“So, Master Washell, send out for the extra chairs.”
This task was customarily done by the first-term apprentices, who scurried out and rattled back in, each carrying a chair which they set in the spaces the journeymen made at their tables. Twelve!
Now, who would be seated in them in the next few minutes.”? There were nineteen in the final term of their apprenticeship. All of them managed to look calm and indifferent, as befitted trained harpers.
It was also the custom for those who walked to be escorted ritually from their lowly apprentice bench to a chair at the journeymen’s tables.
Gennell took a list from his pocket and pretended to have trouble reading it.
“Journeyman Kailey.”
The former apprentice jumped to his feet, and a grinning journeyman instructor immediately strode across the room during the applause. Then everyone had the beat and began the traditional singsong chant: “Walk, Kailey, walk. It’s time to go ahead. Walk, Kailey, walk. Into your new life. Walk, Kailey, walk.”
“You’ll be going to Wide Bay Hold in Keroon,” Gennell said, his voice rising easily above the chanting and the clapping.
And so it went for the next ten as well, ending with the popular Evenek who had two journeymen jostling each other good-naturedly to do the honours. Evenek’s lyrical tenor voice had often been matched with Merelan in duets, and now she clapped loudly at the announcement of his assignment to Telgar Hold, a prestigious posting.
That left one chair – and eight more possible journeymen.
Gennell waited until Evenek was seated and had been congratulated by those around him.
“To be a harper requires many talents, as you all know. Some of us are endowed – unfairly -‘ he put in, grinning charmingly around, “with more than a sufficient share.”
Robinton looked over those remaining at the fourth-term tables.
Really, Kailey and Evenek had been the top men: none of the others were “unfairly’ talented.
“However, when the fundamentals of our craft have been well and truly learned, I insist that we hold no one back from the rank they are entitled to by knowledge and ability and, in this case, rare talent.”
The room was buzzing: everyone trying to decide who the lucky one was. The fourth-termers were just as puzzled.
“Journeyman Shonagar, you claimed this right when you left the Harper Hall two Turns ago. Exercise it.”
Every head turned to watch Shonagar rise and, with the wicked half-grin for which he was well known, walk with measured step down the aisle to the third-term table.
When Shonagar stopped by him, Robinton felt paralyzed. His mouth dropped and his eyes nearly bugged out.
“Shut your mouth, pull your eyes in, and get up,” Shonagar muttered in an undertone. “That gets you even, the only way you could.” Even as he spoke to Robinton, Shonagar’s grin widened at the surprise and shock which had hushed the hall.
Robinton was still trying to assimilate what he’d just heard – his name announced as journeyman – when Shonagar plunged a hand under his arm and, with a heave, got Robinton to his feet. “Wallet Walk, Robinton!” With that, Shonagar turned him and started propelling him to the journeymen’s table. “Walk, Robinton, walk.”
“And none too soon,” Master Washell shouted, jumping to his feet and smacking his big hands together over his head, urging people to join him. Bosler stood, clapping in rhythm with the reluctant journeyman’s stride. Betrice was up, as were the other Masters at the table, Ogolly and Severeid, and the kitchen workers crowded in at the serving doors, adding their noise to the general furore. The only two not on their feet were Robinton’s parents: his mother was weeping, and his father seemed to be too stunned and stony-faced to move. Robinton knew then, as Shonagar had told him, that he had got back at his father in the only decent way he could – by
success.
“Walk, Robinton, walk.”
Unashamed of the tears streaming down his face and swallowing the lump in his throat, Robinton walked the tables, bearing himself as proudly as he could despite the tendency of his knees to wobble.
Still steering him, Shonagar pushed him past the head table.