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Lalasa sensed that Kel was not about to charge after Vinson. She relaxed her hold on Kel’s arm. “If I’d been on my feet, I could have done something,” she commented, and blew her nose. “He had me all twisted around. I could hardly get at him.”

Kel looked at her and remembered what she had seen: Lalasa’s hands groping for a nerve, any nerve, in Vinson’s imprisoning arm, and the bloody furrows on Vinson’s face. “I am so proud of you,” she said warmly, patting Lalasa’s shoulder. “He’s going to hurt for a long time - he won’t dare take those marks to a healer.” And I’d like to see him explain the scratches to Lord Wyldon, she thought. “I don’t know if I could have done as well from that position.” She inspected Lalasa. “Did he hit you? Hurt you in any way?”

Lalasa made a face. “I’ve bruises where he grabbed me. He would’ve gotten to hitting sooner or later - they all do.” Kel stared at her, appalled. Lalasa turned her face away. “My dad, my brothers all hit their women.”

Kel realized she was hearing bleak truth. “I thought Gower said you were alone - wait. Does he hit you?”

Lalasa shook her head and smiled, her lips trembling. “Dad always said Uncle had strange ideas, learnt up here in the north. He’s not, not chirpy, like some, but he’s the gentlest soul. He was the only one left…” She took a breath. “Raiders came in from the Copper Isles and burned our village out. They missed me - Dad sent me to the river to wash clothes.”

“So you came here.”

Lalasa nodded. “Uncle Gower told me the king’s palace is a fine place to work. And so it is - I couldn’t ask for kinder friends than Tian, and Uncle. It’s just - ” She shrugged. “No place is perfect.”

Kel rubbed her temples. “Use the bruise balm,” she suggested. “You won’t need a lot.” She turned.

Lalasa grabbed her arm again. “You’re not - ” she began, eyes wide.

Kel smiled grimly. “I won’t report him, but I have to make sure he doesn’t forget.”

Lalasa’s eyes searched Kel’s face. At last she released her mistress.

“Next time you want to sew in the window?” said Kel. “Come get Jump. He’ll see to it you’re not bothered.”

She went back into the pages’ wing, walked straight to Vinson’s room, and knocked sharply. “Don’t make me say what I’ve come to say out here in the hall,” she called.

Vinson opened the door, his face sullen. “What?” He didn’t invite her in.

Kel put a hand on the door and leaned into the opening, making sure he could see her clearly. “If I hear of you bothering any female, not just her, I’ll take you before the court of the Goddess. I’ll risk making an enemy of the pack that whelped you.”

Vinson blanched under his scratches and pimples. A man convicted of hurting women in the Goddess’s court faced harsh penalties; those for actual rape were the worst of all. The temples maintained their own warriors to enforce the Goddess’s law.

“I never want to see the wench again,” he snapped, his voice cracking. “I’d give anything never to see you.” He slammed the door.

Kel let him do it. He would keep quiet now, she suspected. One thing was certain, though - she must not forget. That her servant was harassed without real punishment was a reproach. Nobles were supposed to protect their servants. Lalasa had done well by her. She had to hold up her end of the arrangement.

She had trouble nodding off that night. She couldn’t get rid of her anger with Vinson and with a world in which servants didn’t matter. It wasn’t right.

If she had gone into her usual deep sleep right away, she might never have heard sounds in the dressing room. Tonight she did. She went around the screen that hid Lalasa’s bed to find the older girl crying.

“Now, what’s this?” Kel demanded, worried. “Lalasa, what’s wrong?” She sat on the bed. “Please don’t cry.”

Lalasa buried her head in Kel’s shoulder. “When he grabbed me, I hoped you would come,” she said, her voice thick. “I’d no right, but I hoped. And you did!”

Kel patted her awkwardly. “You have every right,” she said. “I’m honor-bound to protect you.”

“And you did, you did!” cried Lalasa. “The look on your face - “

“Maybe I should report this after all,” Kel suggested. “It’s not right, letting him off when you’re so scared.”

“It’s not that,” Lalasa replied, shaking her head and sitting up straight. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “Not that, not much, anyway.” She sniffed. “I never knew anybody who’d fight for me, never. When my bro - a man, a man hurt me, when I was little, and my parents said I lied. He was more important to them. But you - you faced down a noble for me!”

Kel looked down, hiding shock and fury. Lalasa’s own brother had hurt her, and her parents had done nothing? They’d as good as told their daughter that she didn’t matter!

At last, when she could trust her voice, Kel cleared her throat and said, “Vinson’s not much of a noble.”

“But I knew you would, if you found out.” Lalasa clung to one of Kel’s hands. “Since I’ve come to your service, I never felt so safe.”

“Well, it’s nothing to cry over,” Kel said.

Lalasa chuckled and wiped her eyes again. “You’re so strong,” she said, a little envy in her voice. “I wish I was like you. I wager no one ever grabbed you in your life.”

Kel bent her head for a moment as memory flooded her. “My brother Conal held me off a balcony when I was four. I forget what I’d done to annoy him,” she said quietly. “He was always hitting me or pushing me. This time he got caught - one of the maids was in the garden and heard me screaming.”

“What a brute!” Lalasa cried, indignant.

“I’d never seen Papa so angry. He almost disowned Conal. He said he would disown Conal if he heard of anything else like that.” Kel smiled bitterly. “I think the worst part, other than my being scared of heights now…The worst part is that Conal doesn’t even remember. I asked him when we came back from the Islands.”

“No wonder you hate bullies,” whispered Lalasa. “No wonder you learned to fight.”

Kel took a deep breath and let it out, thrusting the hard memories away. “Are you going to be able to sleep now?” she asked.

“Yes, forgive me,” replied Lalasa, releasing Kel’s hand. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

“You didn’t.” Kel got to her feet. “I was awake. But you should sleep - all the sewing you do these days, you’ve earned your rest.”

“And you haven’t, I suppose,” Lalasa teased.

“Sleep well, Lalasa.”

“Thank you, my lady.” As Kel reached the dressing room door she heard her maid say, quietly but firmly, “I knew you would come.”

A week later Vinson was gone with his knight-master. Somehow he’d gotten a healer to tend the marks on his face; Kel would have liked to know what story he’d told. She suspected he’d had to hurt his face with something else, to cover the marks - it was an old trick.

Soon after Vinson’s departure, Cleon reported to the study group with a glum face. “This is it,” he announced. “I’m off at dawn. We’re going back north.” To Kel he said, “Sir Inness said to tell you we’ll be visiting at Mindelan, if you’ve anything to send home.”

“I have a letter to Anders,” she said. “Shall I get it?”

“I’ll go with you, if it’s all the same,” Cleon said. “I need to pack yet tonight.” He said his farewells to his other friends, tugged Neal’s ear “for luck”, he claimed, and followed Kel back to her rooms.

Tian and Lalasa sat in the window seat, doing fine embroidery. Kel waved for them to stay where they were and found her letter on her desk. Quickly she signed and sealed it, and gave it to Cleon.

He turned it over in his hands, glanced at the two maids, and asked, “So, Kel, will you miss me?”

She smiled at him. “I missed you last year. Our group always loses a bit of madness when you’re away.”

“Here I thought Neal supplies all you could want, and that little scrapper Owen more than you need. Well.” For a moment he looked at her, then at the maids, then at the letter. Suddenly he hugged Kel tight; as suddenly he let her go. “Don’t break anything while I’m gone,” he advised, and fled.

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 Yancon 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 eye 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.