Being and Seeming

by quiet_wraith

Summary:

Every regime carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction.

Or: when Dockson was a boy, he dreamt of joining the army.

Dockson woke up to Aunt Manon shaking him.

“Get up, lazybones! Them in the house want you.”

Right. The soldiers were arriving today and the Devinshaes would be hosting them. All of the house skaa were being run ragged doing preparations and a few of the field skaa had been sent to help. Dockson had spent the past week scrubbing floors and windows.

“I’m up, I’m up.” Dockson rubbed his eyes and tossed his blankets off him. He washed quickly - Lady Devinshae hated it when anyone had a dirty face - got dressed, and knelt at the altar in the corner. He poured a little water on it as an offering, quickly prayed to the Lord Ruler and to the god of the fields, and asked his mother how she was doing in the Beyond. There was no answer. Maybe she was too busy. Dockson stood up and headed off to the house. It was a nice morning, cool but with the promise of warmth. He entered the kitchen through a side entrance. The lady didn’t allow anyone wearing clogs to enter through the front door.

“You’re up early,” Cook said as she dished out porridge with bits of salt pork, bread, and chicory. Cook was a nice middle-aged woman who always sent the maids and houseboys with this and that to the field skaa’s houses.

Dockson shrugged.

“Well, the lady will be mad if it’s not perfect, so best get working early. Dockson, I want you and Fran to go pick blackberries for the dinner tonight.”

Francois was another field skaa who had been promoted for the visit. As Dockson drank his chicory, the boy, two years younger than Dockson at twelve, ran into the kitchen. They weren’t really friends but they got along alright. They were given baskets and ordered to not come back until they filled them to the top. Dockson had picked blackberries before, he knew there would be no time to eat any themselves.

“You think there’s revolutionaries here?” Fran looked around the woods nervously.

“The revolutionaries are on the other side of the Isere, stupid,” Dockson said. “Our woods are too small to hide in.” The housekeeper had explained that a few days ago. The soldiers would be staying in the area and going on raids to catch the revolutionaries and the officers would live in the manor house.

“Don’t call me stupid!”

“I call you whatever I want, stupid. Bet I’ll be finished before you’ve got half the basket.”

“No you won’t!”

Well, now he really had to work fast, he couldn’t let someone younger than him beat him. Dockson reached into the brambles, picking one berry after another. He wished he had socks because the ants were stinging him really badly. And he had to slap at mosquitoes, too. At least he had his clogs to step with. He easily crushed the other plants, clearing the way to get deeper into the thickets. It was nice and cool under the trees, and his basket filled up bit by bit. The sleeves of his smock caught in the thorns and his hands became covered in scratches. Picking berries was way more fun than working in the fields. It was less boring and he wasn’t out in the sun.

He needn’t have worried. He was done way before Fran. He tied the lid of his basket shut and went back home. Cook smiled when he handed her the basket. “Thanks, Dockson. You’re right in time for lunch.”

The house skaa got to eat the family’s leftovers, which was really great. Especially since it was summer. In the winter, the field skaa ate the same pottage all the time and you got sick of it after a week. Dockson ate his fill and was sent to move furniture into the guest rooms. That took all afternoon and he was very tired by the end of it. On the bright side, the housekeeper said that he would remain in the house until the officers left! Dockson was old enough to know he’d be sent back once they were gone but still, a few weeks of not working in the fields sounded great. They even got him new clothes because the lady didn’t want the skaa to make the house look bad.

The soldiers arrived that evening. Dockson was sent out to receive the officers and take them to the house. He waited in the fallow field where the soldiers would be living and watched a column make its way up the road. When the officers drew near, Dockson couldn’t hold back a gasp.

They were the most handsome men he had ever seen, nobility incarnate. Where Lord Devinshae sat on a horse like a sack of suet, these two were upright and rode as easily as Dockson walked. The one on the left looked like he had been carved from marble and the one on the right looked like he had been cast in bronze, but the little statues on the lady’s desk seemed pathetic by comparison. The men were tall and broad-shouldered, the dark one with a full beard, the light one moustached. Their uniforms were a grey-blue colour that drew the eye, as were their breastplates and helmets, and the sun glinted off the gold embroidery on their uniforms and the hilts of their swords.

“Hey, cloggy, are you the one sent to take us to the house?” the pale one asked in a cold, imperious voice.

Dockson was confused. What did clogs have to do with anything? Everyone took pride in wearing clogs because it meant they weren’t barefoot beggars. But even that thought vanished as he watched the dark one dismount as easily as a snake striking, as a stream flowing. He wore heavy leather boots with spurs, like all nobles did. But looking past the two, even the ordinary soldiers were wearing grey-blue and boots.

“Can I join the army?” he blurted out and immediately regretted his outburst as the dark one laughed.

