At that, the second woman’s smile faded and she even became a bit cold despite my assurances that her remarks had not offended me in the least. But for the most part, my interchanges with the other passengers were courteous and interesting, and improved my sophistication, as I am sure my father had intended.
As we travelled west on the river, the land became more settled. Soon the dawns were showing us prosperous farms along the river-banks, and the towns we passed were populous and large. Fishermen plied the river in their small rowing boats, setting nets or fishing with poles. Our captain, determined that our ship would slow down for nothing, often bore down on them, forcing them to scuttle like water bugs to stay out of our path. The young ladies watching from the upper deck would gasp with trepidation and then laugh with delight as the little boats reached safety. For the final two days of our journey, there was never a time when I could look out at the riverside and not see signs of human habitation and industry. By night, the yellow lights of homes lit the shores, and by day the rising smoke from chimneys feathered up into the sky. I felt a sort of wonder as I thought of all those people living so close together, and on its heels followed a tinge of fear; soon I must live amongst all those people, day in and day out, with never a respite from human company. I found the prospect daunting. My once-glad anticipation dimmed to a grim foreboding.
I recalled the flatboat captain’s warning that Old Thares would smell far worse than the timber fires had. When I asked my father about it, he shrugged his shoulders.
“Much coal is burned in Old Thares, and it has been a city for hundreds of generations. It is bound to smell like a city. Old Captain Rhosher probably hasn’t left the river in twenty years. He can’t smell the smells of his own boat and crew, but he’s happy to tell you that the city stinks. It’s all in what one is accustomed to, Nevare, and a man can become accustomed to almost anything.”
I found myself doubting that. My father read my misgivings. He stood beside me as I leaned on the railing, staring glumly across the river toward the rows of smoke-blackened stone buildings that crowded the river’s edge. Scarcely any natural land remained. Stonework lined the banks of the river and the rise and fall of the water was marked plainly by the slime. At intervals, foul coils of thick water oozed into the river from open trenches or gaping pipes, discharging their stench into the air and their filth into the river. Despite this, ragged hooligan youths fished and fought and wandered dazedly along the reinforced banks of the river. Stunted bushes and thick water plants blanketed the muck at the river’s edge. Above and beyond the hunched warehouses and factories was an undulating roof of housetops and smoking chimneys. It was as dreary and forbidding a sight as any I had ever seen, and more ominous to my eyes than any arid stretch of desert or harsh prairie land.
The aromatic smoke from my father’s short pipe was a welcome mask for the lingering odours in the air. After a time, he knocked the husk of burnt ashes from the bowl. “I never went to the Academy. You know that.”
“I know that it didn’t exist when you were my age, sir. And that you had a great deal to do with its creation.”
“That’s true, I suppose,” he replied modestly as he tamped more tobacco from his pouch into his pipe. “I was educated at the Arms Institute. I attended at a time when those of us who expressed a desire to join the cavalla were regarded as somewhat… above ourselves. Cavalla assignments were the rightful domain of the families who had served the old kings as knights. Even though those families had dwindled, leaving our mounted forces undermanned, some felt it was almost against the will of the good god for a young man to want to be what his father had not been before him. Yet, a soldier is a soldier and I had persuaded my father that I could serve my king as well on horseback as I could on foot. I will admit that I was sorely disappointed when I was marked to be an artilleryman. It seemed the touch of the good god himself when that changed and I was sent off to the cavalla. Well.” He put the stem of the loaded pipe to his lips, gave flame to it from a sulphur match, and took several encouraging puffs to get it going well before he continued. “Here in this city, I fear you will live, as I did during my years at the Arms Institute. No open air, not enough space to run, mediocre food, and living cheek by jowl with your fellow cadets. Some of them will be all a good officer should be, already. Others will be brutish louts and you will wonder why the good god made them soldier sons, let alone destined them to be officers. But when your days here are done, I promise you that you will return to living like a free man again, to roam and hunt and breathe the fresh air of the wild spaces. Think of that, when the city smoke and endless grey nights become oppressive. It may give you heart.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied, and tried to find relief in the thought, but it was elusive.
We docked in Old Thares late that evening. My uncle had sent a man with a wagon. He hoisted our baggage into the bed of the wagon and tethered Sirlofty and Steelshanks to its tail. I rode alongside my father on the spring seat of the rather humble wagon and tried not to wonder if this was an affront to my father’s status. The night was chill with a warning of damp in the air that promised that winter would soon arrive. We left the docks and rumbled through the poorer sections of Old Thares, then through a commercial district, quiet in the darkness save for occasional watchmen.
Finally we emerged from the town’s clutter and climbed into the gentle hills to an enclave of manors and estates. When we arrived at my uncle’s home, the great house was dark save for one yellow lantern at the main entry and a single set of windows alight above us. Servants swiftly appeared, including a groom who took our horses. My uncle’s man greeted my father, and told him that his mistress and my cousins were long abed, but that my uncle had had word of our imminent arrival and awaited us in his study. We followed my uncle’s man into his house and up a richly carpeted staircase while behind us servants struggled with our heavy trunks.
At the double doors of my uncle’s study, his man rapped lightly, then opened the door for us and stood to one side as we entered the warmly lit study. There any doubts I’d had about my uncle’s welcome of us were dispersed. Not only were wine, cold meats, cheese and bread set out on a table to welcome us, but also tobacco for my father. My uncle, clad in an elaborate smoking jacket and silk lansin trousers, rose and came to greet my father with an embrace. Then he stood back from me, pipe in hand, and feigned amazement at how I had grown. He insisted that we sit down immediately to the late night repast he had had prepared for us, and I was glad to do so.
Their conversation flowed over my head as I ate. I was glad to be seen and not heard, for it afforded me the uninterrupted opportunity to enjoy the best food I’d faced in some days, and also to see my father and my uncle as I’d never witnessed them before. In the next hour I realized what had always escaped me, that my father and my uncle were close and that my Uncle Sefert not only rejoiced in my father’s elevation but had genuine affection for his younger sibling. I had been a child the few previous times I had seen them together, and on those occasions they spoke and behaved with the reserve appropriate to their stations. Perhaps it was the lateness of the hour or the casual setting, but tonight they spoke quickly, laughed heartily, and generally behaved more like two boys than two peers of the realm.
As if to make up for lost time, they discussed a dozen topics, from the health of my father’s crops and the product of my uncle’s vineyards to my uncle’s marriage plans for his daughter and my father’s selection of prospects for Yaril’s hand. My father spoke of my mother’s gardens, and that he wished to visit the flower market and take new dahlia tubers home with him, to replace the ones devoured by rodents earlier that summer. He talked about my mother’s pleasure in her garden and home, and how his daughters grew all too swiftly and would soon leave his protection. In contrast, my uncle spoke of his wife’s discontent and ambition with painful honesty, acknowledging that she was ill-pleased with my father’s elevation in status, as if somehow his rise had compromised my uncle’s position. “Daraleen has always been jealous of her position. She was a younger daughter in her family, and never thought to be wed to a first son. It is almost as if she fears that some of her honour will be taken from her if others rise to share the same footing. I have tried to reassure her, but alas, her mother seems to share her daughter’s apprehension. Her family behaves as if the new nobles sprang from common stock, but every one of the soldier sons King Troven elevated had a noble father. Nonetheless, my wife’s family shuns contact with the new nobles as upstarts and frauds. It is without foundation, but, there it is.”