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9:24 Dragon
Bournshire, the Teyrnir of Gwaren, Ferelden
“One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Rest. Switch. Sequence Five; reds attacking, whites defend. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight.”
Alistair moved through the positions as Ser Derrick called out the cadence. He was in a different class now than he had been when he had first come to the monastery. Instead of the general exercise class for all the monastery wards between ten and fifteen or so, he’d been moved to a smaller class—eight boys, and one girl twice a week—all either thirteen or fourteen years old and in preliminary training for the Templar Order. If the Templar instructors stationed at the monastery and the Revered Mother approved, in a year or so they might be picked to move ahead as proper Templar recruits.
Alistair kept hoping against hope that someone would look at him and say, “What’s that oaf doing here? Forgets his prayers, can’t focus for the world, and he just doesn’t have the necessary hate of all magic! Away with him!” Unfortunately, so far, he hadn’t had much luck. He supposed he might have tried pretending he couldn’t do what they kept asking him to do, but despite his complete and total lack of interest in ever actually being a Templar one day, he couldn’t bring himself to lie in word or deed that he was incapable. If ambition or stupidity blinded them to seeing that he had a miserable temperament for it, well, he supposed it would be their fault for recruiting someone absolutely mediocre.
Besides, sometimes, whacking his fellow wards with a stick in the yard was the only thing that kept him sane.
There was something honest about swordplay he liked. Can’t reason with someone? Just go ahead and lop off their heads and have done with it. It was quick, easy, clean. Well, he said clean . . .
Across from him, Drey Trescott was sweating. Not so much with exertion as with nerves. About three weeks after they had both been moved to the new class, Ser Derrick had stopped drilling them with actual moves— “Left backhand, overhead, butterfly,” and so on. Instead, they were meant to memorize the sequences in the drill manual and be able to perform them when called out by number. There were formations and group combat strategies too, but Alistair thought those were for later.
He thought the idea was to make sure everyone in the class was integrating study and execution. Drey and a few of the others were well able to perform any stroke the Templars called for when it was identified individually by name, but as for performing a set sequence of different strokes, let alone remembering several different sequences? Either they weren’t doing the reading, or they were having memory trouble.
The consequences were satisfying, in a way. The looks on the faces of Drey and the other noble or knight-born students when Alistair had started outperforming them in combat had been entertaining, to say the least. Even now, watching Drey try to keep up his defense, out of time and gasping, second-guessing himself every moment, Alistair had to try fairly hard not to smile.
Several times, he probably could have hit Drey. The other boy’s drill sword and shield were only where they were meant to be about half the time. Somehow, it was more gratifying to check his blows, just twitching his sword where it would have thrust or landed, and watch Drey go redder and redder, swearing under his breath.
“What’s that?” Alistair asked quietly. “You know, I can’t actually hear you over all this racket. Do you want to speak up for the brothers and the Templars?”
Drey’s face contorted, and he spat something else very nasty. “Just because you know the drill. In a real fight, you’d have no chance, bastard!”
Alistair pursed his lips thoughtfully as he moved in time to Ser Derrick’s sequence. “I daresay you’re right,” he admitted. “Maker bless me, but I just never had that instinct for pulling the wings off of insects and kicking puppies that seems to be indicative of victory in a real fight. Then again . . .” He saw where Trescott was going to miss his step again. This time, he didn’t check his blow, and his wooden drill sword hit smartly across Trescott’s ribs. The blow jarred up Alistair’s hand. Drey howled, and Ser Derrick looked over. Alistair simply smiled.
“Defend yourself, Trescott!” the Templar barked. “If you were where you were supposed to be, he wouldn’t have caught you, would he? If we were practicing with steel, he’d have killed you! Fall out! Sequence Five! Defense! One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven! Eight!”
Drey tried to perform the moves as ordered, but as Ser Derrick called the time, he was more than a beat and a half behind, and, like Alistair had thought, he forgot two blocks in the sequence altogether and substituted others.
