So did everyone else at Gorbel’s belated bellow:
“STOP!”
He had put his full Shanir power into that command, but with a hitch in it as if of shortened breath.
Jame craned around Higbert’s bulk to see him. The Caineron lordan was leaning against his Five with blood on his coat. Obidin spread the latter to reveal a slashed shirt and a nasty cut skittering up across his ten-commander’s white, hairless torso. A flap of skin hung from it. At its lowest point, where the initial blow had struck, it had just missed the vulnerable flesh beneath the rib cage’s arc.
“I think,” said Obidin conversationally, “that someone just tried to gut you, Uncle.”
“Did . . . er . . . someone lose this?”
Commandant Sheth Sharp-tongue stood in the doorway, holding Higbert’s scythe-arm.
Higbert twisted around, as far as he could against the warning prick of steel at his throat. Outrage flooded his already florid face.
“This bitch just tried to stab me in the back!”
“No, she didn’t!” Dure protested.
The other Caineron cadets shifted, muttering. The Knorth drew together behind Brier.
The Commandant’s eyebrows rose. He couldn’t see Jame, still crammed as she was behind Higbert.
“Er . . . what bitch?”
Jame slipped under Higbert’s arm. “I think he means me, Ran, but I didn’t.”
A murmur of relief at seeing her still in one piece rippled through her ten.
“I told you,” said Rue in a penetrating whisper.
That nothing stops me? Huh. That was Graykin’s coda, and all too likely, someday, to be proven wrong.
The Commandant looked bemused. Usually it was Jame’s weapon that flew out the window. Besides, here was a classroom full of cadets holding each other at swordpoint while their instructor leaned against the wall, blurrily rubbing his head.
“If anyone would care to explain?”
Tigger whistled soundlessly, eyes on the floor. Dure watched Jame, hand in his pocket, appeal naked in his face. She gave him a slight, reassuring nod. His secret belonged in the Falconer’s class and, presumably, with his lord.
“I told you . . . ” Higbert began angrily, as if only capable of fixing on one grievance at a time.
“Yes, yes, so you did. I think, on the whole, that a bit of fresh air is in order. Bran, kindly organize a punishment run.” His cool eyes met Jame’s and Gorbel’s. “If no one takes responsibility, then all should pay, don’t you think?”
With that, he tossed the scythe-arm to Higbert, who nearly dropped it, and swept out of the room.
Punishment runs were conducted in the arcade that skirted the training square. One had been going on when Jame first arrived at Tentir and another had taken place while she lay ill in the infirmary.
The infirmary.
God’s claws, she had forgotten to tell Shade who had dropped Addy on her chest as she slept, presumably hoping the serpent would bite her if she stirred. It was getting hard to kept track of all the people who had, or were still trying, to kill her. She should keep a list.
A punishment run could take all day, leaving cadets only grateful that it was over smooth, flat ground. Then there were the training runs, longer and harder, outside the college. The most vicious ones of all were real, over any sort of terrain, in all sorts of weather, seventy-odd miles a day with life or death at stake. One worked up to that, obviously. The only thing faster was a post rider with remounts every twenty-five miles, or to go by the folds in the land, with the chance of ending up anywhere. As transportation, weirding and step-forward stones didn’t bear thinking about . . .
. . . except what in Perimal’s name was Dure doing with a flesh-eating trock in his pocket?
As discipline went, though, ninety-odd minutes pounding the boardwalk under the tin roof was mild, especially when the drill sargent in charge didn’t really push. At the worst, it was embarrassing. Jame passed the Ardeth Lordan lounging in his garrison’s doorway, grinning. Whatever his second class had been, he had apparently decided to skip it. That was Timmon: he could charm his way out of nearly anything and still earn good scores in the testings. He looked less amused, however, as she jogged past again and again, as if to say, “You’ve made your point. Enough is enough.”
Jame shot him a dirty gesture: May all your male offspring be born with three legs, one of them useless.
Meanwhile, Gorbel was in trouble. Normally, he had a steady, stubborn gait that would carry him as long as necessary. Now, however, he began to stumble. Obidin caught him on one side and his servant Bark on the other. The former probably thought that the scythe slash was literally giving his ten-commander a stitch in the side, but Jame guessed differently. So, probably, did Bark.
As the Caineron ten slowed, the Knorth caught up. They were nearing the end of the run, also their respective barracks.
“Take them in,” Jame told Brier.
The Southron gave her a sharp look, but turned her command into the Knorth quarters without question, where a midday meal of bread, new cider, and cheese awaited them. Jame slipped into the Caineron barracks on the heels of Gorbel’s ten, and from there quickly into the shadows.
These abounded in the multistoried compound due to its general lack of windows. Caineron notoriously suffered from height-sickness. As their growing numbers at Tentir forced them to build ever higher, the less they cared to think about it.
Gorbel was arguing with Obidin. He was all right, dammit, just in need of catching his breath in the privacy of his own quarters for a few minutes. He would join them shortly. Now go away.
Unseen, Jame trailed Gorbel and Bark up the stairs until Gorbel stumbled again and almost fell. She darted forward to help him regain his balance. He snarled at her.
“If you want to keep it a secret,” she told him with a grunt as his weight came to bear on her, “you take what help you can get.”
His quarters were more spare than she had expected, large enough to hold his extensive collection of hunting gear, all in prime trim, as well as some truly startling dress coats. Otherwise, the large room was simple and, of course, dim, although it did have windows fitted with closed slats for ventilation.
While Gorbel collapsed on a bench and Bark went to fetch bandages, Jame tried to pull off the Caineron’s boot. He swore at her again in obvious pain and gripped his seat. His moon face was pale, dank strands of hair clinging to its sweat-sheen.
“Do you really think”—heave—“that someone just tried”—heave—“to kill you?”
Gorbel braced his other foot against her shoulder and shoved.
The boot popped off. Jame sat down suddenly, with it in her hands.
“Yes!” He touched his ribs experimentally and winced. “You don’t nick bone by accident. Although who it was or why, damned if I know.”
Bark returned with strips of linen draped over one arm and a basin of warm water in his hands. While he cleaned and bound up the wound, Gorbel lowered his foot into the basin with a sigh of relief. Then he glowered at Jame.
“Why do you care, Knorth?”
“I suppose,” she said, rising and staring into the basin, “that you aren’t so bad. For a Caineron. Trinity!”
Gorbel’s foot was tightly laced about with fine, white, willow rootlets. As they sensed the water’s warmth, they began to untwine and spread into a fibrous mass that filled most of the tub. Longer fringe roots reached out to tap the ceramic walls of their prison, probing for any crack or flaw.
“If you were a tree, I’d say that you were root-bound. How are you ever going to get your boot back on?”