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by Tamora Pierce

Kel shook her head as the door closed behind the big squire. Owen would say he was treating me like a girl again, she thought, amused.

  "You’ve made a conquest," Tian remarked slyly.

  Kel looked at her and Lalasa. They were giggling. "Cleon? He just hates leaving."

  "Of course, my lady," Lalasa replied, as meek as a mouse.

  Kel sighed, and returned to the study group. At least the boys weren’t always seeing romance whenever a male and female touched hands.

  Joren, Garvey, and their knight-masters left a week later. More squires trickled out of the mess hall one at a time, until only the pages remained. It was spring. The business of the realm was picking up.

  For this year’s little examinations, Neal stuck to Kel like a burr from the moment they met at breakfast. "I won’t risk you being late, and I won’t be late waiting for you, either," he said as Kel gave her shiny brown locks a last combing. "Neither of us will repeat a day of this living doom if I have anything to say about it."

  "Stop pacing," Kel ordered. "You’ll wear out the floor. Is your tunic straight?" Briskly she tugged the back of his tunic until it hung properly. She was never sure if she was glad that her role as unofficial inspector gave her an excuse to touch him. "So tell me," she began as they walked to the exam waiting room, "is it worth all this struggle? You could have been a healer by now, with a university credential and friends your own age. Aren’t you sorry to have missed that?"

  She’d expected him to joke, or to be sarcastic, but he actually gave her question some thought. "The physical training, well, I couldn’t be a knight without it, and I started late. Nothing would change that. It’s true, at the university I never would have spent time with anyone so much younger than me. I would definitely have lost something then. These little fellows here aren’t always testing each other like males of my advanced years." He bowed, and Kel smiled. "And I wouldn’t give up your friendship for all the healer’s credentials in the world."

  "Me?" she demanded, astonished.

  They walked into the waiting room, the first pages there. "You," Neal said, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms. "You are an education, Keladry of Mindelan."

  Kel put her hands on her hips. "I’m not sure that’s a compliment."

  Neal grinned. "Neither am I," he teased.

  As Seaver, Merric, and Owen came in, Kel pointed at Neal. "You will pay for that, on the practice courts," she informed him.

  Owen promptly went over and clapped Neal on the shoulder. "It was good knowing you," he told the older boy solemnly.

  The little examinations went as they had done in the last two years. The questions were all ones each page could answer easily, based on material that had been covered in detail during the year. It was almost a letdown.

  The following week the pages attended the big examinations in support of Faleron and Yancen of Irenroha, who was voted "a good sort, if not one of us," by the study group. That night the fourth-years rose from their tables to walk to the squires’ side of the room as their comrades applauded and cheered. There was a special dessert and entertainment to celebrate their promotion.

  "Next year is our turn," Neal commented softly to Kel.

  His words made her heart thud alarmingly. They were now fourth-year pages.

  twelve

  VANISHING YEAR

  Summer camp that year was tame. There were no spidren nests, no outlaws. Lord Wyldon took them north, on a sixteen-day ride into the mountains around fiefs Aili, Stone Mountain, and Dunlath. In the mountains they lived in caves, hunted, fished, climbed rocks, and practiced the ever-vital skill of mapping. Lord Wyldon didn’t have to search to find heights for Kel to climb. In this rugged country there were cliffs everywhere. Kel handled them: the weeks of practice since Midwinter had been a good idea. She did not spend her thirteenth birthday throwing up due to fright. She decided that this was a good thing.

  I’ll be a squire on my fourteenth birthday, she thought that night as she drifted off to sleep.

  Their training in command and battle continued, with the pages divided into small groups and set at each other in hard terrain. For three days they had guests, acquaintances of Lord Wyldon from a summer camp the year before Kel had arrived: fifteen-year-old Lady Maura of Dunlath, her knight-guardian Sir Douglass of Veldine, a ten-foot-tall, aqua-skinned ogre named Iakoju, and a pack of wolves. The wolves moved among the pages as if mingling with humans were natural. Their gaze was steady and intelligent, making the hair on Kel’s arms stand on end. Lord Wyldon spoke to their leader, Brokefang, as if he expected the great animal to understand him. Worse, Brokefang acted as if he did understand.

