The fire roared in the fireplace, the plates steamed on the sideboards, and the wine sparkled, red, gold, and yellow in the thick patterned glasses, yet you could not have purposefully assembled a duller crowd.
“It is a despicable kind of joke that mocks our very values…”
The Representative for the Palace leaned back in his chair and pressed a cherry to his lips, tempted to practice some kind of flirtatious stem-twisting maneuver for later, when he might attend a real party, with actual important people. But he didn’t want to give any of the dour Military men the wrong idea. And also, he was supposed to be representing the Palace (not accurately, but respectfully, so no flirtatious maneuvers of any kind).
At the Palace they probably would have pitted the cherry and removed the stem, anyway, which was a shame both because it ruined the cherry, whose deliciousness lay in the unbroken tension of its skin, and because it removed the opportunity for flirtatious maneuvers. But it probably also removed the chance for someone to choke to death on a pit, which he supposed might be good.
He reminded himself not to put his heels on the table, ate his cherry, and observed.
“…How can the other cadets be expected to perform at their best…”
This was the nicest of the meeting rooms, so it was a terrible shame it, like the pitted cherry, was being so abused. It really was too small for the crowd the opening meeting this year had garnered – or, rather, it wasn’t actually too small, but its usual comforts were waylaid by it being slightly too full.
The Gold Room at the Palace would have scoffed at calling many times more people a crowd, but these were (for the most part) Military officers, and high-ranked ones. It had long been below their dignity to be squeezing into barracks or classrooms. To have so many so close was like trying to pack porcupines in a box. They puffed to maintain their stately space from one another.
“…much less receive adequate training, when so distracted…”
Yet, they stayed, crowded. In fact, a few more filtered in sending a little rippling squoosh through all the bubbles of personal dignity, and adding a fresh spritz of resentment to the air. The poor little room! Could they have changed venues? Yes, but this, the traditional space, was the easiest to find, the most comfortable (when properly attended meetings were held), and had the second-quickest service. And, of course, the Council was not going to change its traditions for the sake of the comfort of guests.
To the Council anyone not preoccupied with the day-to-day running of the Academy counted as guests, whether they had merely the unexercised right to attend (as many of this evening’s attendees did), or were supposed to have been attending all along (as a slightly smaller number of attendees), or were the actual public (technically, he supposed, the guests who were guests that were also military officers – the rest of the crowd, because no citizen of the Capitol deigned to give the Academy too much serious attention, lest it begin to believe itself important – really did count as ‘public’).
Thus, the air of resentment.
“The ollamh were not even consulted! What strange customs and beliefs…”
Sweet Peace, if only there could be dancing. Was there even a space for dancing at the Academy? (Logically, there had to be – all the little cadets showed up to their graduation relatively skilled, if stiff, dancers, at least of the traditional forms). It was, at this moment, hard to imagine.
The Representative of the Palace briefly entertained himself with memories of past graduation balls, and by the depth of his distraction was briefly saved from hearing the stentorian complaints of whatever ollamh it was holding forth.
“…might have been the case in the past, though I doubt the veracity of these claims and even IF true…”
By Modersty’s Shaded Nipples, everyone was being quite uncharacteristically polite.
Even and especially Quartermaster Ghent, who was the Representative’s only real hope. He quite liked Ghent, not because he was particularly impressive, friendly, or sociable, but rather, he was so thrillingly uncouth he tended to move the meetings along with tremendous efficiency.
This admiration existed only from afar. Quartermaster Ghent, if he knew the Palace Representative existed as a person, as opposed to an office, would probably hate him more than he appeared to hate most of the population of the Academy. Likewise, if in any proximity to Quartermaster Ghent outside the Academy walls, the Representative could easily imagine himself hiding behind bushes or perhaps drowning in a pond to avoid being seen so accompanied. But parliamentarian admiration from afar was fine.
Case in point, though: sometimes, when he thought something particularly stupid or useless was being discussed at too great a length, Quartermaster Ghent liked to suggest they should get bells and motley to put on the Academy Tower – he could really go on at great length about it, always with new details and suggestions, however long was needed to bully the other speaker into silence. But nobody liked to listen to Quartermaster Ghent, for precisely this reason: his suggestions tended to be in the ‘go fuck yourself’ direction.
