Protector of the Small Quartet

by Tamora Pierce

  Kel herself was in Goldenlake colors, her dress outfit: a green velvet tunic so plush she had to stop herself from stroking it, green silk hose, and a pale yellow shirt with full sleeves. Like the queen’s clothes, Kel’s were made by Lalasa and fit perfectly.

  Where her friend had found time to make them Kel didn’t know. When she’d taken Lalasa the money from Joren’s fine earlier that day, the shop was filled with ladies, their maids, Lalasa, and her helpers. Kel might have argued when Lalasa refused to take more than twenty gold nobles of the fine, but it was so noisy and Lalasa so preoccupied that Kel fled. She returned to her room with the package that contained her Midwinter garb and thirty crowns. Lalasa had been just this stubborn when Kel refused to keep the lion’s share of her fees while Lalasa was her maid.

  Kel sighed. She’d almost rather be in Lalasa’s shop again than walking around this pretty room, carrying a tray of cups filled with mulled cider or grape juice, offering them to those who did not have a drink. Most did. Cleon, Neal, and Quinden of Marti’s Hill also carried trays of liquid refreshments: wine, punch, brandy, and, for the Yamanis, rice wine and tea. Four other squires offered food: rolls, tarts, candied fruits, marzipan figures, nuts, and small winter apples, sliced and sprinkled with cinnamon.

  They all looked as bored as Kel. Even Prince Roald, the only squire who did not serve, looked bored. When Shinkokami, elegant in a Tortallan-style gown of peach silk, spoke to him, he put a look of interest on his face. Whenever he replied to or addressed his wife-to-be, Shinkokami leaned toward him, offering an attentive ear.

  They’ll have the politest marriage ever, thought Kel. It was hard to tell if the Yamani was bored, although Kel, watching Shinkokami smooth the bronze silk fan in her lap, suspected that she was. Both princess and prince were more genuinely interested when others came to talk to them. Yukimi, in a sky-blue kimono patterned with gold phoenixes, often returned to her mistress to talk. So did Lady Haname, vivid in a maroon kimono embroidered with white clouds, once she could wriggle out of a cluster of male admirers. She and Yuki were supported by Kel’s mother Ilane, Prince Eitaro’s wife, and the queen. Roald’s visitors included his father, his friends among the squires, and his knight-master, Imrah of Legann. Kel also stopped to chat with Shinkokami. She knew how uncomfortable it was to be among alien people with strange customs.

  She worried about the betrothed couple. Shy, both of them, she thought as she collected empty cups from tables and ledges. Something ought to be done.

  “You shimmer like a mirage of delight,” Cleon murmured as they met in the serving room. They turned in trays of empty cups and plates to take up full ones. “Your teeth call to mind wolfhounds romping in the snow.”

  Kel smiled up at the redheaded squire. She had never noticed it before, but his eyes were an interesting, clear gray. “Wolfhounds are furry,” she pointed out. “I hope my teeth aren’t. And teeth aren’t cold enough to be snow. How is it you get sillier every time I talk to you?”

  “The joy of our nearness cooks my lovestruck heart,” he explained with a soulful look.

  “Or you’ve been looking at Scanrans longer than is good for you. Spend time with actual girls,” she informed him sternly. “You wouldn’t call me things like ‘pearl of my heart’ then.”

  “No, it’s ‘mirage of delight’ today. ‘Pearl of my heart’ was when I was but a mere boy.” They stood in the door, looking at the party. “I hate to say it, my dear, but I think our prince is a fathead,” Cleon remarked. “There he sits with the most gorgeous creature in shoe leather, excepting your luminous self, of course—”

  “Of course,” Kel replied, straight-faced.

  “—without a word to say. Somebody should tell him the lady can converse, and sensibly, too.” Cleon straightened his shoulders. “If I don’t return by dawn, wear my handkerchief beside your heart forever.” He disappeared into a clump of guests. Kel lost the chance to say that she didn’t have his handkerchief, and if she did, after a while it would begin to smell. He’s right about the prince and princess, though, she thought, rearranging cups so her tray would balance.

  “Did Cleon kiss you for Midwinter luck?” a familiar voice drawled in her ear.

