Brightly Burning (16 page)

Owyn sat back down with a thud, and dug in his book bag, coming up with a really fine, red fruit, which he handed to Lan in exchange for a slice of buttered bread. “How did you think of staying up here?” he asked around a mouthful, gazing at Lan as if he was some sort of wizard for coming up with so cunning a solution.

Owyn's admiration made him feel smug and embarrassed, at the same time. Lan did his best to try to look modest. “It was obvious, once you get past the idea that you have to eat something besides bread for lunch,” he replied, with a touch of humor.

Owyn gazed at him with something approaching hero worship, and swallowed. “Half the time, when I know they're going to have at me, I can't eat anything anyway,” he confessed. “I even get sick, sometimes. They've never flogged me, but I keep thinking they're going to. And—” his expression turned fierce and angry, giving the impression of a puppy in a rage, “—I
hate
it when they do something that makes people laugh at me!”

“I think that was why I was having those fits and headaches,” Lan admitted, “but no one at home believes me about
them,
and what
they
are doing to us. My mother pretty much called me a liar and a whiner when I told her what was going on.”

Owyn nodded sadly, and Lan felt a crumb of comfort in discovering he was not alone in being ignored by his parents. “I know, I tried, too. And you should
see
Tyron when he's where any of our parents will see him! It's sickening! He pets little ones and talks to them like he was their best friend, he brings them little toys or sweets.” His mouth turned down in a bitter grimace, and his eyes grew bright. “My parents think I'm just trying to get him in trouble because he's supposed to be in charge of discipline, and that I'm jealous of him just because all the parents and teachers think he's so great—” He had to stop for a moment, as his emotions overcame him. He sniffed angrily and wiped his eyes with the back of his cuff. “All I want is for
them
to leave us alone!”

Lan looked aside, so as not to embarrass the younger boy by noticing his tears. “My mother said that it must have been my fits that made me say such things about
them,
” he told Owyn, gazing steadfastly at his desk until the boy got himself together. “She went on about what a good family he came from, and how no one from such a good family would ever act that way.”

“Huh. What about all the black sheep that get the maids pregnant and gamble away their mother's jewelry?” Owyn retorted, with a worldly and cynical glance at Lan that surprised him. “What about the slick uncles that are so nice to the littles, and—never mind.” He shook his head, and bent to his bread and butter, leaving Lan to wonder just what “the slick uncles” did in his family. There wasn't much more conversation after that; Owyn seemed to feel he'd said more than he meant to, and Lan didn't have much to say for himself. But the silence wasn't unfriendly; for once, Lan was actually relaxed around another student.

Lan and Owyn were well into their books by the time the rest of the class returned, and no one remarked on Owyn's absence from the Hall either. The next day, though, it wasn't just Owyn that remained behind with Lan, it was a timid, mouse-plain girl named Liss. She didn't come empty-handed either; she shyly proffered a chunk of sharp cheese to each of them, as if she thought she needed to supply a sort of toll in order for them to permit her presence. Lan had begun bringing extra bread and butter, and by this point they had quite a comfortable lunch.

That was the last of the classmates from this room to remain behind, but Owyn whispered that there were others, not only in their form, but in every form but Sixth, who were rebelling against the Sixth Form tyranny and staying in their classrooms over lunch. Everyone who did so, it seemed, agreed that starvation was preferable to being harried and hounded as the price of a meal.

And the Sixth Formers couldn't do anything about it! The teachers of Sixth Form personally made certain that the Sixth Formers went to the Hall, since
they
were the ones in charge of keeping the place under control during the meal.

“We have to be careful not to leave a crumb behind, though,” Liss whispered, after a week of peaceful meals. “We ought to sweep and clean when we're done, otherwise they'll
make
us go downstairs again.”

“Why do you suppose they've left us to eat alone up here?” Lan wondered aloud. “By now some of the teachers have to have noticed not everyone is going to the Hall to eat.”