Why he wasn’t doing so now was baffling.
“…can even be accounted for, much less matters of custom and hygiene…”
Bells and motley would at least give him something to look at, though. All the grey stone and dark wood and flickering torches and ceremony (but, like, the stiff and boring kind, not the necessary and beautiful kind, that you got dressed up for). What about a little flair? Colored fire? Some music? Surely the Academy Council could arrange something – surely they didn’t purposefully impose how boring these things were. The King, who also hated the Capitol, at least let people throw parties down here.
Not that bells and motley would help, currently. They couldn’t see the Academy Tower from this dim basement (was it all basement? Maybe!). They were underground, at a crotch proximal to the Tower where several eras of building overlapped like pastry. Still the best room, as the windows of its neighboring rooms created a cross breeze to ventilate it, and the Tower kitchen was only a floor below and somewhere left (also, miraculously, ensconced in a basement – how everyone didn’t die of smoke or heat baffled him, when he thought about it, which he didn’t, at least not often).
“…furthermore the traditions of the Academy itself should be considered, its bricks laid down by Keadar-Ainjir himself…”
The Representative was thinking about how the crowd in the room should dim the ring of the ollamh’s voice, at least a little bit, but this brought on the terrifying thought that this was the ollamh’s voice ‘dimmed’, and his thoughts rapidly diverted.
It was hard to tell exactly when the meeting would start, but their hand wouldn’t be forced merely by being annoyed. Though a beautiful, heavy, long table stretched importantly across the head of the room before the fire, none of the Councilmembers sat until they absolutely had to, to avoid being overheated in the ambivalent cold of early spring. Everyone else – sans orator – was trying to mill about sociably amongst the tables scattered around the floor, three or four chairs around each so decidedly inadequate in number for seating them all that hardly anybody sat in any of them. The only place with any current at all – again, an admirable marker of (very boring) Military manners – was around the many thin tables arranged at the edges of the room, generously laden with food or drinks as appropriate.
They might not change venues, but they were at least not so stupidly rigid as to underprepare the kitchens for an overabundant crowd, which any fool could have predicted would attend.
The Military didn’t do unprecedented, so it had been quite a long time since anything unprecedented happened. He just wished it hadn’t inspired pre-meeting oration, which might be his new most hated occurrence at a meeting.
But thank fuck, here was Ghent.
“Aren’t you hungry, Ollamh Corin? Thirsty? Winded? Bravery’s Brass Balls, that could stop your mouth for a moment, couldn’t it?”
The Representative restrained himself from cheering. Quartermaster Ghent, being on the council, was one of few of rank enough to stem the tide, and of those few was perhaps the only one who maintained a soldierly sense of when to tell someone to shut the fuck up. (To be fair, he only ever told people to shut the fuck up. That there might be other, more polite ways to handle things never seemed to occur to him).
Their orator particularly disturbed to be so addressed by a member of the Council. “I would think you of all people wouldn’t be soft on this issue–”
“Fucking Fate protect us from you thinking, Corin.” With this, the old Quartermaster heaved himself painfully out of his chair and wandered over to one of the sideboards, gravelly voice continuing in a not-at-all contained rumination, twin to the one he had so effectively stopped.
“I know, why don’t we have a little meeting about, eh? Why don’t we get everyone together let’s say, within the first few days of the new classes arriving and just have ourselves a little group think, and once that starts, we’ll have a whole section of it devoted to listening the bleating of idiots, and then you can express your blighted opinion all you want, eh? How about let’s do that instead of listening to you patter like rain while we wait for the blasted meeting to start.”
The officer who had remained sitting at Ghent’s table – an unusual-looking fellow with more-than-sun-browned skin and white hair – cast a glance over his shoulder, perhaps to hide his smile more than watch Ghent shamble to the food.
Brave of him to sit with Ghent (he was beloved, just not often by anyone of rank). This companion was one of many the representative from the Palace didn’t recognize, though some he could pick up through his study of descriptions of the relevant players in Military matters. It was an unusually stacked crowd, but again – unprecedented.
