Squire (26 page)

The three faces looked equally awed. Kel knew how they felt.

“We hoped,” Fianola said shyly, “if - you don’t mind…”

“Have you advice for us?” asked the blond Yvenne. “Things we can practice, like archery, and horseback riding, except we know about those.”

“Do we have to be as big as you?” asked the younger brunette. “I don’t think I’m going to be very tall.”

Kel sat up. Someone had laid a clean shirt and breeches on a nearby stool. She reached for them wearily. Fianola took up the shirt, shook it out, and held it for Kel.

Well, it’s not like they’ve never seen female ribs and legs before, thought Kel. She started to rise. Her whole body protested the effort. The two young girls each grabbed an arm and hauled her up. Kel thanked them, and pulled her shirt over her head. “I’m just lucky that I’m big,” she told them. “Alanna the Lioness is a head shorter than me, and she manages. It will help if you run,” she told them, slowly tying the lacings of her shirt. “Up and down stairs, on broken ground. Run for a long time. That builds up your wind and your stamina and your legs. Climb. Hunt. Really work on archery and riding. Lift heavy things. I worked hard - I still do. Don’t let anyone say it’s easy.” She accepted her breeches from Fianola and drew them on, one tree-stump leg at a time.

Sitting on her chair, she looked each of them in the eyes for a long moment. She wasn’t sure about the blonde, for all her energy and eagerness. She could be one who jumped from wonderful idea to wonderful idea. One of Kel’s brothers, presently a student in the royal university, was like that. But the sisters felt different. The older girl seemed as if she wouldn’t go after things lightly. If she did choose to be a page, it would be because she’d found out all she could and chose to do it anyway. The younger one - Kel saw a fire in her small, dark face. The younger one needed it. She would manage.

“More importantly,” she said, speaking carefully and firmly so they would remember, “be ready to put up with things - insults, practical jokes, dirty tricks. Nobody will make it easy. You’ll be called names and accused of doing things you’d expect from the worst slattern who works the upstairs rooms at inns.” Though girls of their age and station weren’t supposed to know of such things, Kel’s experience was that they nearly always did. “None of that is important, so long as you win through to your goal.” She met each pair of eyes in turn, making sure they had heard her, then nodded a dismissal. “Shoo, please,” she told them with a smile. “I need to go eat.”

They tumbled toward the door. Pianola was the first to stop, turn, and curtsy. The two younger girls did the same. Then all three raced down the grassy lane.

“Good luck, and Goddess bless,” Kel whispered. “I hope I see at least one of you again someday.”

sixteen
THE NORTH

They left Blue Harbor at last. On rolled the progress up the coast. They pitched camp for a week on the western edge of Fief Mindelan, a sign of royal favor to the house that had negotiated the Yamani treaty. Kel saw her nieces and nephews for the first time in six years. They were shy with this large stranger, who looked nothing like their memory of her. Seeing her oldest brother, Anders, who managed the fief, was also a shock: they were the same height. At first Anders goggled. Then he laughed, shook his head, and gave Kel a hug.

“Don’t worry,” he assured Kel as the children kept their distance. “In a little while they’ll besiege you. Would you mind talking to Lachran about page training? He goes in the fall. He’d never say as much to his father, but I think he’s nervous.”

Kel nodded. That was the least she could do for her oldest nephew. Anders had given her useful advice before she had left for Corus.

As luck had it, her seventeenth birthday came while she was at Mindelan. There was a party just for family and friends; the monarchs went hunting with other local nobles. It’s nice to have a meal without having to wait on everyone, Kel thought. Nicer still was the sight of Cleon with her nieces and nephews. They knew him - Mindelan was Inness’s home as well as Anders’s - and shamelessly pestered Cleon for games and treats.

Once he looked up from a knot of children to see Kel watching. His eyes filled with longing, so much that Kel had to go. He was thinking of the children they could have. Kel shivered. She didn’t want to consider that at all. Her shield awaited her, if the Chamber of the Ordeal didn’t grind her to cat meat. An heiress, and his duty to the tenants on his lands, awaited him.

