"Now that's an interesting sentiment." The Training Master had appeared, as usual, without warning. Paks had begun to wonder if he had magical powers. "Are you serious in what you say?"

Paks was, as always, wary around him. "Yes . . . sir."

"You feel you have much more to learn—even with your practical experience?"

Paks felt an edge of sarcasm in his voice. She stiffened. "Yes. I said that."

"Don't bristle at me." To her surprise, he was smiling. "One thing that worried the Marshal-General was the possibility that you might find these things too boring—"

"Boring!"

"Don't interrupt, either. We have had a few other veterans who found them so—who were so intent on what they had done already that they could not learn new things." He looked intently at Con, who colored. Paks wondered what that was about, but was glad enough he wasn't after her. "How are you coming with your reading?" He was after her. She wondered if he'd heard what she had said to Con. She hated having to admit her weaknesses.

"Not—very fast, sir."

"I thought so." It did not sound too sarcastic. "Paksenarrion, the only way to learn to read faster and better is to read—just like swordplay. You can't learn swordplay from a book, or reading from your sword."

"But if I can listen to someone who knows—"

He shook his head. "Paksenarrion, no one knows everything—you're not alone in that. Writing stores knowledge, for others to use who may never know the writer. You know how tales told change in the telling—" She nodded, and he went on. "That's why writing is so important. Suppose you are in a battle; if you can write well enough to describe it accurately, then others can learn from your experience many years from now."

"It's too late." Paks looked down. She had hated turning in her scrawls when the others wrote neat, legible hands. "The ones who can write started earlier."

"And when did you start with staves? And you're already out of the novice class, into intermediate. Work at it. As for you, Con," the Training Master turned to him. "You quit worrying about your standing with the juniors, and start spending your evenings on tactics. And supply. Perhaps if you'll explain reckoning in all numbers to Paks, she'll explain why you can't march a cohort for two days on sixteen measures of barley and a barrel of apples."

"Apples? I meant to write salt beef."

"Your writing is not much better than Paks's—neither Tigran nor I could decide what you really meant, so we called it apples. So might your supply sergeant, someday."

* * *

She could not remember when she had felt so at home. Not even in the Company, that last year. Instead of Saben and Canna, she had Rufen, Con, and Peli. They spent hours with pebbles and beans, teaching her reckoning. She taught them all one of her favorite sword tricks, so that Cieri, bested three times in one day, glared at them all, and accused Paks of trying to get his job as weaponsmaster. She began to read faster, and understand more complicated books and scrolls. They began to realize, as Rufen explained one night, that the soldiers they might command one day were real people.