Corin seemed like he was about to go on – Charity’s Twin Cheeks, how could he? – when they were saved by General Durante abruptly mounting the step up to the head table.
“As good a sign as any – shall we get started?”
Tall and well-built, just past his middle age with only the finest of gray hair showing, Durante had the presence one expected from a military officer, and the politesse more befitting the court than these dank halls. At times he had seemed to know it, and he made a good show of himself in Palace events, but then he would recede, disassociate, find himself too busy for every invitation (and as an officer, it was surprising he received any).
Durante was really the Representative’s main concern – or, he had been told so. He just wasn’t exactly sure what he was supposed to do about it. The meetings were boring. Nothing of great import was ever discussed. It wasn’t like a social event. It was all quite unpromising, really, but that wasn’t for the representative to judge. The Palace had its connections to the Academy the way the Academy had its – neglected and somewhat atrophied in this day and age – connections to the Palace, and they begrudgingly fulfilled the duty of maintaining them.
At least the object of the Palace’s vague interest wasn’t Ghent.
Now, the Councilmembers who weren’t Ghent slowly made their way from tables of food or drink or old friends to their designated spots at the head table. Durante took the center seat, his back to the fire but face nonetheless alight thanks to well-mirrored crystal lamps spaced across the table. Ghent continued to get himself food and drink. The other Councilmembers didn’t seem to think it necessary to wait for him.
“Let the first meeting of the Academy Council for year 541 commence; please recognize Marerog, note-taker, and Saeloch, senior; Ghent, senior; Ichtoran, Fiodar, and Durante, serving, and…” his eyes moved over the room, “some fifty, guest, honored guest, and ollamh.”
Now, the Representative did not particularly like thinking about politics, or would not admit to liking it, but like tinder taking flame – he lit up.
With the exception of Ghent, whose service as Quartermaster required his constant presence, the other Councilmembers rotated. Members could depart, resign, or be called to the field, so a roster existed of ‘active’ and ‘inactive’ candidates for Council seats in perpetual rotation, with the exigencies of Academy business and requirement of odd number the determining factors of its composition. They usually served no less than a year, those bouts of five to eight were more common, and peaks and valleys in the intensity of their work determined who was on hand any given day. The opening meeting required a full bench – no polite notes accepted – so there were only five.
Five was a low number; the peak was something like 15. A normal year, with some unrest, would be more like seven or nine (three was the kind of minimum that revealed an emergency or perhaps plague). So some months ago, at the autumn recess, when the decisions had been made about who to bully into being responsible for being there, they had expected little disruption in the day-to-day business of the Academy.
So, in some sense, they had been surprised, too (though they had had months to ruminate on it. The Military did not just make adjustments. That was a kind of flighty, reflexive, responsiveness reserved for the unreliable Nobility or the Executive officers).
With the meeting commenced, Durante was now looking down at a pile of paper, threateningly thick.
It would contain all of the bureaucratic detritus that piled up between the end of one academic ‘year’ and the start of the next: overviews of schedules, information on divisions of students, reports on supplies and personnel in the medical facilities, some few early requests for more material for classes, early reports of trouble on the grounds from delayed maintenance of buildings or gardens (always so many requests from the gardeners). The onrush of new cadets, the return of old, the re-engagement of staff and resumption of projects delayed and re-started acted like the weight of a step on a semi-rotted stair; there always seemed to be some cracking and breakage not noticed on the last trip up.
All of it needed to be addressed in order, or the Academy – nay, the nation – nay, the entire world, would fall into chaos.
“I open the floor to the ollamh.”
Ghent, who had seated himself back at his table instead of the head table, grunted a “thank fuck” nonetheless audible for the scrapes of shifting chairs and little gasps of surprise. He heaved himself up – repast in hand – to laboriously make the trek up to his official seat.
“We cannot allow a Midraeic to continue as a cadet,” said ollamh Corin, not waiting to be called.
“You are formally recognized as speaker, Ollamh Corin,” Marerog said dryly, scratching it into his notes and titching the sand closer to his hand, prepared to combat the smears of fast writing.