“Enough!” Derrick called finally. He was disgusted, arms folded over his breastplate. His lip curled. “You!” he barked at Alistair. Alistair stood to attention, shield raised, sword in the at-rest position. “Demonstrate Sequence Five for our friends here,” Ser Derrick ordered. “Defense. Call out the blocks as you go.”
And there was the downside to his new proficiency in the yard. Alistair rolled his shoulders back and tried not to meet the gazes of the other wards. They almost felt like sword thrusts themselves, there was so much resentment there. He had looked at the manual, had a better memory than some of them, maybe, but his technique wasn’t any stronger than theirs was, and they knew it. But the Templars kept holding him up as an example. Still, he couldn’t exactly refuse without the risk of even more trouble.
He sighed. “Center shield, left shield, overhead, right shield, right gut, guard, shield deflection, left leg, rest.” As he finished the sequence, he realized he had performed it half again as fast as Ser Derrick usually called it, and after saluting and bringing his sword back to the rest position, he scowled at himself.
Ser Derrick’s mustache twitched. “A bit sloppy in the execution, boy. More than a hair out of the recommended line on several of the stances, and you would have taken the blow on the edge of your blade once. Good way to ruin your sword. And the attack sequence?”
Alistair performed the counterpart, the part he had been practicing with Drey just now.
“Sequence Three! Attack!” Derrick barked.
Alistair shifted his stance and performed the requested sequence.
“Defense!”
When he was finished this time, Ser Derrick gestured for him to rejoin the line. “There,” he said to all the boys. “You see? Instant execution, on either side of the sequences. The boy knows the moves with his body, not just with his head. Now, he’s drilling them wrong, places, and that’s a whole other way he can get killed. In a few weeks, we’ll start new drills designed to tighten up that technique. Repetition. Over and over again on each technique a hundred times until you all get it right, and then a thousand more times until you never get it wrong. Then we’ll reintegrate with the sequences. Right now, though, the idea is to, from memory, have a response to every attack, to know, with your body and not just with your head, how to string your attacks together to form a devastating assault. Eight times out of ten, in a fight, that’s enough to assure you the victory. The other two times, you’re fighting someone who knows what they’re doing as well or better than you do. That’s when you’ve got to get creative. But we don’t teach you that for the next few years.”
Ser Derrick smiled and looked around for an answering smile from the boys. Alistair got it, if they didn’t—creativity wasn’t something you could really teach to anyone. But he was careful not to laugh. He figured he’d stood out more than enough for one morning.
When none of the others laughed either, Ser Derrick grunted and nodded at Alistair. “Take a cue and learn something from this one, will you? Right now, you’re a lot of undisciplined, lolloping gurguts. I’m ashamed of you. You expect to be Templars? Open your manuals. Practice. Not just when you’re with me. Or in six months, he’ll be cracking all your ribs—” gesturing at Alistair again— “and in a year, you’ll be slinking back home to mummy trying to explain why you washed out.”
Ser Derrick stared up and down the line, hands on his hips. Nobody said a word. Then he nodded.
“Sequence Two,” he told them. “Whites attacking, reds defend.” Alistair took up the guard position, looking across at Drey, standing with the others in white practice tunics, more off-white or even brown after a few falls and a lot of dust. “One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven . . .”
“Alistair, I haven’t seen your essay on Brother Kendon’s Heresies of Tevinter,” Brother Egbert said at the end of Friday’s religion class.
Alistair knew he was flushing. Here it came. Penance and a makeup assignment. “I’ve been really busy with the agriculture review for Sister Justine and the report on the Storm Age Clan Wars for Brother Arnald, Brother.”
Brother Egbert tapped his third finger against his desk. “I believe your agricultural and history reports aren’t due until next week,” he said. “Am I mistaken?”
Alistair tried a rueful smile. “No, Brother.”
“And when was your essay due to me?”
Alistair considered claiming he had simply forgotten. He was given over half a dozen assignments every week for various brothers and sisters at the monastery, after all. Most people did forget a couple every now and then. Instead, he bowed. “Tuesday, Brother,” he confessed. “I just . . . geometry, politics, and law are so much more interesting than Chantry tradition! I even prefer astronomy, history, and poetry.” He couldn’t help making a face on this last word.
