Robin Hobb - The Complete Soldier Son Trilogy - Shaman’s Crossing, Forest Mage, Renegade’s Magic

As soon as we reached the house, Epiny excused herself to go change for dinner. Spink and I retired to our rooms. I hung up my damp jacket, cleaned my shoes of garden mud, and used a brush to freshen the cuffs of my trousers. Then, lacking anything else to do until dinner, I decided to explore the schoolroom. I wandered about the space where my father and uncle had taken their lessons, and wondered what it must have been like to grow up in so grand a house. I discovered my father’s initials carved into the edge of one table. Well-worn books shared shelf space with several models of siege engines and a stuffed owl. A rack held fencing foils and sabres. I was sitting at the table, examining one of the siege engines when Spink entered. He looked around the room and crossing to the window, stared out over the grounds of my uncle’s estates. He quietly asked me, ‘Did you think I was being too forward with your cousin, Nevare? If so, I wish to apologize, to you and to her. I did not mean to take advantage of her.’

‘Advantage of her?’ I laughed aloud. ‘Spink, man, if I were trying to protect anyone, it was you! My cousin is taking advantage of your good nature with her outrageous manners. One minute she is tooting a whistle at us like a street performer, and the next she’s claiming your arm to escort her as if she were the Queen herself. No. You’ve given no offence. She is just so odd. Truth to say, she embarrasses me.’

‘Embarrasses you! Nevare, there’s no need for that. I find her oddness, well, charming. I’ve never before met a girl who is so direct, so honest. She puts me at my ease. And so, I thought, perhaps I had become too relaxed with her, to offer to escort her down the path without first asking your permission. I do beg pardon if I presumed too much familiarity.’

‘There is no need, Spink. If anything, she is the one who presumes too much familiarity. She started calling you by your first name almost the moment she met you. I just thought to put Epiny in her place, and show her that if she behaves like a spoiled child, I intend to treat her as one. And now I will offer to beg your pardon, if I offended you with what I said to her.’

‘Me, offended? No, not at all. It was just, well, you acted so strangely for a time. You gripped her arm as if you intended to hurt her, and the way she looked at you, as if she’d never seen you before – I was quite frightened, to tell you the truth. I feared you’d do an injury to one another.’

I was aghast. ‘Spink! You know me well enough, I think, to know that I’d never harm a girl, let alone my own cousin!’

‘I do! Yes, I do, Nevare. It was just that, for a time there, you did not seem like the Nevare I know.’

‘Well … It was odd. For an instant, I didn’t feel like myself at all, either, in all honesty.’

And my admission of that stunned us both into an awkward silence. Spink moved away, looking everywhere except at me. He touched the books on the shelves, the much used school table, and then wandered to the windows. He rested his hands on the sill and looking out into the night asked me, ‘Do you ever wish that you could own a home such as this? With rooms like this for your sons to learn in?’

I was a bit shocked at his words. ‘I never thought of it. I’m a soldier, Spink. All my sons will be soldiers. I’ll teach them what I know, as they grow, and I hope they’ll be bright enough to rise quickly through the ranks. Maybe, if one of them excels, I’ll ask my brother to speak for him and try to have him admitted to the Academy or purchase a commission for him. But, no, I don’t ever expect to own a home like this. When I’m old and can no longer serve my king, I know my brother will make me welcome on his holdings, and he’ll help arrange solid marriages for my daughters. What more could a soldier son ask?’

He turned from his contemplation of the darkening grounds and gave me a rueful smile. ‘You have deeper roots than I, I think. This beautiful home is your ancestral estate and you are still welcomed here. And the way you speak of Widevale makes me think that in a generation or two the house and grounds there will rival this place. But for me, the only home I recall is Bitter Springs.’ He smiled wryly. ‘I love the land there. It’s home. But when your father was given his lordship, he chose lands that bordered the river, arable land and pasture land. Land that could generate the monies to enable him to live like a noble. My mother chose with a different purpose. She chose the land that surrounded the area where my father was killed. His burial site was lost; his troops covered him hastily, for they still feared they might be over-run by the plainsmen and did not want them to have his bones as trophies. So they buried him and hid the grave and we have never been able to discover it. But she knows it is somewhere on the land that she claimed, and says that all we build or do there is memorial to him. But the problem is, the land is not good for much else. You can’t shove a spade into it without hitting a stone, and when you remove that, you find two more stacked under it. You can hunt and you can forage there, but you can’t till a field or even graze sheep. My brother is trying hogs and goats, but they swiftly strip the land and leave only stirred rocks behind them. I do not think they are a good idea; but he is the heir, not I.’

He said this so wistfully that I had to ask, ‘And if the land were yours, to develop as you chose?’ I felt I was tempting him to the sin of ingratitude for order, and yet I could not forbear to pose the question.

He gave a brief, bitter laugh. ‘Stone, Nevare. Stone is what we have. The idea first came to me when one of my father’s soldiers came to retire with us. He looked over our land and asked another fellow if we were growing rocks as a crop or for pleasure. And it came to me then, if stone is what we have, then stone is what we should prosper on. Our house, small and humble as it is, is built all of stone, and the walls between our so-called fields are of stone. I’ve heard that the King’s Road building goes slowly for lack of proper stone. Well, we’ve stone in plenty.’

‘Exporting stone sounds difficult. Are there roads in your region?’

He shrugged. ‘There could be. You asked me for my pipe dream, Nevare, not for the reality. It would take years to bring it to fruition. But my family will be there for generations so why not begin the task now?’

I had made myself uncomfortable with the discussion. All knew that a man’s career was determined by his birth order. To question it was to question the will of the good god himself. All knew the tales of what came of trying to quarrel with your fate. A son must be what he was born to be. My family was strict in the matter. It was true that some of the other noble families were less observant of the law. In one notorious case, when the House Offeri heir son died, Lord Offeri had moved each of his sons up a notch, so that the soldier became the heir, the priest the soldier, and so on. All were failures in their careers. The new ‘heir’ was too militant with the estate serfs, and many of them fled the land, leaving crops to rot in the fields. The priest son did not have the constitution to endure the arduous life of a soldier, and died before he had even faced a battle. The artist forced to become a priest was too creative in his copying of scripture and nearly faced charges of heresy from the archor of his order. And so it went. The story was often told as a warning to any families considering such an extreme measure. I should not be tempting Spink or myself to pretend we would ever be anything but soldiers. I changed the subject.

‘Why is your home called Bitter Springs? As testament to your father’s death there?’