Protector of the Small Quartet

by Tamora Pierce

  “I’d still go around back, m’lord,” replied Merric, who had caught his breath. “With the Royal Forest there, you can get men and catapults and rams really close before you’re seen. Here in front, there’s all that open ground between us and the Temple District.”

  “If you brought an army into that forest, there is a mage king in possession of the Dominion Jewel who will raise the trees and streams to fight you. He has a wildmage who would ask every vole, fox, rat, wolf, owl, and otter to harass your flanks. You would never be seen again,” Wyldon informed them. “Probationer, how would you attack this wall? You must survey the ground before you reply.”

  Kel stared at Wyldon, white-faced.

  Wyldon motioned for her to step up to one of the square notches between the tall stones in the wall. “Before we grow old, probationer.”

  Kel’s legs trembled, and not just with exhaustion from the run. She forced one foot forward, then the next.

  “I hope you are quicker to advise your lord in a combat situation,” Wyldon told her.

  Stone halted her advancing steps. She had reached the wall. Kel took a deep breath and looked out through the opening.

  Straight ahead the city was a jeweled blanket on both sides of the Oloron River. It was a very pretty sight. Kel didn’t feel as if she were high up, but as if she were looking at a complex tapestry.

  “Our attackers have already overrun the city and put it to the torch, girl,” Wyldon said overpatiently. Kel heard the other pages snickering. She was taking too long. “How must they come at us?”

  It’s all right, Kel thought. This isn’t so bad.

  Then she looked down.

  Kel’s ears roared; she could not catch her breath. The broad moat that passed in front of the wall was a long drop below. She heard nothing, did not feel hands prying her grip from the stone. The fear gripped her as tightly as it had on the day Conal held her over the tower balcony. Her whole body crawled with a weak, paralyzed itch.

  A clean-shaven face thrust itself before hers. “Look at me, girl,” a stern voice ordered. “Nowhere else. Look at my face. Whose face do you see?”

  Kel blinked. That hideous drop was gone, replaced... Her eyes darted to red furrows of scar at the corner of his right eye.

  “Lord Wyldon,” she croaked.

  “Exactly. Look at my face and turn with me.” His hands on her arms tugged, twisting her body to one side. She had to move her feet or be wrapped around her own spine. She turned, her eyes locked on his.

  “Now. We’re on a flat place. There’s stone under your feet, do you understand? Look down.”

  “I’ll fall,” she whispered.

  “You can’t. You’re on solid ground. Just look. Curse it, girl, do as you’re told!”

  Instinctively—they’d all learned to jump for that tone this winter—she looked down. The only thing that she saw was stone, flat, gray, and wonderfully close.

  A boy snickered. “Ooh, I’ll fall,” someone squeaked in a falsetto voice.

  Kel closed her eyes, close to tears with humiliation.

  Wyldon let go of Kel. ’’All of you, back to the practice courts,” he said. “We’ve time for a few rounds of staff work.”

  A few boys passed her, giggling. A friendly arm was slung around Kel’s shoulders. “Come on, Mindelan,” Neal’s husky voice murmured in her ear. “We’ll get you inside.”

  “But you’re not afraid on stairs,” Seaver remarked.

  She cleared her throat. “Most are narrow and twisty. You can’t see far in either direction. The rest of the time I just look at the next step.”

  “You better pray he never makes you climb Balor’s Needle,” Cleon advised as they entered the tower stairwell closest to the pages’ wing.

  “He doesn’t make us run up there, does he?” Kel squeaked. Balor’s Needle was the tallest part of the palace, a lean, high spire with a fragile-looking iron stair that spiraled around its length. The mages used it to observe the stars or to work spells of long-seeing that let them view the countryside around the palace and capital.

  Cleon shook his head. “None of us are allowed up there. A page failed the examinations about six years ago and jumped off the Needle.”

  In silence they finished the walk to the court where staff practice was held. It surprised none of them that someone might jump to his death after failing the dreaded spring examinations.

