We marched soddenly to our breakfast and filed into an uncharacteristically quiet mess. We served ourselves a breakfast that was typical of every breakfast we had eaten at the Academy. It seemed more tasteless than usual, and despite my night’s fast, I had quickly had enough. We spoke little at the table, but exchanged many sidelong glances. Which ones of us would be judged “ringleaders” and dismissed?
When we returned to our dormitory to gather our morning texts, we had the answer. Three trunks, already packed, waited in our study room. Mine was not among them, and the relief I felt shamed me. Jared stared at his dully; I think they had overdosed him with the sedative, and he could not quite comprehend the full depth of his misfortune. Trent went over and sat down on his and buried his face silently in his hands. Lofert, a gangly dim lad who seldom spoke, did now. “It’s not fair,” he said hopelessly. He looked round at all of us for confirmation. “It’s not fair!” he said more loudly. “What did I do that was any more than any of you did? Why me?”
We had no answer. Rory looked stricken, and I think we all secretly wondered why he had not been sent packing. Corporal Dent came up the stairs angrily to roust us out. He callously told Jared, Trent, and Lofert that they’d be moved to a rooming house in the city. Messages had already been sent to their fathers detailing their disgrace. It felt horrible for the nine of us to form up where there had been twelve just yesterday. Dent marched us double-time to our first class and left us at the door. Trist spoke quietly as we entered the classroom. “Well. That was our first culling, I suppose.”
“Yah,” Rory agreed stoically. “And all I can say is, damn glad it wasn’t me.”
I felt the same, and it shamed me.
CHAPTER 12
Letters from Home
Life at the Academy went on. Our routine closed up around us like a healing wound, and after a time the empty bunks in our quarters and our smaller formation when we marched did not seem so foreign. Outwardly, little changed, but inwardly, all my feelings about the Academy and even the cavalla had subtly altered. Nothing seemed certain; no future could be taken for granted, no honor or fellowship assumed. In the space of a day I had seen three boys have all their dreams dashed. I now had to believe that it could just as easily befall me.
If that culling had been intended to build a fire in my belly, it succeeded. With single-minded concentration, I poured myself into my academics. I pushed homesickness aside. I even buried my outrage at how the old nobles’ sons were treated in comparison to us. We soon learned that none of them had been sent home in disgrace. On even flimsier excuses, four of the first-years from Skeltzin Hall had been culled. The first-years from Bringham House received demerits to march off, as did a number of the second-years. Our own Corporal Dent had dark circles under his eyes for a month, for he had to rise an hour early each day to discharge his punishment. But that was the worst that befell any of them. And in time I came to believe, as Rory heavily observed one evening, “We were set up for that culling. We were chumps, friends. Chumps.”
The strange part was that once the culling faded in our minds, I truly began to enjoy my days at the Academy. Life was both busy and demanding, and yet uncomplicated. All elements of my day were predetermined; I rose when told to do so, marched to my classes, did my work, ate what was put before me, and slept when the lights were extinguished. As my father had foretold, my friendships deepened. I still felt a divide between Spink and Trist. I liked them both, Spink for his ethics and earnestness and Trist for his elegance and sophistication. If I could have, I would have been friends with both of them, yet neither seemed inclined to allow that to happen.
I think the differences between the two showed most in how they treated Young Caulder (as we all came to call him), for the commander’s son became very much a part of our lives. I recall the first time the boy showed up in our common room, uninvited and unannounced. It was at the end of our second month in the Academy, and on that Sevday evening our proctor had left our study room early to take himself off to an evening in town. It was the first time we had been left unsupervised for a full evening and a welcome respite from the grindstone. Ostensibly we were applying ourselves to our lessons to be ready when classes resumed on the morrow. Certainly Spink was, with faithful Gord at his elbow as he labored through page upon page of math drills, for that remained his most challenging class. I had finished my written work but had my Varnian grammar book open before me, going over some irregular verb forms. As my father had intended, I was ahead of the column in most of my classes and fully resolved to retain that lead.