Owyn snickered. “Because part of our tuition goes for our meal, and with fewer of us eating, that's more that Master Keileth gets to keep. You don't think he's going to stop something that puts
more
money in his purse, do you?”

Lan nodded, because that made perfect sense. The teachers were paid just enough to ensure that they did their jobs properly; if their pupils failed to learn,
they
lost part of their pay. But they weren't paid to do anything more. That was probably how disciplining the younger students had devolved on the Sixth Form, and probably why the task remained with the oldest pupils—no one had to
pay
them.

Master Keileth, he had learned, was motivated largely by profit. The teachers were motivated by a system of debits from their pay. As long as nothing went drastically wrong, neither cared how the pupils felt, only that they passed their exams and absorbed the information laid before them.

“It can't last forever,” he told the other two, carefully folding the muslin bag he brought his bread and butter in and stowing it in his book bag. “At the end of the year, they'll be gone.”

Owyn had gotten the broom, and Liss the dustpan; while they swept the floor, he polished the three desk-tops. “But there are others,” Owyn pointed out. “There are bullies in Fifth Form just
waiting
to go up to Sixth.”

“And next year we'll be bigger and stronger, too,” he replied. “If we can't find a way to talk them out of bullying us, and we're not big and strong enough to
make
them leave us alone, well . . . we'll just keep staying in our classroom for lunch.”

Owyn looked doubtful, but didn't argue. Liss didn't look up at all, but that was normal. Liss usually didn't look anyone in the eye, not even when it was just the three of them.

But Lan had been growing more and more confident that his scheme was working with every passing day. The longer he avoided the Sixth Formers, the more he surely faded from their memory. Eventually, they would forget he was a student here altogether. When the end of the year came and they were dismissed to whatever fate their families had planned for them, they would lose their solidarity as a group.

And then.
. . . He had his daydreams. Someday, one of
them
would find himself facing Lan, at a time when the odds favored Lan. In his fondest, sweetest daydreams, it was Tyron who groveled at Lan's feet, begging for some favor.

The daydreams never went much farther than that, because Lan himself couldn't quite make up his mind about what he wanted to do when the situation came up. Would he be magnanimous, or would he smile politely and let Tyron hang? Or even give him a little push over the edge of whatever abyss he teetered on?

In some ways, being magnanimous would carry the most satisfaction with it. After all, Tyron would then have to go on with his life, knowing that
he owed Lan.
And that he would never, ever, be able to pay off that debt and return things to their former footing.

On the other hand, watching Tyron rot would be awfully satisfying, too.

Lan's teachers had been cautiously indicating that they thought his talents lay in the direction of becoming a Caravan Master, the man who was in charge of everything having to do with the transport of goods from one place to another. So far his parents hadn't said that they were opposed to the idea. Lan's current daydream involved Tyron as an impoverished caravan guard, begging Lan to hire him. The idea of Tyron in rags, groveling, was very satisfying; even more satisfying was the extension of the daydream, where Tyron got drunk on duty and Lan casually ordered him flogged.

Lan was, in fact, in the process of elaborating on that daydream, imagining Tyron's current girl, grown up and even prettier, being conveyed in Lan's caravan from Haven to—say—Hardorn.

When the last class was over, the rest of his schoolmates and the teacher cleared out, and the schoolroom fire was left to burn down the coals, he stayed at his desk with a book open, but eyes unfocused. He imagined Anjeyla as she might be in another four years, turned from pretty into stunningly lovely. For good measure, he turned her hair from dark blonde to a golden cascade, subtracted from her waist and added to chest and hips.

She would, of course, be very impressed with Lan, in his suit of silver-washed chain mail, well-used sword at his side, his weather-tanned face and a few attractive scars showing his courage and experience, and a devil-may-care smile telling of his past conquests among the ladies.
“Don't I know you?”
she would ask, a little puzzled.
“I don't think so,”
he would say, with a careless chuckle. And about that time, the chief of his guards would interrupt, with Tyron, dirty and hung over, being dragged along behind him between two more guards.

