Math and science classes were held in an old building that so resembled Carneston House in that it seemed to have once been a warehouse, too. Built of irregular stones, it crouched along a river-bank. Several docks with small boats moored to them ventured into the river’s sluggish flow. We were marched to the shore side of the building, and directed to a classroom on the second floor. A mouldy smell greeted us as we entered the dank building. We clattered up the steps, only to discover that we were already late.
“Come in, sit down, and shut up!” ordered Captain Rusk, a round bald man scarcely as tall as my shoulder. Before we latecomers were even seated, he had turned his back on us and was once more scratching numbers onto the board. “Work it through, raise your hand when you think you have an answer. The first five with an answer will be invited to come to the board to show their work.”
Our patrol hastily found some seats, and I quickly copied down the equations he had written on the board. It seemed a fairly straightforward problem, though Spink was scowling over it. I had the answer quickly enough, but continued to scratch with my pencil on my paper, unwilling to be called to the board. Gord was the third cadet to raise his hand. Captain Rusk called him down along with four others. As they worked their proofs on the board and presented their answers, the captain wrote a page number on the board and announced, “All those who did not raise their hands with an answer are responsible for completing the following remedial exercises by tomorrow. The practice should sharpen your calculation skills. Very well, now, let us see how your fellows did at the board.”
I sat in my seat, a cold rock of disappointment in my belly, reflecting on how my simple act of cowardice had already repaid me as I deserved. Four of the five cadets at the board got the correct answer. Kort was one of them. I didn’t know the fellow who made a simple addition error in the final step. Gord’s proof was the best, simple and elegant, written in a firm, clear hand, and taking an alternate route to the answer that eliminated two steps of calculation. Captain Rusk worked his way across, using his pointer to demonstrate the progression to a correct answer, pointing out the one fellow’s error and chastising another for his sloppy handwriting and uneven columns. When he got to Gord’s work, he paused. Then, he tapped the pointer once on the board and said, “Excellent.” That was all. He moved immediately to the next cadet, and Gord, dismissed, went back to his seat beaming.
I noticed that Spink’s hands had balled into fists on the edge of the desk. I glanced over at his face. He was pale. I looked down at the page before him, where he had attempted to solve the first problem. His small neat figures filled half of it, but had carried him no closer to a solution. His hands suddenly spread flat over his paper, and when I glanced up at him, his face had turned red. I didn’t meet his eyes; it only would have embarrassed him more. It would be better if I pretended not to know that he had no grasp at all of any maths beyond arithmetic.
Captain Rusk erased the board, and then immediately wrote another problem on it. He paused, tapped his chalk on the board and said, “Of course, for most of you, this is a review of ground you know well. But I know a tower cannot be built upon a shaky foundation, and so I choose to test your foundations before we begin to add to your knowledge.” Beside me, Spink made a very small sound of dismay in the back of his throat. By an effort of will, I didn’t glance at him. Captain Rusk solved the problem on the board, step by step, for us. He wrote up three more, each of increasing complexity, and moved precisely through their resolutions, step by step. He was a good teacher, making his reasoning clear. Beside me, Spink’s pencil scratched frantically as he struggled to write an explanation of each step beside the problems he had copied. He was in over his head, drowning in concepts he’d never glimpsed before now.
I felt almost ashamed, as if I flaunted my knowledge cruelly before him, as I was the first to raise my hand for the next problem, and the one after that. Each time, Gord had a place at the board beside me. Each time, his proof was leaner and more elegant than mine, though we had both arrived at the correct answer. And each time, as we returned to our seats, Captain Rusk assigned another set of problems to those who had not been among the first five to complete the problem. By the time he dismissed us, most of the class was groaning under an onerous burden of work that would be due by this hour tomorrow. We stood as our instructor left. Then, in the shuffle of students gathering their papers and books, I made my offer to Spink. “Let’s work through these problems together tonight.”
He did not protest that I obviously did not need the practice. Instead, he said quietly, his eyes downcast, “I would appreciate that. If you have the time.”
The other patrols left quickly. We waited impatiently for Dent, but another corporal arrived to take command of us and quick-marched us to our next class. I suddenly felt overwhelmed. It frustrated me that our destination was the same building we’d left only an hour and a half ago. Why couldn’t they have scheduled our Varnian class to follow our Military History class, instead of making us rush back and forth across the campus? Only the thought that this was our last class before our noon meal sustained me.
We joined another patrol of first-years waiting in the classroom. It was our first unsupervised encounter with first-years outside of our own patrol, and after a few moments, we began chatting and discovered that they, too, were new nobles’ sons. Their patrol was fifteen strong. We felt lucky to be in Carneston House when we heard that they were barracked in the top floor of Skeltzin Hall, where they shared one large open room with a single window at each end and gaps in the eaves large enough to admit pigeons and bats. They had been promised repairs before winter, but for now the evening winds off the river blew very chill.
We sat and talked, teacherless, for a quarter of an hour, before Corporal Dent, very red-faced, came charging into the room, demanding to know what we were doing there and why we hadn’t waited for him. As we followed him into the hall and up a flight of stairs to the correct classroom, the other patrol’s corporal found his charges as well. They lectured us angrily about stupidly following a cadet we didn’t even recognize, and I came to realize that this had been a prank played upon Dent and his fellow, with us as ancillary victims.
We were late for the class and we received the blame for it. Mr Arnis spoke to us in Varnian, saying that it was the only language we could use during the class, to force us to become fluent more quickly. He added that if we thought we could disrespect him because he was not a military man, he would soon teach us our error. I understood the gist of what he said to us as he ordered us to take the last available seats in the back of the room. Only Trist seemed completely comfortable. He sat two chairs down from me, his pen moving effortlessly over his paper as he took notes. Before the instructor dismissed us, he had assigned us to translate the introductory passage of Gilshaw’s Journal of a Varnian Commander into Gernian, and to compose a letter in Varnian to send to our parents, telling them how much we had enjoyed our first day of Academy life. Because we had been late, he gave us the additional assignment of writing a formal apology for disrupting the class schedule. Someone in the back of the classroom groaned and our instructor permitted himself a small smile, the first sign of humour that any of our teachers had displayed.
As we had arrived late, so he kept us late, and thus any thoughts of a walk back to Carneston House or a leisurely meal were dashed. Corporal Dent was waiting for us, very annoyed that he, too, would be late for his meal. He would not let us run but formed us up and marched us back to our quarters. Before he dismissed us to take our books upstairs, he informed us, with sadistic glee, that we had all failed our first inspection of quarters. A list had been left for us and we should correct our deficiencies before going to the dining hall. After this, our inspection of quarters would take place every morning before we left for breakfast.