Inda (39 page)

 

 

 

And so the Sierlaef was thoroughly, numbingly drunk that night, when the academy stood at attention in the great parade ground, the older boys tapping the big drums with a slow, steady beat, as everyone, young and old, hummed the Hymn to the Fallen, the melody so deep-rooted no one could trace it, they just grew up knowing it, as they grew up knowing that it was never sung for those who died peacefully in bed, but for those who fell honorably on the field.

Inda stood in line, physically present but morally ostracized. The rules required him to be outcast, surrounded in silence, until judgment had been passed. But the isolation of the rules could never match the isolation of his own anguish, intensified by physical misery. The torches held high by Whipstick’s barracks-mates streamed like fire-ribbons toward the sky, the colors smeared not just by the tears he could not prevent, but by mounting fever, as yet unnoticed, unacknowledged.

Whipstick stood straight and alone before the small bier that held his brother’s still body, a black sash of mourning tied around his middle. At the right stood the Sierandael, at the left the king and his heir. Whipstick waved his torch once over his brother and then began the Words of Disappearance, but Inda never heard them.

The ache in his body, clamoring now as insistently as the ache gripping his mind and heart, overwhelmed him, and Whipstick’s falter, his pause to choke on one valiantly strangled sob, sent a pang so fierce through Inda that mind and body could no longer cope. The torches snuffed, one by one, and then the world died.

He crumpled up without a sound, and didn’t wake even when two of the bigger boys, at a gesture from Master Brath, carried him down to the lazaretto.

 

 

 

When he woke, the headache tightened round his skull, and for a time he could not think, did not know where he was.

But then he saw a face. Familiar. Long, hound-jowled, or would be one day.

“Noddy.” His voice was gone.

“Don’t talk yet. You’ve been asleep two days. We’ve swapped off checking, when we can.” Noddy smothered a cough, then sneaked a look over his shoulder, a gesture so uncharacteristic the first faint stirrings of alarm tingled through Inda.

“Sick?” Inda asked.

Noddy shrugged slightly, his turtle shrug. “Near all of us. You’re the only one who went toes up.” He coughed, sniffed, then said, “I’m not supposed to be here, but Sponge somehow got the healer’s assistant decoyed. First this.” He held out a cup.

Inda tried to raise his head and winced against the hammer of headache. Noddy helped, and Inda drank down an infusion of expensive steeped Sartoran leaf laced with willow bark.

Almost at once he felt some of the fever-ache ease.

Noddy sat there, waiting, his dark eyes so serious that Inda gradually realized something was very wrong.

Dogpiss.

Fresh grief ripped into Inda’s heart, and the silence stretched.

At last Noddy said, with another sideways look, “I daren’t stay long. Since I don’t have any fever I’m supposed to be in the stable, but Cama is doing my chores.” He smothered a cough.

“Why shouldn’t anyone visit me?” Inda whispered. “Oh. Judgment. But they know it was just D . . .” He couldn’t say the name. His eyes prickled. “His sting.”

Noddy sighed. “No. It’s not that easy. Somehow the beaks have got the idea that you and Dogpiss were running a ruse.”

“What?”

“Yes. And you were in command.”

Inda thought that through and gasped, which set off a fit of coughing.

When he lay back, exhausted and pale, Noddy grimaced. “Maybe coming was a bad idea, but we thought you had better know. Judgment was postponed for a week or so—that’s how long the healer said you would likely be sick—but then you’re going to have to face Master Brath.”

For a long, horrifying moment Inda tormented himself with thinking about what that meant: not only would he lose honor points, but as a riding commander, he’d lose double riding points for the scrub barracks. And wouldn’t that be worse now that something horrible had happened? Oh, much worse, much worse. Didn’t that kind of thing require punishment before the entire academy?

But wait! He frowned. “A ruse for what?”

“To get both flags and score off everyone else—a double win for the Tveis. Our army’s flag was in our camp. That’s why Hawkeye Yvana-Vayir was there on guard.”

“But we didn’t know that. Did we? Maybe we did—I can’t remember. We didn’t know where the other side’s flag was.”

“How can you prove Dogpiss didn’t know?”

