Arrows of the Queen (15 page)

The boys nodded agreement; but Talia, determined not to be any kind of a burden on the Collegium or those in it, and still not quite ready to believe in the trustworthiness of strangers, pledged silently to manage on her own, no matter what.

A bell rang twice in the corridor outside. “Which of you is Cook's helper today?” Teren asked.

Talia raised her hand a little.

“For future reference, all of you, that's the signal for the helpers; the servers go on three rings, and the meal is served on four. Off with you, youngling. Gentlemen, if you left your rooms in a mess, you'd better rectify the situation; there's inspection after lunch. I'll see you here tomorrow morning.”

Teran directed Talia to use the door and staircase near the door leading out to the courtyard. Instead of letting out into the Housekeeper's office, this one led her to a huge kitchen—and much to her surprise, the cook was a balding, moon-faced man. She was too surprised to find a man in charge of the kitchen to even think to be afraid of him, and his easy, gentle manner kept her from being alarmed, despite his sex.

He ignored what seemed to be chaos swirling around him to question her as to her abilities, his smile broadening with each of her answers.

“Finally!” he said, round face beaming. “Someone who knows what to do with food besides eat it!” He gave her charge over the vegetables.

While she peeled and chopped them, she peered about her, curiously. This place didn't seem all that different from the kitchen of a Hold house; even the ovens were in the same place. That was at first—then she began to notice small things; pumps to bring water to the huge sinks, another one of the copper boilers to heat the water, pipes leading from the sinks to carry the waste away. There was an almost fanatical precision about the placement of pots and pans and tools and the scrupulous cleanliness of the place—Keldar would surely have approved. She was surprised to see that all the ovens were in use; there wasn't much noticeable heat coming from them. They must have been insulated with far better care than the ones in the Holding. Or perhaps—as she considered it, it occurred to her that they actually extended out beyond the outer wall. Perhaps that had something to do with it.

She soon saw that what had seemed like chaos was in fact as carefully orchestrated as any general's field maneuvers. No one was allowed to stand idle for more than a moment or two, and yet the Cook had gauged his helpers' abilities and stamina perfectly. They usually tired just as their tasks were completed, and one by one were sent to rest at a trestle table. Then, just as tired hands had recovered and tired legs were ready to move again, the dishes began coming out of the cupboard and the pots off the stove and out of the oven, and they began transporting the filled dishes to the hoist. When the last of them had vanished upward, they turned to find their table laid ready with tableware and food.

Talia edged over onto a corner, and discovered her seatmate was Jeri. “I
like
this job,” Jeri said, filling her bowl and Talia's with stew. “Mero always saves the best for us.”

The cook grinned broadly, even his eyes smiled. “How else to insure that you work and not shirk?” he asked, passing hot bread and butter. “Besides, doesn't the Book of One say ‘Do not keep the ox who threshes your grain from filling his belly as he works' ?”

“What's the ‘Book of One'?” Talia whispered.

“Mero's from Three Rivers—there's a group up there that believes there's only one god,” Jeri replied. “I know it sounds strange, but they must be all right; 'cause Mero's awfully nice.”

It seemed more than very strange to Talia, and she knew what the Elders would have said. Yet there was no denying the warmth and kindness of this man; he went out of his way to coax Talia into helping herself when she seemed too shy to dive in the way the others were. What Nerrissa had said last night was beginning to be something more than words.

But before she could begin to grasp this more than dimly, the Cook produced a hot berry pie from the oven with a flourish worthy of a conjurer, and all other thoughts were banished. Abstract thought takes a poor second place to berry pies when you're only thirteen.

They were just finishing when the dishwashing crew arrived, and the Cook banished them all back upstairs. Remembering what Herald Teren had said about room inspections, Talia made haste to straighten hers before anyone could see the state she'd left it in that morning. She changed quickly into one of her older and more worn outfits for working with the Armsmaster before hurrying out to the practice yard.