  Not that I’ll have to worry, Kel thought dully as she picked up her staff: He knows I’m afraid of heights now. He can say if I’m afraid of heights, I can’t keep up with the boys, and I’ll be out on my ear.

  By early April Kel was able to hit the quintain’s small shield every time she jousted. Her lance could only take so much of this accuracy; at last it shattered. Taking a buffet from the sandbag—she had yet to strike the small ring on the target, which would cause the bag to swing just halfway around—Kel rode Peachblossom to the quintain and dismounted, picking the pieces of her shattered lance out of the mud.

  “Stop mourning like it’s a dead friend,” Wyldon said curtly. He’d been short with her since that day on the palace wall. “Go choose another.”

  Joren was ahead of her, picking a lance from the spares and holding it to Kel as she approached. Expressionless, she accepted it, knowing his eagerness to help was just so he could give her another weighted lance. This one felt no lighter than the old one. Kel ran her fingers along it and found the hair-fine breaks where plugs had been fitted back into the wood. She looked at Joren. He smirked.

  Something happened to her then, something she would not be able to explain if she lived to be a thousand. A feeling like cool rain poured over her, making her feel more focused than she ever had before.

  She mounted Peachblossom.

  She floated in an empty space, enclosed in glass like one of Master Lindhall’s animals. Outside the glass, the older boys practiced sword work from horseback as they waited their turn on the quintain, or they joked or rested, one eye on Sergeant Ezeko as he corrected Faleron’s seat. A single quintain was free, the one assigned to the new pages: Esmond was next, but Lord Wyldon was showing him something as the other three first-years watched.

  Unobserved, Kel kneed Peachblossom into line with the free quintain. She swung her lance into the couched position, its grip firmly in her gloved hand, the butt passed snugly between her ribs and arm. The long, tapered end thrust out over the gelding’s withers at just the right angle to hit the shield. Gently she kicked Peachblossom, urging him forward at a trot. Her world narrowed to one small, painted circle on a slab of wood. She was halfway down the lane, and everything—her seat, her grip, the heft of the lance—felt perfect in a way it never had before.

  “Charge,” she whispered to Peachblossom. She hadn’t demanded that speed from him since their first try at the quintain.

  He lowered his head and charged, hooves thundering on the damp, springtime ground.

  Kel rose to meet the target, her lance aimed at the circle. She struck it dead center. The target snapped to the side, precisely as it did for the third- and fourth-year pages, the quintain turning neatly. Kel galloped past, waiting for the bruising impact of the sandbag. It never came.

  She raised her lance and drew back on the reins, guiding Peachblossom into a gentle turn. She was almost certain that the gelding congratulated her. “Extra oats for you tonight,” she murmured, slowing him to a walk.

  Wyldon watched her, arms crossed over his chest. “Good,” he said. “When you can do it reliably, instead of once or twice, you will have something.”

  Kel didn’t hesitate. She knew the feel of it now. She walked Peachblossom into a turn and pointed him at the target. One of the pages had already set it for the next tilter. Kel tucked her lance butt under her arm, lowered it until it crossed the gelding’s shoulders, and urged him into a trot, then a gallop, then the charge. Everything that had been so perfect a few moments ago felt exactly right again. She struck the circle dead center a second time, then went back and did it a thi
rd time and a fourth. After her fifth perfect tilt, she stopped in front of Lord Wyldon.

  “Very good, probationer.” Wyldon sounded as if his teeth hurt to say it. The other pages had all stopped what they were doing to watch her last three passes. “You are released for the remainder of the morning.”

  She bowed to him from the saddle and turned Peachblossom toward the stables.

  The sound of applause made her turn in the saddle. “Huzzah, Kel!” Neal cried gleefully. “Huzzah, huzzah!” The prince, Merric, Seaver, Faleron, and Cleon were all clapping and cheering. So were Eda Bell, the Shang Wildcat, and Stefan the hostler, who often came to watch the tilting practice. She waved to them with a grin, and nudged Peachblossom to a trot.

