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The third-years moved to let her at the front. Her friends looked startled; Quinden and his friends smirked. “Who put a wasp in the Stump’s loincloth?” Neal muttered as she passed him.

What made Kel really grumpy was that the training master was right: she was getting smug. As long as she hit within the target circle, she felt she’d done all she needed. She ought to strive to improve, not just coast. If Lord Wyldon thought she could hit a dot she couldn’t even see from this end of the tilting field, she would try.

She brought Peachblossom up to the starting mark and whispered, “Go faster.” He picked his feet up in a trot, then a restrained gallop, not the headlong thundering pace that was his response to the command “Charge.” If she was to hit precisely, she would do better if they took a little more time to reach the quintain.

Kel lowered her lance across Peachblossom’s shoulders and aimed for that small dot on the shield. She missed, though she did hit the shield, and wasn’t clouted by the sandbag.

“Sloppy,” commented Lord Wyldon as she rode past him. He’d dismounted to lean against the fence, where he could see the impact of lance on shield clearly. He was scratching Jump’s ear.

I hope he bites you, Kel thought grimly as she rode to take her place in the third-years’ line.

In the end, Lord Wyldon required only two fourth-years - Faleron and Yancen - and Kel to hit that dot at the target’s center. “I hate it when he thinks up new things,” Yancen told Faleron in Kel’s hearing.

Kel agreed with him completely.

On the last day of that week, Kel’s lance hit the black dot and shattered, the impact and crash making her wrist ache. Shaking her hand, she rode back to the barrel and selected a practice lance. Without lead weights such as she’d had in her old one, the lance was feather-light in her grip. When she next rode at the target, she forgot the new weight and raised her lance point far too high. Before she could lower it, she rode right by the quintain, scraping the target shield. The sandbag thwacked her back soundly, her first buffet in over a year. She heard pages laughing as she returned to the line.

She missed the target on her next charge as well. Determined to hit it, she lowered her lance so hard on her third charge that it bounced off her saddle to rap Peachblossom between the ears. Startled, the big gelding reared. Kel dropped her lance and hung on, praying her mount wouldn’t fall backward. Peachblossom wheeled frantically to save himself from that very fate. At last Kel got him under control and on all four feet. She dismounted to collect her fallen lance, and trudged back to the line on foot, leading her mount. She would have dragged the weapon like her eight-year-old nephew if she hadn’t known Lord Wyldon would give her a punishment job for it.

“What is the matter with you today?” demanded Lord Wyldon. “This head-in-the-clouds act will get you killed in the field, do you understand that? You dare not daydream with a weapon in your hand, or under you.” He pointed to Peachblossom. “That is a weapon, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Peachblossom’s head darted out quickly, like a snake’s. The training master was quicker. The gelding’s teeth closed on empty air where Lord Wyldon’s finger had been.

“My lord, I’d like permission to take this to the smithy,” Kel said, hefting the lance. “It’s too light.”

Wyldon blinked at her. “What?”

“Surely my lord knew that Page Keladry has lead weights in all of her practice weapons,” commented Neal, who stood nearby. He looked the spirit of mischief.

Kel glared at him. Neal ignored her. He usually did.

“Queenscove, do not try me,” Wyldon said, clear warning in his voice. His eyes were on Kel. To her he stated, “You use weighted practice weapons.”

Kel made no reply.

“How long have you done this?”

How could she forget? On the day the first-years began to train with the lance, Joren had made sure that Kel got a lance three times heavier than the normal ones. “Since the first week on lance, my lord,” Kel replied evenly.

“All of your weapons, not the lance alone?” he inquired. Neal had told him all, but it seemed he wanted to hear it from Kel.

“It was too strange after a while, going from a weighted lance to a lighter staff and practice sword and ax,” she explained. “It works better if they’re weighted, too.”

Lord Wyldon hooked his fingers in his belt, frowning. As usual, there was no reading his handsome, stern face. At last he sighed. “Tend your mount first. Do not be late for lunch,” he ordered.

Kel thanked him and bowed, but he had already turned to Neal. “Clearly you have too much time on your hands,” he told Neal. “You may take the next five runs at the quintain, beginning now.”