“Of course he didn’t. He’d tell us. Dogpiss was hot on a sting.” Inda struggled to sit, and forced words past his fiery throat. “Everyone knows what he’s like. All I have to do is tell them that it wasn’t a ruse. Of course he knew we were honor-bound to stay. He wouldn’t have touched the flags, not if they were lying in plain sight. He just wanted to sneak over. Plant his sting. Whatever it was.” A sudden hope. “They must have found it!”

Noddy shook his head once. “He might have had it in hand when he fell, but if so it was long gone downstream by morning. And we did search. Rattooth, Cama, and I. Nothing.”

Inda winced. “But Cama, and Tuft and Flash. They all heard me tell him not to run.”

Noddy shook his head slowly. “Yes and no. They heard you say not to run, but Cama and Tuft admitted they didn’t hear what Dogpiss said next. Flash said he rolled up to go to sleep and didn’t hear a thing. But he was farthest away. Kepa said that the two of you were whispering plans—you being in command—and then took off together.” Noddy grimaced. “And Smartlip said he saw and heard it too.”

“He did not! He was asleep! Wasn’t he?”

“He says he wasn’t.”

“But he lies. Kepa, too. We know that from last year.”

“Everyone knows Kepa’s a sneaking, lying, bootlicking snitch, and that Smartlip can talk himself into believing whatever gets him attention. But we still have to prove they’re wrong. How? And listen to this, Inda. Brath has had Smartlip and Kepa in two or three times, and Cama, Tuft, and me just once.”

Inda groaned, his hands roaming restlessly over the blankets. “I have to talk to them. Have to tell them it was a sting. Dogpiss was hot because the Sierlaef put him up to it.”

“What?”

“Yes. Didn’t Dogpiss tell the rest of you?”

Noddy sighed. “I don’t think so. No, I’m pretty sure he didn’t, or I’d have heard. And he wouldn’t, would he? Most would think it strut, but he’d tell you.” The faint emphasis on “you” slid right past Inda, who was sick, distressed, and confused.

Noddy got to his feet, coughing slightly, looking as distressed and confused as he felt. Maybe it was a bad idea to come. He and Sponge had thought it best to prepare Inda, except he looked so terrible, with those red patches in his cheeks and his eyes looking so wild.

He couldn’t think of any way to take it all back, or to make it better, and so he retreated, as noiselessly as he could.

 

 

 

Ten days later Inda stood before Master Brath in the office off the academy parade court, his fever too recently gone, leaving a heavy lassitude and a very soggy cough. Master Brath, with Master Starthend standing behind him, wooden of countenance, asked Inda for a report. Inda had had days to consider what he would say, and so out it came in logical order, sparing nothing. He watched those blank faces—blank until he recounted Dogpiss’s conversation with the Sierlaef, after which Starthend pursed his lips and Brath said only, “You overheard it? You didn’t? Ah. Continue.” Inda got the feeling they weren’t listening so much as waiting for him to finish.

As soon as he realized that, he tangled his words; then he thought he sounded desperate, and his face burned, and his sentences tangled farther, and it was almost a relief when Master Brath said, “That’s enough, Algara-Vayir. You stopped making sense on your second, or was it third, iteration of your version of what happened in the prisoner-of-war camp before you and Kendred Noth broke boundaries.”

Kendred.
Hearing Dogpiss’ real name brought back, so vividly it was like a knife inside, those sightless eyes, the de fenseless hands that would never move again.

Inda fought hard to regain equilibrium, and almost missed Brath’s quick, low voice. “You know the rules. The offense would have been serious enough for you both, but compounds because you were captain, and thus responsible for everyone’s honor. That a death occurred because of your actions requires public expiation. Ordinarily that is a hundred strokes before the gathered academy, for their honor, too, has been compromised. The king has seen fit to reduce the sentence to fifty, since this was so obviously an accident, and it was not your hand that struck him down. The sentence will be carried out before the gathered academy in three days. Do you understand?”

“Yes.
No.
”

Both masters reacted, one surprised, the other bemused.

Inda went on, fighting desperately to keep his voice still. “I refuse. I have that right. I can’t be caned in front of everybody against my will, unless my father orders it, and so I won’t. Because I didn’t do anything wrong.” The Masters did not speak, and to fill that terrible silence, Inda gripped his hands hard behind his back and said, “I demand the right to tell my father what happened, and abide by what he says.”