“Sir, this scum was drunk on duty last night,”
the guard-chief would say.

“Which one is it?”
he would bark in reply, straightening his back, a man of action and decisiveness. Anjeyla would sigh with admiration.

“Tyron, sir,”
the chief would reply.
“I regret I ever recommended him to you.”
And as Anjeyla gasped in recognition, the chief would grab Tyron by the hair, and pull his head up, so that there could be no mistake about
who
it was.

Anjeyla would make a little pout of disdain, and pointedly move away from Tyron and toward Lan, perhaps even placing her hand on his bicep. Tyron would see, and he would look sick and dismayed.

Lan would wait long enough for all the implications to sink in, then bark,
“And what do you have to say for yourself, scum?”

“So this is where you've been hiding,” Tyron replied.

For a moment, Lan stared at the door in confusion;
that
wasn't what Tyron was supposed to say! Then, with a snap, he came back to himself, and his hands clutched the sides of his desk involuntarily.

Tyron leaned against the doorframe, surrounded by the rest of his gang, an indolent smile on his face. “I wondered how you were managing to get past us every day, you little sneak,” the Sixth Former sneered. “You never got past us at all. You've been hiding up here all along.”

“You—you aren't allowed to be here!” was all Lan could manage, in a faint accusation, his voice breaking on the last word.

“In school hours,”
Tyron corrected. “After school hours, and before, we can go anywhere in the building we choose.”

Full of dismay, his heart pounding and sweat breaking out on his forehead, Lan sought desperately for something that might make Tyron and his band of bullies go away. “I'm studying,” he said, ducking his head submissively. “It's too hard to study at home, there's too much noise.”

The printed page wavered and blurred before his eyes. “Oooh, poor little Scrub!” Tyron mocked. “You know, somehow I don't believe you.
I
don't think you have any trouble studying at home at all. After all, you managed very, very well while you were playing sick, didn't you?”

Lan glanced up, feeling sick. Tyron unfolded his arms, straightened, and moved away from the doorway, followed by the rest of the bullies. “I don't believe that you were studying just now at all. I must have stood there for a quarter candlemark, and you didn't
once
turn a page.”

Lan tried not to cringe, as Tyron stopped right next to him, towering over him. “You, little Scrub, are making things v-e-r-y difficult for me. You're eroding my discipline, and setting a bad example for the others. Why should they obey, when they know all they have to do is stay in their classrooms and they can avoid their just punishments?”

Lan averted his eyes and stared at his book, hands clenched around the sides of the desk, his knuckles turning white.

Tyron was just starting. “And, I believe,
you
have a just punishment coming to you. Doesn't he, Derwit?”

“Setting a bad example, ten strokes,” said a cold voice from Lan's other side. “Eroding discipline, ten strokes. That's twenty.”

Twenty strokes!
Lan's head reeled and a wave of dizziness overcame him. Not even his father had ever flogged Lan with more than five strokes of a cane!

“Oh, but that's not all, not by any means,” Tyron purred. “Unless, of course, you happen to have that velvet I told you to bring me squirreled away in your book bag—”

Lan's head shot up, and he stared at Tyron in shock, all conscious thought driven out of his mind.
I thought he'd forgotten about that by now!

Tyron smiled tenderly, but his eyes were as cold as a fish's. “I thought not. So what would that be, Derwit?”

“Twenty strokes for refusing to obey, ten strokes for lying about being sick, ten for lying about not being able to study at home, and ten for avoiding punishment by lurking up here,” Derwit replied with gloating satisfaction. “That's seventy strokes in all.”

Something hot and angry began to stir sluggishly down in the farthest depths of Lan's mind, but he still couldn't think, or even move. At the moment, it was panic that had control of his body; the same panic a trapped rabbit feels when it freezes. Two of the bullies pried his hands away from the desk and hauled him to his feet by his elbows.