Kel heard Neal say, “Yes, your lordship, immediately, your lordship,” as she led Peachblossom away.

“One day he won’t let his tongue get him in so much trouble,” she told the horse as she groomed him. “I hope it happens before he dies of old age.” Peachblossom whickered, and nudged Kel with his nose. He was uninterested in Neal, except as something to bite, and he preferred to bite apples and sugar lumps. He seemed to think Kel was hiding a treat.

After leaving her new lance to be weighted, Kel returned to her rooms. The noon bell had not yet rung, and she meant to sit in her bath and soak for a while before she had to dress for lunch.

Entering her rooms, she found that Lalasa had company. The stranger was a young woman Lalasa’s age, blond and brown-eyed with a soft, round face and strong shoulders. She curtsied gracefully to Kel, who tried to remember where she had seen this woman before.

“Lady, this is my friend Tian - Tianine Plowman,” Lalasa said nervously. “She is maid to your sister Adalia.”

Kel nodded, relieved. “I thought I recognized you,” she admitted. “Is my sister all right?” She couldn’t think of any other reason that Adie’s maid would come here, unless she was visiting Lalasa.

“She is well, and atwitter over the ball to be held in four days’ time at Nond House,” said Tian. “She sent me to ask, would you allow Lalasa to serve her? She will pay Lalasa for her time, and of course you would get half. My lady wishes Lalasa to sew for her.”

“Is that what you would like?” Kel asked Lalasa.

The maid nodded eagerly. “I do love to sew, my lady. And you won’t need more work on your hems or seams for at least a week.” Her eyes danced at the small joke.

“I don’t grow that fast, thank you,” Kel said.

Lalasa nudged Tian. The blond woman smiled at her and told Kel, “If it pleases your ladyship, Lady Oranie also wishes to give work to Lalasa, with the same arrangements for pay. To be honest, m’lady, I think others will ask Lalasa to sew for them when they see her work.”

“And I’d be sure to do my own work first,” added Lalasa. “I wouldn’t shirk at all, I promise.”

“I don’t mind,” Kel told her and her friend. “You know I’d like to see you get out and about more.”

Tian curtsied to her again and told Lalasa, “This afternoon, then?” Lalasa nodded. “Thank you, my lady,” Tian said, and left the room.

Lalasa closed the door behind her and twirled giddily. Suddenly she halted. “You’ll see, my lady,” she told Kel gravely. “I’ll earn you a bit of money, and put some away for myself. Maybe a shop of my own, though that’s looking a bit high, perhaps.”

“You really like sewing, don’t you?” asked Kel, who hated it.

Lalasa nodded. “I’m better than a lot of the maids that serve the young court ladies, Tian says. And it’s peaceful. Just you, and the cloth, and getting everything just right.”

Kel thought of those moments on Peach-blossom’s back when she lowered her lance at the quintain, and knew in the feel of the horse, and the weapon, and her arm, that she had it perfectly. “I see what you mean,” she murmured. More firmly she said, “But look here - you have to keep what you earn. I don’t want it.”

Lalasa stared at her. “But most nobles take half at least. Some take almost everything!”

Kel began to strip off her tunic and shirt. “I’m not most nobles, remember? Is my bath ready?”

“Yes, of course,” Lalasa replied, taking Kel’s practice clothes. “But, my lady, I wouldn’t feel right, with you paying me a wage, and giving me this chance.” Lalasa’s joy had fallen away, leaving her anxious again.

Kel hated to see that. “All right,” she said, against her will. “But I’m putting it away for a dowry or a shop or whatever you like. You remember that.”

“You say so now,” Lalasa replied, her tone very older-sisterly. “Just wait till you need to buy armor and suchlike.”

Kel met the older girl’s eyes. “Do you really believe that of me?”

Lalasa opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again. She looked away from Kel’s gaze. “No, miss. Not really. And I thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Shaking her head, Kel walked into the dressing room and climbed into the waiting bath. “I’m glad you have a friend.”

“Isn’t Tian nice?” Lalasa took Kel’s afternoon clothes from the wardrobe. “So clever, and friendly. She really thinks other ladies will ask me to sew for them, and pay well for it.”

