Of course not. That wouldn’t be playing the game right. What we’ve gathered to throw is a lot softer than his hand but less sweet smelling.”

“I thought you had a whiff of the stable about you.”

She was about to send Rue on her way when the door burst open. Timmon plunged through and slammed it after him in the face of an Ardeth hunting party.

“They’ve got a list of chores as long as your arm,” he gasped, leaning against the door. “All the household duties I’ve avoided since last summer. They’ve actually been keeping score! Can you believe it?”

“Easily,” muttered Rue as Jame, laughing softly, pulled on her boots.

“Given that,” she said, rising to stomp them home, “why are you here?”

He flopped onto her bed. “I was on my way down to breakfast, half asleep on my feet, and clean forgot what day it was. Before I knew it, they’d cut me off from my quarters. Eek!”

Addy had emerged and was crawling across his hand.

“Will it bite me?”

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Just hold still. Rue, go and have fun. Brier, if you don’t want to play, at least take the day off. Don’t worry about me.”

Rue grinned and slipped outside where she could be heard indignantly driving Timmon’s pursuers out of the Knorth barracks. With a stiff nod to Jame, Brier followed her.

Meanwhile, the snake had achieved Timmon’s lap and was poking around there, curiously, to the Ardeth’s rigid discomfort. Jame scooped Addy up and draped her around her neck.

“You can stay here if you want.”

“Will you stay with me?” he asked hopefully.

“Sorry, no. I have something to do.”

First, she went in search of Jorin and found him curled up on the chest on Greshan’s quarters that contained the hibernating wyrm. The ounce seemed to be spending more and more time there, as if on watch. The last time Jame had opened the box to check, she had seen movement inside an increasingly transparent chrysalis. Soon it would hatch . . . into what? No one knew anything about the life cycle of a darkling crawler. Not for the first time, she questioned the wisdom of keeping such a thing around, but then in its caterpillar phase it had played with Jorin and purred. “Darkling,” as she well knew, was a relative term.

Leaving the cat on sleepy guard, she went out the window and climbed to New Tentir’s roof.

Even though crusts of snow still lingered under some of the denser evergreens, it was a fine, crisp day with spring in the air like the warm hint of wild clover. Early flowers freckled the training fields. Wispy clouds floated overhead, chasing their shadows northward up the Riverland’s valley floor.

Noise below caught her attention.

In the square, a squad of sargents was being drilled and getting thoroughly mixed up as they tried to follow the contradictory orders shouted at them by gleeful cadets.

Meanwhile, one of the more unpopular ten-commanders thundered around the arcade in a punishment run.

And off to one side, a solitary randon officer wobbled as if drunk through a game of hopscotch, surrounded by a crowd of jeering cadets. One of them was Damson, from Jame’s own ten-command. She remembered now that this particular randon had often made fun of Damson’s weight and stocky build, just as Vant had done. That in turn reminded her of how Vant was said to have stumbled into the fire pit as if pushed. Glancing up, Damson caught her eye, flinched, and slid back into the crowd. Sometime soon, Jame thought, she needed to have a word with that cadet.

First, though, she had to find Shade.

Sliding a hand under the serpent’s head, she looked at her eye to eye. “Where is your mistress?” The black tongue flicked the tip of her nose, but she got no other response.

Jame wasn’t sure how smart the adder was—enough to find her, but not enough to lead her back to Shade? That was odd. Then again, while Jorin had alerted her barracks that she was in trouble when the Randir had kidnapped her and thrust her into Bear’s den, the cat hadn’t been able to convey anything but his distress. Of course, no one of the Falconer’s class had been present, which might or might not have made a difference. Perhaps a dog would do better. That in turn reminded her of Gorbel’s pook Twizzle. From here, she could see the tall, semiblind Caineron barracks. Well, why not ask?

Gorbel looked around as she swung in through his bedroom window. “Don’t you ever use the door?”

“You know how I would be greeted below. Fash has a score to settle with me.”

“Huh. Since the Council meeting, yes, not that he didn’t deserve what he got.”

The Caineron Lordan was setting his boar spears in order, his armor with its cuirass and skirt of braided leather nearby ready to be donned.

“I’m not about to waste a good hunting day playing silly buggers with a bunch of retarded brats,” he said, seeing her glance at his gear. “Twizzle stays here, though. For one thing, it’s too dangerous. For another, he makes tracking almost too easy.”