  “Did Princess Kalasin ask for a dance at the ball tomorrow night?” she retorted to Neal. “Cleon doesn’t mean that stuff. He’s just practicing.” Changing the subject, she asked, “Is Lady Alanna here?”

  Neal shook his head. “Home to Pirate’s Swoop,” he said. “Happily leaving me to Lord Wyldon’s guidance while she embraces the baron and the children.”

  “You’re doomed,” Kel teased, and moved on.

  She was about to return for a fresh tray when another familiar voice asked, “Squire Keladry, how are you?”

  Kel turned and faced Commander Buri. The stocky K’mir looked grand in a crimson silk dress. The shade gave a touch of gold to her skin. Her overrobe was crinkled gold silk with jet beads on the hem. “Commander, you look wonderful,” Kel said, trying to remember when she had seen her in anything but mud-splashed working clothes.

  “I feel tormented,” the woman replied. “And I wish you’d call me Buri. You know Riders don’t hold with titles.” Her dark eyes flicked around the room. “I haven’t seen Raoul about. I suppose he defied their majesties and is hiding in his rooms.”

  “No, he’s here,” Kel said. “Not in this room, though, or we’d have seen a big lump behind the hangings.”

  Buri grinned, white teeth flashing against her dark complexion. “Yes, that’s where I’d look. Can’t say I blame him. The crowd around Thayet is thinning. I’d best say hello, or she might think I didn’t show up per my orders.” She saluted Kel and wandered off toward the monarchs.

  Kel’s eyes went to the prince and princess, who now smiled at one another as if their teeth hurt. This is no good, thought Kel. They have to learn how to talk. There must be a way to nudge them along.

  She went to a door that opened onto a book room and peered in. Raoul was there, talking with Gareth the Younger, the king’s closest advisor and one of his friends. Sir Gareth’s wife, Lady Cythera, was tugging on her husband’s sleeve. “I hate to interrupt,” the lady explained, “but Prince Eitaro wants my husband to meet Lady Eitaro.”

  Kel moved on to offer drinks to foreign dignitaries. Yuki stopped her briefly. “When things are quieter, would you sit with her highness for a time?” she asked Kel, her usually merry eyes pleading. “She and the prince have nothing to say to one another, and she’s sad. When someone mentioned you’d fought a forest campaign this summer, she showed interest. She’d love to hear the details.”

  Kel’s plan came together in the flick of an eye-lash. “Wait a moment, Yuki?” she asked, using her old nickname for the Yamani. She put her tray inside the serving room. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Uh-oh,” Yuki murmured wickedly.

  Neal and Cleon were talking when Kel approached them. “Come here,” she said, leading them to Yuki. The four entered the serving room. “Yuki, have you met my friends?” Kel introduced the young men, who bowed in the proper Yamani manner. “I think we agree, Roald and Shinkokami have to start talking. Now, Shinko—”

  “Shinko?” Neal interrupted.

  Kel smiled. “It’s her nickname—she gave me permission to use it when we were little. Anyway, she wants to hear about that bandit hunt I was on this summer. Lord Raoul is in the book room—he’s really good at helping people to relax. If you lads—”

  “I am a man, I’ll have you know,” Neal said loftily, putting a hand on his chest. “Five years older—”

  Kel elbowed him, ruining his dignity. Yuki covered a giggle with her fan. “Hasn’t Lady Alanna taught you not to interrupt?” Kel asked. “Pay attention. Can you two”—she looked from him to Cleon—“get Roald interested? Otherwise he won’t come—he’ll think Shinko will be bored. And she won’t say anything to him. She’s worried he’ll believe she’s unmaidenly for wanting to hear about it.” Shinko had let a few interesting things slip duri
ng morning glaive practices. “If we get them together with Lord Raoul, though, and maybe Commander Buri, they’ll be so interesting that Roald and Shinko might relax.”

  “Why would he think she’s unmaidenly?” protested Cleon. “His own mother hunts bandits.”

  “Prince Eitaro told my lady that men with unconventional mothers want conventional wives,” Yuki said, her round cheeks red with vexation. “I don’t think it’s true—”

  “Me neither,” chorused Roald’s three friends. They grinned at one another.

  “This plan is good,” Yuki said, closing her fan with a decisive snap. She tapped Neal’s chest with it. “Signal me when you have Prince Roald’s interest,” she ordered him, and bustled off.

