These were the Old Gates, the Western Gates, even though they were more south-western than western; the Wulsh might make the distinction, if the directions of things on land ever crossed their minds. The gates rose, looking somewhat stunted – no more deadly spikes on the bottom, sort of dull and rusty rounded metal pegs fit them into hardy old wood and iron. One could still read the intent. They were only about twice a tall man in height, but quite wide, and, by the magic of perspective, everything on the other side was grass.
A silence had fallen, into which these observations fit, once the gate started to open – hard to miss, the squeaking. Even the stalls and people wandering went quiet. Young men in gray walked out, lined themselves up at even intervals across the mouth of the gates. The earliest wags had just gotten to scoffing before their opening witticisms when, like pouncing wolves, an equal number of new cadets materialized and flung themselves through the gaps, beginning an instant cacophony.
“Come to! Line up! Drop that, you twig-thin rodent!”
“Get in groups! Marshall! As in together! Like sheep, not swine, though I see why you make that mistake.”
“All in! All up! Come forward, you sad-faced young clown, what’s gotten to your ears?”
They pushed, shoved – sometimes this way, sometimes back again – grabbing, insulting, releasing, turning about, shouting – they would seize you by the shoulders, or the ear, or the coat, and shout:
“Sponsor?”
“Sponsor? Region?”
“Sponsor? Region? Where you from, you poor, weaselly beast?”
Off you spun –
“What about my things?” whined a tall, blonde-haired aspirant.
That look – the turn, and That Look from a cadet could have killed a small animal; the questioner escaped death only by his height. “We’ll take care of your things, mighty lord.”
Never before had some of these young men every heard so innocuous a title said so scathingly. Dominicus admired the form – very nearly up to Spesnova’s standard, but not nearly as devastating as Auriol could be. But then again, she was his sweetest sister partly by virtue of the fact she spoke so rarely. When she chose to use her words to berate you it was like the gentlest horse in the pasture planting a single hoof directly into your skull.
Pushed off towards the cadets at the gates, each aspiring entrant was checked against a certain list – or thrown disdainfully back into the crowd, should they happen to have entered the wrong line. Each list was organized by sponsor’s region; those without sponsors registered according to their birthplace region, as defined by the Relay, and those sponsored by or from Seolgaire – owing to their numbers – were expected to be quick about it. By the time any coherent lines developed, a third of the waiting crowd – perhaps eighty or so – had already been processed and put through the gates.
Esras had nodded an unseen goodbye to Finanin, who had paled considerably at facing the actual open gates, and worked his way into the crowd.
Esras didn’t quite know how this would go – he had been planning to play it by ear, but he had to admit the very public nature of the sorting disappointed him. Sponsoring him at Prep had been all well and good, but Aunt Grainne had made clear that his continuance to the Academy would be on his own merits and prerogative. He respected that decision, but that meant he walked a fine line. Of course, he would have allies from Prep; it would be a different world from Prep, as not everyone who went to Prep go to Academy, but they would naturally and for their own advancement stick together. That was the point, after all – to enter the Academy with an advantage, which could be expressed either in skills or allies gained.
But he was also a native of the Capitol, and would come in by birthplace rather than sponsor. He had hoped he might find useful allies among those also coming in from the Capitol, even if he planned to exploit connections from Prep, but when he got to the right line, ‘useful allies’ wasn’t his first thought.
The Capitol line was filled with gangling, non-descript orphans, who looked as if they rarely saw enough sun to freckle. A second glance, however, told Esras they were at least a uniquely silent and orderly bunch. They were used to crowds, and to lines – and looking at some of them, maybe not very good food. Certainly that was some sort of advantage.
He knew for a fact that his Prep allies would find the food a mighty hurdle.
“Sponsor?”
“My own – my father… or I guess, his offices?” said a scruffy, brown-haired boy in front of him.
To that, the cadet replied with a grunt.
“The city,” is what the next said, in a tone like granite.
“If anyone in there asks,” the cadet replied, “just say ‘none’.”
So Esras said, “None,” when he reached the front of the line.
“Name?”
“Esras Cole.”
“Height in staves?”
“One and an eighth.”
“Go thirty yards east, line up under the lion.”
The cadet was already looking at the next in the line, so Esras hiked his bag up his shoulder and only briefly worried it might be a real lion.
Chances were the Academy wouldn’t risk killing them, yet.
