P. Hodgell - Honor's Paradox

And was about to fail him unless she earned at least one more white token. If she didn’t win one tomorrow, despite everything, maybe she should try again the day after and let Chingetai enjoy whatever mess he was sure to make of things.

She wished she could ask the Commandant for advice. Once before, he had made it clear that her duty lay with the Merikit, but this time he had said nothing, and much more hung in the balance.

A thought struck her: was this her personal Honor’s Paradox? True, Torisen hadn’t ordered her to do anything dishonorable, nor was he likely to unless through ignorance of her true situation. However, she was being called on to exercise personal responsibility, and what was the paradox if not a test of that?

So her thoughts rolled, back and forth, between the hills and the hall, one last time for each.

“Huh,” said Jame, squinting up under a hand at a sun now in decline. Her face felt tight and hot from so long in its rays. Night creature that she had been before, she should have remembered how easily she burned by day, especially at this altitude.

She whistled up Jorin, who was happily engaged in batting an ants’ nest to pieces, and they went down to the college for supper. On the way, Jame detoured through Old Tentir and left the bouquet of flowers outside Bear’s door. She could hear him snuffling at them through the bars as she retreated.

The next morning Jame was roused early by the college stirring.

“What’s happened?” she asked Rue, who brought her a mug of ginger water in a state of high excitement.

“They say that Bear has escaped. Search parties are forming.”

Everyone scrambled into his or her clothes and down into the square where dawn set aglow the eastern sky, and breath smoked on the crisp air.

The Commandant walked before them, his long coat swishing at his heels, his hands clasped tightly behind him.

“You have all heard the news. This is our business, we of Tentir. Here it started, here it ends. One of our own is lost. He must be found.”

The cadets were sent by squad to search the school, focusing on Old Tentir. Ten-commands inched into the labyrinth bearing torches, keeping within sight of one another. Some tied themselves together with strings that all too often snapped. Others marked the walls with chalk. Soon the plaintive cries of the lost began to echo hollowly.

“What if he’s turned savage?” whispered Rue, creeping on Jame’s heels, giving voice to a fear that haunted them all. “I mean, who could blame him? But we’re the first people he’s likely to run into.”

Jame didn’t answer. It seemed to her altogether possible that Rue was right, that the man had again become a monster, but oh lord, what then?

Her ten was assigned to a spot not far from Bear’s quarters, deep within the old college. They passed his door; it had been smashed open from within, its shattered boards spattered with the blood of broken knuckles. Shredded flowers lay strewn across the threshold.

Beyond, the walls closed in around them, innocent but empty, lined with doors. Most were unlocked, yielding to rooms vacant except for dead spiders trapped in their own webs and white, scurrying things that shunned the light.

“Watch the floor,” said Jame.

They were farther in than most went and the boards beneath them were furred with dust.

“Here,” said Brier.

They saw the prints of large, bare feet and fallen petals leading up to a wall, disappearing into it.

“Now what?” said Brier.

Jame fumbled around the skirting, looking for the catch. A panel gave, a hidden door opened.

Graykin had only revealed a few of Tentir’s secret ways to her, of which this was one. Bear presumably knew them all from his time here as commandant, so long ago. The cadets gingerly descended the narrow, dark stair, batting at cobwebs, and found themselves in the public corridor that led between Old and New Tentir to the north gate. Here the footprints disappeared, but surely that was only one direction in which they could have gone.

“You can return to your quarters now and get some breakfast,” Jame told her command. “Don’t tell anyone.”

Brier loomed over her, frowning.

“Are you sure about this?”

“I had better be, hadn’t I? Bear is Shanir, aligned with That-Which-Destroys. So am I. If we can’t deal together, who can? Besides, he’s my senethari.”

Brier grunted. “So be it. Good luck to you.” She led away the rest of her puzzled squad.

Jame slipped out the side door and crossed the training fields. Beyond was the wall and the apple orchard, adrift in white blossoms. Above was the meadow where she had gathered the wild flowers.

She didn’t see Bear at first because he was kneeling in the deep grass, but a wisp of silvery gray caught her eye and below it she discerned his craggy profile. When she cautiously approached, she saw that his lap was full of early daisies. Clumsily, with blood-scabbed knuckles and his great claws clicking inches from his fingertips, he was trying to make a daisy chain. She knelt before him.

“Here. Let me try.”

Jame had never woven flowers before, but she quickly caught the knack of it. One braided the stems, so, with the petal-fringed faces outward, then added another and another. When the chain was long enough, she twisted its ends together into a frail crown and placed it on Bear’s head. He sat back on his heels with a grunt. She had never before seen him look so serene and almost noble, the cleft in his skull hidden, gray hair and white petals tumbling together over his brow in the warming breeze.

Then he lifted his head and sniffed the air. Following his gaze, Jame saw the Commandant sitting still on his great warhorse Cloud at the meadow’s lower edge. He wore gray hunting leathers. Sunlight glinted off the head of a long-shafted boar spear.

His lord had only given him two choices: to imprison his brother or to kill him. Here was Honor’s Paradox at its most stark.

Bear rose to his feet. The two randon regarded each other across the waving grass. The wind blew. Bluebells nodded. Jame held her breath.

Sheth inclined his head in a salute. After a moment, Bear returned it as if the gesture had stirred a long-buried memory. The daisy garland slipped down rakishly over one eye. He removed it and absently dropped it over Jame’s head where it first caught on an ear and then settled onto her shoulders. He turned to go, then paused and swung back. In his palm was something small that he gave to her, folding her hands over it. Then he turned again and shambled off toward the distant tree line.

Jame watched him go.

Then she looked at what he had given her. It was the wooden cat, recarved so that its broken hind legs curled under it as if in a crouch. She could trace claw marks like chisel strikes, clumsy but still with a mind behind them.

The Commandant watched his brother’s departure without moving until Bear disappeared into the trees. Then he rode up to her and lifted the garland with the tip of his spear as if for inspection, incidentally presenting the blade to Jame’s throat.

“Huh,” he said, flicked off the daisy chain, sheathed the spear, and offered Jame his hand, She accepted it and swung up onto Cloud behind him. They rode back to Tentir without exchanging a word.

Evening came at last, at the end of a long day. Thanks to the Bear hunt, everyone had missed their first two classes. Then Jameth had scored another black in writing.

Rue thought the last grossly unfair. No one wrote better or faster than her lady, nor with a finer hand, but the instructor in this case had been a Randir, and the Knorth could expect little justice from that house.

As she mulled a cup of cider for her mistress, Rue glanced over her shoulder at her.