A barracks town can be a rough place. Even at eight, I knew that, and so I approached the older boys cautiously. They were, as Vev had said, playing at a stick-knife game in the alley between the smithy and a warehouse. They were betting half coppers and pewter bits as each boy took a turn at dropping the knife, point first, into the street. The bets wagered were on whether the knife would stick and how close each boy could come to his own foot on the drop without cutting himself. As they were barefoot, the wagers were quite interesting apart from the small coins involved, and a circle of five or so boys had gathered to watch. The youngest of them was still a year or two older than I, and the eldest was in his teens. They were sons of common soldiers, dressed in their father’s castoffs and as unkempt as stray dogs. In a few more years, they’d sign their papers and whatever regiment took them in would dust them off and shape them into foot soldiers. They knew their own fortunes as well as I knew mine, and seemed very content to spend the last days of their boyhoods playing foolish games in the dusty street.

I had no coins to bet and I was dressed too well to keep company with them, so they parted a space in their huddle to let me watch but didn’t speak to me. I learned a few of their names only by listening to them talk to each other. For a time, I was content to watch their odd game, and listen intently to their rough curses and the crude name-calling that accompanied bets lost or won. This was certainly far different than my sister’s tea parties, and I recall that I wondered if this was the sort of manly company that of late my father had been insisting I needed.

The sun was warm and the game endless as the bits of coin and other random treasure changed hands over and over. A boy named Carky cut his foot, and hopped and howled for a bit, but soon was back in the game. Raven, Vev’s son, laughed at him and happily pocketed the two pennies and three marbles Carky had bet. I was watching them intently and would scarcely have noticed the arrival of the scout save that all the other boys suddenly suspended the game and fell silent as he rode past.

I knew he was a scout, for his dress was half soldier and half Plainsman. He wore dark green cavalla trousers like a proper trooper, but his shirt was the loose linen of a Plainsman, immaculately clean. His hair was not cropped short in a soldier’s cut nor did he wear a proper hat. Instead, his black hair hung loose and long and moved with his white kaffiyeh. A rope of red silk secured his headgear. His arms were bare that summer day, the sleeves rolled to his biceps, and his forearm was circled with tattooed wreaths and trade bracelets of silver beads and pewter charms and gleaming yellow brass. His horse was a good one, solid black, with long straight legs and jingle charms braided into his mane. I watched him with intent interest. Scouts were a breed apart, it was said. They were ranked as officers, lieutenants usually and frequently were nobly born, but they lived independent lives, outside the regular ranks of the military, and often reported directly to the commander of an outpost. They were our first harbingers of any trouble, be it logjams on the river, eroding roads, or unrest among the Plainspeople.

A girl of twelve or thirteen on a chestnut gelding followed the scout. It was a smaller animal with a finely sculptured brow that spoke of the best nomadic stock. She rode astraddle as no proper Gernian girl would, and by that as much as by her garb, I knew her for a mixed-blood. It was not uncommon, though still deplored, for Gernian soldiers to take wives from among the Plainspeople. It was less common for a scout to stoop so low. I stared at her in frank curiosity. My mother often said that the products of cross-unions were abominations before the good god. I was surprised to see that such a long and ugly-sounding word described such a lovely creature. She was dressed in brightly layered skirts, one orange, one green, one yellow, that blossomed over the horse’s back and covered her knees, but not her calves and feet. She wore soft little boots of antelope skin, and silver charms twinkled on their laces. Loose white trousers showed beneath her bunched skirts. Her shorter kaffiyeh matched her father’s and displayed to advantage her long brown hair that hung down her back in dozens of fine braids. She had a high, round brow and calm gray eyes. Her white blouse bared her neck and arms, displaying the black torque she wore around her throat and a quantity of bracelets, some stacked above her elbows and others jingling at her wrist. She wore the woman’s wealth of her family proudly for all to see. Her naked arms were brown from the sun and as muscled as a boy’s. As she rode, she looked round her boldly, very unlike my sisters’ modest manner and downcast eyes when in public places.

Her stare met mine, and we exchanged looks of honest appraisal. She had probably never seen a noble’s soldier son, and I stood a bit straighter, well aware that I was finely turned out in my dark green trousers and crisp blouse and black boots, and especially so in the company of the ragged street-jay boys. I was not so young that the attention of a girl was not flattering. Looking back, perhaps it annoyed the others that she looked so intently at me. They stared at her like hungry dogs studying a plump kitten.