Danilo asked, “Who’s really going to be cadet-master? Di Asturien’s been retired for years. He served with my grandfather!”
Damon MacAnndra said with a careful look at the officer, “I heard it was going to be you-know-who. Captain Ardais.”
Julian said, “I hope you’re joking. Last night I was down in the armory and …” His voice fell to a whisper. Regis was too far away, but the lads crowded around him reacted with nervous, high-pitched giggles. Damon said, “That’s nothing. Listen, did you hear about my cousin Octavien Vallonde? Last year—”
“Chill it,” a strange cadet said, just loud enough for Regis to hear. “You know what happened to him for gossiping about a Comyn heir. Have you forgotten there’s one in the barracks now?”
Silence abruptly fell over the knot of cadets. They separated and began to drift around the barracks room. To Regis it was like a slap in the face. One minute they were laughing and joking, including him in their jokes; suddenly he was an outsider, a threat. It was worse because he had not really caught the drift of what they were saying.
He drifted toward Danilo, who was at least a familiar face. “What happens now?”
“I guess we wait for someone to tell us. I didn’t mean to attract attention and get you in trouble, Lord Regis.”
“You too, Dani?” That formal Lord Regis seemed a symbol of the distance they were all keeping. He managed to laugh. “Didn’t you just hear Lew Alton remind me very forcibly that nobody would call me Lord Regis down here?”
Dani gave him a quick, spontaneous grin. “Right.” He looked around the barracks room. It was bleak, cold and comfortless. A dozen hard, narrow camp-beds were ranged in two rows along the wall. All but one had been made up. Dauilo gestured to the only one still unchosen and said, “Most of us were down here last night and picked beds. I guess that one will have to be yours. It’s next to mine, anyhow.”
Regis shrugged. “They haven’t left me much choice.” It was, of course, the least desirable location, in a corner under a high window, which would probably be drafty. Well, it couldn’t be worse than the student dormitory at Nevarsin. Or colder.
The third-year cadet said, “Men, you can have the rest of the morning to make up your beds and put away your clothing. No food in barracks at any time; anything left lying on the floor will be confiscated.” He glanced around at the boys waiting quietly for his orders. He said, “Uniforms will be given out tomorrow. MacAnndra—”
Damon said, “Sir?”
“Get a haircut from the barber; you’re not at a dancing class. Hair below the collarbone is officially out of uniform. Your mother may have loved those curls, but the officers won’t.”
Damon turned as red as an apple and ducked his head.
Regis examined the bed, which was made of rough planking, with a straw mattress covered with coarse, clean ticking. Folded at the foot were a couple of thick dark gray blankets. They looked scratchy. The other lads were making up the beds with their own sheets. Regis began making a mental list of the things he should fetch from his grandfather’s rooms. It began with bed linens and a pillow. At the head of each bed was a narrow wooden shelf on which each cadet had already placed his personal possessions. At the foot of the bed was a rough wooden box, each lid scarred with knife-marks, intertwined initials and hacked or lightly burned-in crests, the marks of generations of restless boys. It struck Regis that years ago his father must have been a cadet in this very room, on a hard bed like this, his possessions reduced, whatever his rank or riches, to what he could keep on a narrow shelf a hand-span wide. Danilo was arranging on his shelf a plain wooden comb, a hairbrush, a battered cup and plate and a small box carved with silver, from which he reverently took the small cristoforo statue of the Bearer of Burdens, carrying his weight of the world’s sorrows.
Below the shelf were pegs for his sword and dagger. Danilo’s looked very old. Heirlooms in his family?