“I was just about to ask if I could borrow him.”

She explained.

Gorbel grunted. “So that’s why you’re wearing the Randir’s snake like a damned torque. What, no note tied to her neck, or should that be to her tail?”

“I’m serious, Gorbel. Something is wrong.”

“There always is, when you’re around. All right. Take Twizzle. He can’t follow a normal trail worth scat, but if you fix your mind on what you want, he should take you to it sooner or later.”

He dumped the pook into her arms. She reversed him. Dog and snake regarded each other with what seemed like wary recognition.

On the way down, Jame made the mistake of taking the stairs. On the landing, she met Higbert.

“Just the person Fash wants to see,” he said and made a grab for her scarf, only to recoil as Addy reared back to hiss at him.

“All right, all right, go! We’ll catch up with you soon enough and that precious Brier of yours, too.”

Jame wondered, on the way down, what the Caineron had in mind for her five-commander. Few escaped Caldane’s clutches, but Brier had, to take service with her brother. Gorbel might not mind; clearly others did. However, Brier was also a seasoned warrior who had come up through the ranks. Surely she could take care of herself.

On the arcade, she was almost knocked over by the master-ten compelled to the punishment run and saw that it was Reef of the Randir.

“Run, run, RUN!” shouted her cadets.

Not popular, huh? thought Jame, watching her go. Surprise, surprise.

Two more approaching cadets made her hesitate, but they were only Gari of the Coman and Mouse of the Edirr, both students in the Falconer’s class.

“We aren’t after you,” they assured her, “just out to see the fun. What are you doing with Addy? Where’s Shade?”

“I don’t know. In trouble somewhere. I’ve got to find her.”

The two exchanged looks. “Then we’ll round up the rest of the Falconeers to help.”

“Here.” Mouse detached one of the twin albino mice from her hair and handed it to Jame. “If you find Shade first, tell Mick and Mack will tell me. If we find her before you do, Mick will start squeaking. Just follow the direction in which he’s loudest.”

Jame accepted the mouse and let it nestle on the crown of her head, tiny pink paws nervously gripping her braids. A rap on the nose diverted Addy from what would normally have been her dinner.

Gari eyed the diminutive Twizzle. “Maybe he’s a great tracker, maybe not. We’ll see if we can find Tarn and Torvi.”

They left.

Jame checked that Addy wasn’t about to have Mick for a snack, put Twizzle down, and followed his flouncing progress along the arcade.

In the great hall, cadets had stretched a rope from one second-story balcony to the other and were making a captured randon cross it. Jame recognized Bran from her special weapons’ class. He wobbled wildly, causing her to catch her breath. Then he noted her in the shadows and winked, or seemed to—with only one good eye, it was hard to tell.

The pook led her down the stairs into the subterranean stable where she found the horse-master mucking out stalls.

“Some fool cadet thought it would be funny to set me at this work,” he said, pausing to wipe his bald head with a sleeve. “As if I didn’t do it every day anyway, assistants notwithstanding. Have I seen Shade? No. She comes here as little as possible; the horses don’t like her pet—which I see that you’ve got. Also a mouse, also a pook. What is this, a field day at the zoo?”

“Sort of.”

“Well, you’re to go on down. One of your cadets passed by and asked that I send you on if you followed her.”

Now what? wondered Jame, descending into the sullen light and steaming heat of the fire timber hall.

Damson stood near the edge of a fire pit. Jame came up beside her.

“This is where Vant fell?”

“Yes, lady.”

“And that was your doing. How?”

“I can make small changes in people’s heads. Make them dizzy. Make them stumble. Make them feel what it’s like to be fat and clumsy.”

“Now I remember. When Timmon, Gorbel and I were standing at attention in the snow, something made me fall over.”

Damson shuffled, not meeting her eyes. “Vant kept whispering in my ear: ‘Do it, do it, do it, you fat little sow.’ And so I did.”

Jame reflected that she had been lucky only to have lost her balance, and that into nothing worse than snow. A few small changes in the head . . . ! How much did it take to cause seizures or even death? Damson appeared to be a Shanir linked to That-Which-Destroys, her power an inversion of a healer’s in that it allowed her to hurt without touching, apparently without even much thought. God’s claws, how dangerous.

“Don’t do it again,” she told the cadet. “If you strike me, I may strike you back. Hard.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t hurt you. You’re nothing like Vant. I like you. There. Do you see him?”

