Songs of the Earth (33 page)

Gair took a detour to the bath-house to clean up before he went back to his room. The looking-glass in the changing room showed him a large bruise forming by his right eye, with a raw red welt in the middle where the skin had been flayed away. He felt around the edges of the swelling cautiously. He feared Tanith was right; by morning his face would be purple from cheekbone to hairline.

He washed and changed back into his everyday clothes, then climbed the stairs to his room with his bloody whites bundled under his arm. When he arrived he found Darin perched cross-legged on his desk next to a stack of neatly folded laundry.

Darin opened his mouth to speak and Gair held up his hand. ‘Don’t ask,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to talk about it, I just want to take this powder and make the pain go away.’ He dropped his whites on the chest at the foot of the bed. He emptied the powder into a beaker, added some water from the jug on the night table then took a mouthful.

It was so bitter he almost spat it straight out again. ‘Goddess in glory!’

‘Hold your breath,’ Darin advised. ‘You don’t taste it that way.’

‘I was holding my breath.’ Gair grimaced into the cup. The powder was even more bitter than athalin, if that was possible. He bolted the stuff down and chased it with another beaker of water to try to rinse the grittiness away. That did not help much either.

Darin solemnly offered him a tin box. ‘Fudge?’

‘Thank you. That stuff was
awful
.’

Chewing the sweetmeat, he flopped onto his bed with his back against the wall. ‘So. To what do I owe this honour?’

‘I was hoping you’d help me with my history assignment for Master Donata.’

‘What’s the subject?’

‘The Battle of River Run. I thought you might know more about it, since you were trained by the Knights.’

‘You mean since I had Church history drummed into me for a decade.’ Gair kneaded his eyes, then hitched himself more upright and tried to concentrate. ‘What do you need?’

‘Well, it was one of the last great battles of the Founding. Gwlach brought his entire war-band to face the Knights, outnumbering them more than four to one, yet the Knights won. How did they do it? It shouldn’t have been possible.’

Darin was correct; it should have been a rout. Twelve legions of Church Knights against some fifty thousand Nimrothi warriors were impossible odds, even allowing for the Knights’ armour, their discipline and the sheer crushing weight of a heavy cavalry charge. The Nimrothi were horsemen born, they should have scythed round the Suvaeon flanks and hamstrung them as cleanly as a wolf-pack bringing down an elk.

Instead the Knights had ground out a victory over fifteen days of the bloodiest fighting ever recorded in the Founding or any other war in the history of the Empire. It had cost Gwlach and many of his chieftains their lives, and broken the clans so utterly that the northern borders of Arennor and Belistha had been secure for a thousand years.

‘According to most of the Church historians, it was strength of faith. They carried the bones of St Agostin the Defiant in a casket at the head of the army; maybe that helped.’

‘But how did they win? That’s what I don’t understand.’

‘I don’t understand it either, I’m afraid.’

‘Damn it,’ Darin muttered, his brow furrowing under his mop of curls, ‘I was counting on you for a good mark.’

‘All right. You tell me the exact assignment whilst I put these away, and we’ll see what we can figure out.’ Gair pushed himself onto his feet and picked up the pile of clean clothes.

A beam lit up Darin’s face and he began to ferret through his pockets. ‘Thanks, Gair. I’ve got it written down somewhere. How come you’re so neat, anyway? I never saw the point of putting clothes away. They’re just going to get crumpled when you wear them, so why worry about hanging anything up?’

‘You never had the threat of a birching to encourage you to pick up after yourself. Habits like that are hard to break.’

Without looking up Gair opened his closet and began separating his shirts from the rest of the pile balanced on his arm.

‘It’s here somewhere – a-ha!’ Darin flourished a creased scrap of paper he’d found amongst the pocket-litter now strewn across Gair’s desk. Smoothing it with his hands, he read it through. ‘She wants an analysis of the background to the battle and its effect on the economic and political stability of the northern provinces over the next hundred years. It’s worth twenty marks.’

Gair hardly heard a word. All his attention was focused on the middle shelf of his closet and the neatly folded blue fabric, set just so in the centre.

‘What’s the matter? Did the laundry starch your smallclothes or something?’ Darin poked his head round the edge of the closet door. ‘Blood and stones!’

Slowly, Gair set down his other clothes on the shelf. Gut tightening, he lifted up the garment and shook out the folds. Blue
wool pooled on the floor at his feet. Once on, he guessed the mantle would reach his ankles.

Darin whistled reverently. ‘Try it on,’ he urged. ‘I bet it fits.’

Gair held it against himself. The length was perfect, just skimming his boot heels. He pulled it on and a square of paper sycamored down to the floor. It had a stiff, expensive feel. The brief note was signed with a single initial in a bold, cursive hand. He held it out for Darin to see.

‘A for …? It’s not Alderan, he doesn’t loop the descender like that,’ Darin said.

Gair looked again at the initial. The author favoured a broad-nibbed pen and very black ink, but there was no doubt in his mind that it was a woman’s hand.

‘Aysha,’ he said.

He tucked the note in his pocket and adjusted the hang of the mantle. As far as he could tell, it couldn’t have been better cut if he’d gone down to the tailor’s shop in person.

Darin simply stared, eyes filled with hopeless envy. ‘I think it suits you.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

Aysha had brought this? Gair smoothed the fabric over his chest, wishing he could smooth away the butterflies underneath. So she felt he was ready to be a Master, felt it strongly enough to make the difficult journey up into the dormitories. Certainly his control of his gifts had leapt ahead since those few lessons Alderan had given him on the
Kittiwake
. He was capable of doing so much more now, quite apart from the shape-shifting, though he didn’t have the casual skill of the other Masters, or the confidence that came from a lifetime of practice. But to be a Master himself? Surely it was too soon for that. He had been on the Isles barely more than a month, for Goddess’ sake.

