“When come the sun o’er Piasun Guari,
Larragh, larragh, the sky, the sea
Cast no nets nor stride your fief
Down rides the lord of all you see
True crowned, carrie oarwhi.”
“I don’t get it.”
“You’re not supposed to get it.”
“Why do we have such stupid nonsense in our poems?” the first, ignoring the annoyance of the second, continued.
“It’s not a poem, it’s a song,” broke in a third, whispering gently, as if to idiots.
“It’s both, really…” said a fourth.
“If it were song, why would Cole be doing it? Kiso would be doing it,” the first insisted.
“He’s the one for songs,” third agreed, though dubious.
“It’s that Old Ainjir shit,” said the last, making no effort to hide his firm belief they should shut up and listen to that shit, regardless.
“Can you not pretend to have culture for five minutes?” said the second.
“I just want to know why we’ve got so many ‘too-ra-las’ and ‘bonnie-wonnie-lassies’ in our stuff. Feels silly,” the first appealed to the group.
“I suppose it used to mean something,” shrugged the last.
“It still means something,” said Aspen, who wasn’t part of their group, and who, through mere, effortless, presence – the slightest interjection – implied they were surely idiots, and would soon all be dead idiots, “if you understand Old Ainjir.”
“Which we’re all taking classes in,” Kiso added.
“So, shut up,” the last of the group, now backed by his betters, insisted.
For Cole’s part, he tracked the conversation as the fourth or fifth thing in the list of preoccupations. Declaiming – especially the poem he had chosen to recite – hardly required even a portion of his attention. Vying for the first spot in his mind was the fact that he wished to be doing almost anything but declaiming; he wished to be almost anywhere else but a mandatory loitering session with the Prep cadets. But he refused to acknowledge his own annoyance (what good would it do) so it kept losing out to a running list of different things he could be doing. Each of these came with its own diversion down truncated paths of thought.
Really, he probably ought to be studying. He was behind on Tactics. Acknowledging that was even less likely than giving attention to his raging frustration.
Frustration could usually be worked out in one handy way, but he wasn’t in the mood. And he had tipped the balance too far into the perception he was irresponsibly licentious in the last week. And he just didn’t want to fuck anybody. Through no fault of their own.
Maybe he had finally run himself out of interest. Wouldn’t that be a relief.
He doubted it, though.
He needed more time to prepare for Cogadh. They were getting down to the final matches. Lin’s team had just barely squeezed through to victory in their last match, and while the rest of the class was excitedly discussing a match-for-the-ages, all-out brawl between their highest ranked cadets AND teams, Cole was less certain it would play out that way. There were uneven brackets to complete and the judges could always request a team return for rematches (which is why the whole class should continue to work on Cogadh, whether they had lost or not, though many weren’t, including most of these jokers, arrayed here to lounge self-importantly).
“Then kept the brides of bold Garrain
Larragh, larragh, the sky, the sea
O’er fields and dress the yellow stain
Down rides the lord of all you see
From ruin to death to rise again.”
Annoyance bubbling up too high again, Cole signalled his recitation was done, and received the quiet salutes of his audience’s approbation.
“Funny place to stop,” Lin said. “I didn’t peg you for a fan of the revised verses.”
Cole threw himself on the ground, finding the prime hummock that had cradled his head before he had been requested to stand and burrowing his back into it with, he hoped, significant finality.
“They have their place,” he said.
“I don’t mind them, but they do shorten the poem,” Aspen said.
“I think you hit on the significant feature.” Lin chuckled. “Sorry to put you out, Second.”
“Oh, I don’t mind that,” Cole said, letting his eyes close. “But do for Mercy’s sake get Kiso up there.”
“Ugh, I can only stand so many songs about tits, you rat,” Lin said, pointing with his stick at Kiso, who sat ready to leap up and do his bit of entertaining.
“Don’t you know a saga song?” Aspen asked, but the way he leaned back, also shutting his eyes like Cole, indicated he knew the likelihood of that.
“I know one…” Kiso said, as bounding to his feet, he paused to be sure all eyes that were open were turned his way, “… about rods.”
Alternate cheers and groans. Cole was glad he had already turned his face to the uniform gray sky and had his eyes closed.
Time for relaxation was rare enough and getting rarer – he shouldn’t begrudge them their entertainment. He really didn’t mind giving the occasional recitation, and it did elevate his standing that he could do it so apparently effortlessly.
Laughable.
