Reitha fairly dragged Jai to the pens, where crayl were being sold for domestic use. I liked crayl. They were wonderful beasts of burden and tireless mounts, and if trained well they were also vicious and formidable fighters. Native to the surface, they were nevertheless well adapted to life underground. They spent Red Tide Season sheltering from the endless day in the subsurface cave networks that riddled Callespa, only emerging onto the surface when the nights began in Ebb Season.
Reitha was an animal-lover; it went with her job. She petted the crayl in the pens, and they turned their muzzles to nose her hand. I stood by her and joined in. She offered me a smile. I knew she valued these moments when she felt we made a connection, however small. Like Jai, she was sensitive, and she could see how I felt about my only son being taken by another woman, no matter how well I tried to hide it. She wanted me to like her, and I did like her, but nothing was going to erase that faint primal jealousy.
I wasn't an animal person by nature, but it gave me a faint thrill to touch them. They were several times my weight and easily capable of ripping me apart. Shaggy four-legged beasts, high as my shoulder but able to rear up to twice that height. Retractable claws like knives. Broad, flat muzzles with wide nostrils, and small eyes buried under fringes of thick fur. The merchant nearby watched us closely, while pretending not to. He had already decided we weren't going to buy, so now we were just a nuisance.
'She appreciates them, I can tell,' Jai said to Reitha. 'She has an attraction to anything hairy and brutish.'
Reitha gasped, appalled at his cheek. She brought out a wicked streak in him which I was rather fond of. I aimed to clip him but he dodged away, laughing. 'And slow, too! What's the Cadre coming to?'
'You're very cocky for someone who can still be beaten up by his mother,' Reitha said, swatting his arm.
'She'd never hit me. I'm Ledo's property. It's more than she's worth to damage this chassis.'
I wasn't rising to it any more; I was too preoccupied with the animals. Jai gave up teasing, content with a victory.
'What do you like about them?' Reitha asked me, genuine interest in her tone.
I looked over at her. Small, even features, brown hair, dusky skin unlined by age or care. Intelligence in her eyes. I always admired her daring, her determination to work on the surface no matter what the risks. It had warmed me to her immediately.
'I like that they're survivors,' I replied, after a moment's thought. 'Not too many animals made it through when the tribes went underground. But these held on. They're tough. Adaptable.' I thumbed at the ceiling of the cavern, indicating what was beyond. 'I like that they can live up there.'
She smiled again, wider this time, and went back to petting a crayl that was butting her arm.
I left them alone and joined Rynn, who was casting a critical eye over a rack of swords on another stall. He had one out and was turning it over in his hand.
'That's a good choice! All of these are forged from the finest metals, mined near the surface!' the stall-holder was enthusing. He was young, and hadn't yet learned to spot a disinterested customer. He'd noticed the Cadre emblem on Rynn's shoulder and was desperate for the prestige of selling a blade to him. 'You can't get this kind of thing down below! You could plunge this into a Craggen's shoulder and it wouldn't break!'
Rynn put the sword back and turned to me without even acknowledging the seller's furious efforts.
'Are we going?' he asked. Impatient to get on, as ever. He wouldn't relax until we arrived at the hotel.
'Give them a while,' I said, taking his arm and leading him away.
'I'll sell it to you for half price!' the stall-holder shouted after us, flailing now.
'It'd still be too expensive,' Rynn murmured under his breath.
The lift ride had made him cranky. I found him adorable when he was in a grump, but I'd long since learned not to show it. It somewhat undermined his gravitas when his wife told him how cute he was when he was angry.
We walked idly around the stalls, looking at this and that.
'You think he's happy?' Rynn asked suddenly.
'With her? I think he's in love.'
'I mean, at the school.'
I thought about that for a moment. I knew the answer, of course; but I had to choose my words.
'He did it for you, you know,' I said eventually.
A pause. His eyes roved, like they always did when he was on the spot. He wasn't comfortable talking about things like this. 'I know,' he said.
It was only two words, but it was a momentous admission from him. A chink in the armour. I saw at that moment a chance, no matter how slim, to change his mind. I didn't want our son at that school. But by the time I'd realised that, he was already there. And I couldn't go against both my husband's wishes and my son's. Jai would protest till his dying hour that he wanted to be an officer in the Eskaran Army, and he'd hate me for robbing him of the chance.
But all three of us knew it was not what he really wanted, and all three of us knew why he was doing it.
We stopped and bought enamelled cups of liquor, then sat on a low table outside the stall. Rynn was still inwardly squirming. The cavern bustled with life. We were surrounded by the smells of cooking and cakes and the jostle of sellers and buyers and animals. But amidst all that, we were alone, in a little island to ourselves.
'Jai is strong,' I said slowly. 'But not in the way you think of strength. He's driven, he's ambitious, and he's got talent. If we give him his head, he'll be a great engineer, or an architect, or an inventor. He'll be a great man.' I leaned across the table and wrapped both my hands around one of his. 'I can see that. His tutors see that too. But he doesn't. He's too busy trying to please you.'
Rynn sipped the liquor, thought about that for a time. The struggle in him was plain in the frown on his face. He was a simple man, and I wouldn't have had him any other way. He wouldn't have been the man I married without his temper, his gruffness, his unwillingness to socialise and the fact that he'd never danced with me since our wedding. But he had stubborn cut deep into his bones, and getting him to reverse a decision once it was made was like trying to divert an ocean.
'It was his idea,' Rynn said. 'The school.'
'Of course it was. He wanted to prove himself. He was fourteen years old, and he wanted to get your attention. You'd barely said one word of encouragement to him since he failed the Cadre tests.'
'You're making this my fault,' he said.
'No, it's my fault too,' I said. 'But it is a fault.'
'He won't back out now.'
'He won't do it because he thinks it'll be a worse failure in your eyes than if he'd never started. Make him feel it's okay and he will.'
'I don't want him to,' Rynn murmured, clutching his thick beard. It was something he often did when agitated.
'I know,' I said, quietly. 'You want a son who's a warrior. Someone feared and revered: Cadre, like us. But Jai isn't a warrior and he never will be, no matter how hard he tries to make himself one.'
Rynn was silent for a long while, but I was used to that. I knew better than to bombard him with further pleas. It would only make him annoyed.
'How can I make him believe I don't mind him leaving the school, when I do?' he said eventually.
And there was the problem we'd never be able to get over. Rynn was honest: utterly, entirely straight down the line. He was literally incapable of deception. He didn't understand how it worked. Jai would see through him unless Rynn absolutely believed in pulling Jai out of that school. And he just didn't.
'Try,' I asked. 'For him.'
'I'll try,' he promised, and he would try; but right then we both knew he'd fail. Later, we ambled through a sea of golden lichen stalks, our hotel behind us, a ridged brown dome rising among a forest of dwarf mycora. The mycora this close to the surface grew twenty or thirty spans high, which was still tiny compared to the monsters that grew in the sunlight. Some sprouted shelf-like discs and had flat or inverted tops; some had rounded, helmet-like ends and were brightly coloured. Some were like enormous anemones; others hung in translucent veils. The variety was endless.