Powers (6 page)

We went back to the House and to work. Everra did not hold class that day. Sallo and I did our sweeping. When we were sweeping the silk-room court she came and took hold of my hand suddenly. She was in tears. She said, “Oh, Gav, I keep thinking about Oco—If I lost my little brother I would die!” She hugged me fiercely, and then seeing I was crying too, she hugged me again, whispering, “You won’t ever go away, will you, Gav?”

I said, “Never. I promise.”

“I hear,” she said, trying to smile.

We both knew well enough what a slave’s promise is worth, but still it comforted us both.

When we finished sweeping, she went with Ris to the spinning room. I went to the pantry and found Tib, and we loitered out to the back court. Some of the big boys were there. I held back—I had never been sure which ones had helped Hoby dunk me—but they spoke to us mildly. They were playing toss, and one of them lobbed the ball to me. I only had one hand to catch with, but caught and passed it creditably, and then stood back and watched them throw and catch. One of them asked, “Where’s Hoby?” and another, Tan, said, “In trouble.”

“What for?”

“Sucking up,” Tan said, with a high loft of the ball to Tib. Tib fumbled it, another boy retrieved it and lobbed it back to Tan. He caught it, tossed it high and caught it, and turned to me. Tan was a stableboy, sixteen or seventeen years old, a short, thin fellow almost as dark-skinned as me. “You had the right idea, young Gav,” he said. “Stick to your own. Don’t go looking for gratitude up there.” He glanced at the windowed wall of Arcamand towering over the courtyard and back at me, and winked. He had a keen, bright face. I’d always liked Tan, and was flattered by his notice. As the older boys left, another of them slapped me lightly on the shoulder, the kind of comradely notice that looks like nothing and means a lot. It brought a warmth to me I needed. I’d been down at the river in my head all morning, in the grey rain and the silence and the cold.

Tib ran off to the kitchen to his work. I had nothing to do. I went to the schoolroom because there was nowhere else to go. And because if any room in Arcamand was my room, it was that one. It was dear to me, with its four high north windows, its carved and grimy benches and desks and tables, the teacher’s lectern, the bookshelves and stacked-up copybooks and slates, the big glass ink jug from which we filled our inkwells. Sallo and I were in charge of keeping it swept, dusted, and orderly, and though it looked quite neat and peaceful, I set to sorting and straightening out the books on the long shelves. All work was made awkward by the splint on my finger. Often I stopped and had a look into a book I hadn’t read yet. Sitting on the floor by the shelves, I opened Saltoc Asper’s
History of the City State of Trebs
, and got to reading about the long war between Hill Trebs and Carvol, which ended in the rebellion of the slaves in Hill Trebs and the utter destruction of the city. It was an exciting story, and troubling because it was about what I had glimpsed through those cracks in the walls. I was completely lost in it when Everra said, “Gavir?”

I leapt up and reverenced him and apologised. He smiled. “What’s the book?”

I showed him.

“Read it if you like,” he said, “though it might be better to read Asham first. Asper is political. Asham is above opinion.” He went over to his lectern and looked through some papers, then sat on the long-legged stool and looked at me again. I was rearranging books.

“This is a heavy day,” he said.

I nodded.

“I attended on Father Altan-dí this morning. I have some news that may lighten the day for you a little.” He rubbed his hand over his mouth and jaw. “The Family will be going to the country early this year, at the beginning of May. I will go with them, and all my pupils, except for Hoby. He is henceforth excused from school and will serve under Haster. And Torm-dí has been granted leave to stay in the city and learn swordsmanship from a master teacher. He will join us in the country only at the end of summer.”

This was a lot of news to absorb all at once, and at first I saw only the promise of a long country summer at the farm in the Ventine Hills. Then I saw the bonus—without Hoby! without Torm!—That was a moment of bliss. It was quite a while before I began to think about it in any other terms.

Tan and the other boys had already known it, this morning in the courtyard—news always got all over the House immediately:
Hoby’s in trouble for sucking up
. . . Hoby hadn’t been rewarded for his loyalty to Torm, but punished for it. “Serving under Haster” meant being sent to the civic workforce, to which every House contributed a quota of male slaves, to do the heaviest, hardest kind of labor and live in the city barrack, which was little better than a jail.

