P. Hodgell - Honor's Paradox

“So we fight. Huh. Maybe I should have let you fall.”

“That wouldn’t help: Fash would be glad to take my place. By the way, the challenge includes all the Tentir Highborn cadets of both houses.”

Jame counted on her fingers. “That’s one against . . . five?”

“Eight. My command doesn’t include all the Caineron Highborn. Speaking of the randon, if you pass, Father has also threatened to demote the Commandant and reassign him so far into the hinterlands that it will take him a month’s hard ride just to get there.”

“The randon would allow that?”

“In house, they have no say. Worst of all, though, Father can strike at Sheth’s nephews and nieces in the service, some of them Bear’s children.”

“All this to stop me from graduating Tentir? Thal’s balls, I won’t even be a fully collared randon until I’ve spent two years in the field.”

Gorbel snorted. “Father has finally grasped that you aren’t easy to stop. The same may have occurred to your brother.”

“Still, to threaten innocents . . .”

“I know. It won’t make Father popular with the Randon Council, but then he never has been.”

They both contemplated Caldane’s little tests by which he established the loyalty and ambition of his officer core, pushing hard against the bounds of Honor’s Paradox.

“Hey!” the randon officer called over the cliff’s grassy edge, from a cautious distance. “Are you two setting up house down there?”

Gorbel groaned and rose. “What did I say. No privacy. There is this, though: I can challenge you however I like. Well, it’s to mounted combat with your choice of weapon. Think about it.”

Jame did as she followed his agonizingly slow ascent the rest of the way to the top. Hmmm.

They found the two ten-commands waiting for them.

“Last up,” said the randon, and dropped a black pebble into Jame’s hand. She looked at it.

“Well?” the Coman demanded, with a note of challenge in his voice.

It was unfair. He was waiting for her to say so.

“Nothing, Ran.” She pocketed it.

That evening, though, after supper, Jame lined the black pebble up with its mates on the dining hall table and regarded them. Two white river rocks and three dark gray ones, all about an inch long and half an inch thick, all smoothed to perfect ovals. They might have been markers in a game of Gen; perhaps some had been. The game she played now, however, was much more serious.

“You should complain to the Commandant,” said Rue, scowling at them.

“Have I ever, about anything?”

The towheaded cadet wriggled, uncomfortable. “Well, no. And yet . . .”

“And yet I shouldn’t have to.” Jame tapped the latest black stone with a fingertip, saw that she had extended a claw, and retracted it. “The Coman knew that I held back to make sure Gorbel didn’t fall. He can’t have thought I deserved this. So where is honor here?”

Brier deposited three mugs of cider on the table and swung a long leg over the bench to join them.

“We aren’t tested for one lesson alone but for all,” she said, “and for each randon’s opinion as to our general fitness. Did you think, lady, that you’d won all of them over?”

“Well, no. Given who they are and what I am, that would be impossible, but still . . .”

“But still you hoped that you had.”

Jame considered this. Maybe she was naïve. Where honor was concerned, did she see it as black and white as these pebbles on the table before her? But then they were actually natural shades of gray. Wasn’t she herself similarly shaded, caught between Perimal Darkling and her own Three-Faced God? Yes and no. If her own honor were compromised, surely she would know it. Thanks to Tori, she hadn’t yet personally faced Honor’s Paradox. Perhaps neither had the Coman randon. If he didn’t think she was fit to be an officer, it was his duty to say so; and he had, however unfair the pretext.

“You think it’s all politics,” she said to Brier.

The Southron shrugged and drank. As a former Caineron, ancestors knew she had seen more than her share of unfair dealings between Highborn and Kendar.

“Yes,” said Rue, “but would the Commandant see it that way?”

Black stone, white stone, touchstone.

Jame considered Rue’s faith. Did she share it even as Sheth confronted his own crisis of Honor’s Paradox with his brother?

Even then, she thought, regarding Brier Iron-thorn’s stoic, teak-dark face and Rue’s flushed, rebellious one. Especially then.

During these last days, Jame had her last lesson with Bear.

As usual, she was pulled aside after assembly and instructed, almost furtively, to report to the Pit. Surely secrecy was no longer required, she thought as she made her way deep into Old Tentir. The other cadets were already aware that she took lessons from the former monster of the maze, and everyone knew about her claws.

It seemed like a lifetime ago that she had considered them such dreadful secrets. Jame extended her nails through the slit tips of her gloves and flexed them. Click, click, click. Ah, how good that felt.

But don’t get too comfortable, she told herself. Whenever you use them, especially in anger, you draw closer to the Third Face of God.

So the Arrin-ken had warned her, and she felt it to be true. The last time she had nearly flayed Vant alive, something of which she was far from proud. But to use them rationally, naturally, in self-defense—that ought to be different.

Here was the Pit, as desolate as ever with its splintered walls and lingering aura of spilt blood. A shadow passed before the torches in the observation room above. So. The Commandant had once again come to watch her train with his brother.

The opposite door opened and Bear shambled in, prodded from behind. He wheeled to confront his keepers, but they shut the door in his face. He wedged his massive claws into the crack, gouging out new splinters but failing to wrench it open, then turned to scan the room. Jame donned the mesh helmet and saluted. He ignored her. Firelight flared on the crevasse in his skull through the tumble of gray hair. Had it closed further? Jame couldn’t tell. His clothes were more unkempt than ever, his aspect both more aware and more desperate. He saw his brother in the balcony and mouthed at him. One word broke through the babble of sound: “Why?”

Jame dropped her salute and, after a moment, removed the helmet. She touched his arm. He swung around, gigantic in the flickering light, looming over her.

“Why what?” she asked him.

He struggled with articulation, mangling words, then thrust her aside in frustration. She fell back against the wall, rapping her head sharply against the panels.

Bear raised his fists, not against her but against the silent, still figure above.

“Why? Why? Why?”

His voice cracked, then broke into a roar. In answer, the lower door opened and sargents swarmed in to subdue him. He flung them about as if their padded armor were tenantless until Jame got in his way again. She put her hands on his broad chest, ignoring the frightful sweep of his claws as they slashed the air around her head. Though he surged back and forth, he didn’t again strike her and she managed to stay with him as if in some uncouth dance, her agile feet against his lumbering ones. At last he stopped, panting, leaning into her until her knees nearly buckled.

“Why?” he asked his brother again, almost plaintively.

Why am I a captive? Why doesn’t my mind work properly? Why have you done this to me?

Sheth didn’t answer. What could he say?

Bear’s shoulders slumped. He allowed himself to be herded out of the room without a backward glance.