The hall with its smoldering timbers cast few shadows, but one seemed to stand against the charred bark of an ancient tree on the far side of the pit. Fire laced its flaking skin and its eyes glowed . . . or was that only a trick of the light?

Damson snickered. “How he glares! Where’s his high and mighty pride now?”

By the smirk on the cadet’s plump face, Jame suddenly realized that Damson didn’t regret her deed. On the contrary, she had come back because the memory of it gave her pleasure.

“Now see here: you can’t kill people just because they’re unpleasant to you.”

“No?” Damson seemed puzzled. “Why do I have this ability, if not to use it?”

Trinity. Was the girl ignorant or insane? Jame herself tended to take responsibility for things genuinely not her fault, like Vant, hence the Burning Ones and the Dark Judge who came sniffing after her—or was it Damson they were after? But this cadet seemed to have no sense of responsibility at all, and precious little conscience. Was she like a hole in the air to them? How did one judge such an anomaly as a Kencyr with no inborn sense of honor?

“Think,” she said, a little desperately. “There has to be a balance. What Vant did to you was nasty, but was it worth his life?”

Damson pouted. “You almost killed him yourself after Anise died.”

“But I didn’t. The Commandant brought me to my senses in time. Do you trust his judgment? Yes? Then consider before you act: would he approve?”

“I’ll . . . try.” A bit resentfully she added, “You do make things hard.”

Jame sighed. “They often are. The easy thing isn’t always the right thing. We Shanir have to use the Old Blood responsibly or we risk becoming the monsters that some of the lords think us.”

“You mean, like your brother.”

“Tori does have that tendency, which is another reason not to abuse your gifts while in his service.”

With that, Damson trudged off, looking thoughtful and somewhat huffy.

Jame scanned the dark across the pit, but no one was there. Perhaps there never had been.

“Why are so many of us monsters?” she asked no one in particular.

Receiving no answer, she followed Damson back into the cooler, upper air.

The cadet had disappeared by the time Jame reached the upper hall, but Bran’s tormenters were still there, cheering his successful passage across the rope. One of them saw Jame. In a moment, all had given chase. She dashed up the stairs and soon lost them in the dim hallways of Old Tentir, far from the outer walls. There, let them stay until they either stumbled out or someone heard their piteous cries for help.

Her feet had taken her near Bear’s quarters as so often they did. She retrieved a candle stub from a niche and followed the rank, animal smell, thinking with a pang of her teacher shut up alone in his stinking den. The question of justice still bothered her. Where did it lie in what had happened to him? To begin with, nowhere, probably. He had been a warrior and had gotten his wounds fairly in battle—yes, fighting for her father in the White Hills, for a man who could not abide such a Shanir as Bear was and had been.

For that matter, Ganth’s madness had infected the entire Host, and most held him responsible for that day’s brutal outcome. Was he Shanir, to have had such power? She hadn’t thought of that before, but it made sense. What irony, though, given how he had felt about those of the Old Blood, like herself.

But did everything have a reason? That was hard to believe without some overarching, all-powerful authority, which didn’t seem like a description of the Kencyrath’s Three-Faced God unless he/she/it was far more devious and cruel than Jame had ever supposed. After all, wasn’t that why her people clung so desperately to their labyrinthine code of honor? Without it, what were they? With an absent god, what else held them to account and gave them worth? There must be limits, and personal responsibility.

Her thoughts circled back to Bear. Surely there was nothing just in his squalid confinement.

Or was there? Long ago, he had dismembered a cadet foolish enough to taunt him and Lord Caineron had given his brother Sheth a choice: confine his brother or kill him.

One could argue that Caldane was protecting the other cadets.

Knowing the man, though, Jame believed that he was setting a test for his war-leader. If the Commandant killed his brother, he could claim that he was only following his lord’s orders, even though he clearly didn’t think that Bear deserved death. At the same time, Caldane believed that the guilt for this unjust act would not be his, because he personally hadn’t carried it out. That was Honor’s Paradox: did one’s honor lie in oneself, or in following orders?

We are ultimately responsible for our actions, thought Jame, or we are not. That much, in a world of gray values, seemed black or white.

In this case, though, the result was endless, sordid imprisonment, to the torment of both brothers.

