accusing letter that Colonel Stiet had sent to my father over the incident with Cadet Lieutenant Tiber. Here was, surprisingly, a letter of commendation from Captain Maw, saying that I had shown extraordinary ability as an independent thinker in his engineering and drafting class, and suggesting that I might best serve the King’s Cavalla as a scout on the frontier. Was that what had so upset my father? I sorted more paper. There were tallies of my test scores for my various classes. My grades were all exemplary. Surely they had been up to his expectations, not that I’d ever expected him to acknowledge it.
The medical file on me was thick. I had not realized that Dr Amicas had kept such complete records. There was a log of my illness. It began with great detail, but by the fourth day, when cadets were dropping like flies with the plague, the entries were abbreviated to ‘Fever continues. Tried giving him mint in his water to cool his systems.’ Towards the end of the file, I found notes on my recovery, and then more notes that tracked my increasing weight and girth. He’d graphed it. The continuing climb of the line was undeniable. Had that angered my father? He now knew that I had lied when I said the doctor had expected my weight gain to be temporary. Looking at the evidence, I felt a sudden sinking of heart. The line did not falter. It had risen every day since my fever had subsided. Was that what the doctor expected it to do? How long would it continue? How long could such a trend continue? could such a trend continue?
Towards the bottom of the stack, I found what had damned me in my father’s eyes. This document was not in the doctor’s handwriting. My name was marked on the top of the sheet, and a date. Below it was a set of questions, questions that rang oddly familiar in my mind. An aide’s notes below each one recorded my answer.
‘Did you go to Dark Evening in Old Thares?
Yes.
Did you eat or drink there?
Yes.
What did you eat? What did you drink?
Potatoes, chestnuts, meat skewer. Cadet denies drinking anything.
Did you encounter any Specks there?
Yes.
Cadet specifically mentions a female Speck. “Beautiful”.
Did you have any contact with any Speck that evening?
Cadet evasive.
Did your contact include sexual congress?
Cadet denied. Continued questioning. Cadet evasive. Cadet eventually admitted sexual contact.’
I stared at the damning words. But I had not. I did not. I hadn’t had sexual contact with a Speck on Dark Evening, and I certainly hadn’t confessed that I had to the aide. I remembered him now, vaguely, as a dark shape silhouetted against a window that was too bright with light. I remembered him badgering me for an answer when my mouth was dry and sticky and my head pounded with pain.
‘Yes or no, Cadet. Answer yes or no. Did you have sexual contact with a Speck?’
I had told him something to make him go away. I didn’t remember what. But I’d never had sexual contact with a Speck. At least, not in real life. Only in my fever dreams had I lain with Tree Woman. And that had been only a dream.
Hadn’t it?
I shook my head at myself. It was becoming more and more difficult for me to draw a firm line between my real life and the strange experiences that had befallen me ever since the Kidona Dewara had exposed me to plains magic. In her medium’s trance, Epiny had confirmed that I had indeed been split into two persons, and one of me had sojourned in another world. I had been willing to accept that. I’d been able to accept it because I thought it was over. I’d recovered the lost part of my self and made it mine again. I had believed that my Speckself would merge with my real self, and the contradictions would cease troubling me.
Yet time after time, that strange other self intruded into my life, in ways that were becoming more and more destructive to me. I recognized him when I’d lain beside the farm girl, and he’d triumphed at Dancing Spindle. That Nevare, I felt, that ‘Soldier’s Boy’ had been the one to spout anger so drastically at Carsina. I’d known him by the anger pulsing in my blood. He’d had the courage to free the dove from the sacrificial hook. I’d felt him again whenever I’d found words to confront my father in the days since the wedding. He wasn’t a wise influence on me. But he could rally my courage and foolhardiness and suddenly push me to assert myself. He relished confrontation in a way I did not. I shook my head. In that, he was a truer son to my father than this Nevare was. Yet I had to admit there had been times when I’d valued his insight. He had been with me the first time I glimpsed a true forest on my river journey to Old Thares, and it had been his anger I’d felt over the slain birds at Rosse’s wedding. In quieter moments, his vision of the natural world replaced mine. I would see a tree sway or hear the call of a bird, and for the passing instant of his influence, those things would mesh with my being in a way my father’s son would not understand. I no longer denied the existence of my Speckself, but I did all I could to prevent him controlling my day-to-day existence.
But this change to my body was something I could not ignore nor exclude from my daily reality. As part of my ‘real’ life, it made no sense. The rigours of my journey home and my fast should have made me lose weight. Instead, I’d grown fatter. Had I caught the plague because I’d dreamed of congress with a Speck woman? Was my fat a consequence of the plague? If so, then I could no longer deny that the magic permeated every part of my life now. For a dizzying instant, I perceived that the magic was completely in control.
I snatched my thoughts back from that precipice. It was too terrifying to consider. Why had this befallen me? As logically as a mathematical proof, I perceived the beginning of these changes in me, the place where my path had diverged from the future I had been promised and into this nightmarish present. I knew when my life had been snatched out of my control. An instant later, I knew whom to blame for it.
My father.
At that thought, I felt the milling guilt in me stop just as the Dancing Spindle had ground to a halt. That single thought, that pinning of blame made all events since my experience with Dewara fall into a new order. ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ I said quietly, and the words were like cool balm on a burning wound. I looked at the door to the parlour. It was closed, my father no longer there. Childishly, I still addressed him. ‘It was never my fault. You did it. You put me on this path, Father.’
My satisfaction in finding someone to blame was very shortlived. Blaming him solved nothing. Dejected, I leaned back in my chair. It didn’t matter who had put me in this situation. Here I was. I looked down at my ungainly body. I filled the chair. The waistband of my trousers dug into me. With a grunt and a sigh, I shoved at it, easing it down under my belly. I’d seen fat old soldiers hang their beer guts out over their trouser tops this way. Now I understood why. It was more comfortable.
I sat up in my chair and gathered my papers together. When I tried to fit them all back into the envelope I discovered another letter among them. I tugged it out.
This last enclosure was addressed to me in the doctor’s hand. I threw it on the floor in childish pique. What worse thing could he send to me than what he already had?
But after a few moments of looking at it there, I bent down laboriously, picked it up and opened it.
‘Dear