  Kel’s sparrows and Jump, who should have avoided the uncanny pack, were quite comfortable with them. During the nights the wolves stayed near the pages’ camp, Jump slept with them; the sparrows rode on the animals until their departure.

  The break in routine was a lesson in battles. Lady Maura and Iakoju showed the pages how Daine, Numair, and a force of knights, soldiers, animals, immortals, and Maura herself had overthrown Maura’s treasonous sister and the Carthaki mages who helped her. Lady Maura explained the battle as coolly as a general while Iakoju drew maps and showed the movements of the odd army that had freed Dunlath. The fact that the wolves helped the ogre to move the stones used to show the forces’ positions made Kel shiver.

  "I don’t know why it bothers me in wolves and not in sparrows or dogs," she confessed to her friends after the lady and her escort had gone.

  "Maybe because wolves have no reason to like us," drawled Seaver.

  Afterward they discovered that someone had raided their stores of dried meat and fruit. By the look of the tracks, a wolf had done it. Lord Wyldon examined a tuft of fur left by the marauder and shook his head. "Short Snout," he muttered under his breath.

  A week after the pages went home for the summer, Kel was grooming Peachblossom when a voice said, "I hope he’ll get on with the next page as well as he did with you, m’lady."

  She turned. Stefan Groomsman leaned against the stable’s back wall, chewing a straw.

  "Beg pardon?" Kel asked.

  "Maybe Daine will get him to obey his next master like he does you." There was hope in the hostler’s bulging blue eyes. "Or do you mean to buy him yourself?"

  The practice was common: they could buy the horses lent to them by the Crown once they became squires. Otherwise their knight-masters supplied their horses, and those they had ridden were left for new pages.

  "I wish I could," Kel whispered, blinking eyes that suddenly burned. Presenting her sisters at court, opening the town house, paying Kel’s expenses and the school fees of her brothers and sisters had strained her parents’ finances. Even a troublesome destrier was expensive, and there was the added cost of feeding and housing him. Buying Peachblossom was out of the question.

  Stefan cleared his throat. He was more comfortable with horses than with people, but he’d been kind to Kel for Peachblossom’s sake. "You’ve gentled him considerable, miss. Long as his next master don’t use the spur, I think he’ll get on. You prob’ly saved his life, taking him on like you did."

  Kel hid her face against Peachblossom’s neck. What would she do without him? No other horse would give her that same fearful, gleeful sense of riding an avalanche. She envied the gelding his freedom to be mean. Sometimes she told herself that Peachblossom was her temper, her true temper under all her Yamani manners.

  She made herself smile at Stefan. "Well, we have one more year," she said. "We’ll just make it a good one." She heard a whine and looked down. Jump peered up at her, his twice-broken tail waving slowly. ’’At least I’ll be able to keep Jump, don’t you think?"

  Stefan nodded. "Just about all the knights keep dogs. You ever seen the elk and wolfhounds my lord breeds?"

  Kel wasn’t sure whom he meant. "My lord—?" she asked.

  "Him as is your training master, miss. Fief Cavall breeds the finest dogs in the realm. It’s no wonder my lord’s turned a blind ey
e to that chap." He nodded at Jump. "He’s that fond of dogs, and however beauteous your lad may be, anyone with an eye can tell he’s a fine dog under them scars."

  Kel smiled. Only Stefan would call a scarred, stocky, one-eared, small-eyed, chisel-headed brawler like Jump "beauteous."

  She saw Peachblossom’s eyelid lower and grabbed the reins, just as he lunged for Jump. Pulling his head back up, she scolded, "What do you care if he gets compliments? He’s a dog." She told Stefan, "It’s like he understands what we say."

  The hostler grinned. "When new horses come in from outside, I find myself thinking they’re stupid. That’s the palace these days." He was headed for the door when he thought of something. "You know, Lady Kel, if your knight-master is one what keeps close to court, I’ll see to it you stay with Peachblossom. I know that’s not likely, but it’s something. "

  Kel grimaced as he left. Was this what she had to look forward to? Either she lost her horse, or she kept him because she’d been chosen by a palace knight, someone like Sir Gareth of Naxen or Sir Myles, who spent his days among documents. There were worse fates, she supposed. She liked Sir Myles, whose comments and quiet jokes had lightened her bleakest days, but serving a knight who rode a desk, not a destrier, was not in her dreams of protecting the helpless.

