“Fellow name of Buel Hitch,” Tiber went on. “He was before your time at the Academy. You wouldn’t have known him there. He was ‘invited to leave’ when I was just a first year, for pretty much the same reasons I was invited to go be a scout, somewhere else. The man couldn’t tolerate bullies. Hitch wasn’t meant to be a standard-issue officer, but he was a man’s man when things got tough. Knew who his friends were. He saved me from a couple of bad mistakes when I first got to Gettys. And stories! The fellow could tell stories all day, craziest tales you ever heard, mostly about the Specks and their magic. He’d make them seem real. Too bad he’s gone now. I think you’d have liked him. I know he’d have liked you. ”
The children had fallen silent. Dia and Kara both crept closer to their mother. Amzil put her arms around them. Sem was in the wagon, unobtrusively looking for something. When he stood up, my sling dangled from his hand and he was breathing carefully through his open mouth.
I was still and silent, the mouse frozen by the watchful cat’s stare. Tiber drank off the last of his tea and set the mug down with a regretful sigh. “Well, folks, I have to be on my way. Thanks for a pleasant pause, but I’ve got a job to do. You watch out for those highwaymen, Burvelle. Oh, and I should warn you. When I left town, there was a rumor about some escaped criminal. Said to be dangerous. I’m supposed to be looking for her right now. ”
“Really?” I managed to say.
“Really. ” He stood up slowly. “So far, not a sign of her. But you be careful. ” He lifted his arms over his head, stretched, and then said, “Oh, pardon me, ma’am. Sometimes a scout just gets used to doing things his own way so much that he forgets how people expect him to behave. But that’s what Hitch said he liked best about this duty. Making his own decisions. ” He swung his gaze slowly to Sem. “You a good shot with that thing? There’s a place, just down the hill from here, where it opens out into a little meadow. Bet you could get a nice summer rabbit there. But use a smaller rock than the one you’ve got there. That’s big enough to knock a man cold. ” He smiled at the boy in a friendly way, and Sem returned him a sickly grin. I thought to myself that Buel had taught Tiber well. Tiber gave the boy a slow wink and then turned to me. “Well, you take care, Nevare. Nice little family you got here. ”
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“Thank you,” I said reflexively.
“Good evening, ma’am,” he said to Amzil, and doffed his hat briefly, a courtesy that surprised her. He turned and walked away as softly as he had come. Uphill of us, I heard his horse give a soft nicker. Just before he vanished into the surrounding brush, he turned back. “Funny thing, Nevare!” he called back. “I still can’t stand a bully. ” Then he turned and walked away.
We stared after him for a time in silence. Sem hopped down off the wagon and came toward me, sling in one hand, stone in the other. “I thought—” he began quietly.
“I know. I’m glad you didn’t. ”
“Oh, thank the good god you didn’t,” Amzil said fervently.
In the bush, the croaker bird suddenly rattled all its pinions. I stared at him. He cawed raucously and then cocked his head at me. “I think that balances nicely,” he said. In a smirking voice he added, “And it was interesting to be the good god for a change. Farewell, Nevare. ” He lifted his wings wide, launched awkwardly, caught himself, and then ponderously flapped his way to a higher altitude. He circled overhead once and then flew east.
“Save your stone, Sem,” Amzil advised her son. “That’s a carrion bird. We don’t eat them. ”
“He was out of my range anyway. What an ugly bird. ”
I’d been the only one to hear his words.
That was the last time a god ever spoke to me. And I haven’t felt the touch of the magic since then. But being freed of the unnatural didn’t mean that life became suddenly easy for us. In fact, the next month was very hard. The weather stayed mild, but food was short and the journey uncomfortable. When we went through Dead Town, it was late in the evening. Not a light showed anywhere. Amzil was very quiet for a time. Dia didn’t seem to recognize the place. As we went past the collapse of their old cabin, Kara asked quietly, “Is this where we’re going?”
“No,” Amzil replied. “Anywhere but here. ”
And we did not stop.