Dominicus slipped through the crowds almost – almost – unnoticed. There were different levels of noticing; noticing like he had been noticed earlier counted, but just staring didn’t. But staring was worth noticing, so he noticed them noticing – that is, the ones organizing everyone would slide their eyes over him, make a decision to not hassle him, then seem to come back to the idea, only by then he would have slipped away. Whatever line he was supposed to get into – it wasn’t clear to him what they wanted – he wanted it to be far away from the little group of fellow cadets he had already met.
So it was a shouting cadet – perhaps the largest, ever – who finally seized his shoulder and brought him around to face him.
“Sponsor?”
Instinct swept the Ainjir language out of his head, in favor of using his free hand to cover his face – the usual response to a big-ass shouting Ainjir.
“Sponsor or have you got none?”
Idiot – he was an idiot, and soon, others would notice. “Baron Raghailligh,” he said – he had practiced the pronunciation for days – “of Seolgaire.”
“Go,” the cadet commanded, shoving Dominicus’ shoulder in the direction of a particularly long line – but he didn’t quite let go. Keeping a gentle grip, he steered Dominicus through the crowd, up to the line and put him somewhere in the middle of it. Then he turned around and shouted a filthy Ainjir word into the milling crowd, creating a rippling jump among them that, in other circumstances, would’ve been amusing.
There were a lot of people behind him – he was actually rather near the front, and that’s not how lines worked for Midraeic people. God, what had he gotten himself into if not even lining up worked the same?
But no one around him seemed to notice or care where he had been placed, and he soon noticed it was because they were all deadly silent, trying desperately to listen; they were far up enough some of the instructions given by the list-holders floated over the general noise.
“Sponsor? Region? Name? Height in staves? Go thirty yards east, enter the [lion, bear, boar, horse] line.”
By the time they were within ten people of the front of the line, the young men had straightened up, mumbling their answers in order, waiting with an increasing tension for their turn to answer, in as close an approximation of the cadet’s stiff cadence as they could. Having done enough practicing, Dominicus waited.
“Sponsor?”
“Baron Raghailligh of Seolgaire.”
“Name?”
“Dominicus Galen.”
“Height in staves?”
“One and a seventh,” Dominicus guessed. He copied the answer from a boy earlier in line, who he had painfully reflected, despite being noticeably shorter than everyone else, still seemed a bit taller than him. Staves were a stupid measurement; not even the Ainjir in his town used them for anything smaller than a house.
“Go thirty yards east, enter the boar line.”
Nobody else had said anything so Dominicus didn’t either as he passed inside, hoping desperately the animal names would make obvious sense once he was there.
Though the field looked empty, stepping inside revealed an incredible number of buildings clustered against the wall. Behind a copse of larch, the western foot of the Academy building itself stood, a pile of dark stone buildings radiating out from the foot of a tower much shorter than the central one, but also fatter.
Most eye-catching, however, was the fire. Just out of sight from the gates, a polite-seeming cadet stood smiling and poking at the foot of a rather large fire, burning quite fiercely for such a warm day. A much more harassed-looking cadet stood far out in front of it, shouting:
“Who’s got luggage? Luggage this way! Not one bag, get on, you git, what fate-cursed sandwich-eating shitpile brought luggage – boxes, crates, sot-swilled barrels?”
Those not burdened with baggage streamed east, deeper into the Academy grounds. There, tall flags bearing animals stood over a series of tables and wagons. Only one of the people at each table was a cadet – the other seemed to have a different uniform, with a scarlet shirt.
Esras knew them – tailors. The Academy had its own core of tailors, as it had its own fleet of launderers, cooks, and everything else. They rarely worked outside the Academy, and if they did, it wasn’t with dressmakers like his father. The tailor in the lion line had stripes down the sides of his pants, and a higher collar to his coat. She would glance at an approaching aspirant, say a number, and the cadet would dig in the pile and chuck a bundle into his hands almost before he stopped walking, followed by a barked “Back west.”
The lion line moved like a water wheel, a steady stream of numbers, bundles, directions.
Boar line stretched far back from the wagon, with a cluster of hopefuls lingering like leaves in an eddy by the wagons.
At the front, the problem with the boar line became evident.
“You’ll have to take those up – about two inches. Can you sew? The Sweet Four Cheeks of Peace, this First Year batch might not make it to Second. Who can’t sew? Fuck off – away from the wagon. You – do you have a needle? Give him a needle – you lose that I’ll take your nuts home in a jar, I expect those needles returned. Thread? Of-fucking-course-not, Mercy’s preserves. Virtue’s Tits, you’re shaped like a rake on end, I can’t do anything about that, you’ve got a more a horse torso, so see if you can find someone to trade with once you’ve got roommates.”