On the other hand, Torm hadn’t been punished for killing little Miv, but rewarded for it. Studying the arts of war was the dream of his heart.

It burst out of me—“It’s not fair!”

“Gavir,” the teacher said.

“But it’s not, Teacher-dí! Torm killed Miv!”

“He did not mean to, Gavir. Yet he is being made to do penance. He is not allowed to come with the Mother and the rest of us to Vente. He will live with his teacher and be subjected to a very severe discipline. Swordmaster Attec’s pupils lead a hard, bare life of constant training, with no reward but their increase of skill. The Father spoke of it to Torm-dí while I was there. He said, ‘You must learn self-restraint, my son, and with Attec you will learn it.’ And Torm-dí bowed his head.”

“But then Hoby—what did he do to be punished?”

The teacher was taken aback. “What did he do?” he repeated, looking at my scabs and swellings and splinted finger.

“But that—that didn’t hurt the Family,” I said, not knowing how to say what I felt. I meant that if Hoby was punished for what he’d done to me, it should be by his and my people, the slaves. That’s why I hadn’t said who hurt me. It was between us. It was beneath the Family’s notice. But if Hoby was being punished for his attempt to defend Torm, clumsy as it had been, then it was so unfair that it must be a mistake—a misunderstanding.

“What happened to you was no accident,” Everra said, “though in your loyalty to your schoolmate you say it was. But Hoby was insolent to me. And through me the authority of the Father acts in this classroom. That cannot be tolerated, Gavir. Listen now; come sit here.”

He went to sit at the reading table, and I went to sit by him, as I would when reading with him. “Loyalty is a great thing, but loyalty misplaced is troublesome and dangerous. I know you’re troubled. Everyone in the House is troubled. The death of a child is a pitiable thing. You’re hearing wild, angry talk, maybe, in the barrack and the dormitory. When you hear such talk, you must think what this household is: Is it a wilderness? Is it a battlefield? Is it an endless, hidden war of sullen rage against implacable force? Is that the truth of your life here? Or have you lived here as a member of a family blessed by its ancestors, where each person has his part to play, always striving to act with justice?”

He let me think that over a minute, and went on, “When in doubt, Gavir, look up. Not down. Look up for guidance. Strength comes from above. Your part is with the highest in this House. Born wild as you were, a slave as you are, as I am, without family, yet you’ve been taken into the heart of a great household and given all you need—shelter and food, great Ancestors and a kindly Father to guide you. And as well as all that, nourishment for your spirit—the learning I was given and can pass on to you. You have been given trust. The sacred gift. Our Family trusts us, Gavir. They entrust their sons and daughters to me! How can I earn that honor? By my loyal effort to deserve it. I wish when I die it might be said of me, ‘He never betrayed those who trusted him.’”

His dry voice had become gentle, and he looked at me a while before he went on. “You know, Gavir, behind you, in the wilderness you came from, there’s nothing for you. In the shifting sands beneath you, there’s nothing for you to build on. But look up! Above you, in the power that sustains you and the wisdom offered to you—there you can set your heart, there you can put your trust. There you will find treasure. And justice. And a mother’s mercy, which you never knew.”

It was as if he talked of the house I had dreamed of, that sunlit house where I was safe and welcome and free. He restored it to me in waking life.

I couldn’t say anything, of course. He saw what comfort he had given me, though, and he reached out to pat my shoulder, as the boy in the courtyard had, a light, brotherly touch.

He stood up to break the mood. “What shall we take to read in the summer?” he asked, and I said without thinking, “Not Trudec!”

T
HE
F
AMILY HAD STAYED
in the city for the past two summers, since the farm had not been considered safe from roving bands of Votusan soldiers out for plunder in the Ventine Hills; but our army had a camp now near Vente and had driven the Votusans back to their city gates.