Perhaps somebody shared her dissatisfaction. Approaching Bear’s door, she saw that someone had been at work on the outward swinging hinges. One pin had been pried half out of its socket and tools lay scattered about the hall floor. Whoever it was would need heavier instruments, though, and perhaps had gone to fetch them.

Then she heard it again, as she thought she had several times while traversing these dusty corridors: the sound of light, swift feet, following her.

With a rush, they were upon her and she was sent sprawling. Candle, serpent, and mouse arced away into the darkness. Twizzle yelped as she fell on him. Then a weight crashed down on them both and hot breath roared in her ear. Hands fumbled at her scarf, wrenched it free.

Jame stumbled to her feet. Turning, she faced Narsa. Oh no. Not again.

The Ardeth cadet had drawn back a step. She was a handsome Kendar, dark-haired and fine-featured, but by the flickering light of the dropped candle her visage was ghastly and twitching, her breath ragged.

“You’ve done it again,” she panted, “taken him away from me! This was to be our special day. We were supposed to spend it together.”

In bed, Jame assumed with a flare of exasperation, just as she assumed that the girl meant Timmon.

“That isn’t my fault, or his. He was cut off from his own quarters and chased into mine.”

“You claim that you don’t want him. You could have sent him back.”

Jame thought about that.

“I suppose I could have, with a guard. It didn’t occur to me. I had something else on my chest at the time.”

Where was Addy? Having a poisonous, short-tempered serpent loose somewhere underfoot didn’t seem like a very good idea. For that matter, with Jame’s scarf in one hand and a knife in the other, Narsa didn’t look particularly safe either.

She tried again. “Timmon is stuck there now, twiddling his thumbs, no doubt missing us both. Join him, with my blessings.”

The Kendar gave an angry sob. “Oh, so noble, so condescending. Would you throw me to him like a bone to a dog? What good would that do anyway? He prefers you. He always has. And now that I’m p . . . p . . . p . . .” She couldn’t finish the word, but her hand dropped to cradle her stomach.

“Oh, Narsa, I really am sorry.”

This was serious. Sexual relations at the college were discouraged, as they were in the field, but one recognized that youth will have youth. To become pregnant while at Tentir, however, was automatically to be expelled. Although Kendar could usually control conception among themselves, they had less luck with Highborn lovers.

“Does Timmon know?”

“Would it matter to him if he did? What have I ever been but a pastime to him until he could bed you?”

“If it’s any comfort, he hasn’t, and isn’t likely to. Please, Narsa. Put away that knife and let’s talk sensibly.”

“I don’t need sense. I have this.” She brandished Jame’s scarf in her face. “You have to do what I say.” Abruptly she tossed Jame the blade. “And I say, ‘Kill me.’ ”

Jame nearly fumbled the catch. “What? I can’t!”

“Come on. It’s easy. My honor is already dead. Should I give the world another bastard? The Ardeth are jealous of their oh-so-pure blood, more than any house except yours. Timmon should have thought about that when he spent his precious seed on me. You Highborn take us and you break us.”

“Not on purpose. Not usually.”

“Then let this be different.”

She flung herself at Jame and cried out with sharp pain as they met breast to breast. Then the Kendar collapsed into the Highborn’s arms sobbing. Jame dropped the knife and held her. Ancestors be praised that she had lowered the point in time. Narsa shuddered in her grip, so strong, so alive, so desperate.

We take them and we break them, who are so much better than ourselves. What kind of a god gave us such unjust power?

“No!” Narsa thrust her away, turned, and ran.

Jame didn’t follow her. Instead, she knelt and listened at the iron bars of Bear’s feeding slot, surprised that the ruckus hadn’t drawn his attention. From inside came stentorian snores. Somehow, he had slept through the whole thing.

A hiss near her hand made her look down. There was Addy, coiled, angry. She and Narsa must have nearly trampled the serpent, and the knife had come close to impaling her when Jame had dropped it.

“It’s all right,” she told the snake, carefully drawing her fallen scarf out from under her.

Addy took some soothing before she consented to being picked up again, and Jame felt more hesitant this time about draping those restless coils around her neck. Highborn, especially the Randir, had some immunity, but still a strike—especially to the throat—could be dangerous. Adder’s venom dissolved flesh, among other things. Instead, she slipped the serpent inside her jacket to form a slowly slithering belt against her skin.

Twizzle emerged cautiously from the shadows.

“Woof?” he said.