Dominicus reviewed the animals again: boar, lion, horse, bear.
Boar was the shortest, then lion, then horse, then bear. Bear didn’t even have a line – too few for one to build – for which he was grateful.
The red-shirted person looked at him in a cold and evaluating way that was somehow comforting, even though he ended with an unhappy face.
“You better make sure they don’t short you at mess.” He shouted a number, the cadet launched a grey bundle into Dominicus’ arms, and then the red-shirted person sighed heavily. “Can you sew?”
“Yes,” Dominicus said, not saying ‘yes, because he wasn’t an idiot.’
The red-shirted person’s demeanor lightened considerably. “Do you have a needle?”
“Yes,” Dominicus said, because only idiots traveled without needles.
“All of these little wastrels better make friends with you. Back west.”
Some of the other hopefuls had heard that – the ones that still held their bundles, miserably contemplating whatever dire task the sewing turned out to be. Dominicus did feel a slight surge of gratitude, only to stuff it back down – there was noticing and noticing, and even good noticing could be bad.
He turned west and ran.
As Esras loped back by the bonfire, he could hear violent cursing, as well as the crash of someone’s year-long supply of their favorite liqueur being tossed onto the flames. Many ranks of relatives were invoked to no effect. The harassed-looking cadet from before now prowled like a guard dog before the crowd, a one-man wall of complete frothing rage.
“Look – I don’t care if it’s necessary for your health, or your doctor prescribed it, or it’s the ancient dispensation to your line from the king, if it’s not an heirloom, rare artifact, otherwise irreplaceable, and you can’t carry it yourself, it’s going in the fucking fire. You die of lack of brandy and cream, I’ll personally dance naked tributes on your grave in the potter’s field back by the brambles, and if I don’t you can haunt me like a sad mare’s fart for the rest of my fucking life, but toss it, take care of it, or fuck right on off, right now.”
The entire group from the gates now employed themselves hauling luggage directly into the fire. The smart cadet-hopefuls broke away from the wall invective spewed by the bonfire guard to negotiate with the prescient group of porters waiting just at the other side of the gates.
Esras smiled to himself as he ran.
‘West’ being something of a scope, the cadet aspirants had fanned widely across the field, but soon, it was clear enough – hopefully, to most of them – that ‘back west’ meant the long stretch of buildings nestled up against the walls. Brick at the bottom, wattle-and-daub, and thatched on top, they had a ramshackle air, compared to the solid stone outbuildings they passed to reach them. An older man in a grey-accented regular officer’s uniform waved down the cadets as they streamed by, and gave them each a number, one to five, which corresponded to the building against the wall they should head for. And even older gentleman, dressed as a civilian, at the door to Esras’ building (five), smiling gently, handed him a soft leather tab, and pointed him inside.
“Drop off your baggage, then head to the field.”
He would learn other buildings held other symbols, but his building just had numbers, and his number was a room at the top of the third floor, in the back corner – furthest away from everything. It smelled slightly damp, and he could see the thatching needed attention, if it wasn’t outright leaky – but they had two windows, and he knew it would be ‘they’ because the room held four beds: two stacked on top of one another in the tallest corner, and one in each low corner. The way the door opened prevented placing anything in that corner, though they did have two rickety tables and four chairs, though two of those were stacked on top of each other, too, to save room. One of the corners was already taken, which would probably be the warmest – the inside corner, across from the door, but away from the windows. So the choice was between a bed alone in a badly protected area, or a bunk, with the disadvantages that came with a shared sleeping space.
The door opened behind him, and another hopeful looked in; they briefly locked eyes. Esras flung his bag across the room and onto the single bed.
He smiled a greeting. “Do you know where the field is?”
“It’s all field out there, isn’t it?” the other hopeful said, recovering himself smoothly. He evaluated the bunks, chose the one at the top.
“Someone will come yell at us if we go the wrong way,” Esras said.
“I certainly hope so.” He turned back to Cole, then stuck his hand out. “Oisin.”
“Esras.”
“Shall we?”
They left together – and, indeed, someone was waiting to yell at them. He was also holding a large flag and waving it, so it was really either interpretation that resulted in their wending their way around a long outbuilding stretching back into the base of a cluster of buildings at the bottom of a second tower – not as tall, of course, but still a tower.
“I wonder if it’s an honor or a punishment to direct First Years? That must take incredible endurance.”
