Mercedes Lackey - Brightly Burning

She clattered out of his room, and Lan's relief evaporated, replaced by dread.

Oh, gods, now what? Was he going to be 'prenticed to someone after all? His heart plummeted, and with cold hands he straightened his tunic and swept his hair off his forehead.

Feeling as if he were going to his doom, he plodded down the stairs and into the lesser sitting room where he could hear his mother and father talking.

They both looked up as he entered; his mother still had that tightly-closed expression around her mouth, as if her lips were the opening to a miser's purse, but his father looked less grim. Archer had a milder temper to go with his gray-threaded, tidy chestnut hair, but today there was a sense of sadness around his calm, brown eyes, and his square jaw was set in a way that suggested it would not do Lan any good to argue with the fate planned for him.

Lan took deep breaths, but still felt starved for air.

"Sir," he said, suppressing the feeling that he ought to bob like a servant, but keeping his eyes down. "Ma'am. You wanted me?"

"Sit down, Lavan." That was his father; Lan took a seat on the nearest chair, a hard, awkward thing that was all angles and a little too tall for his feet to lie flat on the floor. That was the signal for his father to rise and tower over him. Lan's chest tightened, and he truly felt as if he couldn't breathe. "I was hoping for all of my sons to follow in my trade."

"Yes, sir," Lan replied in a subdued tone of voice, going alternately cold and hot, a feeling of nausea in the pit of his stomach. I'm going to be sick, I know it....

He looked up through his lashes as his father looked down at him and sighed.

"Well, having two of my offspring take to the trade is more than any man should expect, I suppose." Archer shook his head. "Lan, have you any idea what you propose to do with yourself with the rest of your life?"

His feeling of sickness ebbed, but he started to sweat. "Ah—" Don't say that you want to go into the Guard! he cautioned himself before he blurted out the truth. That was not what Archer wanted to hear. "I, ah—"

"That's what I thought." Archer looked back at his wife, who grimaced. "You know, in my day, you'd have found yourself packed off to whatever master I chose to send you to. You wouldn't have a choice; you'd do what I told you to do, as I did what my father wished for me."

"Yes, sir." A tiny spark of hope rose in him. Did his father have some other plan? Whatever it was, could it be better than being sent off to some miserable dyer or fuller? Unless—he—oh no—not a temple—

"If you were lucky , I'd have sent you to be a priest," his father continued, echoing Lan's unfinished thought. "There's some that would say it's the proper place for you."

"You'd at least be serving your family if we did," Nelda said acerbically. "Which is more than you can claim now, lolling about in bed most of the day and glooming around the house doing nothing the rest of the time!"

"Superfluous" sons and daughters were often sent to one temple or another; the sons of the highborn were the ones that became the priests that were ultimately placed in the best situations. The rest took what they were assigned, normally poor temples in tiny, isolated villages in hardscrabble country or in the worst slums of the cities. Their families were greatly praised, of course, and it was generally thought that they incurred great blessings from the god or goddess of their choice for sending one of their blood to serve.

Lan gulped back alarm and forced himself to keep his eyes up. If he read his mother's words aright, he wasn't being sent to a temple either.

"You're luckier than you deserve," she said after a pause, sounding very bitter and resentful of her son's good fortune. "And your father is kinder."

"Now, Nelda, the boy isn't bad ," Archer admonished. "He's just a bit adrift."

" You aren't home enough to see," his mother replied, "or you weren't, back in Alderscroft. Running off with those ne'er-do-well friends of his, never coming back until all hours, and the gods only know what he was up to with them—"

"Nothing that anyone ever complained about," Archer retorted, a sharpness in his tone showing that he was getting weary of his wife's complaints. "No one ever said anything to me about Lan getting into mischief."

"Well, they wouldn't, would they?" Nelda muttered, but there wasn't much else she could say beyond that. No one had ever complained to her about Lavan's behavior either, as Lan well knew, because no matter what he and his friends got into, they always made sure it wasn't where anyone would see them.

Archer turned back to his son, and rewarded his wary hope with a faint smile. "Times change, more so here in Haven, maybe. We've got another place for you, and you can thank the Collegia for it."

"I'm going to the Collegium? But I'm not—'

He wasn't a Bard or a Healer, and he certainly wasn't a Herald! But his father laughed and shook his head.

"Na, na, not to the Collegia—that's for the highborn, not for the likes of you! Or at least, not unless you show some kind of genius, my boy, and since you've not shown anything so far, I rather doubt you're going to start now! But it's the Collegia and the way the highborn send their younger sons and sometimes daughters there for extra learning that made the Haven Guilds think something of the kind was a good place for our younglings." He cocked his head to the side and took in Lan's baffled expression. "You're going to school , lad."

"School?" Now he was more confused, not less. He knew how to read, write, and cipher, so what more could he possibly learn? "I've already been to school."

"Not like this, you haven't." Archer settled back on his heels and tucked his thumbs into his belt, looking as proud as if he had thought of the idea of this "school" himself. "This is the school all of the Trade Guilds in Haven put together. You'll be going beyond what the priest at Alderscroft could teach you—history, fancy figuring, oh, I don't know what all else. And the schoolmasters will be testing you, seeing what it is you're good at. When they've got you figured, they'll be finding a Master for you to 'prentice to; something you'll fancy more than clothwork, I reckon."

"You'll start tomorrow," Nelda stated, narrowing her eyes, "And you should be thanking your kind father for such a blessed opportunity."

"I am—I mean, thank you sir," Lan replied, still in a daze, and not quite certain if this was something to be glad about, or otherwise. More schooling? He hadn't been particularly brilliant at bookwork before....

But as he continued to stammer his thanks, he evidently sounded sincere enough to satisfy both his mother and father. They dismissed him, and made no objection when he went back to his room.

He stood beside his bed in the open window, staring at the blank wall of the neighbor's house, close enough that if he leaned out, he could touch it. The wall seemed an apt reflection of his state of mind.

Only one thought was at all clear.

Now what am I getting into?

ONE of the manservants woke Lan at dawn the next morning, gave him barely enough time to dress, and chased him downstairs. While the sullen fellow stood there with his arms crossed, tapping one foot, Lan threw on the first things that came to hand—his tunic and trews from yesterday. His mother waited for him at the foot of the stairs, and eyed him with patent disfavor.

"Get back up there and put on something decent. You don't have to make people think we're too niggardly to clothe our children properly," she ordered sharply. "And get your hair out of your face. You look like a peasant."