A trembling morsel of white tucked into a corner proved to be Mick. With the mouse again tucked into her hair, Jame set out after the pook.

Twizzle’s clamor drew her to one of the outer second-story, western-facing classrooms. The chamber was full of cadets all crowded against the window to peer down into the training square. Rue separated herself from them and ran to grab Jame’s arm.

“You’ve got to do something!” she cried, pulling her toward the windows where the others made room for them.

Below, Brier Iron-thorn staggered back and forth, buffeted by a dozen jeering Caineron, her clothes torn, her face streaked with blood.

“What in Perimal’s name is going on?” Jame demanded.

“Higbert called her out as your acting master-ten. I mean, we all know that that’s really your title, but she does most of the work.”

“I know that. We split duties.” She flinched as a Caineron hit Brier in the stomach and she fell. Several more landed kicks before the Southron could struggle stubbornly to her feet.

“Why isn’t she defending herself?”

“She did at first. When Hig called her out, he was only backed by three Caineron. The rest ran out after she’d accepted his challenge. It wasn’t long before they had her scarf. Then they ordered her not to fight back.”

Two Caineron grabbed the Knorth’s arms and held her while a third lashed out at her face. Blood sprayed. Brier spat out a tooth.

“This isn’t right.” Jame saw several randon including the Brandan Captain Hawthorn watching from the arcade rail. “Why don’t they stop it?”

“First off, she told everyone not to interfere. Second, I don’t think the randon can step in, not today.”

This is a test too, Jame thought. They want to see how we behave, left to ourselves. And Gorbel isn’t here to call his hounds to heel.

“Well,” she said, “Brier didn’t order me.”

She clambered out onto the tin roof of the arcade, gave the rathorn battle cry at the top of her lungs, and jumped down onto the back of the nearest Caineron. An answering yell echoed from all sides as Knorth and their allies charged the square.

Among the uproar came the terrible bell of a Molocar. Tarn’s Torvi rushed onto the scene, shouldering cadets aside left and right. He bowled Higbert over and ripped at his throat. The next moment, incredibly, the cadet was up and running with his cohorts on his heels. All plunged into the Caineron barracks and slammed the door after them.

“I can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I?” said Jame, helping Brier to rise. The Southron glowered, then caught her breath sharply and wrapped arms around her bruised ribs.

Meanwhile, Tarn was prying something black out of Torvi’s jaws—two scarves, one with the Knorth crest embroidered on it, and other with the Caineron. Jame presented both to Brier.

“Do with them as you will.”

“With pleasure,” said the Southron grimly and limped after the fled enemy, tying her own sodden scarf around her neck as she went. Rue and the other Knorth rushed to support her.

“That was well done,” said Hawthorn, coming up to Jame as the assault began on the Caineron barracks.

Jame glared at her. “Was it? These are mostly children. Would you give them rules and then not hold them to account?”

“Not entirely. Remember, they won’t always be under our eyes. Nothing they do today will be held against them, short of a blatant breach of honor, but we watch and remember. We also note what their superiors do. What’s that, around your waist?”

“Something held in trust.” Jame flicked open her jacket to reveal Addy’s triangular head questing upward between her breasts.

“And you’ve got a mouse sitting on your head. Let me guess: the Falconer’s class.”

Pink nose in the air, Mick started chittering.

“At last!” said Jame, adding to Twizzle, “Small thanks to you.”

Under the randon’s bemused gaze, she revolved to see in which direction the mouse squeaked the loudest, then set off at a run for the Randir barracks.

She found most of the Falconeers in the Randir basement gathered around a gaping well mouth.

“She’s down there?”

“So Mack says.”

“And my trock,” added Dure.

“And Torvi.”

Addy slithered out of Jame’s coat, disconcertingly like a short length of glistening, spilt bowel, and disappeared down the shaft.

“That settles it. Shade, can you hear me?”

Her voice echoed hollowly off stone walls, down dank depths, to fall flat on a stone ledge just visible by torchlight.

“Where’s the water?” asked Tarn.

“Below the shelf, I think,” said Mouse, leading perilously over the edge to peer down. Gari caught her by the belt. “This must be the Randirs’ shallowest well, not always useable.”

“It’s raining in the mountains,” said Drie.

Gari snorted. “And dark on the other side of the moon. So?”

“I think he means that the water level is about to rise.” Jame stripped off her jacket, adding to forestall the others’ protests, “It looks convoluted down there. Which of you is skinnier than I am? Someone, find a rope.”