“I sit down to work on your religion assignments, and suddenly I’m a moron.” He looked Brother Egbert in the eye and shrugged. “More of a moron than usual, I mean. Mind just goes out to gather daisies. I’m drawing stick figures in the margins, throwing draft after useless draft away—horrible waste of parchment . . .” he sighed. “I hate turning in the garbage I come up with, and I’m liable to work on anything before your assignments. But that’s no excuse. I apologize. I’ll accept whatever consequences you think are necessary.”
He waited. Brother Egbert had the strangest look on his face. He tapped his fingers on the desk again, in a slightly different rhythm. Then he said, “I’ll give you until Monday to turn in the essay, Alistair. I won’t excuse you the work merely because you find it uninteresting and are unsatisfied with the products of what you present as restless, halfhearted efforts. We are all of us called upon, from time to time, to undertake tasks that we do not care for. It is through persevering through tasks we find unpleasant that we develop patience, stamina, and work ethic—even if we don’t happen to be considering so important a subject as the tenets of our faith at the time.” He raised an eyebrow and tilted his head. Alistair acknowledged the thrust with an expression. To him, Chantry tradition just didn’t seem so important, but he supposed Brother Egbert was a monk. It was only natural he should find the teachings of the Chantry the most important subject in existence.
“Consider a cross-disciplinary approach,” Brother Egbert continued. “It’s generally a domain of higher scholarship, but I think it might assist you. You assert some interest in your other subjects that you don’t feel in mine, but Chantry tradition is something that relates very well to other fields. Military history, for example, or art, or literature. All scholarship is, of course, part of an ongoing conversation. If you can relate the things you study in my course to other things you are learning in the work you produce for me, you may not only find that you are able to get through your assignments more easily, but you may in fact produce work on a much higher level.”
He opened a drawer of his desk and fished out a scrap of parchment. “Now where’s that pen?” he muttered.
Alistair cleared his throat and gestured to the goose feather quill sitting on the edge of the desk. Brother Egbert picked it up, dipped it into his ink pot, and scratched out a few lines. “These,” he said, “are a few books in our library that consider their topics from a cross-disciplinary approach. Brother Leon’s assessment of sacred art as related to Empire politics, Sister Dorina’s thesis on the Canticle of Threnodies as compared to accounts in a few Tevene epics and elven traditions—I forget which. Nothing very material to your assignment, so as to reduce the temptation of plagiarism—” he smiled— “but they should give you some idea of the possibilities.”
Alistair stared. “So . . . no penance or prayers of contrition?” he asked. It seemed to him to be the most material concern.
Brother Egbert laughed. “Boy, if you don’t believe I’m sending you to do a penance, you have some growing up to do. But I won’t be writing a report to Mother Amity or giving you any makeup assignments at this time, no. Just get me the essay by Monday.”
“A much more complicated and involved piece of work, if I can possibly manage it,” Alistair summarized.
Brother Egbert raised an eyebrow again and smiled.
Alistair hazarded a smile back. “I guess it is a penance of sorts,” he admitted. “Not exactly the sort I’m used to.” In fact, Brother Egbert’s cross-disciplinary approach had its appeal to Alistair, though he had no doubt there were several dozen ways he could get it wrong, and studying so he would have a better chance of getting it right in just three days would be a bit of a pinch, especially considering he did actually still have to complete the agricultural review and the report on the clan wars before the middle of next week. That, however, was really no more than he deserved. He did have to wonder, though, how many of the other students, on confessing they had totally failed to complete an assignment, would have been given an extension to complete a more interesting one instead of a reprimand; a punishment; and additional, boring work. Developing patience, stamina, and work ethic, and all that.
“Thank you, Brother Egbert,” he said. After all, it was general wisdom not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“Oh, away with you, boy,” the brother said, waving his pen. Some ink flew off the end and landed on Alistair’s tunic. “It’s fatiguing to be thanked for my magnanimity with you feckless students.”
But he was smiling again, and Alistair took his leave.
Alistair walked into the dormitory to find a parcel on his bed once again.
