Trist brought his chair back flat on the floor with a thump, and then stood slowly. The blond cadet towered over small, dark Spink. “I was just joking with you, Spink. Are you always this serious? God’s breath, what a stiff neck you are!”

Spink stood his ground, his feet slightly apart as if setting his weight for a fight. “And that’s blasphemy, to speak the good god’s name other than in prayer. And also against Academy rules.”

“Your pardon, O saintly one. I’ll go to my room and make reparations now.” Trist rolled his eyes and sauntered from the room. Spink refused to notice it or to look after him. After a moment, Oron and Gord followed him, closing the door behind them.

Felt sad at that first little crack in our unity, even though a part of me recognized it as inevitable. Sergeant Duril had spoken to me of such things, though he had been speaking from his experience in the field rather than at an Academy. Despite the differences, I recognized that his words would hold true here as well. “Whenever a new group forms, or an old group takes in new members… don’t matter if it’s a regiment or a patrol, nor even if it’s troopies or officers… there’ll be some shoving to see who’s first to the trough. They’ll try each other’s strength, and it’s rare that there’s not a fistfight or three before the dust finally settles. Just keep your cool and remember it’s got to be, and do your best to stay clear of it. Don’t back down, lad, that’s not what I’m saying. But hang back, calm like, and make them shove the challenge at you before you take it up. So no one ever doubts that it wasn’t you that started it. You just be the one that finishes it.”

“Nevare?” Kort nudged me, and I jumped. I realized I’d been staring at the closed door. “Forget about it,” he advised me quietly.

I nodded. “I think I’m ready for bed, too,” I excused myself. But that was sooner said than done. There was only one washstand in our room, and I had to wait my turn for it. Rory wandered into our room in a homespun nightshirt. He perched on the foot of my bed beside me and spoke quietly. “Think there’ll be trouble ’tween Trist and Spink?”

“Spink won’t start it,” I said after a moment of pondering.

“I guess that’s right. But I’m thinking that if there’s a fight, we’ll all have to pay for it. That’s how they do things here. One screws up, we all pay the toll.”

It was my turn for the washstand, and as I stood, Rory said quietly, “Maybe you could talk to Spink. Tell him to take it easy until we all settle in. It’s goin‘ to be bad enough with Corporal Dent chewing on us without us bitin’ each other.”

“Maybe Trist is the one we should talk to,” I offered.

Rory’s dark eyes met mine and he gave his bullet head a shake. “Na. Trist isn’t one to listen. Well. I’d best get back to my room.”

I wanted to ask him if Trist had sent him to talk to me, and wondered, too, if they were playing dice in there. Then I decided I didn’t want to know.

Shortly after that, Kort blew out the lamp and we all knelt by our beds to say our prayers. I prayed longer and more earnestly than I usually did, asking the good god to show me the middle path through strife. Then I got into my narrow bed in the darkness and tried to fall asleep listening to the breathing of the others in the room.

CHAPTER TEN

Classmates

In the dead of night, someone was drumming. I rolled over and fell out of my bed. It was much narrower than my one at home, and this was the third time I’d fallen out of it. I groaned as I sprawled on the cold floor. I heard a door open and close and someone came into the room carrying a candle. In that instant, I was awake. I sat up wearily. “That can’t be the drums for dawn. It’s black as pitch out there.”

“Not if you open the curtains,” Kort observed dryly, as he walked to the window and pulled back the drapes. There was a faint pearliness to the night sky. “That’s the drum for rising. We have to be up, dressed, and on the parade ground by the dawn horn. Remember?”

“Vaguely.” I yawned.

Spink was sitting up on his bed, blinking owlishly. Natred had his pillow over his head, and was holding it down with both hands. I saw an opportunity to be first at the washstand and seized it. Kort unceremoniously jostled me aside to share it as we shaved. As he passed Natred’s bed on the way to his closet, he kicked the end of it. “Get up, Nate! Let’s not be the ones to give Dent an excuse to harangue us today.”

I was struggling into my boots before Natred rolled out of his bunk. Nonetheless, he was ready to go when we were. Nate patted his downy cheek happily as he left the washstand. “I love being fair. My father told me I’ll be in my twenties before I have to start shaving!”

Spink had made up his bunk for him, even as he promised ominously that it was the first and last time he’d ever do it and that Natred now owed him a favour. We were immensely proud of how tidy we left our room and how well turned out we all were. We left our floor, calling to the laggards who remained to hurry up, lest we all get in trouble. As we clattered down the stairs, uniform hats clutched under our arms, cadets from the other floors joined us until we spilled out of our dormitory to join a green-clad flood of students cascading onto the parade ground in the dimness of pre-dawn.

The dawn horn had not yet sounded, but Corporal Dent was there before us. He demanded to know where the rest of his patrol was, but gave us no time to answer before informing us that he expected us to arrive as a group, for we’d soon learn that the men in a cavalla patrol look out for one another. He used the minutes before the others arrived to disparage our appearances. He asked Spink if he’d slept in his uniform and then demanded that Kort describe a boot brush to him and tell him what it was used for. He told me to put my hat on straight and warned me that if I continued to show the wrong attitude, he’d find a cure for it that I wouldn’t like. He walked all round Natred several times, regarding him as if he were an exotic animal before asking him how long he’d been walking on two legs and when he thought he might learn to stand up straight. As a scarlet-faced Natred groped for a reply, Gord arrived. He came trotting in alone, cheeks red and one of his buttons already giving way to his girth. Dent appeared to forget all about Nate as he turned to a new target. “Look at yourself, Gorge!” he commanded, and Natred gave a snort of laughter that Dent ignored. “Stand up straight and suck that gut in! What? That’s the best you can do? Who’s in there with you? Or have you a baby on the way?”

Dent went on for some time in that vein as Gord squirmed in humiliation and Natred nearly suffocated trying to keep from laughing. I was torn between sympathy for my fellow cadet and my own suppressed amusement. The more Gord tried to hold in his gut, the redder his cheeks grew. I think he might have burst if he had not been rescued by the arrival of the rest of our patrol. they dashed up, out of breath, and Rory’s shirttail was only half-tucked in. Corporal Dent sprang on them like a big tomcat on a nest of new mice.

He didn’t have a single kind word or encouraging comment for any cadet. Not one of us met his standards and he doubted that any of us would survive our first term as cavalla cadets. If he couldn’t think of some fresh insult for a man, he simply roared, “And you’re no better!” before proceeding to his next victim. He pushed, prodded, and bullied us into ranks until he was either satisfied or too frustrated to try any more. He took his position in front of us when the dawn horn finally sounded.

Then we stood there. I knew we were supposed to keep our.eyes straight ahead, but I risked a glance at the others. In the dawn light, we all looked alike: forest green uniforms, tall hats, black boots, and wide eyes. Only the lack of stripes on our sleeves distinguished the first-years from the upper classmen. Each dormitory had formed up separately. We were Carneston Riders, named for our dormitory Carneston House, and our colours were a brown horse on a green field. Each dormitory housed cadets from all three years. I noticed that two of the first-year patrols were substantially larger than the other two. I wondered if this were a breakdown of new nobles’ versus old nobles’ sons. The cadet officers had formed up their own separate ranks off to the right. I envied them the dress swords that hung at their sides.