Forest Mage. Робин Хобб

course, but it is ample for the little furniture we have. The bedstead fills one corner, and our table with our own two chairs is right by the window that looks out over the open hillside. Spink tells me that once the late frosts have passed, we shall have a vista of wild flowers there.

      ‘Even so, it is quite rustic and quaint, but as soon as Spink’s health has improved, he says he will put in a new floor and fix the chimney so that it draws better, and use a spoke shave to persuade the door to shut tightly in the jamb. Summer approaches and with it warmer weather, which I shall be grateful to see. I trust that by the time the rains and frosts return, we shall have made our little home as cosy as a bird’s nest in a hollow tree. For now, when the cold wind creeps round the door or the mosquitoes keen in my ear at night, I ask myself, “Am I not as hearty as the little ground squirrels that scamper about during the day and have no better than a hole to shelter in at night? Surely I can take a lesson from them and find as much satisfaction in my simple life.” And so I make myself content.’

      ‘Yer cousin wants to be a ground squirrel?’ Rory asked me. I turned to find him reading over my shoulder. I glared at him. He grinned, unabashed.

      ‘That’s rude, Rory, and you know it.’

      ‘Sorry!’ His grin grew wolfish. ‘I wouldn’t have read it, but I thought it was from your girl and might have some intrestin’ bits in it.’

      He dodged my counterfeit swipe at him and then with false pomposity warned me, ‘Better not hit me, Cadet! Remember, I outrank you for now. Besides, I’m a messenger. Dr Amicas sent word that you were to come and see him. He also said that if you don’t think his request to visit him weekly is sufficient, he could make it a direct order.’

      ‘Oh.’ My heart sank. I didn’t want to go see the Academy physician any more, but neither did I want to annoy the irascible old man. I was aware still of the debt that I owed him. I folded up Epiny’s letter and rose with a sigh. Dr Amicas had been a friend to me, in his own brusque way. And he’d definitely behaved heroically through the plague, going without rest to care for the dozens of cadets who fell to the disease. Without him, I would not have survived. I knew that the plague fascinated him, and that he had a personal ambition to discover its method of transmission, as well as document which techniques saved lives and which were worthless. He was writing a scholarly paper summing up all his observations of the recent outbreak. He had told me that monitoring my amazing recovery from such a severe case of plague was a part of his research, but I was dismally tired of it. Every week he poked and prodded me and measured me. The way he spoke to me made me feel that I had not recovered at all but was merely going through an extended phase of recuperation. I wished he would stop reminding me of my experience. I wanted to put the plague behind me and stop thinking of myself as an invalid.

      ‘Right now?’ I asked Rory.

      ‘Right now, Cadet,’ he confirmed. He spoke as a friend, but the new stripe on his sleeve still meant that I’d best go immediately.

      ‘I’ll miss the noon meal,’ I objected.

      ‘Wouldn’t hurt you to miss a meal or two,’ he said meaningfully.

      I scowled at his jab, but he only grinned. I nodded and set out for the infirmary.

      In the last few balmy days, some misguided trees had flowered. They wore their white and pink blossoms bravely despite the day’s chill. The groundskeepers had been at work: all the fallen branches from the winter storms had been tidied away and the greens manicured to velvet.

      I had to pass one very large flowerbed where precisely spaced ranks of bulb flowers had pushed up their green spikes of leaves; soon there would be regiments of tulips in bloom. I looked away from them; I knew what lay beneath those stalwart rows. They covered the pit-grave that had received so many of my comrades. A single gravestone stood greyly in the middle of the garden. It said only, Our Honoured Dead. The Academy had been quarantined when the plague broke out. Even when it had spread through the city beyond our walls, Dr Amicas had maintained our isolation. Our dead had been carried out of the infirmaries and dormitories and set down first in rows, and then, as their numbers increased, in stacks. I had been among the ill. I had not witnessed the mounting toll, nor seen the rats that scuttled and the carrion birds that flocked, despite the icy cold, to the feast. Dr Amicas had been the one to order reluctantly that a great pit be dug, and the bodies be tumbled in, along with layers of quicklime and earth.

      Nate was down there, I knew. I tried not to think of his flesh rotting from his bones, or about the bodies tangled and clumped together in the obscene impartiality of such a grave. Nate had deserved better. They had all deserved better. I’d heard one of the new cadets refer to the gravesite as ‘the memorial to the Battle of Pukenshit’. I’d wanted to hit him. I turned up my collar against a wind that still bit with winter’s teeth and hurried past the groomed gardens through the late morning light.

      At the door of the infirmary I hesitated, and then gritted my teeth and stepped inside. The bare corridor smelled of lye soap and ammonia, but in my mind the miasma of sickness still clung to this place. Many of my friends and acquaintances had died in this building, only a couple of months ago. I wondered that Dr Amicas could stand to keep his offices here. Had it been left to me, I would have burned the infirmary down to scorched earth and rebuilt somewhere else.

      When I tapped on the door of his private office, the doctor peremptorily ordered me to come in. Clouds of drifting pipe smoke veiled the room and flavoured the air. ‘Cadet Burvelle, reporting as ordered, sir,’ I announced myself.

      He pushed his chair back from his cluttered desk and rose, taking his spectacles off as he did so. He looked me up and down, and I felt the measure of his glance. ‘You weren’t ordered, Cadet, and you know it. But the importance of my research is such that if you don’t choose to co-operate, I will give you such orders. Instead of coming at your convenience, you’ll come at mine, and then enjoy the pleasure of making up missed class time. Are we clear?’

      His words were harsher than his tone. He meant them, but he spoke almost as if we were peers. ‘I’ll co-operate, sir.’ I was unbuttoning my uniform jacket as I spoke. One of the buttons, loosened on its thread, broke free and went flying across the office. He lifted a brow at that.

      ‘Still gaining flesh, I see.’

      ‘I always put on weight right before I get taller.’ I spoke a bit defensively. This was the third time he had brought up my weight gain. I thought it unkind of him. ‘Surely that must be better than me being thin as a rail, like Trist.’

      ‘Cadet Wissom’s reaction to having survived the plague is the norm. Yours is different. “Better” remains to be seen,’ he replied ponderously. ‘Any other changes that you’ve noticed? How’s your wind?’

      ‘It’s fine. I had to march off six demerits yesterday, and I finished up at the same time as the other fellows.’

      ‘Hm.’ He had drawn closer as I spoke. As if I were a thing rather than a person, he inspected my body, looking in my ears, eyes, and nose, and then listening to my heart and breathing. He made me run in place for a good five minutes, and then listened to my heart and lungs again. He jotted down voluminous notes, weighed me, took my height, and then quizzed me on all I’d eaten since yesterday. As I’d had only what the mess allotted to me, that question was quickly answered.

      ‘But you’ve still gained weight, even though you haven’t increased your food intake?’ he asked me, as if questioning my honesty.

      ‘I’m out of spending money,’ I told him. ‘I’m eating as I’ve eaten since I arrived here. The extra flesh is only because I’m about to go through another growth spurt.’

      ‘I see. You know that, do you?’

      I didn’t answer that. I knew it was rhetorical. He stooped to retrieve my button and handed it back to me. ‘Best sew that on good and tight, Cadet.’ He put his notes on me into a folder and then sat down at his desk