He shrugged, almost dismissing my concern. “But her father seemed to like me, and Epiny herself… well…” He stopped short before he said anything indelicate.

“Epiny obviously likes you,” I admitted. “I thought her rather too forward about indicating that to you.”

His face and tone lightened, as if I had just given a brother’s consent to his courtship. “Then if I could win your uncle’s regard and good will, I might have a chance with her.”

I doubted it. I suspected that my aunt had a will of steel. Seeing how Epiny had ridden roughshod over my uncle, I doubted that he would stand up to my aunt well. And even if my uncle were well disposed toward Spink himself, all he had told me of his family made me sure that he was a poor prospect as a match for my cousin. No money, no influence, new nobility… “You might have a chance,” I heard myself concede, simply because I lacked the courage to point out to him that his odds of success were less than a whisper’s chance against storm winds.

He looked at me oddly, as if he had somehow managed to hear my mental reservation. “Speak to me plainly here, my friend. Do you feel I set my sights too high? Would you oppose my courting your cousin?”

I laughed out loud. “Spink, no, of course not! I can think of nothing I would like better than to call you cousin as well as friend. But what I might oppose is my cousin courting you! My friend, in temperament and manners, I think you could do far better than Epiny. Even if you were thinking of taking a plains wife.”

He looked shocked and then gave an odd laugh. “A plains wife? My mother would kill me. No, she wouldn’t have a chance. My brother would do it first.”

Our steps had carried us to the door of our dormitory. We checked in with the sergeant and then went up the steps to our room. Spink asked me not to speak too much of Epiny before the other fellows, and I was only too happy to comply. We greeted Oron and Caleb. They were both finishing their assignments at the study table. They kept us listening for some time as they recounted their stay with Oron’s aunt. She had hosted a musical gathering at her home, and they were full of stories of ribald songs, risque dancing, and a young woman who had bedded both of them on the same night with neither the wiser to it at the time. Even now, they were astonished, scandalized and delighted to have such a wild adventure to tell. It made the tales from Caleb’s penny adventure books pale by comparison.

I was almost relieved that they gave us no room to talk of our own time away from the dormitory. Spink and I were talking of settling down and getting our assignments finished before the evening meal when we opened the door to our room. There we halted, filled with dismay that rapidly turned to anger.

My bunk had been overturned and all my books strewn about the floor. My carefully pressed and brushed uniform parts were scattered around the room. It looked as if someone had thrown them down and then trampled and kicked them about. There was a dusty footprint clearly outlined on the back of my jacket. Spink’s things had suffered similar vandalism. The bedding from the other bunks in the room had been flung about, but Natred and Kort’s belongings still rested on their shelves. Whoever had done this had targeted Spink and me for most of the mayhem. Spink recovered first, beginning to curse savagely in a low voice very unlike his normal tone. I stepped back into the common room and called Oron and Caleb. They came quickly, wondering what could be wrong, and then stood in shock when they saw the mess in our room.

“Any ideas on who might have done this?” I asked them.

Oron spoke first. “We only returned to Carneston House about an hour ago. And I had no reason to come in here.” He looked at Caleb.

Caleb was as mystified. “Our room was fine when we unpacked. Nothing was touched in there.”

“Check the other room,” Spink suggested brusquely.

In the room that Gord shared with Rory and Trist, Gord’s bedding and possessions were the only ones that had been disturbed. The mess in there was even worse than in our room; Gord’s books and personal items had been heaped on top of his bedding on the floor, and someone had urinated on them. In the closed room, the smell was overpowering. We quickly backed out.

“I’m reporting this to Sergeant Rufet,” I announced.

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Caleb asked me. The gangly cadet looked even more anxious than usual.

“It’s going to be seen as tattling,” Oron added, scowling. “And no one likes a snitch, Nevare.”

In one sense, I knew he was right. A deep dread surged in me. This was how they reacted simply because we knew what they had done. This was how they sought to cow and silence us. When they discovered that we had talked to my uncle and that he had taken the matter to the commander, what would they do then? Abruptly, I knew that keeping silent about this and accepting their abuse would not stop it. My uncle’s complaint to the Colonel Stiet might stir them to worse things, but keeping silent hadn’t made them leave us alone. Reporting this was the only way I could stand up to them. Difficult as it was, even though my fellow cadets might see me as weak, I held myself to what my uncle had said I must do. “It’s not ‘snitching’.” I told Caleb and Oron. “It’s a cadet reporting vandalism to the dormitories while we were gone.” They just stared at me, unconvinced. Why was this so difficult? My uncle had said it was the right thing to do. “I’m going downstairs now. Leave this mess alone until Rufet has seen it.”

“Should I go with you?” Spink offered quietly.

“I think one of us is enough,” I told him, but he knew I was grateful for his offer.

With every step I took down the stairs, doubts assailed me. Reporting it seemed a whining and babyish thing to do, running to the sergeant to tattle. I knew the others might speak with disdain. Were we too soft to take a bit of pranking in stride? Yet the early months of school were past, and what had been done to our rooms went beyond ordinary hazing.

I stood before the sergeant’s desk until he looked up at me. Then, in as calm a voice as I could muster, I reported the damage to our rooms and possessions. He heard me out, his face darkening with anger. Then he led the way back up the stairs to survey the mess for himself. He questioned Oron and Caleb, but they had nothing to tell. The mess could have been made at any time. When he realized there would be no easy discovery of the culprits, his orders were terse. “Clean it up. Have Cadet Lading report to me. I’ll see that you get fresh bedding. There isn’t much more I can do.”

Spink and I set to work on our area immediately. As our other roommates trickled in, they expressed various levels of outrage or amusement at our predicament.

“It isn’t just the time lost when we should be doing assignments,” Spink complained as he pulled the bedding tight on his bunk. “It’s the feeling of invasion, and of being the butt of a joke with no chance to hit back.”

Rory had come into the room. Without anyone asking him to do it, he began to put Natred’s and Kort’s bedding back on their bunks as he spoke to us. “At least your stuff is just tossed about. Our room reeks like a sty and it’s freezing in there. Oron says he just about passed out from the smell when he first walked in, so he opened our window. That didn’t help much. Trist is furious with Gord; he says if he don’t come back soon and clean up the mess, he’s just going to toss all his stuff. And I’ll be there lending a hand!”

“It’s not Gord’s fault!” I said. “No more than this is our fault. Trist should be mad at whoever did it.”

“Well, I sort of see it both ways,” Rory replied obstinately. “Obviously, you and Spink and Gord made someone really mad at you that night. Gord’s never said what happened, but I don’t believe he fell down the steps. Now they’re getting their own back at you all, but Trist and I are the ones who are paying for it.”