“Complaint registered,” Durante intoned. His final say on admissions made him liable. “But what is its substance?”
“It’s ludicrous,” Corin spat.
“Elaborate,” Durante replied.
“This is ludicrous,” Corin said, looking around the room for support. “On the face of it. I cannot imagine it an oversight, as classes have begun and this Midraeic is among the cadets. So I must assume it was done on purpose.”
Ichtoran, whose duties included ranking and thus the class rosters, seemed annoyed more by the aspersion on his record-keeping than opposed to – or in favor of – Corin’s objections. “All of the appropriate steps were taken for enrollment. There is nothing in the regulations that would prevent enrollment.”
“I would not doubt General Ichtoran’s grasp of the regulations, but some reasoning must be provided to those of us perhaps less familiar with their intricacies,” Corin said, barely maintaining a polite tone over his seething. “There should be an explanation.”
“Would it not be unusual to explain admission of a cadet in compliance with regulations?” Durante inquired, much better at maintaining a neutral tone. Not that it mattered, because–
“Why not?” Saeloch asked, offering the requested explanation in a bored, raspy voice, looking down to pick a new morsel from his plate.
“The objections are obvious and numerous, and to go through the procedure for removing a cadet at this point could be harmful to the class formation, and reveals a shortsightedness–”
Ghent’s glower seemed to imply he would respond, but before he could Durante raised a hand to stop them both. “On what specific premise would admission be refused?”
“We refuse admission all the time,” Corin objected.
“On regulatory grounds,” Ichtoran replied coolly, apparently still smarting from having his punctiliousness slandered.
“Also on the grounds of the spirit of the institution,” Corin retorted.
“Can you provide any specific examples of such?” Durante said over Saeloch grumbling “‘Spirit’ my ass.”
(The Representative assumed Marerog did not record this addition, though he did flourish his paper into a new orientation to quickly continue his notes)
Corin balked, but only for a moment. “The second son of the Royal Family, who applied as second son but became Prince Cullan.”
“That happened more than a hundred years ago,” Fiodar said, almost reluctantly. “And was the Palace’s business.”
“The Council then applied its right of refusal on grounds of the purpose of the institution.”
“But the objection was raised and prosecuted by the royal family,” Fiodar said. “The Council’s ruling was a concession of the branches and not on internal regulatory grounds. It was a gift of the Military to the Nobility.”
“And how could such a similar ruling not apply in this case? Prosecuted by the people of Ainjir for the sake of the purpose of the institution?”
“Because that’s horseshit,” Ghent said, which Durante quickly followed with, “the people of Ainjir have no such voice in the doings of the Academy.”
This was actually quite tetchy, in a way that sent political-theory tingles up the Palace Representative’s spine. There COULD be something like a voice of the people IF the third branch were revived… (or so all the best and filthiest radicals were arguing)
But, perhaps finally realizing there was some chance that the Council had already discussed the matter, Corin paused to reassess, glare sweeping from one side of the great table to the other.
Finally, he took a nice lungful of air and started back where he had begun before the meeting commenced, “It’s a stain on the honor of–”
Durante held up a hand. “Condense your objections only to the salient points and we will commence discussion only if the Council’s answers prove insufficient.”
Really, he should have realized then that he was dead in the water, but it appeared that Corin’s anger up to this point had been mostly rhetorical, put on for show. This call for concision truly got to him – the Representative could tell as the little tips of his pressed-flat ears reddened. “I don’t see how that’s a reasonable request. The ollamh were not consulted, not even warned–”
“It is neither the habit nor a requirement of the Council to consult ollamh on decisions of admission before the Academy year begins.”
Lips pressed into a line, Corin re-engaged. “The differences of belief, custom, even basic behavior and moral–”
“Differ from region to region,” Saeloch interrupted this time, “from family to family, from station to station – braile-breith” (a little sigh from Marerog under the scritching – they weren’t supposed to use that word) “cadets and noble and east and west and plain and forest, farm and mine – if the cadet adapts to the Academy from any of these places of difference then there is no reason to expect that a Midraeic cannot do the same. If he fails to adapt he can leave, like the rest.”
