Chương 12

Two days after the enrolment ceremony, Cal left the infirmary and made for Dorr's office, where the oath would be administered. The registry had sent an escort anyway, one bored junior warden, walking him across two courts through a thin morning drizzle. Today, he was dressed in his own clothes for the first time in a fortnight — laundered, mended at the side where Harl's point had gone in, the repair done in thread that almost matched.

Earlier, when he stepped into the corridor, he found the space beside the door where guards had stood since his first conscious morning was simply empty. Nobody had been assigned to watch him sleep tonight. It was a strange thing to notice, and a stranger thing to miss for half a second before good sense caught up. A few minutes later, they arrived at the registrar's office. There had apparently been, at one point in history, a ceremony for it — a hall, witnesses, some business with banners.

Dorr explained this while unlocking a shallow wooden case, in the tone of a man describing a disease that had been successfully eradicated.

"The old form assumed the retainer was a household knight with a lineage to recite. The registry finds the short form binds identically and wastes less of the morning." Inside the case, set into a bed of dark felt, lay a palm-sized plate of grey stone.

"A warrant-copy," Dorr said.

"Cut from the charter-stone when the registry was founded. It is tradition to place your hand on it when you answer." Clearing his throat, the registrar retrieved and read aloud the oath from a card. The words were short enough that John could weigh each one as it went past. To preserve the life, the person, and the lawful confidence of Elara Vey, enrolled student, while within the chartered district. To keep the charter's peace.

To stand as her household in this place, and answer for his conduct as her surety, until release, expulsion, or the end of her enrolment.

"Your name, and your answer." The stone was cold under his palm, smooth as the lip of a well. John gave the only name the paperwork had ever contained and felt the small, familiar dishonesty settle into place alongside all the others, one more borrowed thing in a borrowed life.

"Cal Rook. I do." The registrar's pen moved. That was the whole of it. No flare, no tone of bells. A man walked into the office as a detained witness and walked to the chair by the window as a sworn retainer, and the entire transformation had occupied a clerk for perhaps four seconds. John read the entered copy while Dorr warmed wax.

"There's no obedience clause."

"There is not."

"Deliberate?"

"Entirely." Dorr pressed the seal and set the sheet aside to cool.

"A retainer is a member of the student's household, Master Rook. Not the household's property. The oath binds you to her life, her person, and her lawful confidence — and to the charter above all three. It does not bind you to her instructions. A student who requires someone to fetch and carry may hire someone to fetch and carry." He aligned the papers with one finger.

"The framers understood that a guard sworn to obedience is only as useful as his principal's worst idea. If her instruction and her safety ever part company, the oath has already told you which one you serve." Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Someone, John thought, had written that clause perhaps after watching a great many nobles order a great many guards to do a great many stupid things.

He felt an abstract fondness for the framers, whoever they had been. He noted, too, the word lawful sitting quietly in front of confidence, doing unadvertised work, and decided this was not the office in which to ask what became of the other kind. Then came the kit, produced from a second case.

"Your personal effects," Dorr stated as he laid before John a sash of plain grey wool, tightly woven, unornamented. The registrar would go on to explain that this was the mark of a retainer inside the walls, to be worn whenever he was on duty in public. John was also given a small bronze badge, bearing a stamped numeral: the residence number of Elara's quarters.

Having read the books and easily remembering that tidbit of lore, he knew before Dorr could state it that the badge did double duty of declaring his rank as a Martial Warrior as certified by the Guild. A Silver-rank retainer wears silver. The wardens read it at a glance, and so will everyone else. There are students here whose retainers outrank half the watch; there is no sense making the wardens guess who they are dealing with.

Turning his attention back to the clerk, John received a written pass to the household guard yards — training grounds, equipment, the company of other people's retainers — and the rules of the sword, which Dorr stated clearly: keep your blade peace-bound in all public courtyards and passages. You may carry it anywhere your duties take you. You may draw it in three circumstances only: within the yards, during an authorised escort, or in immediate defence of life.

Breaking the bond outside those three is an offence against the charter's peace regardless of your reasons, and your reasons will be examined afterwards, at length, by people far less agreeable than John would prefer. Last, he received the rest of his items which had been confiscated for the duration of the investigation: Cal's brigandine, cleaned, the cut riveted closed. The steel helm. The longsword, now jewellery. The dagger that had gone into Voss. The Guild token, Bronze stamp intact.

His ordinary money, counted twice in front of him. Then the estate of the dead, such as it was: two more longswords — decent steel, worth a sale — two knives, Voss's hunting knife and whetstone, and the contents of two ordinary purses, coppers and silver, counted out with the same ceremony as if they had been crowns. Three items were starkly missing from the lot: the pouches of advance payment John had kept for himself.

"All three pouches," Dorr said, replying to John's unspoken question, "were retained as evidence while the inquiry remains open — and I will be honest with you, Master Rook, since you have been honest with the registry: as proceeds of the conspiracy, they are very likely forfeit at the end of it. The law is not sentimental about the origin of gold." A hundred and fifty gold pieces. More money than this body had likely ever held at once, earned by the worst decision anyone had ever made in it.

Still, John had been hoping to get it back as well, given how much of an early boost it could given him on his newfound quest for more power.

"So the Academy has found a way to punish my conscience," John said, signing the last line, "without technically fining me." Dorr smiled — a real one, brief, with actual amusement in it. Then the amusement stayed and something under it did not.

"Funny," he said, "but I would advise you never to repeat it in front of anyone else. There are offices in this school that collect remarks, Master Rook. Given your past, yours would keep well." John looked at him for a long moment, but ultimately replied with a simple nod.

"Understood," he said.

"Thanks for the warning."

"Don't mention it."