  The examinations at the end of April had existed for only fourteen years. King Jonathan’s father had introduced them after the discovery that a girl— Alanna the Lioness—had concealed her sex to become a knight. The suspicion that trickery was involved had led King Roald to create public tests.

  Now anyone could watch as a panel of nobles, mages, and teachers asked pages questions about their classwork and watched them show their physical skills in practice bouts of all kinds. Only three boys had failed the examinations since they were set up, yet all the pages were convinced that they would be the next. Even the prospect of the lesser examinations, the “little tests,” which gave younger pages experience in public questions and performance, made them nervous.

  Kel dreaded the public exams, but she was beginning to think that this year’s tests would be the only ones she would get to take. Lord Wyldon would never let her return in the fall. He was as cold to her in April as he’d been in September. He still referred to her as “probationer,” which seemed like a bad sign.

  Knowing that, she had to force herself to study for the little tests. The reality was an anticlimax: their audience was tiny, the classroom questions basic. The pages had to write and do mathematical problems on a large slate so everyone watching could follow their work. They had to recite the Code of Ten, the set of laws that formed the basis of government in most realms north of the Inland Sea. They reported aloud on the habits and behavior of some species of immortal—Kel chose hurroks. Then they demonstrated three different ways to greet dignitaries. That marked the end of the classroom work.

  Going to the outdoor practice court for their examinations, the first-year pages had to saddle, mount, and ride their horses around a ring. They went through the most basic maneuvers with unarmed combat, staff, wooden practice sword, and bow. Then, to Kel’s surprise and relief, it was over. All of the first-years passed.

  “I keep telling you, these tests have to be easy enough that even a noble with ogre blood could pass,” Neal informed her at supper that night.

  Kel grinned, but said, “You know, ogres only sound stupid. Most are pretty smart.”

  “And it’s a shallow person who judges anyone by the way they sound,” he admitted cheerfully. “I’m so shallow I’m surprised I don’t reflect myself.”

  Kel groaned and punched him in the shoulder.

  The next week Kel, Neal, and the other pages watched the big tests, in which the fourth-year pages were publicly quizzed and made to demonstrate their mastery of the skills they would need as squires. Kel was surprised that neither Lord Raoul—the Knight Commander of the King’s Own—nor Alanna the Lioness as King’s Champion was among the judges, and mentioned it to Neal.

  “Well, of course they can’t decide on whether or not a page is suitable,” Neal replied. “None of the knights from that generation are allowed to judge. Quite a few of our stuffier nobles claim the pages and squires in those years collaborated to get the Lioness made a knight, though of course no one says as much to their faces. Even Duke Gareth the Elder—her training master—has never served. The king picked the oldest, blue-bloodedest, fustiest men in the realm to do the tests, ones who were nowhere near the palace for Lady Alanna’s training. That keeps the traditionalists happy so His Majesty can then get them to go along with things like opening schools on their estates.”

  “How dare they say the Lioness cheated!” growled Kel. “Great Goddess, she fights ogres and spidrens and armies all the time—”

  “You really look up to her, don’t you?” Neal asked.

  “She’s a hero. She’s proved it over and over.”

  “And will go on doing so until the day she dies,” he said evenly. “You can smack some people in the face with a haddock and they’ll still call it a mouse if a mouse is what they want to see. She’s learned to live with that. Perhaps you should, too.” After a pause, he asked, “Have you ever met her?”

  “We were away, and now—she’s had a busy year,” whispered Kel, hanging her head. “So busy she hasn’t even visited Their Majesties.”

  He seemed about to say something, but he changed his mind. “I want to hear this,” he said as the judges quizzed a page on the law regarding illegal settlement.

  That night in the mess hall, the fourth-year pages moved to the half of the room where the squires sat. Everyone applauded. There was cake for dessert and a juggler, a special treat from Lord Wyldon for the new squires.

  It marked the beginning of a lazy May. Throughout the month knights drifted in and out of the practice courts, looking at the new squires. Only simple reading assignments were given in afternoon classes. There was no etiquette class: Master Oakbridge was in charge of arranging the monarchs’ summer travels throughout the realm, and had not a moment to spare. Only in the practice courts was the pages’ schedule the same.

