Shaman's Crossing (The Soldier Son Trilogy #1)

“Does he despise me?” Spink asked immediately.

I told him all that had transpired. I spared him nothing, thinking it was better to let him know that he had small chance of ever winning my cousin. He nodded at my account, and a ghost of hope came into his face when I told him that my uncle might speak for him to the colonel. But then it slipped away as he confided, “Her letters to me are very affectionate. I doubt he will read them and think she would write such things if I had never encouraged her. But I swear that is the truth, Nevare.”

“I believe you,” I said. “But I also fear the same things that you do. That he will think that you incited Epiny.”

“Well. There’s nothing I can do about that,” he said. His words were philosophical but his voice was despairing.

“You should go to bed, Spink. Get one solid night of sleep this week. This endless studying will make you a wraith by week’s end.”

“I just need to keep at it. I just need to fix the equations in my mind. Where I cannot master it by understanding, plain rote may suffice.”

I stood a moment longer. “Well. I’m going to bed.”

“Good night.” He was not to be dissuaded from his vigil.

In the darkened study room, my books were on the table as I’d left them. I gathered them up in the dark and carried them back to my room.

I put them away by touch and undressed by my bed, letting my clothes drop to the floor. I was suddenly too tired to deal with them. I listened to my friends’ breathing for a moment, then fell into my bed and let go of consciousness.

The remaining days to the section exams both lagged and sped past me. I thought it cruel that Captain Infal did no review with us, but simply kept on introducing new material right up to the day of the test. I felt my brain was crammed with dates and facts and names, but little understanding of how the battles had flowed or what the overall strategy had been.

A long-anticipated letter from Carsina arrived enfolded in a bare note from my sister. I tore it open, and for the first two pages her flowering phrases and curly handwriting cheered me. But by the third page the charm of her innocent affection and her girlish fantasies about the wonderful life we would have were suddenly worn thin. What, I abruptly wondered, did she actually know of me at all? What would she think of me if I failed my history exam and condemned my entire patrol to Academy expulsion? Would she still find me as attractive if I were facing the prospect of enlisting as a common soldier? Would her father? Or did her parents, like my aunt, have ambitions and plans, and consider their daughter merely a valuable item to be bartered for alliance and advantage?

I tried to shake myself free of my dismal thoughts and forced myself to read to the end of her letter. There was, I realized, nothing new in it. She had sewn a sampler and baked two loaves of pumpkin bread from a new recipe. Did I like pumpkin bread? She so looked forward to cooking for me and our darling children as they came along. She had already begun to fill her hope chest. She enclosed a drawing she had done of our initials intertwining. It was what she was embroidering on the corners of the good linen pillowcases her grandmother had given to her for her future home. She hoped I liked it. She closed with the wish that I would think of her, and that I would send her some blue lace like I’d sent my sister if I had the opportunity to get to town.

It suddenly struck me that what I knew of Carsina was that she was pretty and well mannered, laughed easily, danced well, and got along excellently with my sister. In the short time I’d spent with my cousin, I’d gotten to know Epiny better than I knew Carsina. I suddenly wondered if Carsina might be as eccentric and strong-willed as Epiny, but more adept at covering it up. I wondered if Carsina would ever want to hold a seance or spend half the morning wandering about the house in her nightgown. I felt very unsettled as I folded up her letter. It was all Epiny’s fault. Before I had met her, I had assumed that women were rather like dogs or horses. If one came of good bloodlines and had been properly trained, one had only to let her know what was expected of her, and she would cheerfully carry it out. I don’t mean that I thought women were dumb animals; quite the contrary, I had believed them wonderfully sensitive and loving creatures. I simply did not understand why any woman would wish to change her station or do otherwise than her husband’s or father’s wishes. What could she stand to gain by it? If a true woman dreamed of a home and family and a respectable husband, did she not betray that dream and undermine it when she defied the natural authority of her father or husband? So it had always seemed to me. Now Epiny had shown me that women could be sly, self-indulgent, deceptive, and rebellious. She made me doubt the virtue of every woman. Did even my sisters conceal such wiles behind their bland gazes?