Jexal looked up from his own bed as he passed, where he was huddled at the top, near to the small oil lamp on the table between his place and Anse’s. His nose was just a few centimeters away from his book. Alistair at first thought it was an agricultural assignment, but on closer examination, he observed the lurid image of a scantily clad woman with a nose ring and a cutlass on the cover and took it to be a penny dreadful instead.
Alistair wondered for a moment how Jexal had managed to smuggle the book in, then determined there was no way he would ever be told even if he asked. Jexal would share his book, if the pleasure were bought with hoarded desserts from supper or chore rotation swaps, but while he could sell it, he would not reveal his source.
Alistair turned back to his own bunk. “Someone likes you,” Jexal remarked, a bit of envy and resentment in his voice. “Must be the fourth set of new clothes you’ve had this year, and you aren’t growing that fast.”
Alistair, sitting down on his bed, saw that the parcel had been opened before he had arrived. He supposed it might have been worse. Jexal snooped, but he wasn’t a thief or a vandal. A few times after Alistair had first arrived, some of the other wards had got into his things. Not all of them had been particularly kind.
Alistair pulled out the tunic and breeches inside the parcel, sighing. Then he rose, gathering up the clothes with him.
They had to be dealt with, but he wasn’t particularly keen to discuss the subject with Jexal. So instead, he opened on another. “Will you let me take a look at that novel once you’ve finished?” he asked. “I’ll trade my chapel duty this week for your work in the garden if you want.”
“The sisters don’t like the mage-spawn lighting candles and setting out prayer books in the chapel,” Jexal answered noncommittally.
“There are maybe two of them out of the whole lot that object,” Alistair pointed out. “And isn’t it worth it just to tweak their stuck-up noses? Anyway, it’s not like you’re a mage yourself, probably. They’d have to have assigned you chapel duty sometime or other.”
“You would think,” Jexal muttered. He thought the offer over. Chapel duty—lighting and snuffing the candles, laying out copies of the sermon or the Chant or the hymnal and putting them away again, and sweeping up any litter left on the floor after prayers—was one of the easiest jobs assigned to wards on the chore rotation, and coveted trading stock.
For some reason or other, possibly related to his getting one or two more new suits a year than the other wards, Alistair was in possession of desirable chores to trade just slightly more often than most. He did what he could to correct the inequity on his own, but he could never be sure if he was more popular or more resented for it. Trading cushy jobs like Chapel duty for harder, dirtier work for nothing looked too much like doing favors, and he had learned early on that that didn’t go over well with the other wards. On the other hand, he hadn’t yet learned to pretend he actually enjoyed the harder work. Other wards excelled in the intricacies of telling and sustaining barefaced lies. Alistair had never mastered them. So, he traded jobs he received more often than he ought for other luxuries in the ward. But he supposed even being able to trade more frequently than the others could be its own kind of irritant.
Still, today, Jexal accepted the trade. “Deal,” he said. Alistair, shifting his armful over to his left side, extended hands to shake, and they sealed the bargain.
Jexal didn’t ask him what he was doing as he left, returning to his book instead, and Alistair was grateful for it. He didn’t particularly want to explain.
Alistair hadn’t actually been to Mother Amity’s office in several months. When he had first arrived at the Bournshire monastery, it had seemed almost like a separate classroom to him, he had been called in so frequently. Things had settled down since then. Alistair wouldn’t say he was happy and reconciled to his new home, to paraphrase the way she had often put it, but he was adjusted. He had learned to cope. For the most part.
He turned off into her antechamber, a square, spare room with a few bare benches situated around it. There was a tapestry with some embroidered sayings of Divine Galatea and a double-sided hearth opening into the office on the other side. There was rarely a fire in it.
Alistair crossed the empty room, went through the short corridor, and knocked on the Revered Mother’s door frame. Her voice came through the door. “Yes?”
Alistair opened the door and stopped. He had clearly come in the middle of a meeting. Mother Amity was in conference with Brother Lorcan, the groundskeeper; Sister Finna, who kept the accounts; Ser Nils; and Sister Elizabet, who ran education for the monastery wards as well as teaching herself.