  “Bossy little thing,” Neal said to no one in particular. “Let’s go hook Roald, Cleon.”

  Kel went to talk with Raoul. He was eager to help, if it didn’t mean leaving the book room. Kel suspected he was also glad to have a good excuse if the king asked him where he’d been. She found Buri, who was more than happy to join them.

  It was some time before Kel, Neal, and Cleon were finally able to join the book room gathering after the second shift of squires arrived to take their tasks. The prince and princess were caught up, asking sharp questions of the two commanders and of Kel herself. Kel noted Roald’s look of wonder and pleasure as Shinko revealed a thorough grasp of strategy, supply problems, and tracking. Pressed by Raoul and Buri to tell what she knew, she described Yamani battles and tactics. From there talk ranged over other battles against immortals, bandit chasing in Tortall and the Yamani Islands, and the latest round of trouble with Scanra.

  Others came and left: Lady Haname, Kel’s parents, Sir Gareth and Lady Cythera, the queen. Roald’s knight-master, Lord Imrah, stayed for some time. Everyone groaned when Imrah’s lady dragged him away at last.

  Slowly the group shrank to its original members. Neal and Yuki then left for a mages’ party. The prince and princess left together, debating the advantages of crossbows over longbows.

  Raoul, Buri, Kel, and Cleon watched them go. “Who would have thought?” murmured Cleon. “She looks like she’d break if you touched her too hard.”

  Kel got to her feet. “Come to the training yard the queen’s ladies use some morning and see how fragile she is.” She covered a yawn. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m asleep on my feet.”

  Cleon got up. “Gods, I’ve yet to finish wrapping gifts.”

  Buri and Raoul waved to them and continued their conversation.

  “So have you survived your first night of squire social duty?” asked Cleon as they wound their way through the last partygoers in the Crystal Room.

  “It could’ve been worse,” Kel replied. “I’m just sleepy.”

  “You see Lord Raoul at parties and balls, and he looks like a piece of wood,” Cleon said as they walked down the hall. “But he isn’t, is he?”

  Kel shook her head. “He’s completely different with me and the men.” She smiled. “Something he said once—I guess a lot of mothers with daughters to marry off come after him at these things.”

  Cleon’s smile was crooked. “There are a lot of them, and they can be persistent.”

  They had reached the place where their paths separated. Kel looked up at Cleon. “I wouldn’t know,” she teased. “I don’t have to worry about matchmaking mothers.”

  Cleon leaned down and pressed his lips gently to hers. “Midwinter luck, Kel,” he whispered. He turned crimson, and strode down the hall.

  Kel stood there for some time, completely poleaxed.

  The next evening Cleon had duty at a different party from Kel. That’s a relief, she told herself as she offered sweetmeats to the heads of guilds and their wives. Of course it’s a relief, not to see him so soon. I need time to decide what to say to him, or what to do, when I see him. Particularly what I’ll do. Not that I plan to do anything.

  Then they didn’t serve together at any other Midwinter parties. Kel only glimpsed him once, at a distance. She told herself that she was not unhappy that he hadn’t seen her.

  She kept busy. She tended the griffin, who was quiet after his encounter with Daine. She practiced weapons with the queen, the Yamanis, and her mother, and rode Peachblossom and Hoshi. She wrapped and sent out her Midwinter gifts the day before the longest night of the year, and opened hers the next morning. Her unknown benefactor had not vanished with Raoul’s taking her on—among her gifts was a splendid brass-mounted spyglass, one that Raoul threatened to steal. Raoul himself had given Kel a beautifully made pair of armored gauntlets that were nearly as flexible as cloth gloves, and padded inside for warmth. Kel’s gift to him was the best feathers shed by the griffin, each bright orange and perfect. Kel knew she could have sold them, but the look on Raoul’s face when he thanked her was more valuable.

  Kel had started something with the book room conversation. Others like it continued during the holiday parties. Raoul and Buri presided; Shinkokami and her Yamani ladies and Prince Roald and his friends always came, though plenty of others took part. Warfare wasn’t the only topic. The Tortallans were curious about Yamani customs and history; the reverse was true of the Yamanis. They could ask any question about the Eastern Lands and no one would laugh. Kel felt a little smug as she watched Roald and Shinkokami lose their shyness with one another. It was nice to end the old year with a good idea.