  Kel’s two-month holiday passed quickly, as it always did. Stefan gave her permission to ride Peachblossom into the Royal Forest, if she didn’t go too far. Kel took Jump and the sparrows, and tried out her mystery well-wisher’s latest gift, a beautifully made bow and quiver full of arrows. Several times she brought Stefan small game like rabbits and partridges as a thank-you.

  The brightest spot was two weeks spent with her parents in Port Caynn, picnicking on beaches and in the countryside. With Adalia to marry at Midwinter and Oranie betrothed, both to husbands they helped to choose, Piers and Ilane of Mindelan wanted time with Kel. She practiced glaive skills with her mother and talked late into the night with her father, telling him all she had learned about battles. The three reminisced about the Yamani Islands and talked about the negotiations for a new Yamani treaty and an imperial bride for Prince Roald.

  On their ride back to Corus, Ilane asked, "Are you frightened of the big exams?"

  Kel shook her head. "The worst part is having people watch—well, and the judges don’t seem that friendly," she admitted. "But I’ve sat in on the big exams, and the questions on learning and showing your physical training just aren’t that hard. Neal’s more scared than I am. He’s afraid that we’re going to be a sneeze late, and have to do this year—or worse, the whole thing—over again."

  "I shouldn’t think you’d be late on such a day," Ilane remarked, amused.

  "Nor do I, but that’s Neal for you," Kel replied, shaking her head.

  Training began again. There were new first-years to meet, and the nightly hazing patrols to resume. Lord Wyldon handed out weights to the senior pages, and set new, more vexing targets for Kel to tilt at after she mastered the lightweight ring. He then shifted other fourth-years to the ring once they were able to hit the small black dot on the quintain target.

  Requests for Lalasa’s services as a seamstress poured in as ladies readied for the court social season. Counting the part of Lalasa’s earnings that she was saving, Kel realized that her maid’s goal of her own shop might be reached soon. She might even have enough money by the time Kel entered a knight-master’s service. Kel wouldn’t be leaving her to fend for herself.

  The training season was a week old when Iden and Warric reported to Kel’s room immediately after supper. With them were three first-years. "We told them how good you two are at helping," Iden explained.

  Kel and Lalasa traded looks, Kel’s resigned, Lalasa’s amused. Extra training with staffs resumed in Kel’s rooms.

  In November, before the squires returned, Lord Wyldon, Sergeant Ezeko, and the two Shangs took the pages into the Royal Forest, where they camped overnight. In the morning, the pages were split into two groups. One, led by Seaver, hiked beside a broad, brisk stream until they were out of sight of the rest. They would assemble, pick weapons and blunt-tipped arrows, and coat them with red chalk, as Seaver explained what position each of his "men" held. The other group was taken to a huge pile of boulders upstream. This was their castle, which they would defend against Seaver’s marauders. They, too, used red chalk to coat the edges of their weapons and arrows. Eda Bell and Hakuin Seastone would judge if a page was still "alive" according to the red marks on clothes or skin.

  To everyone’s astonishment, Lord Wyldon chose Kel to command the defending force. She trudged around the rocks, scratching her head, then climbed nervously to their heights to inspect their surroundings. There was no moat to keep enemies from taking her rock castle from the rear. She had the stream on one side, which meant that approach was moderately safe. She immediately put her first-years to building noise-traps of dry branches to give warning of the enemy’s advance. She chose Neal, Quinden, and Warric and posted them as lookouts farther away. For a moment she thought Quinden would refuse her orders, but the moment passed. He vanished into the trees. The adults left, too, fading into the trees to watch. She wished she had their skill at moving silently through dry leaves.

  If she had learned anything in hill country, it was the benefits of high ground. She positioned her archers on the stone heights, in those spots where trees didn’t obscure their view of the ground. The pages who wielded staffs she placed on stones that raised them just above the ground, to give them the advantage. Before she took an observation post for herself, she assembled Jump and the sparrows on a rock too small for a human.