“How old are you?”

“Fourteen.”

“You’ll have to wait until you’re sixteen. Or maybe even twenty, if your lord doesn’t want you to go.” Dockson had no idea how to understand that last part. “Your lord can’t stop you from joining the army once you’re twenty.”

The dark one took off his helmet, revealing a black kerchief that kept his hair in a sort of bun on the back of his head. His eyes were black as night, his skin was fire agate, his smile was as radiant as the sun itself. Dockson forgot what he had just been thinking about because all he could do was stare.

“Here, boy, take this.”

Dockson took the helmet. When their hands touched lightly, it was like being stabbed with countless needles. He tried to focus on his task, taking the helmet under his arm. He had expected it to be like shoe leather, but it was more like the sole of a boot. Which made sense, because it had to stand up to halberds and swords.

“My lords, should I take your horses?”

“No, we’ll take them ourselves.” The pale one took off his breastplate and handed it to Dockson. His grey eyes were like a portal into a void. “And we’re not lords, we’re skaa. I’m Second Lieutenant Threeriver and that’s Lieutenant Singh.”

Dockson couldn’t believe his eyes. Sure, he knew that in the cities there were uppity skaa who put on airs and called themselves bourgeois, just because he was a serf didn’t mean he was stupid. But they looked so much like nobles, they looked more noble than Lord Devinshae himself!

“Does that mean I can become an officer?” he asked, scarcely daring to breathe.

Second Lieutenant Threeriver took off his helmet, revealing short-cropped light-brown hair. “Why not? Junior officers rise out of the ranks sometimes. You just have to prove yourself in battle.”

They didn’t address him for the rest of the walk, instead telling each other crude jokes about women. But they also talked about sleeping together. Dockson was a little bit surprised that they, too, were the sort of people who couldn’t decide what they were. With him, it made sense that he couldn’t decide if he preferred boys or girls because he couldn’t decide if he preferred chopping wood or sewing, either. But these were officers, so you’d think they were totally normal men.

Dockson resolved that he had to join the army no matter what. He remembered with a jolt that Lieutenant Singh had said that if you were an adult, you could join up no matter what your owner said! That was great. Dockson had always wanted to see the world. His mother had been from a city and Dockson privately thought she had been stupid to sell herself into serfdom. Everyone was always running to the cities, not away from them.

“So, cloggy, what’s your name?” Lieutenant Singh had a beautiful voice and spoke with a melodic accent.

“Dockson.”

“You a serf?”

“Of course.”

“How many days do you work on the lord’s fields?”

What a strange question. “All of them?”

“Huh,” Second Lieutenant Threeriver said. His accent was harsher, like the strike of a sword. “In our parts, serfs rise up if you make them work for the lord four days a week. Two or three is normal.”

“In your parts, serfs have their own land? We only have little vegetable gardens.”

“Of course. There’s even many free skaa farmers who hire their own field hands.”

“But my owner says skaa can’t manage themselves on their own,” Dockson said, confused. He had heard of skaa owning factories in the cities but that was cities, things were strange there.

“Well, we do just fine for ourselves,” Lieutenant Singh said with a laugh.

In the house, Lord Devinshae bowed to the officers and called them ‘my lord’. Dockson smiled to himself. Nothing was better than tricking the lord and lady. The lady was probably pregnant again. The lord only came back from Luthadel to make another child.

“Devinshae, do you mind lending us the boy Dockson for the duration? We’ll need someone to wait on us and he’s made a good impression.”

The lord thought that they were really important nobles and nodded respectfully. “Of course, my lords.”

Dockson helped a little with waiting at table. It was really annoying to have food in front of him but not be allowed to eat. He noticed that the eldest daughter was making eyes at the officers and they were looking back at her. He had to stifle a giggle. Young Mistress was flirting with skaa and had no idea!

Dockson got a little time to eat dinner but then had to go back to work because the officers wanted to drink in their room and needed him to wait on them. Dockson wasn’t very good at pouring wine and all that, he was a field skaa after all, but he did his best. The officers played cards for money and Dockson could only gape at the sums they were handing over to each other. Surely skaa could not be that rich?

Then something even crazier happened. The daughter of the obligator and Young Mistress crept into the room, giggling. They sat down next to the officers and began to flirt, paying no attention to Dockson. Dockson was terrified. Sure, the obligator was skaa, so Miss Angelique was allowed skaa men, but Young Mistress! The lord always killed his women after a night, would he kill the officer if he found out?

Dockson didn’t think about that for long. He was tired and the sight of the couples distracted him. He watched Lieutenant Singh unlace Young Mistress’ stays and touch her breasts. His face burned and he had to look down. He wasn’t sure if he also wanted to touch Young Mistress like that or if he wanted to sit on the officer’s knee and have him touch him.