I lost count of how many ways I found to keep the cart from falling apart. As time went by and we left Gettys farther and farther behind, we began to stop earlier in the evening. Sem and I hunted meat for the pot or caught fish in the river when we came to it. We did not eat well, but we didn’t starve. I told Amzil my tale, in bits, as we sat by the fire in the evenings after the children were asleep. Much of it was not easy for her to hear. But she listened and she accepted it as truth. Then she told me her own tale and it was enlightening to me to hear of the young seamstress who had married the daring and handsome thief. She’d never liked her husband’s trade, but he was what his father had been before him, just as the good god decreed. And they had been happy there, in their own way, in Old Thares before the city guard caught him one night. And I felt a bit ashamed that it was hard for me to hear of her happy times. But I listened and accepted that that was who she had been.
We married in a small town named Darth. The priest was a young one who had vowed himself to a year of wandering and service. We wed in the courtyard of an inn. Amzil wore wildflowers in her hair. The proprietor of the inn was a widower and a romantic who spread a wedding meal for us and offered us two free rooms. His daughter sang for us and all the inn patrons enjoyed the festivities and wished us well. They backed up their good wishes with a wedding basket full of coins, two chickens, and a kitten. Kara observed that we now had everything we could possibly need.
And much later that night, as I was dozing with Amzil in my arms, she asked me softly, “Is this how you imagined your wedding night?”
I thought of the protracted torture of Rosse’s wedding, the endless preparations and fuss, and said, “No. This is much better. This has been perfect. ”
And that, we both felt, truly began our lives together. We left the town as an established household, with Kara holding the kitten in her lap and the two tethered chickens clucking to themselves in one corner of the cart’s bed. We went north, and without quite knowing how we decided it, ended up in a very small town named Thicket, not far from the citadel at Mendy. Unlike Gettys, Thicket’s population had settled there willingly, attracted by gentle land and rich soil. The small farms looked prosperous. Thicket had lost some population to the gold rush to the Midlands, but most of the well-established folk had stayed.
The town was actually glad to see a new family arrive. Amzil quickly found work as a seamstress, and worked longer hours and brought in more money than I did. A local stockman who raised cattle to supply Mendy with meat and leather was glad to let me exchange labor for rent on a cottage. In the evenings, Sem and I walked to a nearby creek to hunt or fish. As often as not, we took Dia with us, for while Kara was old enough to help her mother with the simpler sewing, Dia was still a thread-tangler.
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At night, when our candles were too dim a light for good workmanship with her needle, Amzil and I sat near our hearth and talked. In many ways, we scarcely knew each other, but I never doubted our compatibility. I played simple games with the children and tried to continue the education that Epiny had begun with them. Sem did not like his letters, but quickly saw the use of numbers. Kara read and did her sums but spent most of her time learning embroidery stitches from her mother. Beyond those basics, I told them stories from the history of Gernia, and the boy loved those, especially the ones about famous battles, the bloodier the better. The night that he rose from listening to tales to go off to bed and exclaimed, “When I am old enough, I shall be a soldier, and win fame and fortune on the battlefield,” my heart suddenly smote me.
“Well, what do you expect?” Amzil asked me later as we prepared for bed.
“When it is the only sort of story you tell him? You make it sound so exciting that I’ll be surprised if Dia and Kara don’t try to enlist as well. ” She said the words with humor, but I suddenly perceived a lack in my life. The tales I told the boy were the ones I had best loved when I was that age. Buel Hitch had perhaps been wrong. Soldiering might have been the only future that was ever offered to me, but that did not mean that it had not been my dream as well.
I lay awake that night after Amzil slept and considered my life. We were thriving. If Amzil continued to have as much work, we’d soon have enough saved to find a little place of our own, and then I could start to really build something. I lacked for nothing. I had a woman who loved me for who I was, and three fine children. Sem was as smart as a whip, Kara would soon be as skillful with a needle as her mother was, and Dia was everyone’s sweet little despot. What more could I ask for that the good god had not already given me?