“Have you not considered the level of disruption–”
“This is one cadet,” Saeloch said, as if having to bring it up tired him. “The Academy has run its business during war. This cannot be more disruption than the raids from Geron were, and cadets died in those.”
“The level of disruption,” Corin continued pointedly, “this may bring to the Academy’s reputation? That it may not be a ploy?”
He had struck gold! The Council’s hesitation proved that they had not considered this. But that was because it was so very stupid an idea.
After a brief glance at the rest of the members, Durant raised a flat hand to invite a response from the Palace Representative.
The Palace Representative, preoccupied with his self-narration, stared dumbly for he was surprised.
“The nomination was made by Baron Seolgaire. Speaking on behalf of the Nobility, does the Palace wish to address the nomination of a Midraeic cadet by Baron Seolgaire?”
“As you know,” the Representative said, “the Palace on principle takes no interest in who chooses to attend Academy and how Noble families might wish to handle their sponsorships. Those are adjudicated entirely individually, within the family, except on small matters of inheritance when certain conditions of conflict are met, which in this case doesn’t apply – one assumes.”
He didn’t want to suggest that Baron Seolgaire might somehow have an unknown Midraeic inheritor, but… well, it wasn’t likely, though it wasn’t UNlikely, either, but… that was… well, that was quite out of the Palace’s purview and really any of his business and nobody, including the Military itself, would want the Military involved. It was all so very… Capitol Romance to have cadets turn out to be heirs.
Durante was still looking at him, though, so the Representative went on, pausing between each statement to see when he had said enough that he could stop. “Which Baron Seolgaire? There’s some dispute over title inheritance at the moment. There’s a pretender.”
This damaged Corin’s clever suggestion, if only because it was yet another indication that the Nobility were very silly people.
Durante had to consult his stack of paperwork, digging down several sheets, adjusting his distance from the paper to consult the right note. “Baron Raghailligh Seolgaire.”
“Oh, well,” the Representative shrugged, “that’s who I would back. Anyway, no.”
“No what?” Corin objected.
“No, I can’t possibly see what Baron Raghailligh Seolgaire would get out of this. Actually not the other one, either, but still. That Baron Seolgaire is known for being eccentric. Thus the title challenge. Did argue once there shouldn’t be Barons at all. Might actually be a Seolgaire by blood, which would mean there’s been some… close marriages in his ancestry. Runs a fine estate but makes odd choices, so it’s in keeping. Quite harmless most of the time. Likes to wear furry knickers, puts butter on–”
“Enough,” Corin barked.
Since Durante was still looking at him – as was the rest of the Council – the Representative shrugged again. “I would imagine not. No ploy that makes any sense, anyway. And, of course, it goes without saying the Palace disavows any knowledge of such a plot, so even if there was one, it would be up to him, and I don’t think he’s up to much of anything except filing lineage proofs and frightening the peasants with the occasional public appearance. Of which the Palace also avows no pre-emptive knowledge. Officially.”
“Are there any other objections to raise on this issue?” Durante said tiredly to the assembly. Then, particularly to Corin: “Consider what Councilmember Ichtoran has said. Proceed with the understanding the decision has been made.”
“What loyalty can we expect from a Midraeic to Ainjir?” said a man with a severe face, square-jawed and narrow-eyed – an ollamh, sitting amongst the others. “The point of this education is to raise officers who will then give their oath to defend the nation. The Oath would be meaningless to a Midraeic.”
Corin nodded, as did a few others in the room. Even the other Council members turned to Durante.
Though it was evidently his answer to give, Durante instead turned to Ghent. “Quartermaster, your experience might suggest a better answer. What say you to this objection?”
Startled at having been called upon, Ghent started to answer, only for Durante to cut him off: “Please refrain from casting aspersions on the meaning of the Oath or other unrelated objections to the premise. A cadet is at issue.”
Ghent resettled himself, spending a moment looking out into the room without necessarily seeing it. His face maintained the same disgruntled expression that had settled on it upon arrival. Corin seemed to be about to interject when he finally rumbled out a response.
“There is no difference. If this boy has chosen the path, then he’ll walk it, or not. The decision was made when he walked through the gates in the first place, same as the rest of them.”