They all looked at him with expressions ranging from mild interest to annoyance. “Alistair, child,” the Revered Mother said. “What is it?”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Alistair said. “I can come back later.”
“We’re just having our monthly meeting to discuss the wellbeing of the monastery. But if you have anything urgent to discuss with me—”
Brother Lorcan frowned, and Sister Elizabet’s eyes went all narrow, and an uncomfortable lump rose in Alistair’s throat. Mother Amity’s offer to postpone a regularly scheduled meeting with the most senior residents at the monastery at Alistair’s leisure was a level of consideration and deference he was fairly sure no other lowly ward ever received.
He bowed low. “My thanks, Revered Mother. It isn’t urgent. I’ll wait outside in the antechamber.”
“Do,” Mother Amity encouraged him. “We should be finished here ere too long.”
Alistair couldn’t help worrying they would be finished faster because he was waiting. He bowed again, turned around, and left, closing the door behind him and going to sit on a bench, but he heard Ser Nils’s voice through the empty hearth anyway—somewhat muffled but still distinct.
“A good boy, Alistair. A bit high-strung when he arrived here, perhaps. Reminds me of a thoroughbred colt I trained once, blighted good Forder stallion—nervous, twitchy, temperamental—but ah, once I broke him, I never had a better horse . . .”
There were murmurs of agreement, and then they started talking about allocation of coin for the various divisions of ministry at the monastery, and Alistair allowed the ongoing meeting to fade to the background.
Alistair stared at the bundle of clothes in his arms. His fingers clenched around them. He hadn’t been able to tell at first, but by now, he was almost certain that the Revered Mother at least had some idea of who his father was, and that the other brothers, sisters, and Templars at monastery, guided by Mother Amity’s treatment of him, were conscious both that whatever noble blood he possessed was of particular importance and that he was still of high interest to the Arl of Redcliffe. Even if he had been sent away.
He kicked at the floor as though he really were Ser Nils’s thoroughbred colt. That’s what they all thought of him, he knew. Not just the knight captain. High-bred. Sensitive. Both in need of and deserving special treatment. Extra uniforms, the best chore assignments, notice and consideration in his studies, and a job that would keep him close to the Chantry when he grew up.
Because of my father, and the man that raised me. Not for anything I’ve done.
Really, Alistair didn’t understand it. Eamon had always made it abundantly clear that Alistair was a bastard and a commoner; the Lady Isolde, in the little less than a year that she’d had, that anything anyone gave him was more than he deserved. But his whole life, there’d been that second message, veiled—
You’re a bastard and a commoner. Be grateful for what you’ve got, and don’t expect anything, but—
But.
Honestly, Alistair could have done without that but. If he was going to be a bastard and a commoner, he’d just as soon they all let him get on with it. Let him sink or swim on his own merits and treat him just the same as every other nobody in Ferelden. It wasn’t as if his father had ever taken special interest. Sometimes it was hard for Alistair to believe he had once thought Eamon a neglectful parent.
Behind him, the sound of the door to Mother Amity’s office reopening broke Alistair out of his reflections—or broodings, more like. One by one, Ser Nils, Sister Elizabet, Brother Lorcan, and Sister Finna passed out of the office. They smiled at him as they passed—benevolent, well-meaning smiles of total condescension.
Alistair nodded at each, took a deep breath, gathered his parcel up again, and stood. Then he walked through the door into Mother Amity’s office again.
Except for there being only one door into the room, Alistair had never understood why someone had decided this should be the Revered Mother’s office and the outer room the antechamber. There were several windows in the antechamber, but only two narrow ones into the office. The room was much darker, especially with Mother Amity’s particular distaste for hearths or candlelight. She had a single candelabra standing on her desk, but it didn’t do much more than cast shadows around on her dusty bookcases and piled-up paperwork. Alistair didn’t believe it would be much use in reading the books or writing letters.
Alistair took a moment to adjust to the dimness, then, greeting the Revered Mother again with a bow, he crossed over to her desk and placed the bundle of clothes on top.
Mother Amity peered at the parcel for a moment, feeling the fabric within. “What’s this?” she asked. “Don’t they fit?”
