Jame straightened, breathing deeply. The pounding in her ears, of water, or her blood, subsided. Damson and a Randir cadet had lost their balance and fallen to the floor under Corvine’s scornful gaze. The Randir contorted and flopped about gasping until a sharp rap of the baton brought him to his senses.
“Turned fish, did you? Now remember how to breathe and tell me where you failed.”
The cadet sat up, gulping air and shaking.
“I-it was during salmon-leaps-downstream, Sar. I forgot myself. Ouch!”
Corvine had rapped him again. “That’s so you’ll remember. We leave ourselves at our peril. With that in mind, the Third Kantir: Body-Becomes-Water.”
Most lessons didn’t go this far. To become water and yet remain oneself was very tricky. It also involved movements more fluid and extreme than many cadets could manage. Jame herself had never successfully finished the set. She wondered why Corvine was pushing them so hard, but was game to try.
Again, listen for the tide in the blood, but this time it runs deeper and stronger. This is not stream but ocean, vast enough to lose oneself forever and to drown. Great billows of the deep, stitched with silver fish. The shadows of predators, the feel of their skin brushing past. Drawn by the moon, push back. Lifted by the sun, rise. Water is strong and supple. Ocean is immense—don’t let it swallow you! Somewhere in it is a vast maelstrom, the size of a kingdom, there, to the north. Water roars into the gaping maw of the chaos serpent of the deeps beneath. Flow. Flee. Now the shore calls. One is back in the moon tide, rising, falling, surging forward. Ah, the sound of the breakers, the curling waves. Keep balance, keep balance . . .
Jame felt her back creak as it arched backward. Surely it would snap. Then the surf took her and she was tumbling helplessly over and over, to wash up at last on the classroom floor.
Damn, she thought, wincing as strained muscles twinged. I didn’t make it.
Nor had all but one of the class. Several cadets lay twitching, salt water dribbling from their mouths. Others sat up dazed, rubbing sore joints. All who could stared at the last cadet standing, or rather floating with black hair spread out in a cloud.
Shade bent impossibly, not front to back but back to front, her spine curling over on itself in a serpentine arch. Hands came down but slid above the floor rather than on it. They spread in a swimmer’s stroke. Her back uncurled, feet coming over her head. She slid along the floor on her stomach, at last coming to rest, at peace. The kantir was over.
No one clapped. All stared. Someone muttered, “Freak.”
Shade came to herself and met their eyes. Her own, still slit and taut despite her loosened hair, narrowed further. Without a word, she gathered up her snake and left the room.
The class scattered soon afterward, still muttering.
“You pushed her to see what she could do,” Jame said to Corvine. “Why?”
“Better to know.”
“To know what? Addy could have told you that she’s a Shanir. So am I, as you well know.”
“This is . . . different. I don’t understand it, and what I don’t understand worries me.”
“Do you doubt her honor?”
“No.” Small eyes bore into Jame’s over the set trap of a mouth. “I care,” said this remarkable woman. “About her. About you. We destroy too much that is irreplaceable as it is.”
“That doesn’t sound like a Randir.”
“I wasn’t always. Someone else will tell you if I don’t. I’m an Oath-breaker.”
It took Jame a moment to remember what that was.
“You were a Knorth?”
“Long ago, before the White Hills. I broke faith because of my unborn child. I didn’t follow my lord into exile. The Randir took me in, as they did many others of my kind. But it was all for naught: the babe was stillborn.”
“I’m sorry. D’you think I blame you? The Haunted Lands were no place for a child. Tori and I were nursed by a Kendar whose infant couldn’t survive those harsh, unnatural hills.”
“Who?”
“Winter.”
“Ah. My cousin. I always wondered. Did she teach you the Senethar as well?”
Jame laughed. “She refused. I was a lady, y’see, although I had no idea at the time what that was besides a dirty word. She taught my brother and I learned by attacking him.”
Her mouth quirked, not quite into a smile. “You would.”
As she turned to go, Jame called after her. “Do you remember?”
The Kendar rolled up a sleeve. On her forearm, carved deep and scarred over, was a name: Quirl.
“The flesh remembers.”
Then she was gone.
Jame arrived, late, for her last lesson of the day: strategy. This class was taught by an irascible, grizzled veteran in the habit of throwing his wooden hand at any inattentive student, thus earning him the distinction of being the only lecturer at the college not only capable of putting his audience to sleep but of rendering it unconscious. Today, however, was reserved for Gen and everyone was already enthusiastically engaged at their boards. Her opponent waited, his own side of the game set up and no doubt well memorized.
Timmon grinned at her. “Hello, stranger.”
True, thought Jame, sliding into the chair opposite him; they had hardly met since her return from Gothregor. She had missed the Ardeth’s easy manner and even his flirtations, before they had turned serious.
“Are you all right?” she asked him, reminded only as she spoke that she had inquired much the same of Shade barely two hours ago.
His smile twisted wryly. “You know how it is when something gets under your skin, an itch that you can’t scratch . . . ”
She cut him off. “Please. Let’s not go there. I think better of you than that. Damn. I’m no good at this.”
“What, at telling me you just want to be friends?”
“What’s wrong with that? I’m sorry about your itch, but I’m not obligated to scratch it. Friendship wouldn’t demand it.”
“So, on your terms or on none?”
“Pretty much. Timmon, grow up. You can’t have everything you want, at whatever cost to others. And don’t tell me that your father would have taken it as his due. I’m afraid that he would.”
Their whispered conversation was interrupted by a wooden missile flying between them and stunning Drie at the next table.
“Are you two going to play or not?” demanded the randon instructor, retrieving his hand. “Sorry about that,” he added to the dazed cadet, whose game pieces along with his opponent’s were now scattered all over the floor.
So they began.
Timmon had chosen white; perforce, she chose black. The Gen pieces were smooth, flat, river stones about two fingers’ width across, and one thick. On their bottoms were indicated their rank or status: one commandant, three ten-commanders, three five-commanders, and twenty-four cadets—in essence, three ten-commands and a master-ten. Added to these were four hunters, four hazards, and one flag. The goal of Gen was either to capture this last or to end play with a higher count of survivors than one’s adversary. Strategy and tactics were called for, but also memory: once the pebbles were in place, the player had to remember what each one of them represented, as well as what one deduced about the opposing pebbles by their movement and effect.
Timmon advanced a pebble from the front rank. Was it a mere cadet or an officer? Both moved only one square at a time, vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. It could even be a hunter, whose movements in a straight line were unlimited.