“If I’m here,” said Paks.
They shrugged again, and passed out of the stableyard toward the training fields. Paks gathered up the damp scarf, pushed herself upright, and limped back toward her room. On the way, she saw the Training Master turn into the corridor ahead of her and called to him. He stopped, looking back, and came forward, looking concerned.
“Paksenarrion—what’s happened? You’re hurt?”
“Yes, sir. I—” Suddenly she felt close to tears. She pulled herself upright. “It’s not that, sir, but I must speak with you.”
“Something’s happened?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, come along, then.” He led the way to his study, and waved her to a seat. “What is it?”
21
Paks took a long breath, clutching the sodden scarf in her hands. “Sir, I—I lost my temper, and was rude to Marshal Cieri, and he doesn’t want me in his class.”
“I see.” His face looked almost as cold as the first day. “And you come to me about it—why? ”
“I thought I should.” She swallowed painfully the lump that had been growing in her throat for the past half-hour. “Sir.”
“You want me to plead for you? Without hearing his story?”
“No, sir.” Why was everyone misunderstanding what she meant? Paks plunged on. “It isn’t that—I thought I was supposed to tell you—”
“He told you to?” That was with raised brows.
“No, sir,” said Paks miserably. “I mean—you’re the Training Master—if this were the Company, I’d have to tell the sergeant—”
His voice gained a hint of warmth. “You’re saying that you are doing what you would have done in Duke Phelan’s Company? Reporting something you did wrong?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I see.” His fingers drummed on the desk. “You agree that whatever happened was your fault?”
Paks nodded. Thinking back, she knew that Siger or Stammel would have reacted just as Cieri had—if not worse.
“Well, suppose you tell me about it. And by the way, how did you get hurt?”
“You knew I’d asked to learn axe fighting?” Paks waited for his nod, then went on. “I’d been doing drills with the axe—not hitting anything, and today Marshal Cieri set up a target. A log, with limbs.” Paks stopped. It seemed even worse as she tried to think how to say what had happened.
“Yes?”
“Well—sir—I had trouble with it—he’d said I would—”
“And you lost your temper over that?”
“No, sir. Not then. After awhile I made some chips of it, and then he wanted me to hit specific targets. Only when I started, he—he got after me for not thinking of it as live, for giving it a chance to hit back.” She looked up to see the Training Master’s lips folded tightly. As bad as that, then. She went on. “Then I hit a limb—he said to think of it as an arm—and when I went to hit again, he was angry that I hadn’t allowed for it to move. So I jumped at it, and hit it really hard, and the limb broke and the axe hit my leg.”
“How badly?”
“Just a cut. But then I was angry, and I was about to—to swing as hard as I could, and he stopped the axe.” Paks looked up again. “I didn’t know he could do that.”
“It’s not something we demonstrate very often,” said the Training Master, in a neutral voice. “Go on.”
Paks ducked her head. “Then he said he thought I knew better than to lose my temper, and that I wouldn’t be any good at axe-work, like he’d said. And that’s when—”
“What did you say, Paksenarrion?”
“I said—” she paused to remember the words. “I said I could learn, if he wouldn’t harass me. It—I was wrong, sir, and I know it. I knew it as soon as I said it—”
“Did you apologize?”
“Yes, sir; I told him I was sorry—”
“Did you mean it?”
Paks looked up, startled.
“Were you sorry for being rude, or sorry he was angry with you, or sorry you’d lost your temper in the first place?”
“I—I don’t know, sir. I suppose—I was just sorry about everything.”
“Hmph. So then what happened?”
Paks told the rest as well as she could, and on being prompted added the conversation with the dwarves. When she had finished, the Training Master sighed.
“So you came to me, because you thought you should, and you expect me to do—what? What do you think will happen now?”
Paks met his gaze squarely. “I think you’ll send me away,” she said. “If that’s what all of you think—that it’s unfair to spend the time when I’m not a Girdsman. And even if I were—he said it would be bad—you might still.”
“Do you think we should send you away?”
Paks didn’t know what to say to this. For a moment she looked away, but when her eyes returned to his face it held the same quiet expectancy. She thought the question over. “Sir, I—I don’t know what your rules are—what your limits are. If I do what you don’t want, then of course you have the right to send me away. But I can’t think what is best for you—for the Fellowship. If it is best to, then you will. Otherwise—I don’t know.”
“Well, if you are convinced we will send you away, why come to me? Why not simply go pack your things and leave? Or tell us you’re leaving, and not wait to be dismissed?”
“But—I couldn’t do that. It would be—” She could not think of the right words; she knew it would be wrong, and somehow worse than wrong. “Discourteous,” she finally said. “Ungrateful. It’s my fault, and you have the right; I don’t.”
He shook his head slowly. “I’m not sure I follow your reasoning, Paksenarrion. You agree that we have the right to dismiss you, if you displease us—but you think you have no right to withdraw?”
“If I didn’t want to stay—or if something happened, perhaps to my family or something—then I could, but it wouldn’t be fair to—to walk out when it was my fault.”
He pounced on that. “Fair. You’re trying to be what you think is fair?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you said ‘if I didn’t want to stay’—does that mean you do want to stay?”
“Of course I do,” said Paks, louder than she’d meant to.
“There’s no ‘of course’ to it,” he replied crisply. “Many who come here to train don’t like it, and don’t want to stay. Are you saying that even after Cieri’s thrown you out of his class—in front of everyone—you’d still prefer to stay here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why?”
Her hands twitched. “It’s—it’s what I always wanted to learn. These weeks have been the best of my life.”
“Until today.”
“Yes, sir.” Then she looked at him again. “If I could stay—today is not much, really—”
“Oh?” His brows went up again; Paks’s heart sank. “You call an axe wound, and having the senior weaponsmaster refuse to have you in his class ‘not much’? We have different views, Paksenarrion.”
“I’m—”
“You’re sorry. I’m sure.” He sighed again. “Paksenarrion, we accept occasional outsiders—non-Girdsmen—because we know that good hearts and good fighters may choose another patron. You have an unusual background; it may be that you have seen that which makes today seem minor to you. But to us it is important. We have all watched you, for these weeks, and been puzzled. You are capable, intelligent, hardworking, physically superior to most of the others. You have gotten along with the others, juniors and seniors both. You don’t brawl, get into arguments, get drunk, or try to seduce the Marshals. If you were a Girdsman, we would be more than pleased with your progress. Yet you have reserves, you harbor mysteries, which we cannot fathom. All our skills say these are not evil—yet great evil has been known to masquerade as good, just as a beautiful cloak can cover an evil man. This—today—is the first chink in your behavior. Is it characteristic? Is this the true Paksenarrion coming out? And why have you refused to make any commitment? Marshal Cieri does, in this way, speak for all of us. We would welcome you gladly as a knight-candidate—perhaps more—if you were of the Fellowship of Gird. But until you show us some willingness to give in return for what you are given—more than that surface pleasantness you have shown, I must concur with him.”