Gair slipped the mantle off and folded it carefully, then put it on
the top shelf, right at the back, behind his winter cloak, where it could keep company with the pouch of silver.

Darin was aghast. ‘What are you doing? Why are you putting it away?’

‘I haven’t earned this yet.’

‘But you’ve been tested!’

‘I wasn’t raised to Master, though – at least, not so far as I know.’ Gair rubbed his forehead. He hoped Tanith’s powder started to work soon. The headache had settled in like an unwelcome tenant. ‘Actually, I don’t know what I am. They still haven’t told me.’

‘Isn’t that what this means?’ Darin frowned, puzzled. ‘There’s usually a presentation from the whole Council, but that’s just a formality. You’re ready when someone says you’re ready, and she’s saying you’re ready.’

Gair thought about the few words he’d kept his fingers over when he’d shown Darin the note now nestled against his hip and had to breathe deeply to quell a flutter in his belly.

‘Somehow I don’t think the rest of the Council sanctioned this.’

‘You could always ask her – I mean, she was part of the testing, wasn’t she? And she’s on the Council. Ask her.’

He supposed he could thank her for the gift, but he could not help but wonder why she had chosen to deliver it this way. Why slip it into his closet for him to find? Why not just hand it to him?

‘I’m supposed to have a lesson with her tomorrow. I’ll see if she mentions it.’

Darin laughed. ‘In other words, you’re too frit to ask. Not that I blame you, mind; she scares me spitless.’

‘She’s not that scary,’ Gair said absently, leaning back against the closet door. Bewildering, maybe. Opinionated, fiercely independent, bold. The last time they had flown together she had exulted in her mastery of the air, the Song a huge, soaring swoop in her as she danced around him. She had laughed for the sheer joy of it, the rich sound bubbling into his thoughts, then seized his
talons in hers and sent the two of them tumbling through the pellucid mountain air. He remembered her tipping her face up to the sun like a cat on a wall with the wind pressing her loose shirt to her frame—

No. She was supposed to be his teacher. He had no right to be thinking of her in that way. It was entirely inappropriate … but now that he’d thought about her, her image would not go away. Especially those eyes.

‘Hello-o,’ Darin sang.

Gair blinked.

‘You were a mile away. That knock on the head stirred your brains, I reckon.’

‘Sorry.’ Goddess help him, he had to get a
grip
.

‘I still say you should ask her.’

‘Mmm. I’ll think about it.’

A bell sounded outside, followed by banging doors and hurrying feet.

‘Supper!’ The Belisthan lunged for the door. ‘We’d better be quick, or there’ll be none left.’

Gair waved him away. ‘You go ahead. I’ll catch you up in a bit.’

‘Sure?’

He nodded and Darin was off like a terrier after rats. The Belisthan might be led by his stomach, but Gair was too tired and sore to run. He touched his bruised face and winced. Even thinking hard might not be such a good idea.

Slowly he took out the note and read it again.
We make such a pretty pair
, she had written. Only half a dozen words, but taken together they had at least the same number of interpretations. If she’d given him an Arkadian puzzle-box it would have been easier to figure out. He slid the note back into his pocket and walked down to the refectory for a supper he felt too full to eat.

The Master of Novices had always taken a stern line on personal hygiene with the boys and young men in his care. Baths had been frequent, with plenty of soap, but there the similarity with Chapterhouse ended. The Motherhouse baths were housed in a lamplit, dripping cavern beneath the vaulted footings of the dortoir, and contained a large communal pool barely hip-deep on a man and a smaller plunge pool. The former was filled by a sulphurous hot spring, the latter by a stone culvert that fed directly from the River Awen, occasional frogs and all. There was no privacy there for a boy standing uneasily on the borders of manhood. Gair had quickly grown tall enough to leave the taunts and flicked towels of the other novices behind, but for the younger, skinnier lads, bath time had been a parade of misery until their bodies filled out and furred up.

In contrast, the baths at Chapterhouse occupied a long tiled room well lit by high windows. A double row of sunken baths was fed by a network of verdigrised copper pipes that spread out from a hole in the far wall like tentacles from the monstrous copper boilers in the next room. Each tub was built large enough for four, though there were rarely that many bathers at once. Wooden shelves of towels and washcloths stood at the head of each one, and waist-high partitions divided each bath from its neighbours to provide at least some scope for modesty.

Gair sluiced off the last of the soapsuds and leaned back against the tiles. The hot water was soothing, but nearly an hour of soaking hadn’t managed to overcome the aches in his muscles. However he might complain about the other Masters, Aysha worked him no less hard. In the fortnight since she had first summoned him, she had called him another eight or nine times, usually early in the morning, when she could be sure the other Masters hadn’t even finished breaking their fast, and he had lost count of the miles they had flown and run across the Isles in shapes other than their own. Today was supposed to be his free day, his first since his arrival, and she’d summoned him whilst he
shaved, bursting into his thoughts so suddenly that the razor nearly carved him a second smile.

His bruised face had elicited only a raised eyebrow and a wry enquiry as to whether the other fellow looked as pretty, before they had taken flight for the uplands. Aysha had shown him how to shape a whitejack deer, then laughed when his first efforts made some real deer bound off into the silvery birch trees, tails high in alarm. He had countered with a heavy-antlered red stag from Leah, and bellowed so loudly that it was her turn to take fright. A squirrel-shape had streaked into the nearest tree, from which he had been pelted with spruce cones. Her aim had turned out to be as deadly as her wit and he had a stinging right ear to prove it.