“Get this over with,” Meartin growled, tapping his empty cup against his armrest.
It was clear that the lady was tempted to say something, but she held her tongue. Again, it looked to Terync that the panther was laughing. He cleared that thought from his head and moved to the indicated seat. He sat at the very edge, taking up no more than two inches of the seat as was proper for a whelp.
It didn’t matter that the chair was exceptionally plush, made of soft dark leather over a heavily cushioned wooden frame.
It didn’t even matter that the others were sitting comfortably, with their backs resting against the cushion and their arms draped across the leather wrapped arm rests.
Whelps were never supposed to enjoy sitting, as that was considered a luxury. So, when they were required to sit, at meals and other social functions, they were to do so in the least enjoyable manner possible and in such a way that they could immediately stand to attention should the order be given to do so.
Woe be it to the cadet that is caught sitting comfortably or that is too slow to stand. Great was the number of physical exercises that could stress the muscles of the rear end in such a way as to make exceptionally painful any form of sitting or lying down, and each of these ways was well known to upperclassmen.
“Lemme look at you boy,” Ser Meartin said gruffly. Despite the amount of alcohol he must have consumed, his eyes seemed to suddenly turn clear and sober. He leaned forward and eyed the cadet up and down, his eyes growing more narrowed and focused with every pass.
Terync found himself growing more and more uncomfortable under his gaze, yet he maintained his posture.
The minute of intense observation was broken when a hearty, bellowing laugh erupted from the elder knight. “This whelp? This one?” He turned his gaze to the lady at his side and anger seemed to flash across his face.
The lady nodded but said nothing. She even seemed to look a little angry herself, though Terync couldn’t tell why.
“Stop being an ass.” The words were soft-spoken, but they stilled the room as effectively as a booming order. Terync swallowed hard, trying to keep down the gasp of incredulity that was threatening to pop out. The very audacity of comparing the most senior knight in the Order to an ass was just unheard of.
Though the role of the Commandant placed Ser Levenstone as a senior knight in the Order, he was still technically the least of them. Certainly, he was lower in the hierarchy than Ser Meartin.
The exact makeup of the Order still confused Terync, as most of the classes for their years focused on what it took to be a knight, rather than on the history and structure of the modern Order of Dragon Knights. The cadets were told that there wasn’t a point, since the vast majority of them would fail to achieve the high standard required to be knighted. Coupled with the general idea that most of the knowledge about the Order was either secret or would be useless to them while they pursued other, less grand employment when they failed out, and that created the perfect reason to avoid the topic altogether in the early years of training.
“I apologize for Ser Meartin’s conduct,” the Commandant said, turning to face the whelp at his side. “This is a rare situation for our Order, which only makes it more difficult overall as we have no script to work from.”
“Perhaps, we should start with the beginning,” the lady suggested.