I remembered the farm as a marvelous place. It was as if I felt the warmth of summer whenever I thought about it. Even the preparations for going were exciting, and when we actually set off, a great straggling procession of horse-drawn chariots and wagons and donkey carts and outriders and people afoot going through the streets of Etra to the River Gate, it was as good as a heroes’ parade, even if we didn’t have drums and trumpets. The chariots in which the women and girls and old people of the Family rode were high and ungainly and seemed too wide for the bridge across the Nisas; but Sem and Tan and all the drivers and outriders were in their glory, guiding the teams across, hoofs clattering on the bridge, plumes on the harnesses nodding. Sotur’s elder brothers rode ahead with Yaven on fine saddle horses. The wagons and carts came creaking behind, with a lot of shouting and whipcracking, and the inevitable donkey who did not want to cross the bridge. Some of the women and little children rode on the wagons, high on the piled-up goods and foodstuff, but most of us walked, and when people stopped to watch us go by, Tib and I waved at them with patronising pity, because we were going to the country and they, poor cockroaches, had to stay all summer in the city.

Tib and I were like dogs on an outing, traveling three times farther than anybody else because we kept running up the line of the procession and back to the back again. By noon we had become a bit less energetic and mostly stayed close to the women’s wagon, where Sallo and Ris had to ride, because they were getting to the age where girls can’t run loose; they had Oco with them, and several babies, and the kitchen women, who were always good for a handout of food when Tib and I came panting by.

The road was going up now, winding among small hillside fields and oak groves; ahead were the round green summits of the Ventine Hills. As we climbed we began to be able to look back over the countryside and see the silver curve of the Nisas where it ran down to the wider river Morr. Across the Nisas was Etra, our city, a hazy huddle of roofs of thatch and wood and red tile in the circle of its walls, with four towered gates of yellowish stone. There was the bulk of the Senate House, and the dome of the Forefathers’ Shrine. We tried to make out the roofs of Arcamand, and were sure we saw the tops of the sycamore grove by the wall where we used to drill with Torm—miles away, years ago . . .

The wagons creaked slower and slower, the horses strained at the climb, the drivers flicked their whips, the gaudy tops of the chariots up ahead dipped and rocked as the high wheels lurched in the ruts of the dusty road. The sun was hot, the breeze in the shade of the roadside oaks cool. Cattle and goats in the wood-fenced pastures watched our procession solemnly; colts at a horse farm went bucking off stiff-legged at the sight of the chariots, and then came mincing back to have another look. Somebody came running down the line of carts and wagons, a girl—Sotur, who had escaped from the Family and now clambered up onto the wagon to sit with Ris and Sallo. She was flushed with the excitement of her escapade and much more talkative than usual—“I told Mother Falimer-ío I wanted to ride outside, so she said go ahead, so I came back here. It’s all stuffy and jouncy in the chariots, and Redili’s baby threw up. It’s much better here!” Pretty soon she began to sing, raising her sweet, strong voice in one of the old rounds everybody knew. Sallo and Ris joined in, and the kitchen women, and then people walking or riding in other wagons up the line sang too, so the music carried us up the road into the hills of Vente.

We came to the Arca farm after sunset, a long day’s journey of ten miles.

To look back on that summer and the summers after it is like looking across the sea to an island, remote and golden over the water, hardly believing that one lived there once. Yet it’s still here within me, sweet and intense: the smell of dry hay, the endless shrill chant of crickets on the hills, the taste of a ripe, sun-warmed, stolen apricot, the weight of a rough stone in my hands, the track of a falling star through the great summer constellations.

All the young people slept outdoors, ate together, played together—Yaven, Astano and Sotur and the cousins from Herramand, and Sallo and I, Tib and Ris and Oco. The cousins were a skinny boy and girl of thirteen and ten, Uter and Umo; they had been unwell and their mother, Sotur’s elder sister, brought them to the farm hoping the country air would be good for them. There was a whole scrabble of little kids, too—Family babies, Sotur’s nieces and nephews, and slave children being mothered—but the women looked after them and we had little to do with them. We “big ones” had lessons with Everra early in the morning and then were set free for the rest of the long, hot day. There was no work for us. The slave women from the city waited on the Family and looked after the huge old farmhouse along with its regular housekeepers, of whom there were plenty. Tib had been brought as a kitchen boy, but was so unneeded that he was released to study and play with us. Everything else on the farm was in the hands of its people. They lived in a fair-sized village, down the hill from the great house, in an oak grove by a stream, and did whatever it was farm people did. We city children knew nothing of them, and were ordered to keep out of their way.