I felt embarrassed for him, and smiled awkwardly. “It’s a bit hard to believe, sir, yes.”
“Sir,” he said softly. Then he smiled, the expression pressing lines into his doughy face. “Been a long time since a young soldier has called me that. I was a lieutenant when this happened to me. I was on my way up, too. They told me that in a month, perhaps two, there would be a vacancy and I’d be a captain in my father’s old regiment. I was so happy. I thought it had all been worth it.” His face was transfigured by some memory, his eyes staring into the distance. He glanced down at me abruptly. “But you’re an Academy lad. Bet you wouldn’t think much of some ranker like me. My father had been a ranker before me, but he’d never risen higher than master sergeant. When I got my lieutenant’s bars, he was over the moon about it. He and my old maw sold just about everything they had to buy me a commission. I was shocked to hear they’d done it.”
He suddenly fell silent and all the old glory faded from his face. “Well,” he said, and laughed harshly. “My dad was always a good trader. I bet he got top dollar out of that commission when he sold it off.” He saw me staring at this revelation, and laughed again, more harshly. He gestured rudely at his body. “Well, after this happened to me, what was I to do? My career was over. I come back west, hoping my family would take me in; they wouldn’t even speak to me. Wouldn’t even admit itwas me. My old dad tells everybody that his son died in battle with the Specks. Close enough to truth, I guess. It was the damn Speck plague that did this to me.”
He lumbered over to the edge of his stage and sat down heavily. The whole process of lowering himself looked awkward. He dangled his legs over the edge. His low shoes were run over and tired, near bursting at their seams. His feet looked fat and run over, too, wider than they should have been. I wanted to leave, but could not simply turn and walk away from him. I wished other spectators would come to distract him from me. I did not like that he was being so friendly and talkative. I had to force myself to look interested in his words.
“So I come to the city. Took up begging on the street corners, but no one believes a fat man who says he’s starving. I would have starved, too, if I hadn’t taken on this duty. It’s not that different from the cavalla, some ways. Get up, do your shift, eat, go to bed. Watch each other’s backs. Stick together. That’s what they say about the cavalla, isn’t it? That we always watch out for one another. Right, trooper?”
“Right,” I said uneasily. I felt he was building up to something, some declaration of brotherhood that I didn’t want to hear. I needed to leave, now. “I have to be on my way now. I’m supposed to be looking for my cousin.” The words came to me with a sour taste of guilt. They were merely an excuse, and a stark reminder to myself that I had completely forgotten about Epiny and Spink and the danger she might be in.
“Yeah, right, he has to go.” The Fat Lady spoke from her divan. From somewhere she had drawn out another box of candies and was untying the blue ribbon that bound the creamy yellow box. She spoke without looking at either of us. “He knows you’re gonna touch him for some coppers. ‘I was in the cavalla, gimme a coin.’ Bores me to tears. I heard it too often.”
“Shut up, you fat old slut!” the man told her angrily. “It’s true! I was cavalla, and a damn good soldier once. Maybe I was a ranker, but I’m not ashamed of that. Every promotion I got, I earned. It was never give to me because I was some noble’s son, nor bought for me. I earned it. Earned these lieutenant’s bars. Looky here, trooper. You recognize the real thing, don’t you? And you wouldn’t mind giving an old comrade-in-arms a few coins so I could buy me something a bit stronger than a beer? Gets cold working in here in the wintertime. A man could use a good stiff drink after what I go through.”
The fat man had managed, by much effort and with several grunts, to haul himself back to his feet. Now he took a folded cloth from his trouser pocket. He opened it carefully, to show me the lieutenant’s bars that shone inside it. I stared at them, knowing they might not be real, knowing that, like the jewelry that many folk wore for Dark Evening, they might be paper or enamel over dross. The fat man unpinned the gleaming bars from the rag that wrapped them and polished them a bit. Then, as he refastened them to the rag, he made the “keep fast” charm over them. I felt a chill up my back. True, he might have learned it from watching others, as Epiny had, but there was something so habitual about the way he did it that I doubted it.