Odd, but he felt as if he didn’t want to relax. Couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just his annoyance getting the better of him, but he tested the thought of doing something else right now, and it didn’t sit right. He imagined making his excuses and going to the Library and the thought tired him. He imagined gathering his Cogadh team together and taking them through a practice or some kind of lesson, and the very idea repulsed him. He imagined going off and finding a lover, and that tired AND repulsed him.
But staying, for lack of a better word, made him itchy.
You know what? What he wanted was to go to the showers. He knew it – why deny it? That’s what he wanted to do after almost every class these days.
Not really because he felt the need to clean himself (it wasn’t like Tactics involved a lot of rolling around in the dirt), or to get whatever pathetic solace could be gotten from hot water on increasingly cold days, but…
Why?
He wanted to stand under the hottest stream, really close to the cistern and the fire, where it felt like little stones falling on his face, and just…
What?
He knew he should stay here. He knew he was keeping up appearances, showing solidarity, maintaining social ties.
He rolled up to his feet and started brushing the grass and fallen leaves from his uniform, just as Kiso was making some kind of fabulous musical double entendre about rods (dicks) and rods (units of measurement) and rods (which certain Houses among the Families specialised in for extra charge).
“Oh ho, had too much then?” Lin asked.
“No, I’ve remembered a bit of work I meant to get done yesterday afternoon and set by and forgot.”
Cole did his best to appear annoyed.
“That isn’t like you,” Lin said, no weight to the words to suggest suspicion.
“Admitting it isn’t,” Aspen added, cocking a grin.
“Well, we all have our moments,” Cole replied.
“The rods reminded you?” Lin asked, light smile on his face.
“The rodding I’ll get if I don’t finish it did,” Cole admitted.
“Reasonable enough.” Lin shrugged. “See you later, I suppose.”
A vague set of waves and Cole was extracted, walking through the woods to the dormitory.
Dominicus scrubbed the dishes and thought of the Library. He brought a forearm up to rub away the sweat above his lip before plunging the plate deep into the basin of hot, murky water again.
The midday crew hadn’t finished, so the night crew had been called in early to do pre-supper work (and presumably, the slovenly midday crew would be called in for an extra-late-night of post-meal cleanup – everyone ‘knew’ it was coming, but Dominicus increasingly waited to see what orders were before he assumed anything would happen the way he thought it would).
Certainly, though, he looked forward to a potential free evening. He was tired, but he was somehow always tired these days. Someone at the rock field (always ‘someone’ – they didn’t learn each others’ names, it somehow felt… unprofessional) had mentioned he was tired because he was growing, but he hadn’t gotten any taller. He didn’t think he would be getting any taller. He could use an inch or two, at least, so he wasn’t quite among the shortest cadets. But maybe that wasn’t what he had meant.
What else could he mean, though, Dominicus thought tiredly.
It wasn’t all sweat but also steam off the hot water – what a miracle, to have so much hot water, so readily available, that he could sweat over washing the dishes (Prophet be merciful – the hot water got the sauces and crusts and fat off better, they had been told, and whapped awfully with cooking utensils for their inefficiency when caught using water not hot enough). But he thought of pumping enough water for bathing eight siblings, three of whom could not be bathed after because one could not bathe in dirt soup, and then of course a fresh bath for his mother and his father, and plunging the next dish into the hot water became miraculous again.
“Galen, bring up those next three, we’re catching up,” said Odhrán, who was part of the chain feeding dishes down to be rinsed, inspected, dried, and put away. His usual reticence had been worn away by the fact that if they managed to finish the midday leftovers early, too, they would have even more precious, precious free time.
Free time in which to…?
Well, the Library. He had gone to the Library, at his first thought of doing… research. But he had ended up standing stock still, staring up stupidly at the stacks, having no idea where he could even start looking.
Death before he asked the Librarian this particular question. Death before he asked anybody.
Maybe once he found the right section, death before he allowed anyone to see him there. He didn’t know. Was there a whole section? Seemed like something the Ainjir would have a whole section of books on. They were a licentious people.
Second Years trickled into the kitchen, looking lackadaisical, and the whole dish line tensed.
“You’re early for being late,” one of the cooks said, lifting an enormous pail off the ground by its swinging metal handle one-handed, as if it weighed nothing. “If you’re going to be around get started on the vegetables.”
The yawning Second Year took the pail (two-handed), and shoved his way between the First Years at the far end of the dish line to pump it full of (cool) water. Two others, who had trailed in with him, leaned full-weighted on the First Years rinsing the dishes at that end like they made up a balustrade. Once he had pumped it full, one helped him take the handle, shoving the cadet he was leaning on hard into the stone edge of the sink. The other, having bowed over two cadets under his elbows so that they bent like broken reeds, jumped back before he rose, shoving both cadets’ faces into the rinse-water in the sink.
