over to accept the pencil that Spink offered. As he did so, his desk bumped against his sizeable midsection and then lurched against Spink’s. Both their papers cascaded to the floor under Spink’s desk. Spink leaned down, gathered the papers and handed Gord’s back to him, along with the extra pencil. I watched this from the corner of my eye. And I could not be certain that Spink gave Gord back every sheet that truly belonged to him.
Captain Rusk made no comment on it. He continued his slow pace around the room. I heard my classmates groan when he announced, ‘You should have finished with these problems by now,’ and erased the first set on the board. He immediately began to write more problems. And I sat there, feeling paralysed and sick, not by the maths, which was well within my abilities, but by my uncertainty. Had they cheated? Had they planned that manoeuvre? Did I have an honour duty to raise my hand and inform Captain Rusk that they possibly had cheated? But what if they hadn’t? What if it was coincidence? I would have doomed the nine men of my patrol to expulsion from the Academy. We would all be culled, because I had had a suspicion. I felt a sudden wave of loathing for Trist, so busily scratching away at his own paper. But for his horrid suggestion, I would never have considered Gord or Spink capable of cheating. I could not move until Captain Rusk asked me, ‘Cadet Burvelle? Finished already?’
His words jolted me back to my own situation, and I immediately replied, ‘No, sir,’ and bent my head over my own paper and my mind back to the task before me. Despite my delay, which had seemed an eternity but had likely been only a minute or two, I finished well within the hour and had time to go back and check my work. I found several errors, probably due to my rattled state. Nonetheless, when Captain Rusk announced, ‘Time! Pass your papers to the cadet on your right. End cadets, bring the papers forward to me,’ I felt as queasy as if I had failed every problem.
I kept my eyes to myself and spoke not a word as we left our classroom and formed up for our march across campus. A few of the others whispered to one another about two of the knottier problems on the test, but both Spink and Gord were as silent as I was. Despite the cold air, I felt sweat trickle down my back.
My test in Varnian is a hazy memory to me. We were given a technical passage from a cavalla strategy text to translate into Gernian, and then had to compose an essay in Varnian about how to care for a horse. I handed in my papers feeling I had done well enough. The trick of the essay was, of course, to keep to vocabulary and verb forms one was certain of.
Our mid-day meal was next. We went first to Carneston House, to exchange our morning books and notes for our afternoon materials, and then straight to the mess hall. I didn’t speak a word to anyone. No one seemed to notice my silence. They were all preoccupied with the tests we had completed and dreading the ones still to come. If anyone else had noticed what had happened between Gord and Spink, they chose to keep as quiet about it as I did. The cooks had prepared a hot and hearty bean soup containing chunks of fat ham and plenty of fresh bread to go with it. It smelled good, much better than their usual concoctions, but I scarcely tasted it. Spink seemed lighter of spirit, as if he had faced his most feared demon and the rest of the day could not daunt him. I avoided meeting his eyes for fear of what I might read there. Would I know if my best friend had forsaken his honour and cheated on a test? And with the next breath, I traitorously wondered if that would be such a bad thing, if he had done it so that his fellows, including me, could continue at the Academy? Did the ends justify the means? Was the culling, as Trist had suggested, a cruel way to test our loyalty to one another as well as our learning? And then my mind came back to Rusk’s comment about Gord needing to borrow a pencil – that one cannot always depend on his comrades but should always be in a position to let them depend on oneself – and wondered if there had been some hidden meaning there.
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