Two days later the progress was about to heave itself onto the road when urgent messages came from Fiefs Seabeth and Seajen. Scanran wolf-ships had been sighted off the coast, though they had yet to attack. That same afternoon a messenger from Northwatch galloped through Mindelan’s gates. Scanrans had crossed the border in three places. General Vanget haMinch, in charge of the border defenses, needed troops and supplies immediately. He also wanted the progress to head inland and south, out of danger. He could not promise their safety if they followed their scheduled route north. When Kel heard the news, she knew what was coming. To put it off - and to hear it in private - she went down to the River Domin. Someone had rolled a log nearly to the water’s edge. Kel sat on it, looking across the shallow band of water. Seven years ago she had tried to kill a spidren with a handful of rocks here.

Steps in the undergrowth made her look around. Cleon sat next to her. For a long while they simply shared the quiet chuckle of the water and the calls of birds. Finally Cleon said, “Half of us are off to Northwatch. We leave tonight at moonrise. The ones to defend the coast are going now. They’re taking three of the Rider Groups - not Buri’s Seventeenth, though.”

“My lord?” Kel asked.

Cleon shook his head. “The king’s decided that First Company of the King’s Own has been at court too long and needs to remember why they wear the pretty mail. Glaisdan and his men are on their way to the coast. My lord Raoul and Third Company stay with the progress.”

“Maybe I’ll sleep here tonight,” Kel said with a shudder. “He’ll be angrier than a stung boar.”

Cleon smiled. “The queen sent him to his room.”

Kel gaped at him. “She what?”

“Oh, not in front of anyone,” Cleon assured Kel hastily. “They were in that tower of yours. I wouldn’t have heard if I hadn’t been using the, er, necessary that’s on the floor right below. The queen said if Raoul was going to squall like an infant cheated of a sweet he could go to his room until he grew up.”

Kel hid her face in her hands, not sure if she would laugh or cry. “Definitely I stay out here tonight.” Then she thought to ask, “Did he go?”

Cleon nodded. “Sooner or later he’ll realize the monarchs will want to see things for themselves, and that he’ll have to keep them safe with one hundred men. Maybe he’s figured it out by now, that it’s why Commander Buri didn’t squeak about her staying with the progress.” He sighed. “I wish I were sleeping out here with you tonight.”

Kel didn’t care if anyone saw. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face against his chest. “How long?” she whispered.

He stroked her hair. “All summer, at least.” She had nothing to say that wasn’t pointless. Instead she turned her face up for his kiss.

The much smaller progress was east of Mindelan when Cleon’s prediction came true. The king and queen let most of the train, led by Roald and Shinkokami, follow the Godsroad east. The monarchs, with the mages Numair and Daine and the realm’s chief healer, Baird of Queenscove, remained behind. Raoul, Kel, and Third Company were their guards, along with Buri and the Seventeenth Rider Group. Dressed plainly, moving quietly, their party visited fiefs and towns below the Scanran border. They noted what was needed, then Numair magically transmitted their requests to mages in Corus. Further news of Scanran activity came as Daine sent out hawks and eagles to spy for her and flew as an eagle herself. From their reports she drew maps and sent them to General Vanget through bird messengers. Unlike the monarchs, she had not been requested to leave the district.

They had been riding through mountain terrain for two weeks when General Vanget caught them. Kel stood guard at the tent as the fiery Minchi expressed overburdened feelings to his king and queen, with Buri and Raoul in attendance. The king’s explanation of what he’d been doing did little to appease the general. He demanded that they not add to his worries and get their royal behinds back to the progress.

“You can’t expect me to do nothing while my people are in danger!” snapped the king.

“But I expect you to do what you must away from the danger zone!” barked the general. “I can’t chase after clan war parties and guard you. And if you think the realm won’t go to pieces if you’re killed, sire, then you don’t know your people.”

“Roald is of an age - ” King Jonathan began.

To Kel’s astonishment, Vanget interrupted his king. “Roald does not command the Dominion Jewel and thus its power over each pond and leaf of this kingdom. People think if you fall, the land falls.” There was a long silence before he said wearily, “So if you will please go away?”

“We’ll go,” Kel heard the queen say firmly.

By the time Vanget left the tent, Kel had schooled her face to blankness. For the first time she felt sorry for the king. His people were in danger, and he could only ask others to protect them.

“Why doesn’t he use the Jewel to protect the north?” she asked Raoul that night. Like all pages she had studied the magical artifact and its power to hold a kingdom together if a strong-willed ruler held it.