“She’s a lady’s maid, so she ought to know.” Kel put her head back with a grateful sigh. “If I doze off, wake me when the noon bell rings.”

That night, Kel went out after supper to retrieve her lance and take it to Peachblossom’s stable, where she placed it with her gear. She was trotting up the sloping, torch-lined road to the palace when someone called, “Hullo - is that Keladry of Mindelan?”

Kel looked around and saw a big man in the stable that housed the horses of the King’s Own. She knew that broad, red-cheeked face with its cap of black curls and bright dark eyes. “My lord, good evening,” she said, bowing to Raoul of Goldenlake and Malorie’s Peak, Knight Commander of the King’s Own. “It’s a pleasure to see you.”

He walked over, tucking riding gloves into his belt. “Good to see you, too, youngster,” he said with a kind smile. “Mithros bless me, you’ve grown.”

Kel smiled at him. She had added almost two more inches since Midwinter, but there was still quite a gap between her height, nearly five feet and six inches, and his six feet and one inch. “I believe I have, my lord.”

“Going to the palace? If you don’t mind, I’ll come along.”

“I’d be honored, sir,” Kel replied.

They walked slowly up the hill. “How goes training?” he asked. “Are you still riding that huge gelding - what’s his name - Peony?”

“Peachblossom, my lord. Yes, I am.” Kel explained her current training schedule, including the new things Lord Wyldon had begun. Lord Raoul asked questions that drew more details from her.

“The thing is, I don’t know why he’s changing things,” Kel admitted.

“I think Wyldon got a scare when you and your friends stumbled into that bandit camp.” Correctly guessing the reason that Kel stopped to gape at him, the big man grinned and said, “The whole court’s heard about it by now. Anyway, if seven pages had gotten slaughtered, he would have felt responsible. Never mind that the district commander lied about the area being cleared of bandits. They found out he was taking payoffs, did they tell you?” Lord Raoul spoke as he might to a noble his own age.

Kel shook her head. “I still don’t see how it would make Lord Wyldon change the training, though.”

“He didn’t teach you youngsters how to manage when there’s no adult in command, is my guess. He’s trying to make up for that now. To be honest, I couldn’t have done what you did when I was a page. Wyldon’s already taught you plenty.” The big knight began to chuckle. “Gods, but those free fight sessions must be a mess!”

Kel hid a smile. They were messy, with fighters not always knowing where to step and whom to look at. “Is battle like that for real, sir?”

He thought about that for a moment. “It can be,” he said at last. “Battle plans go to pieces, as they’re teaching you. It depends on the discipline of the people you lead. See, the problem is, knights used to operate alone. We’re trained to independence. For centuries the lone knight enforced what law he chose. If he had any help, it was local peasants. With them not knowing their foot from their elbow, you can see where a knight might prefer to fight alone.”

Kel could indeed.

“These days knights have to work with others. You might be put with a squad of the Queen’s Riders, or an infantry company, or even a naval crew. I was trained to think only for myself, and look at me - acting as general for three companies of the King’s Own. We never fight in strengths less than a squad of ten. I learned command on the fly, and wish I’d had more lessons on it as a lad.”

Kel nodded. What he said made a great deal of sense. She liked Lord Raoul. At the end of her first year he had led men of the King’s Own and pages in a mission to clean up a nest of spidrens in the Royal Forest. She had admired his skill as commander and fighter then, and he had made it clear he thought her talented.

They strolled into the palace, entering a kind of indoor courtyard, with a fountain at the center and trees in pots around the edges. Lord Raoul sat on a bench and motioned for Kel to sit by him. They sat without talking for a while, watching the fountain. It was Lord Raoul who broke the silence. “I hear you and your friends declared war on hazing.”

Only six years at the Yamani court, with its iron discipline, kept her quiet. Kel fought to be stone, waiting until she was sure of her self-control before she dared to ask, “How did you hear that, sir?”

Raoul grinned. “The Knight Commander has sources in the palace,” he commented, all too innocently. “I hear things. I understand some of last spring’s squires were the focus of your campaign?”