“Leave off, you little tits!” a cook called to the Second Years, sweeping by the stack of rags and flinging a couple of dry ones into the faces of the dunked cadets.
“At least it weren’t the hot,” said the cook serving as inspector of the dish line’s cleaning work.
“Don’t deserve to come late, even if we’ve got less work for them,” said the other cook, practically ripping the towels off the First Years’ faces and physically turning their heads back to the their work as she scowled after the Second Years. “Shouldn’t have given them the break. Don’t deserve it. Twice as bad when Fourths aren’t around, and then already twice worse than the last of them.”
The inspector cleared a bit stuck to a dish with his thumbnail, blew away any remnants and set the dish aside for the next.
“Oh, Thirds weren’t that bad.”
“Half worse than them lot?” The other cook grinned, snapping one of the towels at a cadet who was too obviously listening in. “Love, then let me say a quarter. Sweet bunch, if a bit stupid.”
“An’ them’s sour an’ stupid,” the inspector replied.
“You lot better be sweet if you’re going to be dumb as bricks,” the cook said, trailing one of the towels over everyone’s head as she passed down the line, back to her own work. The minute it touched the back of the neck of one of the cadets to Dominicus’ right, he dropped a dish with a fantastic clatter into the sink, much to her amusement.
“Oye,” mused the inspector consolingly, holding another plate up to the light, “not as bricks, but maybe a soft stone.”
“Sweet Peace, I just want to get out of here once they’re all in here,” Odhrán muttered, holding his hand out insistently to Dominicus.
Dominicus plunged his hands into the hot water and redoubled his efforts.
Odhrán had a point. If he wanted free time, unobserved free time, then he had an unusual opportunity, if the timing worked out. With the Fourth Years out on bivouac, a portion of the Second Years preoccupied with dinner preparation, and the midday cleaning team reassigned to after-dinner clean up, odds were good the Library would be, for the most part, abandoned by all but the most furiously studious.
Now was his time to strike.
Cole was not totally certain why he was going to the dormitories. He didn’t have any uncompleted work except that which would only be completed when they graduated (that is, their transformation into laudable and respected officers of the Ainjir Military). There were a hundred other places he could go, not least of which were the showers, as his fantasising had indicated. But at minimum he was clever enough to realise that his wanting-to-go-to-the-showers wasn’t literally wanting-to-go-to-the-showers, but standing in for some other thing he had yet to identify precisely.
Why the dormitory was a whole other question he was leaving up to instinct.
It was where his feet were taking him. It fit the lie he had instantaneously made up to extract himself.
Nothing much preoccupying him, now that he was fully given over to just seeing what happened, he jogged across the field to the dormitory buildings. Hand brushing the brick before he gripped the door frame to help turn himself into the main entrance – the back way was too much trouble to contemplate at the moment – he dodged another cadet leaving and headed up the stairs. They were roasting something in the kitchens – well, they were always roasting something in the kitchens – but the wind was such that the smell of it overtook the funk of the thatch and crowded bodies in the dormitory for once. He dodged piles of clothes left out for gathering, and the disgruntled cadets in pairs slung with huge, but thin wicker baskets, fit for narrow hallways, gathering them (laundry was a duty usually filled out by cadets needing less direct punishment than a beating – Cole had reason to hope he would never have to do laundry, a task which, as a tailor’s son, even the plentiful laundering services of the city couldn’t fully keep him from).
Pleased again by the privacy of their little corner room, he pushed open the door and found himself stumbling face to face with Oisín.
They stared at each other silently, then Cole slid past him into the room.
“What are you up to?” Cole asked, walking himself over to his bed and hoping Oisín had something to say that could become a matter of interest because he had no idea what he was going to do once he got there.
“I...uh,” Oisín paused, hand going to the door pull, then backing away, body turning reluctantly to face Cole.
“The Library,” he said. “What about you?”
No greeting, no pleasantries, but this was all very normal; small talk was for leisurely sorts who didn’t live four to a room (though to be fair, one of their roommates basically lived in his lover’s room, while the other Cole had scared away from spending any daytime hours in the room: he slept more than anyone Cole had ever known, in every more-than-minute-long space of time in the day, and snored, and thus made every rare potential moment of privacy a moment of privacy with a noisy, unconscious body. Cole had finally lost his temper about it, so now he slept in nooks all over the grounds. He couldn’t possibly remain much at Academy much longer).
“The Library, too, in fact,” Cole lied, immediately and senselessly. But he could dig out a note book, a lead, and some subject to be interested in.