“They don’t have to,” he answered. “My shirt and breeches now fit fine. I’m grateful, Mother Amity, but I think this suit had better be given to one of the other wards.”
Mother Amity seemed confused. “But wouldn’t you rather have something new?”
“Not until you would usually give a ward a set of new clothes, please,” Alistair told her. “When I’ve outgrown the set I have, passed to another class, at Satinalia, or on Summerday.”
Mother Amity pursed her lips. She looked at him, squinting as she did so, hesitating.
Alistair hesitated too. “If you have an extra allowance for me from Arl Eamon or—or from elsewhere, I—I’m not ungrateful, but I’d rather have it held against my departure from the monastery, or when I come of age. I can do fine with just what the other wards receive, and I—and I think it would help with harmony with them all. If you’re giving me the presents out of your own kindness and generosity—well, you can save a spare uniform from time to time and have more thanks from me if you stopped.”
The Revered Mother seemed struck by this. “Have you been having problems with the other wards, child? I was under the impression you were reconciled to our little community.”
Alistair shook his head. “The worst of the trouble’s stopped, Revered Mother. But the other wards can’t help looking sideways at a fellow with a new suit just when theirs are being sent out for mending or a new hem for the fourth time, can they? You don’t think it might be a—” fumbling for the words that might carry his point— “a temptation they don’t need?”
Mother Amity’s expression softened. “You may be correct, and it shows wisdom and a generous spirit for you to consider it, child.”
Alistair made a face at the praise. “Revered Mother—” he said, haltingly, “it isn’t just the clothes. Do you—do you think you could possibly talk with the Templars, with all the brothers and sisters? I—everyone’s been kind, far kinder than I deserve, probably, and I—people notice it,” he finished lamely. “I don’t want—that is, I want to make my own way, if I may. The arl always told me I would need to, and I really think it’s better.” He looked hard at Mother Amity through the dimness of the room, really worse than the dark for making her out.
She was quiet for a moment. “I believe I understand your feelings,” she said, “and they do you credit. I think you are mistaken in believing yourself so generally singled out above your deserts, but I will honor your request and speak to your instructors. I cannot promise a change, but if we can guard against envy in the other children in our care, it is meet for us to do so.
“But Alistair,” she added, holding up a hand when he would have thanked her— “you must learn to give some allowance to what is due you. You respect your station and position in life, and that is well. I have had many children under my care in similar circumstances to yours who exhibited much less self-awareness. I think you may know one or two.”
Alistair did—a girl a few years older than he was, almost ready to leave the monastery’s wards, and another boy a few years younger. The girl was the daughter of a bann, the boy the grandnephew of an arlessa. Both of them made a point of dressing in better clothes, occasionally dining separately from the rest of the wards, and promising advantages to small groups of hangers-on. There always were groups of hangers-on, but most of the rest of the wards viewed the noble bastards with contempt.
“But your noble heritage—for noble heritage you undoubtedly have, as I see you yourself are aware, though we name no names—is also worthy of some respect,” the Revered Mother concluded. “You yourself may be nothing; we must honor who you are come from. You cannot make it otherwise, entreat how you will, nor is it necessarily wise for you to attempt it. Your unique circumstances may, after all, enable you to be of some use to others less fortunate, to do some good in the world someday. And your line, Alistair, though corrupt, may have given you other advantages in person and understanding that we do not take for granted. Nobles, after all, rose to their position for a reason. They are blessed by the Maker, and these blessings may sometimes be said to fall even to their seed cast alongside the path.”
So, in other words, even though you’re a nobody, Alistair, Alistair translated in his head, we’re going to treat you like Somebody because your father won a war and got confirmed on the throne of Ferelden. And even though you’re an unfortunate bastard half-breed, you’re probably actually a little better than everyone else anyway because your father won a war and got confirmed on the throne of Ferelden.
He clenched his fists. “Thank you for your time, Mother,” he managed. Barely, true, but he did manage it.
Mother Amity gave him a gracious wave of her hand. “Not at all, child. Have a pleasant evening.”
Alistair let himself out of her office and started back toward the dormitory. The light was starting to go, and he had a lot of studying to do.