Jame accepted the leather sack and nearly dropped it in surprise at its weight. Opening it, she was even more bewildered.
“Look,” she said to Rue, and poured the contents out onto her blanket.
They both stared at the heap of gleaming gold and silver coins.
“This is an arax from Kothifir,” said Rue reverently, picking up one of the former. “See? There’s King Krothen’s fat face, splayed from rim to rim to discourage clipping. It’s death to disfigure the king’s image. Here’s an ollin from Karkinaroth, and a copper bool from Hurlen, and this”—gingerly fingering a bit of silver the size of a thumbnail—“is a fungit from the Central Lands. Be careful handling these: sometimes the Poison Courts mint them with curses. We Kencyr don’t have any coinage of our own, of course, unless you count turnips.”
“And the blood of our fighters; and the wisdom of our scrollsmen; and the songs of our singers.”
“Oh. Those.”
An arax escaped and went rolling off across the floor, to Jorin’s delight. Jame flinched but didn’t look up as the ounce bounced headfirst off the copper basin. Rue scrambled to save the gold from the fire, then shied it into a corner for the cat gleefully to chase.
A note had tumbled out with the glittering cascade.
“It seems that I’ve been granted a quarterly allowance,” said Jame, reading it. “Oh, good! Tori has returned Aerulan to Brenwyr. This seems to be in earnest of my share of the booty. What a way to put it, and what a stiff, little message. He still seems to be angry with me.”
“Well, he did hear you threaten to flay Vant alive. I saw him at the edge of the crowd. Then he turned around and left, just as the Commandant stepped forward.”
“So you and the walls told me. Of all times for him to have paid a visit!”
“And of all times to send you money, when the Southron peddlers are long gone. We won’t have much use for this short of spring.”
“I just hope he kept enough of it for himself. Trinity, Rue, look at it! I’ve never had this much wealth in my hands in my life.”
Well, maybe, as an apprentice thief in Tai-tastigon, but then anything she stole had belonged to her master Penari and besides, she had always gone for the most challenging thefts rather than the most lucrative. Now, however, was not the time to enlighten Rue about such details of her former life.
The five-minute horn sounded, indicating the imminent arrival of breakfast.
Jame scooped up the coins and poured them back in their sack.
“Put this somewhere. No, don’t bother about Jorin’s. Someone should get some fun out of it.”
Five minutes later, Jame took her place at the head of her table. Knowing that she was on her way, the cadets had remained standing until her arrival. All sat at a barked order from Brier while those assigned to serve ran in with bowls of porridge, baskets of bread, and pitchers of milk.
Jorin had brought down his new toy and batted it around the floor under tables and chairs, to universal amazement. More than one cadet stopped the spinning coin with a foot and picked it up to examine it before sending it, ringing, back into play, pursued by a wildly excited ounce.
Jame buttered a slab of fresh bread—part of the bounty now flowing from Falkirr to Gothregor and Tentir. No one had known what to make of it when it had started to arrive several days ago but now, of course, she could easily guess. Good for Tori.
As she chewed, she surveyed the room. Everyone looked happy, with a few exceptions. The most notable of these was Vant. The remains of his ten-command had been dissolved and its members scattered among the other short tens. Her own table had gained a quiet, thick-set Kendar named Damson to fill Anise’s empty chair. One couldn’t tell yet if the girl resented this change or was naturally shy among comparative strangers. At least no one was teasing her about being overweight, as had been the case when she had served in her previous command.
Vant was also silent, for more understandable reasons. In effect, thrown back into the cull pool, he had emerged without rank at the bottom of another’s table—enough to make anyone unhappy, whether he deserved it or not.
Jame remembered Greshan’s fine coat that she had ripped off his back. Sober, he probably never would have donned it. After all, he claimed to hate the Highborn, but part of him still plainly craved recognition of his own portion of Highborn blood. She supposed it was natural to despise what one was denied, and yet still to crave it.
The other cadets left him alone, in part because of his black expression, in part because everyone blamed him for a fellow cadet’s death. He had really picked the wrong night to overindulge in applejack, much less to keep company with Fash and Higbert. To Jame’s mind, the latter two were probably as much to blame for what had happened as Vant’s own pig-headedness. She had no doubt whatsoever that they had goaded him on. It seemed unlikely that he would thank her for her part in his demotion. She wondered if he realized how close he had come to being expelled altogether.
Arguably, he might now hate Brier even more than he did her: the Southron had been made a provisional Ten and given his old job of running the Knorth barracks, although she continued also to serve under Jame as her Five. No one else could have made such a situation work, Jame thought, glancing at Brier’s strong profile. Even cadets who had originally mistrusted her for her Southron blood and turn-collar status now took their daily assignments from her cheerfully, as a matter of course. They had both come a long way since their early days at the college.
But her gaze drifted back to proud, brooding Vant, and she wondered if she had done him a favor after all.
Another note was delivered, this one from the horse-master. It might almost have been in code—as an old-school randon, the master generally mistrusting the written word—but from the rathorn sigil Jame deduced that he wanted to see her up among the boulders above Tentir when classes ended.
The horn sounded assembly. As they all scrambled out into the square, a passing cadet slipped the errant arax into her hand. They left blind Jorin still hunting for it, ears pricked for its ring-bring-bring along the wooden floorboards.
The first class that day was under the Brandan instructor, practicing again with the scythe-arms. Their opponents were a ten-command from tiny Danior. As play advanced, it became clear that most of the Knorth far outranked their distant cousins.
“Whoa, stop!” cried Jame’s adversary, laughing, as she drove him into a corner with her flashing blades. “I thought you didn’t like swords.”
“I don’t. This is something different.”
She looked down at the gleaming steel with their leather-sheathed edges and flexed her claws within their grips. Accepting the claws and accepting these blades amounted to much the same thing. Oh, how she wished that Bear were here to witness how much his lessons had benefited her.
The instructor called time and they disarmed.
Jame had noticed that Damson had fared poorly throughout the lesson. Now the cadet leaned against a wall gasping, her black hair a stringy fringe over her eyes and ears, her heavy shoulders slumping.
“There’s a trick to it, you know,” Jame said to her. “You have to imagine that your fingers extend as much as a foot beyond your hands, and be careful where your spurs go. You have to think both before you and behind. Listen: Brier is giving lessons on the side in this, and you’re welcome to join in.”
Damson probably knew as much; it wasn’t a secret. However, Vant had expressed such distain for anything of Southron origin that his command had never taken part.