Master Brath said, “If you refuse my judgment, you must be remanded to the Sierandael for his judgment. He will decide whether or not you have the right to send a Runner all the way to Choraed Elgaer—which would take about a month, there and back, and we’re two weeks from the end-of-season games.”

Starthend snapped, “Do you really want the entire academy kept here longer just so you can stand on privilege of rank?”

Inda saw it then, that he had been trapped. He did not know why, or how, but instinct—no, conviction—sang along his nerves. He gritted his teeth and said, “I won’t do it.”

Master Brath gave him an angry, cold look. “You could have that sentence increased for cowardice.”

“I won’t agree to a punishment I don’t deserve.”

“I have no choice but to place you in a holding cell pending the judgment of my superiors.” He sent a look at Master Starthend—what do I do now?—and then glared at Inda. “Wait here. And I mean do not move.”

Inda’s knees felt like water, his head ached again, and tears threatened behind his eyes, but he gripped himself hard, determined to stand there all day and night if need be.

Such resolution turned out to be unnecessary. Very shortly thereafter two big guards appeared, both with stiff demeanors that didn’t quite hide their embarrassment, and he had to walk between them over to the Guard side, and to the prison there.

His last sight of his academy mates was brief glimpses of pale faces peering from archways and barracks windows, some of them looking as stricken as he felt, but some cold, forcing him to realize that there were those who believed the false story just because the beaks did.

Chapter Thirty

I
NDA sustained three interviews while he was in that stone cell. The first was by no means the worst. The Royal Shield Arm came that night, but the interview went exactly as Inda had come to expect. The Sierandael held to the story that Smartlip and Kepa told; he refused to believe that the Sierlaef had had any such conversation with Kendred Noth.

“But it’s true,” Inda said almost voicelessly. “Dog—Noth Tvei told me himself. The Sierlaef said everyone ‘needed a laugh.’ D—Noth Tvei said the Sierlaef wanted a sting, to make everyone laugh—”

The Sierandael’s eyes narrowed. “Are you asking me to believe that the royal heir, commanding the banner game, talked a boy secretly into scoring against his own side—against the rules? Into sneaking out of a prisoner-of-war camp, when you are honor-bound to remain?”

Inda winced. Did it sound like he was trying to put the blame on the Sierlaef? Was that some sort of treason? “Oh, please, Sierandael-Dal. Ask Noddy—um, Toraca. He’ll tell you. I mean, he didn’t hear it or anything, but—”

“I have spoken with Nadran Toraca, but it is well known that he is your own personal friend, and as such, his testimony might be, shall we say, suspect. As it is, I do not see why I should ask his opinion on conversations he never heard. Nor did you, by your own admission.”

In other words, they believed that not only was Inda lying, but that Noddy was, too, which effectively shut Inda up.

The Sierandael then said, in his most friendly, most persuasive voice, “Come on, now, boy. I don’t believe you’re a coward. You can face fifty smacks. It’s not even a whip, for you’re still in smocks. Just a willow wand, and if you like, we’ll stuff you full of liquor before and kinthus after. You won’t even feel the welts until they heal. You surely do not want to dishonor your father’s House. Why, what do you think he will say if we have to turn this into a kingdom-wide affair? Your father has a formidable reputation for honor.”

“So much so that I know he will listen to me,” Inda said, lips trembling. “He knows I tell the truth. And I will abide by whatever he decides.”

The Sierandael’s anger was more a relief to Inda than not. His persuasive voice contrasted with all the signs of hostility—the steady, searching gaze, the taut shoulders, the angry angle of jaw and elbow—signs Inda was scarcely aware of except that he was made uneasy in this man’s presence.

“You might have forgotten,” said Anderle-Sierandael Montrei-Vayir, brother and Shield Arm to the king, “that refusal of justice on the grounds of cowardice, or untruth, is a dishonor that never can be amended. You could be stricken from the House lists, stripped of name and inheritance, and your father has the right to hang you as a thief, a thief of honor.” A narrow, white-mouthed look. “And so does the king.”

“I won’t do it,” Inda whispered. “I did nothing wrong.”

The door slammed shut.