  With the arrival of warmer weather Kel’s sparrows had moved back into the courtyard. In May the babies began to explore the world outside their nests. Kel loved to watch the tiny birds. They approached their parents or Kel with wings aflutter, yellow-rimmed beaks wide open, cheeping plaintively until they were fed. When not hungry, they seemed to view the world with the gravity of aged priests, watching everything around them with great earnestness. Crown’s fledglings were every bit as alert as their mother, reaching their seed before all of the other youngsters. They were also the first to shed their baby feathers; Kel was able to recognize them only when they begged their mother for extra food.

  At the beginning of June, the pages began to prepare for their weeks in camp. They were issued summer clothes much like their practice garments, and taught how to load a packhorse with supplies and gear. Their first class of the day for a week was neither reading nor writing, but the art of calculating the amount of supplies necessary to keep four adults—Lord Wyldon, Sergeant Ezeko, the Shang Horse, and the Shang Wildcat—and twenty-odd pages for two months.

  Finally Lord Wyldon gave them an entire day to run last-minute errands and laze. They were to leave for the depths of the Royal Forest in the morning, after breakfast.

  The next morning Kel rose at her usual early time. She gave her sparrows one last feeding. “You stay out of trouble,” she ordered them as they pecked at their seed. Salma was to look after them while she was gone. Kel refused to think of who would care for them in the fall. Lord Wyldon had still not given any sign that she might be allowed to return.

  Overhead, the great bell clanged, summoning those who were late risers from their beds. Gathering her saddlebags, Kel left her room.

  ten

  THE ROYAL FOREST

  The morning’s ride into the Royal Forest seemed more like a picnic expedition than training. The pages were silly and giddy. They snatched at leaves, pushing at each other and telling jokes. Riding at the front of their column with Hakuin, Wyldon ignored them. Kel was at the end of the line, because Peachblossom tolerated another horse and rider near him for just so long. Neal, Merric, Prince Roald, and Eda would keep her company for a time, then move off to give the big gelding the solitude he clearly desired.

  Kel noticed clouds gathering before lunch. Few of the boys had. They were shocked when it began to pour in mid-afternoon. “It’s not like the rain’s a surprise,” Kel murmured to her mount. “And it’s not l
ike they aren’t used to mud.” She preferred being wet to being muddy, though she knew she wouldn’t feel that way after dark, when it got cold.

  They followed a broad, well-traveled track most of the day. Wyldon halted the column when they reached a wide clearing with an immense ancient oak at its center. Most of the riders led their mounts under the tree’s scant protection, while four of the oldest pages went to search for water and cover. It was a test of their hunt skills, as well as Lord Wyldon’s way of letting them know that they were now senior pages, expected to master the hardest chores.

  Two returned quickly, having found a stream and shallow caves on the ground above it. Wyldon showed the first-years how to leave a trail sign that would tell the two pages who had not yet returned the path they had taken. Kel got hers right on the second try, but Seaver and Quinden had yet to put the stones and twigs in the correct formation when the missing pages returned. Finally Quinden got it, but Wyldon kept them all until Seaver laid the sign correctly.

  Kel waited for the others to lead their horses into the open ground past her before she brought Peachblossom out. “Don’t feel bad,” she murmured to Seaver as he trudged by. “Next time, picture it in your mind like it’s a drawing of a building, or a map. That’s how I do it.”

  “It just wasn’t making sense,” he whispered to her.

  “That’s why making it a picture helps. That gives it sense.”

  Seaver gripped her shoulder in wordless thanks, keeping an eye on Peachblossom.

  A short thunderstorm rolled in as they set up camp. Chilly air followed; Kel felt it even before she finished rubbing Peachblossom down. Once she’d fed him and eaten, she wrapped herself in a blanket and closed her eyes. Breathing slowly and softly, as she’d been taught, she made herself believe that she was comfortable as she drifted off to sleep.