And yet, I was not as content as I should have been. There was an empty spot inside me, and I wondered at nights if it were because Soldier’s Boy had taken some essential part of me or because of some shallowness in myself. I threw myself more earnestly into my work, repairing and improving the little house we rented until even the landlord commented that it didn’t look like the same place.
Several times Amzil reminded me that I had promised to write to Epiny. There was no mail or courier service out of Thicket, and I had neither pen nor ink, I would remind her. But one day close to the end of summer, she abruptly declared that I had procrastinated long enough and that it was cruel of me to leave my cousin and my sister wondering what had become of us. Besides, she wished to see a larger town, and there were things she needed that the small store in Thicket didn’t carry. So we loaded the children into the repaired cart, hitched up our nag, and made the trek to Mendy.
Mendy was a serious citadel, three times the size of Gettys. A prosperous little town surrounded it, a place of straight streets and tidy buildings with a bustling population. I found a letter-writer’s stall without difficulty, and bought paper and ink and pen from the proprietor. I composed letters to both Epiny and Yaril, begging forgiveness both for the delay and for the brevity with which I updated them. I also asked each to write to the other with my news, in case either of my posts went astray. I paid the substantial post fee for each letter, and made sure that the owner of the shop knew I’d be returning in a month to check for a reply. “Likely it will come faster than that, young man. We’ve got a good service now between here and Franner’s Bend, and they send out regular deliveries from there,” he assured me.
That business tended to, I went to meet my family. Amzil had told me she would be visiting a large dry-goods store that we had seen, and there I found her, Dia in her arms, driving a hard bargain with the harried man behind the counter. She was buying fabric and notions, as well as a number of minor household goods we’d been unable to obtain in Thicket.
When she noticed me watching, it seemed to give her more energy for the bargaining, and shortly after that, she’d reduced the poor man to compliance. That finished, she collected Kara, who was lovingly surveying a display of sugarplums, and declared she was ready to go.
“Where’s Sem?” I asked her.
“Oh, he saw the sentries changing, and nothing would do but he had to stand and gawk at them. No doubt he’s still there. ”
I took the heavy basket she carried on one arm and she claimed the other. Dia filled her other arm and Kara trailed after us as we walked to the cart. “Do you know, there are only two dressmakers in this town, and one is so expensive that only the wives of the officers can afford her services?” Amzil told me in a hushed voice. “I visited the other’s shop, and while he sews a fine seam, he doesn’t really have an eye for how he puts his dresses together at all. Fancy a yellow dress, with red cuffs and collar! And that’s what he had in the window. Nevare, if we saved a bit more and moved here, and if Kara practiced her embroidery stitches a bit more, we could do quite well here. Quite well indeed. ”
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I scarcely heard her. A mounted troop of cavalla came up the street behind us, returning to the citadel from some mission. I turned to watch them come. The men had weathered faces, and their uniforms were dusty, but they rode as cavalla should, and their proud horses, however weary they might be, held up their heads and trotted in ranks as they came. Their colors floated over them, a small banner held aloft only by the wind of their passage. I watched them pass, a boy’s imagined future come to life. A young lieutenant led them, and just behind him came his sergeant, a husky man with long drooping moustaches and a permanent squint. At the end of their line, with them and yet apart, came a scout. With a lurch of my heart, I recognized him. More than a decade of years had been added to his face since I’d seen him stand up for himself and his daughter at Franner’s Bend. As he passed, he glanced my way. I suppose I was staring, for he gave me a nod and touched his hat to Amzil before he rode past, following the troops. I felt as if hooks dragged at my heart as I watched them go by. There, but for strange luck and stranger fortune, went I.
“Look at Sem,” Amzil said softly. I followed her gaze to the boy who stood, awestruck, by the side of the road. His face shone as he looked up at the passing troops and his mouth was ajar. I saw the last rank of horsemen grinning at the small boy’s worship. The trooper closest to him snapped him a salute as he passed and Sem gave a wiggle of joy. “He looks just like you,” Amzil added, startling me from my reverie.