By now the sun was high; the trees that ringed the practice yard gave very welcome shade. The “yard” itself was nothing more than a square of scuffed, yellowed grass, with benches along two sides of it, and a small well behind the benches. Just beyond the trees was a cleared area with archery targets at one end; there were racks of bows and arrows at the other end. As Talia watched, two of the students picked up several bows in succession, trying them till they found one to their liking; apparently no one had his own special weapon. She moved hesitantly to the practice yard itself, where the Armsmaster was currently holding forth; he seemed to be dividing his time equally between those who were shooting and the ones practicing hand-to-hand fighting.

She had been filled with dread at the thought of reencountering the fearsome Alberich, but she discovered that afternoon that having served as the butt of her older brother Justus' cruelty had been useful after all. Alberich actually looked mildly pleased when she demonstrated that she knew how to fall without hurting herself and how to use a bow without ruining forearm, fingers, or fletching. So far as proficiency with the bow went, she thought she wasn't much worse than the other students her own age and began to feel a tiny bit more confident. There were a lot more of them than she thought there would be, for mixed among the gray of her own Collegium were uniforms of the pale green of Healer's and the rust-brown of Bardic. It did seem a bit odd, though, that she was the youngest to be receiving training with edged weapons. Most of the students her age were being put to stave-work or hacking away at dummies with clubs that only vaguely resembled practice-blades.

Once again Jeri was there; a familiar face was comforting, and Talia sat next to her when her turn at the targets was over. “Why aren't there any Blues?” she asked curiously.

“Them?” Jeri gave a very unladylike snort. “Most of
them
have their own private arms tutors—at least the ones that aren't learning to be scholars or artificers. The scholars don't need weapons-work-the courtiers wouldn't want to soil themselves among us common folk. Besides, Alberich won't coddle them, and they know it. King or beggar, if you don't lunge right, he's going to smack you good and hard. Oh-oh,” she groaned, as Alberich dismissed the boy he'd been working with and nodded at her, “Looks like it's my turn to get smacked.”

She bounced to her feet to take her stance opposite Alberich with her practice blade in hand. Talia watched her enviously, wishing
she
could move like Jeri did.

“Don't let Jer fool you, young 'un,” chuckled an older boy, who Talia judged to be about sixteen. “Her blood's as blue as the Queen's is. If she hadn't been Chosen, she'd be a Countess now. She's had a good share of the benefit given by one of those private tutors she was demeaning just now; that's why she's so incredible at her age.”

“And why Alberich treats her rougher than the rest of us,” put in another, a short, slim boy near Talia's own age, with dark brown hair, bushy eyebrows and nearly black eyes, and a narrow, impish face. He had just finished a bout with another student, and dropped down next to Talia, mopping his sweating face with a towel. He winced as Alberich corrected Jeri's footwork by swatting the offending leg with the flat of his blade.

“He doesn't approve of private tutors?” Talia hazarded. “He doesn't like nobles?”

“Starseekers! No!” the second boy exclaimed, “He just expects more out of her, so he rides her harder. I think he may have ideas about making her Armsmistress when he steps down—if she survives his training and her internship!”

“Believe me, with swordwork that good, by the time she gets her Whites the only way to take Jeri down will be with an army,” the first replied.

“Well Coroc, if anyone would know, you would,” the second admitted, watching him step forward to replace Jeri. “His father's the Lord Marshal, so he's been seeing the best swordwork in the Kingdom since he was born,” he told Talia.

Talia's eyes widened. “The Lord Marshal's son?”

Her compatriot grinned, hanging his towel around his neck. “Whole new world in here, isn't it? On your right, the Lord Marshal's son, on your left, a Countess—and here we sit, a former thief and beggar—” he bowed mockingly “that's yours truly, of course—and—a ”what are you, anyway?”

“Holderkin.”

“Farmgirl, then. Hard to believe, isn't it? Like one of those mad tales we used to listen to. You're Talia, right?”

She nodded, wondering how he knew.

