“Y’see?” Frentis said urgently to the Aspect. “Told ya’! Told ya’ he knew me.”
“This boy has requested entry to the Order,” the Aspect went on. “Will you vouch for him?”
Vaelin stared at Frentis in appalled surprise. “You want to join the Order?”
“Yeh!” Frentis said, nearly jumping with excitement. “Wanna join. Wanna be a brother.”
“Are you - ?” Vaelin choked off at the word “mad” and took a deep breath before addressing the Aspect. “Vouch for him, Aspect?”
“This boy has no family, no one to speak for him or formally place him in the hands of the Order. Our rules demand that all boys who join must be vouched for, either by a parent or, in the case of an orphan, a subject of recognised good character. The boy has nominated you.”
Vouched for? No-one had told him this. “Was I vouched for, Aspect?”
“Of course.”
My father spoke to them before he brought me here. How many days or weeks before had he arranged it? How long had he known and not told me?
“Tell ‘im I can be a brother,” Frentis was saying. “Tell ‘im I helped you.”
Vaelin drew a heavy breath and looked down at the frantic desperation in Frentis’s eyes. “May I have a moment alone with this boy, Aspect?”
“Very well. I shall be in the main keep.”
After he had gone, Frentis started again, “Ya gotta tell ‘im. Tell ‘im I can be a brother…”
“Do you think this is a game?” Vaelin cut in, stepping close to grasp the rags covering Frentis’s narrow chest, pulling him close. “What do you want here? Safety, food, shelter? Don’t you know what this place is?”
Frentis’s eyes were wide with fear as he shrank back, his voice small now, “’S where they train the brothers.”
“Yes they train us. They beat us, they make us fight each other every day, they put us through tests that might kill us. I have fifteen years and more scars on my body than any seasoned soldier in the Realm Guard. There were ten boys in my group when I started here, now there are five. What are you asking me for? To agree to your death?” He released Frentis and turned back to the door. “I won’t do it. Go back to the city. You’ll live longer.”
“I go back there I’ll be dead by nightfall!” Frentis cried, voice heavy with fear. He sank back into his chair and sobbed miserably. “I got nowhere else to go. You send me away and I’m dead. Hunsil’s boys’ll do for me for sure.”
Vaelin’s hand lingered on the door handle. “Hunsil?”
“Runs the gangs in the quarter, all the dippers, whores and knifers pay ‘im homage, five coppers a month. I couldn’t pay last month so his boys gave me a beatin’.”
“And if you can’t pay this month he’ll kill you?”
“It’s too late for that. Not about the money anymore. ‘S about ‘is eye.”
“His eye?”
“Yeh, the right one. It ain’t there no more.”
Vaelin turned back from the door with a heavy sigh. “The knives I gave you.”
“Yeh, couldn’t wait for you to teach me. Practised on me own. Got right good at it too. Thought I’d try it out on Hunsil, waited in the alley outside his tavern ‘til he came out.”
“Taking him in the eye was an impressive throw.”
Frentis smiled weakly. “Was aimin’ for ‘is throat.”
“And he knows it was you?”
“Oh ‘e knows alright. Bastard knows everything.”
“I have some money, not much but my brothers will pitch in some more. We could buy you a berth on a merchant ship, a cabin boy. You would be safer on a ship than you could ever be here."
“Thought about that, din’t wanna. Don’t like ships, get queasy just crossing the river in a flatboat. Besides, I’ve ‘eard sailors’ll do things to cabin boys.”
“I’m sure they’ll leave you alone if we guarantee it.”
“But I wanna be a brother. I saw what you did to those Crows. You and the other one. Never seen nothin’ like it. I wanna be able to do that. I wanna be like you.”
“Why?”
“’Cos it makes you someone, makes you matter. They’re still yakkin’ about it in the taverns y’know, how the Battle Lord’s boy humbled the Blackhawks. You’re almost as famous as your old man.”
“And that’s what you want? To be famous?”
Frentis fidgeted. It was clear he was rarely asked for an opinion on anything and found this level of scrutiny disconcerting. “Dunno. Wanna be someone, not just some dipper. Can’t do that all me life.”
