Astano had closed the book, so I asked, "Where were you?"
"Sitting here all along, Beaky," Hoby said, and Tib sniggered.
What was hard to take was that Tib was my friend, but whenever he was with Hoby he was Hoby's friend, not mine.
"Go on reciting from where you left off," I said, speaking to Hoby, trying to sound cool and stern.
"I don't remember where it was."
"Then start over from where you started today."
"I don't remember where it was."
I felt the blood rise in my face and sing in my ears. Unwisely, I asked, "What do you remember?"
"I don't remember what I remember."
"Then begin at the beginning of the book."
"I don't remember it," Hoby said, carried away with the success of his ploy. That gave me the advantage.
"You don't remember any of the book at all?" I said, raising my voice a little, and Everra immediately glanced our way. "All right," I said. "Tib, say the first page for Hoby."
Under our teacher's eye he didn't dare not to, and set off gabbling the Origin of the Acts, which they'd both known by heart for months. I stopped him at the end of the page and told Hoby to repeat it. That made Hoby really angry. I'd won. I knew I'd pay for it later. But he muttered the sentences through. I said, "Now go on where you left off with Astano-ío," and he obeyed, droning out the Act of Conscription.
"Tib," I said, "paraphrase." That's what Everra always had us do, to show we understood what we'd memorised.
"Tib," Hoby said in a little squeaky murmur, "pawaphwase."
Tib broke into giggles.
"Go on," I ordered.
"Go on, pawaphwase," Hoby whisper-squeaked, and Tib giggled helplessly.
Everra was talking about a passage in the epic, lecturing away, his eyes shining, the others all listening intently; but Yaven, sitting on the second bench, glanced over at us. He gazed at Hoby with a sharp frown. Hoby shrank into himself and looked at the floor. He kicked Tib's ankle. Tib immediately stopped giggling. After some struggle and hesitation he said, "It uh, it uh says, it means that uh, if the City is threatened uh with uh an attack the uh the Senate will uh what is it?"
"Convene," I said.
"Convene and debilitate—"
"Deliberate."
"Deliberate the conscription of able-bodied freemen. Is deliberate like liberate, only the opposite?"
That was one reason I loved Tib: he heard words, he asked questions, he had a strange, quick mind; but nobody else valued it, so he didn't either.
"No, it means talk something over."
"If you pawaphwase it," Hoby muttered.
We mumbled and stumbled through the rest of their recitation. I was putting away the Acts with great relief when Hoby leaned forward from his bench, staring at me, and said between his teeth, "Master's pet."
I was used to being called teacher's pet. It was inevitable—it was true. But our teacher wasn't a master, he was a slave, like us. This was different. Master's pet meant toady, sneak, traitor. And Hoby said it with real hatred.
He was jealous of Yaven's intervention on my behalf, and shamed by it. We all admired Yaven and longed for his approval. Hoby seemed so rough and indifferent, it was hard for me to understand that he might love Yaven as much I did, with less ability to please him, and more reason to feel humiliated when Yaven sided with me against him. All I knew was that the name he'd called me was hateful and unfair, and I burst out aloud, "I'm not!"
"Not what, Gavir?" said Everra's cold voice.
"Not what Hoby said—it doesn't matter—I'm sorry, Teacher. I apologise for interrupting. I apologise to all."
A cold nod. "Sit down and be silent, then," Everra said. I went back to sit by my sister. For a while I couldn't read the lines of the book Sallo held in front of both of us. My ears kept ringing and my eyes were blurred. It was horrible, what Hoby had called me. I'd never be a master's pet. I wasn't a sneak. I'd never be like Rif—a housemaid who'd spied on the other maids and tattled, thinking to gain favor. But the Mother of Arca told her, "I don't like sneaks," and had her sold at the Market. Rif was the only adult slave who had been sold from our House in all my life. There was trust on both sides. There had to be.
When the morning lesson was over, Everra gave punishment for disturbing the class: Tib and Hoby were to learn an