He shook his head. “Anyone ever mention the famine of 438 to you?”

“No, sir,” Kel replied, putting her weapons-cleaning gear aside.

“You know Roger of Conte tried to magic an earthquake to destroy most of Tortall and quite a chunk of our neighbors, right?” Kel nodded. Raoul stirred up their campfire before he said, “It didn’t happen because Jon called on the Jewel to hold the land together. The problem was, the strength it drew to stop the quake had to come from somewhere. We had a famine throughout the realm the next year. All the year’s seed, with that magical potential for life, was dead. He and Thayet beggared Tortall for three years to buy food, to keep the kingdom from starving. All magic has a price. Pay now or later, with your own substance or someone else’s, but you will pay.”

“Enough. We lived and you’re depressing me,” Buri said, nudging his foot with hers. “Tell her about the giantess who fell in love with you that year.”

“Aw, Buri!” he protested.

“Giantess?” Kel asked, wide-eyed. “Come on, tell!”

They rejoined the progress at Fief Hannalof and traveled east to the sprawling lands held by members of the Minchi clan, north of Fief Dunlath on the Gallan border. After a week of celebrations the progress took a meandering route south and west. There were tournaments: Kel entered as many contests as she could. It was the only way she could even briefly stop worrying about Cleon, in battle as a knight for the first time. There were fewer knights to joust against. Everyone who could be spared was sent north. To fill empty hours, Shinko talked Kel into doing exhibitions of glaive combat and Yamani archery with her ladies. Kel mentioned that she would have thought that with the border in trouble, people would frown on expensive, showy affairs like the progress.

“Not so,” Shinko told her. “If the rest of this were canceled, people would think the realm is in real danger. They would panic.”

Kel shook her head. “I’ll stick to jousting,” she told her friend. “It’s nice and simple, just like me.”

They came to Corus as the last leaves fell from the trees. The Grand Progress was over at last.

Feeling obsessed, Kel went to the Chapel of the Ordeal as soon as she left her gear in her room. Midwinter would not come for nearly two months. She saw dust on the benches, though altar and sun disk had been cleaned recently.

They must come every month, Kel thought, walking down the aisle, whether this place needs dusting or not. A giggle that tasted nervous bubbled up in her throat. She swallowed it, ignoring her brain as it clamored to know why she kept doing this to herself. She wiped her hands on her breeches and laid her palms against the iron door.

For a moment she had the oddest fancy that something in the metal breathed. You again.

“Yes, of course it’s me,” she whispered. “I’m proving to myself that I’m not afraid of you.”

But you are, that strange not-voice replied.

“I like lying to myself. It’s fun. Would you just please do it?”

It did.

Cleon stood halfway across a grassy meadow, longsword in hand. A blond man with tags of fur braided into his beard rode down on him, one handgripping a big-bladed axe. Kel tried to scream, only to find she couldn’t. Cleon ducked, letting the rider pass him by.

The blond man yanked his steed to a halt and dismounted, gripping the haft of his axe with confidence. Roaring, he charged Cleon.

Cleon blocked the swings of the axe, then tried to cut in under the other man’s guard. The blond man - Scanran, from his clothes - was fast, dancing out of reach, then lunging back in with that murderous axe. They circled, looking for an opening. The only sounds Kel heard were their panting and the swish of meadow grass. She tried to move, tried to get to Cleon, but she was helpless, frozen in place.

Cleon darted to the side, slashed at the foe, and stumbled, falling to the ground. Kel heard him curse. He struggled to get to his feet. The Scanran was on him with a triumphant yell. He raised the axe and brought it down.

The Scanran was gone. Kel was free. She ran through the grass, sobbing, hunting for Cleon. She nearly fell over him. He was so white that his summer freckles stood out on his skin. A huge slash from his left shoulder to the ribs on his right side bled sluggishly. Somehow he was still alive.

Kel had no belt knife, no edged weapon at all. She took his and hastily cut strips from her tunic. She wadded the rest of it into a long pad and laid it over that dreadful wound, then worked to tie it down, to hold the pad secure until a healer could be found. Within minutes the pad was soaked. She screamed for a healer and hauled Cleon’s dead weight up. She fumbled, supporting his head on her shoulder to keep pressure on the wound with her hands.