“Who? That trooper?”
“No. Sem. Staring with his heart in his eyes. ” She gave a small sigh. “You’ll have to temper the tales you tell him, Nevare. Or somehow make him understand that only a soldier’s son can become a soldier. ”
“That’s not always true,” I replied, thinking of Sergeant Duril. “One of the best soldiers I ever knew was really the son of a cobbler. ”
“You’re the son of a soldier,” Amzil said quietly.
“And now I’m a hired hand for a cattleman,” I said without rancor.
“But you shouldn’t be,” she said.
I made a sound of dismissal and gave a shrug. Her grip tightened on my arm as we walked. “Do you think I never heard Epiny and Spink talk about you, and how much you dreamed of a career? They often spoke of what it would be like if you could come back, clear your name, and serve alongside Spink. I don’t think they could imagine you doing anything else except being a cavalla officer. ”
“That’s gone,” I said.
“Why? Why couldn’t you enlist here? Use your real name; you’ve never signed up with it before. I don’t think you’d be a common soldier for long. You might not be an officer, at first, but even if you never rose to the rank you were born to, you’d still be what you’d dreamed of being. ”
“Amzil—”
“Don’t you think I know how important that is?”
“I’ll think about it,” I said quietly. And truthfully, for I knew I could not help but think about it. We collected Sem and headed back to Thicket. The ride home was quiet, the children asleep in the cart bed while I was caught in my own thoughts.
Two nights later, at dinner, Amzil abruptly asked me, “What holds you back from doing it?”
“Fear,” I said shortly.
We both noticed the children listening to us, and let the conversation die. But later that night, as we nestled together, Amzil asked without preamble, “Fear of what?”
I sighed. “When my father first disowned me, he was very angry. And very thorough. He sent out letters to the commanders of various forts, letting them know he had taken his name away from me. ”
“You still managed to enlist at Gettys. ”
“Oh, yes. He left me that, telling them that if they could give me any sort of a life as an enlisted soldier, he would countenance that. Even so, I had to use a different name. He’d forbidden me his. ” I sighed again. “Amzil, I don’t want to go back t
o living under that shadow. I don’t want to enlist as someone’s failed, disowned son. ”
She was quiet for so long that I thought she had fallen asleep. Then she said, “You’re already living as someone’s failed, disowned son. ” She softened the words by putting her arms around me. “You should stop doing that,” she said quietly. And then she kissed me, and for a time I failed at nothing.
When the month had passed, I returned to Mendy to see if I had any replies to my letters. Amzil rode along, tight-lipped and fairly quivering with excitement. In her lap, she carried two paper-wrapped dresses she had sewn. She intended to show them to the dressmakers in Mendy, to see if one of them might take her into his shop as an assistant. Kara and Sem each clutched two precious pennies they might spend. Dia held hers in a tiny cloth bag Kara had sewn for her. I left them to their errands and went to the letter-writer’s shop.
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He charged me threepence for holding my post for me, and I thought it an outrageous sum until he reached under his counter and brought out the stack of envelopes he had carefully tied up with string. “You’re a popular man,” he observed, and I dazedly agreed with him. I left his shop. Across the street, there was an open-air booth where a man was selling sweet tea and brown cakes. Feeling guiltily self-indulgent, I handed over one of Amzil’s hard-earned coins for a cup of tea and a cake with raisins in it. Then, my courage bolstered, I went through my stack of post. There were five fat envelopes from Epiny and two from Yaril. One of the ones from Yaril had been sent from Old Thares.
I felt a strange sense of trepidation as I turned them over in my hands. Did I want to open these things, open the door and admit the Nevare I’d been? For a moment, I considered tearing them up and tossing them to the wind. I could walk away from that Nevare just as I’d walked away from Soldier’s Boy. Amzil and I had begun something new together. Did I want to risk unsettling that? Then I decided that I already had, when I’d sent my first two letters. I sighed, carefully arranged my post by the date it had been sent, and opened the first one.