Lady Knight

by Tamora Pierce

  “Grandda says he’s got an assistant trained for you,” Aly replied. “She’ll be here in a month or so. He is right. It’s no good holding Scanra off in the north if Carthak or Tusaine or the Copper Isles try nipping up bits of the south.”

  “Don’t teach your gran to make butter,” George advised her drily. “I learned that lesson before you were born.” He knew Aly was right; he even knew that what he did was necessary. He just missed his wife. They hadn’t been separated for such a long stretch in their twenty-three years of marriage before. “And an assistant in a month does me no good now.”

  Aly gave him her most charming smile. “Oh, but Da, now you’ve got me,” she said as she gathered a wad of documents. “Grandda wanted me to take the job as it was.”

  “I thought he might,” George murmured, watching as she leafed through the papers she held.

  “I told him the same thing I did you,” replied Aly, setting documents in stacks on the long table. “I love code breaking and knowing all the tittle-tattle, but I’d go half mad having to do it all the time. I asked him if I could spy instead. . . .”

  “I said no,” George said flatly, hiding his alarm. The thought of his only daughter living in the maze of dangers that was ordinary spy work, with torture and death to endure if she were caught, made his hair stand on end.

  “So did Grandda,” Aly informed him. “I can take care of myself.”

  “It’s not the life we want for our only girl,” George replied. “My agents are used to living crooked—you’re not. And whilst I know, none better, that you can look after yourself, it’s those other folk who worry me, the ones whose business it is to sniff out spies.” To change the subject he asked, “What of young what’s-his-name? The one you wrote was squiring you about Corus?”

  Aly rolled her eyes as she sorted documents into stacks. “He bored me, Da. They all do, in time. None of them ever measures up to you, or Grandda, or Uncle Numy”—her childhood nickname for her adoptive uncle, Numair, the realm’s most powerful mage—“or Uncle Raoul, or Uncle Gary.” She shrugged. “It’s as if all the interesting men were born in your generation.” She scooped up another pile of documents from the desk. Soon she had the various reports, letters, messages, and coded coils of knotted string into four heaps: decode, important, not as important, and file. “So you can forget what’s-his-name. Marriage is for noblewomen with nothing else to do.”

  “Marriage gives a woman plenty to do, particularly the noble ones,” George said. “Keeping your lands in order, supervising the servants, using your men-at-arms to defend the place when your lord’s away, working up your stock of medicines, making sure your folk are fed and clothed—it’s important work, and it’s hard.”

  “Well, that lets that straight out,” she told him, her eyes dancing wickedly. “I’ve decided that my work is having fun. Somebody needs to do it.”

  George sighed. He knew this mood. Aly would never listen to anyone now. He would have to have a serious conversation at another time. She was sixteen, a woman grown, and she had yet to find her place in the world.

  Aly rested her hip on George’s desk. “Be reasonable, Da,” she advised, smiling. “Just think. My da and grandda are spymasters, my mother the King’s Champion. Then I’ve an adopted aunt who’s a mage and half a goddess, and an adopted uncle who’s a mage as powerful as she is. My godsfathers are the king and his youngest advisor, my gods-mothers are the queen and the lady who governs her affairs. You’ve got Thom for your mage, Alan for your knight”—she named her oldest brother and her twin, who had entered page training three years before—“and me for fun. I’m surrounded by bustling folk. You need me to do the relaxing for you.”

  Despite her claim to studying the art of relaxation, Aly had sorted all of the documents on her father’s desk. She set the important pile in front of him and carried messages to be decoded to the desk that she used when she helped George. There she set to work on reports coded in the form of assorted knots in wads of string. Her long, skilled fingers sorted out groups and positions of knots in each message web. They were maps of particular territories and areas where trouble of some kind unfolded. The complexity of the knot told Aly just how bad the problem was. The knots’ colors matched the sources of the trouble: Tortallans, foreigners, or immortals—the creatures of myth and legend who lived among them, free of disease and old age. Most immortals were peaceful neighbors who didn’t seek fights, since they could be killed by accident, magic, and weapons, but some were none too friendly.

  George watched Aly with pride. She’d had an aptitude for codes and translations since she was small, regarding them as games she wanted to win. She had treated the arts of the lock pick, the investigator, the pickpocket, the lip reader, the tracker, and the knife wielder in the same way, stubbornly working until she knew them as well as George himself. She was just as determined a student of the languages and history of the realm’s neighbors. How could someone who liked to win as much as she did lack ambition?

  TAMORA PIERCE captured the imagination of readers twenty years ago with Alanna: The First Adventure. As of August 2003, she has written twenty-one books, including three completed quartets—The Song of the Lioness, The Immortals, and Protector of the Small—set in the fantasy realm of Tortall. She has also written the Circle of Magic and The Circle Opens quartets. Her books have been translated into many different languages, and some are available on audio. Tamora Pierce’s fast-paced, suspenseful writing and strong, believable heroines have won her much praise: Emperor Mage was a 1996 ALA Best Book for Young Adults, The Realms of the Gods was listed an “outstanding fantasy novel” by VOYA in 1996, Squire (Protector of the Small #3) was a 2002 ALA Best Book for Young Adults, and Lady Knight (Protector of the Small #4) debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestsellers list.

  An avid reader herself, Ms. Pierce graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. She has worked at a variety of jobs and has written everything from novels to radio plays. Along with writer Meg Cabot (The Princess Diaries series), she co-founded Sheroes Central, a discussion board about female heroes, remarkable women in fact, fiction, and history, books, and teen issues. She now runs Sheroes Central and Sheroes Fans with the help of her beloved Spouse-Creature and dedicated board members of all ages.

  Ms. Pierce lives in New York City with her husband, Tim (who is a writer, Web page designer, and administrator), and their four cats, two birds, and various rescued wildlife.

  For more information, visit:

  www.tamora-pierce.com

  Sheroes Central at:

  www.sheroescentral.com

  TORTALL BOOKS BY TAMORA PIERCE

  The Song of the Lioness Quartet

  Alanna: The First Adventure

  In the Hand of the Goddess

  The Woman Who Rides Like a Man

  Lioness Rampant

  THE IMMORTALS QUARTET

  Wild Magic

  Wolf-Speaker

  Emperor Mage

  The Realms of the Gods

  Protector of the Small

  First Test

  Page

  Squire

  Lady Knight

  Copyright © 2002 by Tamora Pierce

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Pierce, Tamora. Lady knight / by Tamora Pierce.

  p. cm. — (Protector of the small ; #4)

  Sequel to: Squire.

  SUMMARY: When she became a knight, eighteen-year-old Kel hoped to be given a

  combat post, but instead she finds herself named commander of an outpost of

  refugees, where she must face the unnatural forces of the evil Blayce.

  [1. Knights and knighthood—Fiction. 2. Fantasy.] I. Title.

  PZ7.P61464 Lad 2002

  [Fic]—dc21 2002069862

  RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered

  trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  www.randomhouse.com

  eISBN: 978-0-307-43352-7

  v3.0

 

 

  Tamora Pierce, Lady Knight

  (Series: Protector of the Small # 4)