“The weakness of superstition–” Corin began.
“Will get him kicked out. Or it won’t. He would hardly be the first superstitious cadet, and certainly not the last. Believers have come through the gates before, open and more likely many clandestine. It has never been raised as an objection to the Oath, which relies only on the personal valor of the cadet, their individual worthiness and participation in our society. To go through the Academy is to participate more fully than many a person outside the Midraeic people in Ainjir. If he lasts to the end, he may swear as truly as any other.”
“To disrupt the learning of the other cadets–” Corin began, but Ghent had no more interest in letting him finish than he had all evening.
“Many might be less worthy. Many a superstitious person has sworn the Oath, and many more a stupid person has done the same, and it’s the stupid ones that worry me more. I didn’t see you objecting then. Probably because when stupidity sees its kin–”
“That will do. Thank you, Quartermaster” Durante interjected. “The matter is settled. The Midraeic cadet has been admitted and will perform or fail as any other cadets performs or fails. Shall we proceed?”
Ghent stayed up at the table for the duration of the open-floor part of the meeting, but there was – perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not – little to bring in that was not already on the agenda at some other point. So the Palace’s Representative soon watched Ghent stump away from the table, back presumably to one more comfortable, with very little to add to what the Representative had thought was going to be the most exciting portion of the evening.
But alas again, all the interest of this particular evening had been spent, and now there was nothing to look forward to, except whether the discussion of the medical budget would lead to fisticuffs between the practitioners of rival healing arts. Which, frankly, appointment of the latest head, a woman who almost certain had ties to the family and clandestine religious beliefs, had put quite a damper on. Though exciting in that she added to overall political drama of the Academy, she seemed to frown on the practitioners spending their first few weeks healing themselves – she implied it wasted resources, but what about the resource of the Representative’s interest in the meetings? – and thus doomed the meeting. So there wasn’t even that to look forward to.
Despite Durante’s radical reordering of the agenda, the meeting still stretched into the wee hours of the night. This was why Ghent advocated for holding all such meetings in the stables, where they would all be as sore and aching from sitting on dirty floors and railings as he got from the ‘comfortable’ chairs indoors, and would all come out stinking of shit literally instead of just figuratively. It would take some walking to work out the stiffness in his joints and twists in his muscles, but his rooms were some ways away of walking, so it worked out.
Ghent stumped through the halls with his broad rolling gait; his companion walked beside him with long, slow strides.
“Thank you for inviting me,” he said.
Ghent grunted. “What shit. You were conveniently around to be invited. Awfully conveniently. I hope you got what you came for – there’s nobody that would thank anyone for being put through that shit.”
“Well, it was interesting.”
“It absolutely was not.”
“I was interested.”
“Aiming for my job?” Ghent glanced up at him through narrowed eyes, but it was a show. He grunted again. “You can have it. Who wants it? Too much grief. Fucking gardeners wanting every cursed plant. Then they want to dig it up and put in every other cursed plant. These bloody meetings. Cadets.”
“Surely no one could hope to do your job as well as you.”
“Horseshit,” Ghent grumbled. “Any idiot could do my job.”
They ambled together in silence for a few paces.
Ghent seemed finally to lose his patience; though every bit as gruff, his outburst was quiet. “What do you want, Horace?”
Rather than responding, Horace turned his face to the sky, appreciating the stars.
“Oh, fuck you,” Ghent said, but in his way, meaning it was a kind of compliment.
“Well, if I just asked, would you do it?” Horace was smiling, as he often smiled with friends, whose company, though they might be yelling to wake Ainjir’s dead gods, make him happy.
What this meant was that Ghent was going to have to figure it out. Because of course he wouldn’t do it if he was just asked. At least, if he hadn’t already thought of doing it himself. So Horace must think he has an unusual request. This could be any of a thousand things, given the wide range of duties of the Academy Quartermaster, whose power really was second only to Durante’s, if he chose to exercise it (Ghent did not, but then, they had chosen Ghent at least partially because he could not leverage power through personal connections, his being quite so sparse). Ghent had other strengths.