Kel looked down, her face as smooth and emotionless as marble. “I couldn’t say, my lord.”

“Oh, don’t start my-lording me, youngster,” he said cheerfully. “Didn’t anybody tell you a palace is like a sieve? Servants talk, families talk, boys talk, and nobles talk. If people stopped talking around here, the walls would fall in. There’d be no wind to hold them up. So tell me, now that the worst of them are gone, have you given up your no-hazing patrols?”

“No,” she replied, startled. “Plenty of pages believe in it still. You can’t stop it all. We just want the bullies to back off.” She didn’t tell him that this year, when her group had found anything suspicious, the other pages had left rather than fight.

“I see. And who’s this?”

Kel looked up as Jump trotted in from the outside. He must have gone looking for her. “That’s Jump,” she said, getting to her feet. “I guess he got worried when I didn’t come back.” Remembering they weren’t allowed pets, she said hurriedly, “He’s sort of a mascot, you see. He looks after all of us.”

“I’ve heard of Jump,” the big knight said, fishing a strip of jerked beef from a pocket and offering it to the dog. “Wyldon said he accounted for three riders and a dog in that mess this summer. Now that I’ve got a look at him, I’m surprised he only brought down three.” Jump took the strip of dried meat in his front teeth, daintily, and began to gnaw on it.

“I really should do some work tonight,” Kel said regretfully. She’d never felt so comfortable around an adult as she did with this man, unless it was her parents or her oldest brother, Anders.

Lord Raoul stood. “Of course. I’m glad we had a chance to talk, Keladry.” He smiled at her. “Keep up the good work.” He turned and walked out of the room, into the night.

“That’s a nice man,” Kel told Jump. “I wish more were like him.” Jump wagged his battered tail, still gnawing on his jerked beef. “Let’s go,” Kel said, and headed back to the pages’ wing.

ten
THE SQUIRES RETURN

The next night Kel was in line for supper when she saw more faces at the squires’ tables. The number of squires who lived on the floor above the pages’ wing had been growing slowly as autumn went on. Kel barely knew those who had come in before, but tonight she recognized two faces: Cleon and Garvey.

“One good, one bad,” Merric remarked from behind Kel.

“Do I have to close my eyes to guess which?” Owen wanted to know.

When they went to their usual table, Cleon walked over. “It’s about time,” Neal said when the redheaded squire slid onto the bench next to him. “We thought they would leave you in the north all winter. You would have come back as an icicle.”

“A really big icicle,” added Seaver.

After seeing Lord Raoul, Kel knew that Cleon wasn’t that big, but he certainly seemed to be headed that way. She smiled at him. He seized one of her hands. “Kel, my rose, my pearl,” he said, attempting a player’s yearning stare, “my life has been a desert drear without the light of your eyes. I knew it not until just this moment, when my soul opened like a flower in the rain.”

Kel yanked her hand free. “Stop that, you oaf,” she told him, but she grinned despite her stern tone. She had missed Cleon’s colorful way of speaking to her.

“It’s not right,” Seaver announced abruptly.

“What’s not right?” Neal asked.

“When Cleon talks to us, he doesn’t do that.” Seaver frowned at Cleon. “You don’t call us ‘rose’ or ‘pearl.’ If you don’t talk to us like that, you shouldn’t do it to her.”

“She’s as good as us,” added Owen. “You don’t have to treat her like a girl.”

Kel hid her face in her hands.

“But she is a girl,” protested Cleon. “A tall, glorious sunrise of a girl, a - ” He stopped, blinked, and, astonishingly, turned red. “Sorry, Kel.”

“I know you’re just funning,” she reassured him. “How’s Inness?”

Cleon hit his forehead. “I keep forgetting he’s your brother,” he explained as the others grinned. “He’s nice.”

“And Kel’s not?” demanded Owen, outraged.

“I can’t win,” Cleon muttered. “He’s quiet like you, Kel. And he’s a mean hand with a sword. I’m learning a lot from him.”

“Good,” Neal told him sternly. “I hope he manages you with a whip and a chair, like a wild animal in a show.”

“He hardly ever uses the whip,” Cleon replied in his loftiest tone. “I am so much better than his last squire.”