Briefly, they were at an impasse. Cole pretended not to notice it, and Oisín graciously tried to pretend he wasn’t doing it.
Which was fine, except that it went on just a fraction too long for it to be all on account of their uneasy return to good relations. So now Cole was curious and all alight with the sense that his aimless instincts had won him something good.
“Want to… walk together?” Oisín asked, as if he had been asked to translate the question out of Old Ainjir and back again with new vocabulary.
“If you don’t mind…?”
“No – no,” Oisín tisked, as if nothing sillier could be conceived than an objection to their walking to the Library together, despite the fact that avoiding such casual interactions had defined their relationship for weeks.
“Come on, let’s go.”
They departed the room silently, walked down the stairs one after another silently, exited the building silently.
They crossed the field silently.
Cole waved to some friends passing. Oisín, a few steps ahead and off to the side, as if they didn’t walk together although walking together, turned a few times on their route as if to start a conversation. Cole staunchly refused to give him any encouragement and intimidated by whatever it was that was on his mind, Oisín turned coward and returned to walking in front of him – silently.
Enter the building, up the stairs – mostly Third Years about, which was dangerous but not so dangerous as Second Years (they were too busy to be so needlessly bullying) – down this hall, that hall, and finally the last corner to turn–
“What are you studying?” Oisín asked, stopping abruptly.
“Tactics,” Cole said.
Oisín, frustrated by the obvious simplicity and ultimate acceptability of this answer, had to fidget his way into a continuance.
“What particular part of Tactics?”
“Oh, you know Tactics,” Cole said, relishing the slight terror as Oisín realised he could, if he so choose, make this dithering conversation persist in such vague terms indefinitely.
Cole wasn’t that cruel. “Mostly history. I want to pick up some ammunition to answer questions the ollamh hasn’t asked yet.”
“What does that mean?”
“As long as we’re all pulling from the same examples, we’re all answering in predictable ways, and we’ll all be asked the same questions. I want to get ahead.”
Discomfort momentarily forgotten, Oisín’s brows knit as he stared at the floor. Whatever personal grudges he might still bear, Oisín was at least not so stupid as to turn down learning from Cole – another reason Cole could feel smugly justified in his continued investment in their relationship.
But Cole also had his grudges, and he was just cruel enough to ask, “Why are you here?”
“I – uh – studying.” Oisín, Peace favour his days, was not so smart, either.
“Not secret meetings?” Cole jested.
But Oisín simply stared at him, eyes narrowed.
Well, fuck – Cole didn’t actually have anything to follow that up with. He actually hadn’t expected the real answer to be ‘secret meetings’ – which it obviously was, or Oisín’s gaze would not be filled with such an air of suspicion tinged with slight awe.
“They’re not… secret,” Oisín said, looking anywhere but Cole’s face as he did so.
“Well,” Cole said, keeping his tone light, “let’s say… under-advertised?”
“Anyone can go, really,” Oisín said. “That’s the idea – that they’re open to anyone.”
“Yes…”
“And you’re…” Oisín hesitated, as if realising Cole could hear him, “well, you’re… you’re not one of them, one of them.”
On the one hand, this veered dangerously close to subjects Cole didn’t want to talk about, and more importantly, didn’t want others to talk about, and therefore dangerously close to Oisín getting his ass kicked again. On the other, this was fascinating.
“Not that there’s a ‘them’ to be one of?” Cole returned.
“Yeah,” Oisín agreed. “Well… not that – yes, there’s a them.”
He stared at Cole, perhaps begging him to understand while also standing his ground on some point of… something.
“Sure,” Cole said.
Oisín was making some fast calculations. Something of the stubbornness that had helped draw Cole into their friendship was returning to his expression.
“And you’re not really… coming, right? Not that you couldn’t. It’s not secret.”
“No,” Cole assured him. “I’ll just be browsing the books.”
“I just…” Oisín let out a breath, sharp with frustration. “This is stupid.”
“I wouldn’t say stupid…” Cole demurred, despite this very much verging on the stupid.
This appeared to be the right thing to say.
“They won’t be happy to see you, but I’m allowed to associate with whomever I wish. If they don’t like it, that’s their problem.”
“Agreed.”
Which was, fundamentally, true, for all that Cole had no idea what they were actually talking about. Perhaps that was why Oisín shed not just his anxiety over… whatever was about to happen… but also some portion of the hostility that had remained since Cole had so unceremoniously kicked his ass in front of their classmates. This, ultimately, Cole felt was good, perhaps even worth… whatever was about to happen.
But still, though closer he remained just a step or so behind Oisín as they entered the library together.