“Hey, boy, you must be tired,” Lieutenant Singh said. “Run along and sleep. And take this.” He tossed a coin to him. Dockson took the coin and dashed to the room where the house skaa did their sewing and mending. The housekeeper would know what to do about the forbidden lovers.

Thankfully, she was there, going through an account book. “Housekeeper?” Dockson whispered. “I need to talk to you.”

She saw his face and turned grave. “Of course.” She took him to a storage room and pretended to be looking at their supplies. “What is it?”

“Young Mistress is with the officers.”

She smiled. “I did tell you that you need to pretend to be deaf and blind while seeing and hearing everything. Don’t tell anyone, that’s not our business.”

“But the officers are skaa!” Dockson whispered as quietly as he could. “They told me. What if Young Mistress finds out?”

The housekeeper coughed several times. “Then nothing happens. The sky is high and the Lord Ruler is far.”

“But the lord always kills his women!”

“No,” she said. “Not in Luthadel. Only here. Come on, Dockson, you’ll be a man soon, you should have figured it out by now. It’s not the fucking he likes, it’s the killing. Even the neighbours think he’s a nutter. They can say what they like but their women turn up alive once the Canton of Inquisition types go back to Luthadel.”

“Oh.” Dockson scratched his head. He had never thought it could be any other way. But apparently not everyone lived like them. That was strange to think about.

“Not anything we can do anything about. You go sleep now, we wake up early tomorrow.”

Dockson went to his new room, which he shared with the houseboys. He lay awake for a little while, thinking about the lord’s women, but when he fell asleep, he dreamed of hands, light and dark, caressing him.

---

For a few days, the soldiers didn’t go anywhere. They mostly chased after skaa women. All the boys and some of the girls talked about joining the army because the work was less and you were paid and got to go all over the Final Empire. Dockson managed to sneak away with some of the soldiers a few times. Meanwhile the officers roamed around the area and played cards. Dockson was ordered to take them on a tour of the plantation but they looked bored and talked about how serfs were worse workers than free people. Well, that was probably true, Dockson knew he spent most of his time trying to do as little work as possible.

“Hey, cloggy, why are you hitting the poor man?” Lieutenant Threeriver demanded insolently of the overseer. Dockson gaped at hearing anyone address him like that.

“My lords? I am punishing him.”

“For what?”

“He was working too slowly.”

Second Lieutenant Threeriver laughed and tore the whip out of the overseer’s hands. Dockson had used to think that overseers were one step below the lord, but maybe in truth, he was one step above the serfs. “Your owner must be a very bad manager, if the only way he can keep his workers in line is to beat them! If my brother was so inefficient, all the workers would have run off long ago. Do you want a jacquerie on your hands?” Dockson was shocked to hear the officer mention the jacquerie. How did he know about it? He had thought it was something serfs in these parts talked about on long winter evenings. Seven hundred years ago, there had been a lot of war here and the serfs realised that the nobles weren’t going to protect them and were disloyal to the Lord Ruler. So they tried to rise up but the nobles tricked the Lord Ruler and He sent the army to destroy them.

“My lord?”

“Are you a free man?”

“Of course. My mother was a seamstress over in Doizieux. She was a serf but bought her freedom when her owner sent the skaa to the city in the winter. You know what they say, my lords, city air makes one free.”

“Hmm.” The two men strode off, the second lieutenant still holding the whip.

Dockson decided that he liked the officers very much. Anyone who could flip the hierarchy topsy-turvy like that was one to admire.

“Do you send your skaa to the cities in the winter?” Lieutenant Singh asked over dinner. He was from the Big Island and Lieutenant Threeriver was from the Northern Dominance, way up north near the Terris mountains. They were both from so far away!

“Of course not. You know how it is - the first year they work well, the second year they get ideas, the third year they run off if you don’t pay them wages.”

Dockson giggled into his hands.

Of course, the officers weren’t nice people. They took whatever woman they liked and threw money at her until she relented. They strolled around like real nobles and looked down on everyone. The soldiers ate all the food and slept with all the women and everyone sighed with relief once they finished catching the revolutionaries and headed back to their garrison, even if the lord was really mad that several women married soldiers and left with them. Then it turned out that Young Mistress was pregnant and had to marry Lieutenant Singh in a hurry. Dockson was back in his house by that point, but everyone knew that the lord had found out that the lieutenant was skaa but did nothing. He simply returned to Luthadel like always.

So it was true, then. The sky was high and the Lord Ruler was far away. The lord’s women could have still been alive. Dockson found himself looking at the girls and wondering which one of them would be next. He couldn’t wait to turn twenty and leave. He’d join the army and return on a horse, spurs on his heels and a sword on his hip.

Dockson never did join the army. But that is an entirely different story.