A nearby bucket supplied the latter. Anchored at the top, Jame swung over the rim and descended, touching the slimy walls as little as possible. Some twenty feet down she landed on the ledge. It looked as if in excavating this well, the Randir had run into a slab of rock too hard to be easily removed, so they had circumvented it. Running water sounded around its edge. Jame wriggled down a crack and dropped into a lower tunnel extending west to east. Water rushed by on one side in a channel down toward the Silver. On the other, under the overhang, lay a dark, trussed-up figure. Firelight reflecting off wet stone caught Addy’s golden coils looped over it.

“I sent her to you for safekeeping,” said Shade’s voice out of the shadows.

“What, not to summon help?” Jame considered this as she probed the other’s bindings: stout chain and rope tight enough to stop the blood. “Maybe that’s also why Twizzle wouldn’t lead me to you. D’you want to die?”

“Do you know who put me down here?”

“At a guess, Reef and her cronies.”

“There you’re wrong. Reef would have saved me as her lady’s granddaughter if the others hadn’t kept her busy all day. Some Randir would follow the rightful heir if they could. To them, I’m the Witch’s freak.”

Ouch. Shade would also serve Randiroc if she could, but who in her house would believe that? Both sides must see her as the very emblem of the enemy.

“So, if you escape, that proves you guilty, or so they think. Only death can assure your innocence. And, if they’re lucky, the coming flood will wash your body down to the Silver. I hate double binds. These, on the other hand, you should be able to escape.”

Shade’s mulish silence was answer enough.

“All right. Here’s something they didn’t consider: you have friends.”

“I do?”

“God’s claws and small, furry fishes, of course you do. Who d’you think tracked you down here and is waiting on top to help pull you out? Half the Falconer’s class, that’s all.”

Shade stirred for the first time. “I have friends,” she repeated dubiously, with an undernote of wonder.

“And we have company.”

The shadows rustled. Reflected light glinted off hundreds of beady eyes: wild trocks, scavengers capable of stripping flesh from bone in seconds. Then from up the tunnel came the approaching roar of water. The eyes blinked out and claws scuttled away.

Jame cut the ropes. To deal with the chains, she hoisted an outraged Addy by her tail and held her twisting over the metal. Venom dripped on iron, ate into it.

“Too slow. Shade, do something!”

The nascent changer grunted and flexed her hands. They became long and narrow enough to slip through the chains, likewise her bare feet, leaving scraped skin on the links.

“That hurts,” she said through her teeth.

“Would you rather drown?”

The water beside them was rising, starting to fill the tunnel. Shade wriggled through the gap and started to climb the rope to urgent cries falling from above. Jame followed her. The rushing water nearly plucked her off the rope, but then she emerged from the cleft onto the ledge. From there, it was up the rope with the rising flood lapping at her heels.

By now, it was nearly midday and cadets were returning to their barracks for a noon meal prepared by their ten-commanders. At the top of the stair, still well within the Randir precincts, the assorted cadets who made up the Falconeers encountered Reef. The master-ten Randir was gray with dust and fatigue after a morning-long punishment run, but not too tired to notice their presence within her domain. She stopped short, staring.

“What are you lot doing here?”

Then she noticed Shade, covered with well-slime.

“And what happened to you?”

A Randir ten-commander came up behind her. Jame noted Reef’s scarf tied around her arm. She stopped, stony-eyed, when she saw Shade.

“So.”

“Just so,” Shade answered her.

Reef looked from one to the other. “What in Perimal’s name is going on here?”

“A mistake,” said Shade, eyes still locked with the commander’s.

“We’ll see about that. The rest of you, get out.”

The cadets left, glad to have escaped the crossfire. Jame hesitated.

“Go,” said Shade. “It’s over for today.”

“What was that all about?” asked Tarn as they gained the arcade boardwalk.

“House business,” said Jame. “Just be glad it isn’t yours.”

Trinity, what a mess the Randir are, she thought, and the Ardeth too. Ha. Let’s not forget the Knorth. How many other houses are secretly coming apart at the seams?

At the square, they parted, each to his or her own quarters, Mouse with Mick and Mack again settled in her hair.

“That just leaves you,” said Jame to Twizzle.

The pook wriggled what was presumably his hind end and jumped up into her arms.

“All right,” she told him as he licked her face. “At least until your master returns.”