“All you are likely to earn here is an early death.”
Frentis no longer looked like a boy then, rather he seemed so aged and burdened by experience that Vaelin almost felt himself to be a child in the presence of an old man. “That’s all I’ve ever bin likely to earn.”
Can I do this? Vaelin asked himself. Can I condemn him to this? The answer came to him within a heart beat. At least he had a choice. He chose to come here. And what will I condemn him to if I send him away?
“What do you know of the Faith?” Vaelin asked him.
“’S what people believe ‘appens when you die.”
“And what does happen when you die?”
“You join the other Departed and they, y’know, help us.”
Hardly the Catechism of Faith but succinctly put. “Do you believe it?”
Frentis shrugged. “’Spose.”
Vaelin leaned down and looked him in the eye, fixing him. “When the Aspect asks you, don’t suppose, be certain. The Order fights for the Faith before it fights for the Realm.” He straightened. “Let’s go and find him.”
“You’re gonna tell ‘im to let me in?”
May my mother’s soul forgive me. “Yes.”
“Great!” Frentis surged to his feet and ran to the door. “Thanks…”
“Don’t ever thank me for this,” Vaelin told him. “Not ever.”
Frentis gave him a quizzical look. “Alright. So when do I get a sword?”
It would be another three months before the next intake of recruits so Frentis was put to work. He ran errands, laboured in the kitchens or the orchard and swept the stables. They gave him a bunk in their north tower room, the Aspect felt leaving him alone in one of the other rooms would be a poor welcome to the Order.
“This is Frentis,” Vaelin introduced him to the others. “A novice brother. He’ll bunk with us until the turn of the year.”
“Is he old enough?” Barkus asked, looking Frentis up and down. “He’s just rag and bone.”
“Up yours fatso!” Frentis snarled in response, drawing back.
“How charming,” Nortah observed. “An urchin of our very own.”
“Why’s he bunking with us?” Dentos wanted to know.
“Because the Aspect commands it, and because I owe him a debt. And so do you brother,” he said to Nortah. “If he hadn’t helped me you’d be swinging in a wall cage.”
Nortah inclined his head but said no more.
“He’s the one you knocked out,” Frentis said. “The one that knifed that Blackhawk in the leg. Proper sharp that was. Are we allowed to knife Realm Guard then?”
“No!” Vaelin tugged him to his bunk, Mikehl’s old bed which had lain unused in the years since his death. “This is yours. You’ll get bedding from Master Grealin in the vaults, I’ll take you there soon.”
“Do I get a sword from him?”
The others laughed. “Oh you’ll get a sword, right enough,” Dentos said. “Finest blade ash can make.”
“Wanna proper sword,” Frentis insisted sullenly.
“You’ll have to earn it,” Vaelin told him. “Like the rest of us. Now, I want to talk to you about thieving.”
“I ain’t gonna thieve nothin’. I’m done with that, I swear.”
More laughter from the others. “Fine brother he’ll make,” Barkus said.
“Thieving is…” Vaelin fumbled for the right words, “accepted here, but there are rules. You never steal from any of us and you never steal from the Masters.”
Frentis gave him a suspicious look. “Is this one of them tests?”
Vaelin gritted his teeth. He was starting to understand why Master Sollis was so fond of his cane. “No. You can steal from others in the Order provided they aren’t a master and their not in your group.”
“What? And no-one cares?”
“Oh no, they’ll tan the hide off you if you get caught but that’s for getting caught, not for stealing.”
A very small smile appeared on Frentis’s lips. “I only ever got caught once. Won’t happen again.”
If Vaelin had expected Frentis to be quickly disillusioned by the rigours of Order life he was to be disappointed. The boy happily scampered to every task given him, moving like a blur around the House, watching attentively during practice sessions and pestering them to teach him their skills. Mostly they were happy to oblige, training him in sword play and unarmed combat. He needed little instruction in knife throwing and soon began to rival Dentos and Nortah at the game. Seeing an opportunity they quickly arranged a knives tournament and reaped a tidy sum in blades which were shared out equally.