“I'm Skif—if you were with the Dean when the Provost-Marshal came by, you probably heard plenty about me! It's not fair, I know; we all know who you are just because you're the only female face we don't recognize, but you have fifty-two names and faces to learn! And as if that wasn't bad enough, everything you've been seeing probably runs against all you've been taught at home, and you're all in a muddle most of the time.” He reached out too quickly for her to flinch away and tousled her hair with a grin of sympathy. “As they kept telling me all during
my
first year, ‘this, too, shall pass.' We're all glad you're with us, and we all most fervently wish you luck with the Royal Brat. Now it's
my
turn to get whacked on by Master Alberich—with luck I'll get a set of bruises to match the last batch he gave me. Take heart,” he ended, rising, “you follow me.”

Despite his own words, Skif seemed to give a good accounting of himself with the Armsmaster. Talia, in spite of her lack of experience in weaponry, saw that Alberich was drilling him in a style radically different to the styles Coroc and Jeri had used. Skif's weapon was a short, heavy blade, as opposed to Jeri's lighter rapier or Coroc's longsword. His bout seemed to include as much gymnastics as bladework, and seemed to depend on avoiding his opponent's weapon rather than countering it in any way. He bounced about with the agility of a squirrel—nevertheless, Armsmaster Alberich eventually “killed” him.

Skif “died” dramatically, eliciting a round of applause at his theatrics; then rose, grinning, to present Alberich with his own gloves—which Skif had filched from Alberich's belt some time during the practice bout. Alberich received them with a sigh that said wordlessly that this was not the first time Skif had pulled this trick, then turned to motion Talia to take his place. She came forward with a great deal of trepidation.

“You were watching Skif closely?” Alberich asked. “Good. This is the style I wish you to learn. It has nothing of grace, but much of cunning; and I think it will do you more good to know the ways of avoiding the blade of the assassin in the arras than the duelist on the field of honor. So. We begin.”

He tutored her with far more patience than she had expected, having witnessed his outbursts of temper over some of his pupils' mistakes. He favored her with none of the sarcastic comments he had heaped on the others, nor did he administer any corrective slaps with the flat of his practice blade. Perhaps it was her imagination, but he almost seemed to be treating her with a kind of rough sympathy—certainty he paid far more attention to the level of her spirits and energy than he had any of the others—for just when she was quite sure she could no longer keep her rubbery knees from giving way with exhaustion, he smiled briefly at her (an unexpected sight that left her dumb) and said, “Enough. You do well, better than I had expected. Rest for a moment, then go to work with your Companion when you are cool.”

She rested just long enough to cool down without stiffening up, then ran to Companion's Field with an eagerness that matched the reluctance with which she had gone to arms practice.

As she approached the fence, she saw that Rolan had anticipated her arrival; she scrambled up the rough boards and swung from the top of the fence to his back without bothering to saddle him, and they set off across the field at a full gallop. It was intoxicating beyond belief; though she'd urged the farmbeasts to an illicit gallop many times, there was no comparison to Rolan's speed or smooth pace.

The Field proved to be far more than that—almost a park, full of trees and dells and with streams running all through it. It was so large that when they were most of the way across it, the people near the fence on the Collegium side looked hardly bigger than bugs. At the far edge of the Field they wheeled and returned at top speed to the fence. She leaned into his neck, feeling so at one with him that it seemed as if it were her own feet flying below them. She gripped a double handful of the mane whipping about her face and whispered, “Don't stop, loverling! We can take it! Jump!”

She felt him gather himself beneath her as the fence loomed immediately in front of them—she shifted her weight without thinking—and they were airborne, the fence flashing underneath his tucked-up hooves. It was over in a heartbeat, as he landed as easily as a bird, his hooves chiming on the paved court on the other side.

As she combed her own hair out of her eyes with her fingers, she heard a hearty laugh. “And I thought I'd have to coax you into the saddle with a ladder!” a rough voice said behind her. “Looks like you might be able to teach me a trick or two, my young centaur!”