But that wasn’t why Horace was asking; Horace was asking because he was Ghent, and was asking because he was Horace. Because he was Horace, there was an obvious connection to make, well outside Ghent’s usual wheelhouse.
“What do you think I can do for him?”
Horace smiled, as if for the thousandth time as for the first, dazzled by his companion’s brilliance (that he did this in a way that didn’t seem patronizing was one of his exceedingly unique gifts – when he was patronizing, you sure did notice, though).
“That’s a bit of the puzzle, isn’t it?” Horace asked, looking down at the grass as he kicked his feet through it. “I don’t even really know why I’m asking.”
“Beyond the obvious?” Ghent said.
Horace had been nodding along as soon as he had started to speak. “There’s not some conspiracy, you know. I wasn’t even raised in the faith, as you’re aware. I wish I could offer some kind of unique perspective to tell you what you might look out for, but really, I think the reason I thought of it, and the reason I thought of you–”
“–Other than my amazing puissance–”
“–Other than your amazing puissance, is because it seems so mightily unfair.”
“It’s not a fair place,” Ghent said, but as a pat response, not an objection.
“Neither was the border,” Horace replied. “At the border, at least, we all had a sense that we were there to make it fair.”
“‘We all’, my ass,” Ghent said, anger heating his voice. “It was setting bones getting all you grubs to think anything. All you had was hot blood and wet loins.”
“To be fair, many of us only hoped for wet loins,” Horace replied thoughtfully, to Ghent’s conceding nod. “Yet some sergeant seemed driven by death itself to get us to think of something else.”
“Well, there was hope for you, yet,” Ghent said. “You weren’t officers.”
Horace didn’t have to say anything about their officers. They walked in silence for a few long, slow paces.
“We talked to the Fourth Year class. Reminded them that if they had any pretensions of having reached their station through merit, the role of merit was theirs to maintain. I think they picked it up.”
“We?”
“Durante and I.”
Horace grunted, a surprisingly Ghent-like noise. “Well, I wonder if anything should be done beyond that.”
“The Fourth Years can’t be everywhere,” Ghent said. He had clasped his hands behind his back, slowed their walk to give them time to resolve the conversation.
“They’ll be busy,” Horace said.
“Very,” Ghent agreed. “At the same time, I’m not sure what I can do.”
“Keep an eye out, maybe?” Horace said, turning to look sidelong, smile on his face. “As you once did for another young soldier forced into your company?”
Ghent grunted disdainfully. “You didn’t need my eye out. You had them all running.”
“Maybe,” Horace said. “But maybe it mattered that somebody didn’t run, too.”
“And wasn’t thin as the last piss squeezed from a pencil dick.”
“Oh, some of them turned out alright.”
“Once they had it beaten out of them.” This time Ghent’s grunt was a little raspy, more from phlegm than sentimentality, probably, but raspy all the same. “If they lived.”
“If they lived,” Horace agreed. “It wouldn’t hurt to give this one a fighting chance at living, you think?”
Ghent spat, whatever had been building up in his lungs excised by pleasant conversation. “If he turns out not to be a limpdick snot stone.”
Horace nodded and smiled. “If he turns out to be a limpdick snot stone. But frankly, if he’s made it this far and hasn’t realized he’s thrown himself to the wolves, I would be very surprised. Takes a bit more than a limpdick snot stone to keep at it after that. Surely there’s at least some stubbornness there. Stubbornness can be admired. Or at least keep him alive until he’s worth being admired for something else.”
“How dare you,” Ghent said flatly. “There’s nothing else worth being admired for.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Horace replied, grinning. “I’ve heard people quite like sociability, also one of your foremost traits.”
“You just want my liquor.”
“Not true! I also want your recommendation for the best House to visit.”
“Virtue’s Tits, man,” Ghent grumbled, “make sure you’ve got your own wrapper.”
“For the liquor, or…?”
“Come in, you reprobate, and keep your dick away from my liquor, wrapped or no.”
“Ah,” Horace said, as Ghent laboriously unfastened the antique lock to the tiny outer court of his quarters, “to visit old friends is to know joy, even if you aren’t allowed to put your dick in their liquor, isn’t it?”
“Fuck off,” Ghent said, by which he meant, yes.