When Lord Wyldon arrived, Cleon had to return to the squires’ tables. After supper he caught up to Kel just as she was about to enter her room. “I hope you don’t mind what I said before,” he said gruffly, not meeting her eyes. “I wasn’t making fun of you. You know what I mean.”

What’s this? wondered Kel. “I’m surprised they said anything,” she replied. “They never minded your foolery before.”

“I know,” he said. Oddly, he added, “Neither did I.”

Addressing him slowly in case, like a skittish horse, he took alarm and bolted, she said, “You talked to me that way while you were making me earn my way as a first-year. Maybe they thought you were trying to haze me again, even though I’m a third-year?”

“That’s silly,” he said, crossing his arms.

Kel shrugged. “Maybe. Are you coming to study tonight?”

His face lit with a grin. Suddenly he looked like his old self again. “That’s right. We’re supposed to do reports on our time with our masters for Sir Myles, and mine’s” only half-done.” He walked away, halted, and turned. “We meet in the usual place?”

Kel smiled warmly at him. “You haven’t been gone that long, Cleon of Kennan.”

He looked at her wide-eyed for a moment, as if she had startled him. Once again he turned red. “You look - fit, Kel,” he remarked. Then he trotted off.

Fit, she thought, shaking her head as she unlocked her door. Why would he care if I look fit or not?

Winter began with a mild storm that left two inches of snow on the ground, not enough for training to be moved inside. The day after the snow fell, Kel was on her way back to her rooms at the end of morning classes when someone hailed her. She halted and looked up. There, at the door to the pages’ wing, stood Joren of Stone Mountain. He was an ice prince in a blue tunic over a white shirt and hose, his pale blond hair caught back in a horsetail. Looking at Kel, he actually smiled.

She waited, her face Yamani-smooth, her breath forming clouds on the chill air. What did he want?

Joren folded his arms over his chest. “You look cold,” he offered.

“I’m not,” Kel replied flatly. She did not feel like conversing with him.

“Listen, Keladry…” He looked down, as if trying to decide what to say. At last he looked up, and gave her a disarming smile. “We got off on the wrong foot.”

Is that what you call it? wondered Kel. She continued to wait, her hands clasped loosely before her.

“I - allowed myself to be influenced by the prejudices of others,” he explained, still smiling prettily.

“And I was reared in a, a rough-and-tumble home, not a cultured place like this.” His graceful hand-wave took in the palace that surrounded them. “Sir Paxton, my knight-master, was quite firm about my usual behavior. He gave me cause to think, and to review the things I have said and done.”

Kel’s mind raced. She supposed it was possible. But he didn’t learn in the two years we fought him, telling him that he couldn’t thump everyone he had a mind to, her cooler self whispered. How could that change in the seven months he’s been a squire?

“What I am trying to say,” Joren went on at last, when she was silent for too long, “is that I would like to start fresh with you. If I may.”

“Of course you may,” she said pleasantly, her eyes on his. “We’ll have a fresh start, just as you like, Squire Joren. And now, if you’ll excuse me” - she bowed quite correctly, not an inch deeper than protocol demanded - “I must wash up.” She walked by him, all her senses alert to the rabbit punch to the back, or the boot in her behind.

“I would like to be friends,” he said.

Kel turned to give him her best, most meaningless, social smile. “That would be pleasant,” she said, and left him.

Now, what do you suppose that was about? she wondered as she scrubbed. She sighed. She really didn’t need him to complicate her life at this point.

That night she was in her room, writing to her nephew before she went to study with her friends, when someone knocked on her door. Kel continued to write as Lalasa answered it. There was a puzzled note in Lalasa’s voice when she said, “You have visitors, my lady.”

Kel turned, about to demand that she be left in peace to finish her letter. Iden and Warric, Owen’s first-year cousins, stood in the doorway, looking very embarrassed. Both held staffs. They didn’t try to pet Jump or greet the sparrows who lit on their shoulders, even when Crown perched on top of Warric’s staff and began to preen.

“You ask,” Iden murmured to his cousin.

Warric punched him gently. “No, you.”