  "This is a game," she explained, a little embarrassed that her teammates could hear her talking to animals. "It’s for fun. Well, not fun, exactly, but— never mind." She glanced around, in case Lord Wyldon had appeared to scowl at her. He was nowhere in view. "You stay right here. Don’t move. Don’t help." Then she climbed to her own vantage point high on the rocks.

  Instead of looking down, which made her sweat, she closed her eyes and listened for the crunch of leaves over the stream’s rush. Twice she told the boys in her command to be quiet. For the most part, though, they took her instructions as seriously as if they were at war.

  Kel opened her eyes when an arrow struck a tree stump halfway between her vantage point and the archers. She jumped down and inspected it: a purple thread around the shaft marked it as Neal’s. The enemy had just passed him. Kel alerted her warriors on that line of approach. She made sure that the others kept their positions. "Don’t get into the fight," she told them firmly. "Watch the trees— Seaver might split his people up. You archers, shoot carefully. You don’t want to hurt anyone you hit, and we don’t have more arrows once yours are gone."

  That should have been everything until Seaver’s force reached hers, but Kel was still uncomfortable. She took a last tour of the level where the staff men were, then circled again on her height. She was still fidgeting when the rattle of a noise-trap met her ears. Looking to the rear of her "castle," she saw a small group of pages creeping through the trees.

  They got around Quinden, she thought, and alerted the sentries on that side with hand signs. One of them was Owen, who lay flat on a high stone, a selection of cloth balls beside him. Instead of the dear, deadly jelly called blazebalm, used in real combat, the balls held a fist-sized clump of dirt, leaves, and red chalk. When the attackers came within range, he lobbed the balls at them with deadly accuracy. They burst when they hit, leaving his victims covered with dirt and red dust. As "killed men" they sat on the forest floor in disgust.

  When they attacked in the rear, Seaver led his main group in a charge at the front.

  By Owen’s terms it wasn’t a jolly fight—he complained later there was far too much thinking and calls of "You, out!" by the adults—but it was brisk. Kel moved from post to post, making sure there were no more surprises and that everyone obeyed orders. Seaver’s attack was defeated at every turn. When only three of his "men"
were left, they tried to retreat. Kel sent her staff men to capture them, winning a total victory.

  Afterward they cooked lunch, and the adults reviewed their performance. Several boys received punishment labor for refusing to stay dead after an adult decreed them so. Quinden was given twice that amount of work for not warning Kel when Seaver’s second group passed him. When she glanced at him, surprised—she’d honestly thought they’d sneaked around him—Quinden sneered at her.

  The last of Joren’s legacy, Kel thought as she scrubbed her dishes. I’ll be glad when I’m a squire and don’t have to deal with that anymore.

  Two days after their return, squires began to appear in the mess hall. Once again Prince Roald stayed at Port Legann in the south. Joren returned, Vinson, Faleron, Garvey, Yancen—but no Cleon. In December, Kel got a letter from him, addressed to her but written for the entire study group. Sir Inness had chosen to remain in the north, training villagers in self-defense. They wouldn’t come to the palace until the spring.

  With the start of winter, Kel’s year appeared to melt away. She could remember the passage of time if she thought about it. Once again she waited on the Archpriestess and her companions over Midwinter. She exchanged gifts and received them. There was a beautifully made longsword from her benefactor, one that was the envy of her friends. Lalasa surprised her with a long coat, quilted with down for warmth, containing a number of useful pockets. It was in Kel’s favorite color, russet red. Neal gave her a book of Tortallan maps, while Kel gave him a history of his famous grandfather’s battles. There were gifts of clothes and money from her family, a drawing of Jump from Seaver, and small gifts from her other friends. Kel gave Owen some of her precious bruise balm—of all the pages, she told him in her accompanying note, he needed it the most. Seaver and Merric each got one of her lucky Yamani cat figures. For the rest she had gotten sweets, knowing they would appreciate those on cold winter nights.

  She could remember what she learned in Sunday night battle lessons without trouble: they continued to fascinate her. Lord Wyldon chose battles with immortals, sea raiders, and Scanrans to cover that winter, to give his students an understanding of the methods preferred by the enemies they would have to fight most as knights.