All the time, she had been vaguely aware of them lurching around the room, one clinging to the other’s back, smashing furniture. Harn had rammed Sheth against a wall, but hadn’t loosened his grip. At last, the Knorth Kendar had tangled his feet in a welter of ruined shirts and pitched forward headfirst.
“That’s how it was,” the Commandant said, breathing hard. Jame had to think for a moment to remember what he was talking about. Oh, yes. “I don’t think Harn even knew that I was there. That one’s life wasn’t worth Hallick Hard-hand’s, nor worth much of anything as far as I could tell.”
“I agree, Ran. But that foul coat . . . ”
“You’ve settled for that, I should think.” He eyed the garment ripped almost seam to seam by her claws.
“Not quite, Ran.”
She rose from the bed and nudged it gingerly with her foot. It flapped over, like something that should have bones but didn’t. There were stains on the lining, dark red on peacock blue, soaking through to the weave. At first they looked random. Then one could discern crude features—a gaping mouth, running nose, bloody eyes. Leering.
“Greshan,” said the Commandant.
“And this is his death banner. All these years, his blood has trapped his soul in it.”
The randon looked up sharply. “I didn’t realize that that was possible.” A corner of his mouth twisted. “What an odd life you must lead, to know such a thing.”
“Ran, believe me, whatever my failings at Tentir, about some things I know considerably more than I find comfortable.”
“So. Presumably it possessed that wretched boy and might have you, if you had claimed it. What would you have done with it, Lordan?”
Jame didn’t have to think. “Burn it. Here. Now.”
The Commandant piled kindling on the cold hearth, some of it from the smashed chest that had held the coat, and added the soiled underclothes as tinder.
“Here.” Torisen emerged from the shadows and offered the snap-wick candle.
“Tori! How long have you been here?”
“Long enough to understand a number of things better.”
“Yes, but why are you here?”
“The Commandant invited me to see a slice of cadet life. Is Tentir always this confusing?”
“It comes and goes.”
“Also I wanted to apologize. I really thought that you had flayed that cadet. Instead, now I’ve burned him alive.”
“Vant is dead?”
“I sincerely hope so.”
“No doubt someone will explain that to me later,” said the Commandant, and snapped the wick alight.
The tinder caught. As he tried to throw the coat on it, however, it wrapped its arms around him. He and Tori pried it loose. It fell writhing on the flames. The stitches seethed into a face, mouth agape where the blood had seeped through.
“You!” it spat at Torisen. “Beware your own victims, Highlord.”
Torisen drew back. “I don’t understand you.”
“Think, and you will. The dead know what concerns the dead.”
The arms tried to rise, but thin threads entwined them like a net and drew them back, down into flames burning gold, cerulean, and chartreuse.
The heat drove the watchers back. The fire roared up once with a shriek, then sank to a sullen hissing of embers and the stink of burnt hair.
Sheth was breathing hard, but spoke steadily. “I thought that he was going to escape. What, pray tell, were those threads that pulled him back?”
“Every lordan for generations has added a strand of his hair to the weave. I’m the first and the last not to do so. It was a hair-loom, not just an heirloom. Some fragments of their souls were trapped in it too.”
She regarded her brother, frowning. That was the second time Greshan had spoken of unspecified unburnt dead. Were they never to be free of them?
Then she flinched. Suddenly into her mind had come a drawling voice, as clearly as it struck Jorin’s ears: “A prime pelt on this hunting cat. I reckon it’s wasted where it is.”
“Fash has Jorin. I’ve got to go.”
“Wait. Take these.” Tori handed her two scarves, one of which she recognized with surprise as Timmon’s. “I locked him in the Knorth kitchen—poetic justice, as it turns out.
She hastily donned her scarf, then stuffed the other one and the two flags into her coat, creating considerably more of a bosom than she normally sported, and a lumpy one at that.
When she was gone, Torisen and Sheth looked at each other.
“I seem to have saddled you with a whirlwind,” the Highlord remarked. “By the way, did you know that most of your student body appears to be rioting in the square?”
“Ah, children. They will have their war, one way or another. I see that I will have to talk to their so-called leaders. At least we know what your sister has been doing. Now, if you please, tell me about that wretched boy Vant.”
Rounding a corner on the stair, Jame ran head-on into Rue.
“Oh, good,” said the cadet, helping her up and dusting her off with the air of having regained a treasured if elusive possession. “You have your scarf back. Now you can take over again.”
“Where is everyone? Not squabbling in the square, I hope.”
“The Edirr started it. You know how they like to prance around taunting people. Well, the Coman took the bait. Their master-ten stomped one of the Edirr mice flat, which upset its mistress, and your friend Gari let loose all the mice’s fleas, which upset everyone. The next thing we know, both sides are screaming for their allies.”
“To battle fleas?”
“Oh, Gari pulled ’em off again, but not before he’d help to start a general melee.”
“So besides the Edirr and Coman, that’s the Caineron, Randir, Ardeth, and Jaran playing in the mud.”
“Most of ’em, anyway. Now Timmon has gone missing.”
“Huh. What about our people?”
“Brier sent the Brandan back to guard their own barracks—honestly, that Berrimint can’t think of anything for herself—and left a token garrison below to hold our quarters. She’s using the confusion to raid the Randir to search for their flag, assuming it isn’t with master-ten Reef.”
“And where is she?” Jame was beginning to feel dizzy. None of their plans for the war had encompassed anything like the chaos that had in fact ensued. Maybe that in itself was a good lesson to learn about the whole experience.
“Reef is in the Caineron barracks, I think. They say that she’s pretty much taken over the campaign.”
“Don’t tell me that Gorbel is locked in his room too.”
Rue blinked. “Why should he be?”
“Precedent.”
“Well, I hear that he is feeling poorly—too long without dwar sleep after having a bear fall on him, y’know.”
“All right. Follow Brier and tell her that I’ve gone to the Caineron . . . ”
“The Caineron!”
“ . . . to get back my cat, assuming that’s where he is, before Fash turns him into a hearth rug. Now run!”
Reaching Gorbel’s room without encountering her own people downstairs or the mob in the square involved climbing out the attic smoke hole, crossing the roofs to the towering Caineron barracks, and then climbing up to one of Gorbel’s shuttered windows.
No one below noticed. From the uproar, it sounded as if all were too busy having a good time wrestling in the mud, with the occasional flash of a thrown icicle.
Jame hooked her claws in the window frame, swung back, and crashed feet first through the slats.
“Well, that was a grand entrance,” remarked Gorbel, without turning around.
The Caineron Lordan huddled alone like a toad by the fire wearing a sumptuous dressing gown, this time with clothes on underneath. His house flag was wrapped around his legs. Sprawling across his knees, Twizzle whuffled a greeting.