  During the festivities Kel thought of those squires who faced their Ordeals that year. Each night one of them held vigil; each morning one entered the Chamber at dawn. Did they have visions in the chapel? Kel wondered as she filled glasses and served food. Did they touch that iron door in the night, or were they content to face the Chamber only when the time came to walk into it?

  Despite her curiosity she never joined the cluster of family and friends that waited for the squires to leave the Chamber. It didn’t seem right, as if it were indecent for her to look on the squires’ faces just then.

  That year ten of them entered the Chamber, three more than the holiday had nights. Afterward Kel waited three days, to allow for cleaning, before she went into the chapel alone. She didn’t think she broke any rules doing this, but she had to be alone in any event.

  The chapel smelled of beeswax and cleansing herbs. The sun disk shone from a recent polishing. Only the Chamber door looked the same as it had that summer.

  Kel shivered: the room was cold. She blew on her fingers, then pressed her hands flat on the cold iron.

  Something bound her from shoulders to feet, locking her arms against her sides and her legs together. The binding was tight, though she saw nothing but the clothes she wore. Another band lay over her mouth, gagging her.

  She stood at one end of a long room. Next to her was a line of people who passed without looking her way. One at a time they advanced to a table nearly ten yards from Kel. She could smell them, it was so real: soap, damp wool, fear-sweat. She knew most of them: Lalasa’s friend Tian, Bernin from Owlshollow, the girl whose doll she’d found at Haresfield, the girl’s mother, Shinkokami, Jump, Peachblossom, Lerant.

  Kel twisted frantically, trying to get free, with no luck. She could not move or utter a sound. Fighting to catch her breath, Kel stared at the table. Duke Turomot, the Lord Magistrate, consulted a long sheet of parchment; Ebroin of Genlith, the steward for the lord of Stone Mountain, manipulated a large abacus as the duke spoke. They sat behind the table. Joren of Stone Mountain leaned on it, beautiful in black velvet, his hair pale gold against the dense black. He smiled mockingly at the people in the line.

  “Lalasa Isran,” Ebroin said clearly, taking up his abacus.

  Kel wrenched hard at her bindings. A muscle pulled in her neck, sending a white-hot streak of pain into her skull.

  “Dressmaker,” Turomot said, drumming his fingers on the table. Ebroin touched a bead on the abacus. “Breeding age, looks well when clean, strong enough for servant’s work, rarely ill.” For each comment, Ebroin flicked another bead on the abacus. “That is all of worth abou
t her,” Turomot said.

  Ebroin calculated a sum on the abacus and wrote it on the slate, which he passed to Joren. The young man looked at it.

  “Not interested,” Joren said. “Cull her.”

  The centaurs Graystreak and Iriseyes walked out of nowhere to grab Lalasa’s arms. They dragged her to one side. There another centaur clubbed her with a spiked mace. Lalasa fell into a pit in the floor.

  “Shinkokami, Yamani princess,” Turomot said, reading from his parchment. “A good bride price, connections, and an alliance with the Yamani Islands. Embroiders, dances, knows the use of weapons.” Ebroin flicked abacus beads and wrote a new total on his slate.

  Joren inspected it. “Fifty gold crowns. Not a copper more. It’s risky, taking a woman who uses weapons.”

  Turomot nodded. Graystreak and Iriseyes took Shinko’s arms to lead her out.

  Bernin stepped up. “Bernin of Owlshollow,” Turomot read from his parchment. “Trained shepherd, a guide—”

  Joren raised a hand. “I have no need of shepherds or guides,” he said. “Cull him.”

  Kel fought her bonds to stop this, whatever it was, without success. Joren kept Haname and Kel’s mother, sending them to some unknown place, then ordered that the Haresfield girl, Yuki, and Jump be culled. They were clubbed down as Kel fought to do something, anything. She was trying to scream to Peachblossom to run when she fell.

  She was in the Chapel of the Ordeal, pouring sweat, her throat raw from smothered screams. Her body ached furiously.

  Trembling, she staggered to her feet and stared at the Chamber door, fists clenched. You won’t beat me this way, she told it silently. You will never beat me.