“It’s a duty, either way,” Esras responded.
Oisin’s grunt in response was difficult to interpret, but now wasn’t the time to devote attention to it. The only further communication they indulged in was to exchange a glance as their destination came in sight.
A large, beaten track, in an oval shape, stretched diagonally across the space between the large outbuilding they had come around and another doubly enormous hall. A disorganized cluster of hopefuls gathered in the center, in front of a platform, on which stood three officers. Groups of gray-clad regular cadets stood by the side of the field by a series of crates, none looking particularly honored.
“Who’s that?” Oisin asked, slightly-out-of-breath, in the crowd.
“Don’t know,” Esras said.
“Got to be a Provost,” another cadet said. He looked flushed, but whether it was fatigue or excitement was hard to tell. He pointed to the vertical stripes on his pants. “I think that’s what the stripes mean.”
“I think everybody but cadets has those,” another responded.
“Is he going to talk or just look at us all day?”
That was Maoilin N’tyoleire. He sidled through other hopefuls, uncertain whether they should try to hold their ground or not.
Maoilin and Esras stared at one another.
“Esras Cole,” Maoilin said, tone as warm as it ever got, and put his hand out for shaking like an old friend.
Esras smiled and took and hoped whatever came next somehow broke Maoilin’s leg. “Maoilin.”
Arms folded, Maoilin turned to look at the stage, putting Oisin conspicuously at his back, such that he had to move if he wanted to be able to see. A tall, broad-shouldered hopeful sidled through the crowd, nodding to Esras, and stood next to them. He had a common personal name (Brid), so he had gone by his family name at Prep, Cruvcrudiach. People didn’t address him by name at all if they could avoid it.
Maoilin had a particular talent for making people feel unwelcome, which Esras could see reflected on Oisin’s face, but Oisin stubbornly stood his ground. The space around them, between Maoilin’s attitude and Cruvcrudiach’s height, cleared considerably.
“What do you think?” Maoilin glanced Esras over his shoulder.
“I think it’s all a game,” Esras said. At this point there was no reason to be disingenuous, especially if he wanted to keep the interest of unknown aspirants with potential – or whose favor he might need, regardless of talent – like Oisin.
Maoilin raised a brow at him, and they watched the group on stage share a short laugh.
“It’s all going to be a game until they get us sorted,” Esras explained. He decided to shake his spear a little early. “Unlike at Prep, they’re under no pressure to keep us, so for now, everything will be a test to determine we’re worth keeping, rather than a test of skill.”
“When they’ve got their favorites,” Maoilin added, “that’s when things will get hard.”
Coattail-riding asshole.
Some of the breathless hopefuls standing around them exchanged worried glances.
“They’re always testing skill,” Cruvcrudiach said. “Never think they’re not also testing skill.”
Displeasure touched Maoilin’s face as he looked at their tall companion, but Esras nodded, to concede the point. It was a matter of which to focus on, and right now, he was focused on earning his place, as would be – or should be – the others listening in.
“All right,” the right-side officer of the three on the platform barked out, instantly silencing the crowd. “Get yourselves in order!”
Nobody had any idea what ‘order’ was, but many jumped to obey; Maoilin and Esras remained stock still.
The officer smiled and stepped back, and the central officer stepped up. “Well, this is enough, I guess,” he began, in a conversational belt. “Welcome to your first day. For some of you it will be your last. For some of you it will be the first of long years of misery that end ultimately in failure. Some of you may die, Fortune pity your poor, dumb corpse. The few of you that succeed…” he glanced back at the other officers, who smiled in return to his smile, “well, we’ll see about that. There are three important strictures by which to live in the First Year, and disregarding any one may warrant your removal.”
He held up one finger. “Be truthful.”
Esras’ eyes narrowed.
A second finger. “Obey.”
Maoilin smiled.
A third. “Excel.”
Like a bull, Cruvcrudiach lowered his head.
The officer turned as if he were finished, consulting with the other two. After a moment, he turned back around, “Now – run.”
As a body, the crowd lurched uncertainly. He may not have been the first, but his height certainly made it noticeable, when Cruvcrudiach shoved through the crowd to the track, and set off at a thundering pace.
Driven by the instinct of an asshole who had to be first, Maoilin angrily followed, but by then, the whole crowd had more or less gotten the idea, and started streaming towards the track. Esras began a lazy jog, looking back at the stage, where the officers were watching as they dismounted the stage, the smiles on their faces not at all friendly.