Protector of the Small Quartet

by Tamora Pierce

  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 supicious, 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, outrag
ed.

  “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 horse-tail. 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.”

  Kel sighed. Lalasa had returned to her sewing. “One of you say something, or go away,” she advised. “I’ve classwork yet tonight, and so do you.”

  “Sergeant Ezeko says he should just impale himself on the staff, he’s so bad with it,” Iden announced, pushing Warric. “My lord told me I’d do better to plant mine and hope a tree grows out of it.”

  “We’re hopeless,” announced Warric.

  “You’re like butter with the staff, butter with no cow hairs in it, all smooth and clean,” Iden continued. “Owen said we should stop bothering him because he’s no hand with it, either, and you’re the best.”

  “And you never get mad, or yell,” Warric finished. “Owen and Merric do.”

  Lalasa ducked her head to hide a smile as Kel stood. “You want me to help you?” Kel asked. She thought, but didn’t add, Even though I’m The Girl?

  “If you don’t mind,” said Iden, hope in his large hazel eyes.

  “Just some pointers, so we quit getting our fingers broke,” Warric supplied. Kel glanced at his hands—they were covered with bruises, and one finger was swollen.

  “Well, you can’t start that way,” she remarked, and opened the desk drawer where she kept the bruise balm. “Come here, both of you,” she ordered as she removed the top. “Let’s see your hands.”

  Both lads’ hands were mottled with training bruises. Kel dabbed balm on the worst, nodding as the swellings went down and purple marks faded. “Now,” she ordered when she had put the balm away, “show me what you’re doing.”

  She saw the problems immediately. No matter how often she positioned Warric’s hands on his staff, he let them slide closer together as he practiced. Iden’s stance was bad, even weak; a blow would knock him aside. Using her belt-knife, Kel roughened the wood on Warric’s staff at the spots where his hands should be most of the time. Then she marked the floor with chalk to show Iden where to put his feet. She suggested that he take one step out of his stance and another to return to it, starting first with the left foot, then the right, and continue doing only that. Her idea was to make the position feel natural. While he stepped, Kel turned back to Warric.

  After he had practiced strikes and blocks for a brief time, stopping often to reposition his hands correctly, she said, “Do it slow. As you’re doing each thing, check that your hands are always where they should be.”

  He swung his staff in the high strike position, moving it with a dancer’s slow grace. “But we’re supposed to go fast,” he pointed out.

  “You will, in the practice court. But you do the thing I used to, where I was so in love with swinging a weapon that I didn’t care about the exact way to do it. I got my fingers broken before I learned to stop thinking how good I must look, do it slow, and make sure my hands were where they ought to be.” She didn’t mention she’d been six at the time. If Warric had studied with tough old Nariko, the Yamani emperor’s armsmistress, he would be further along, too.

  She watched carefully as the boy went through each movement, p
ushing his hands back into place whenever they moved off the rough areas where he had to grip. When he lost his stance, she stepped behind him to correct the placing of his feet.

  “It doesn’t feel right,” Kel heard Iden complain as she positioned Warric.

  Lalasa replied, “It didn’t to me at first, either. No, your toes point out.” Kel glanced over in time to see Lalasa kneel beside Iden. She moved his feet into the correct position and held them in place with her hands as she explained, “They have to point straight ahead on that foot. Try the block now.”

  Iden obeyed. “But they want to point out,” he protested.

  “And your belly wants sweets. You shouldn’t give your body what it wants all the time,” Lalasa said.

  Warric looked at Kel, startled. She winked and said, “Try that low block again. Hold your stance.”

  “You know what my lady suggested?” Lalasa asked Iden. “She said whenever you aren’t doing anything, just assume that stance and hold it for a count of ten.”

  “Any old time?” inquired the boy.

  Lalasa nodded gravely. “When I get up in the morning, or I’m in line in the servants’ mess, or at the draper’s waiting for a clerk, I just stand like that and count. The more I did it, the more natural it got. My lady says I do much better now.”

  “She does,” affirmed Kel. “She threw me all the way to the door this week.” The boys stared at Lalasa, awed.

  The first bell of the night rang, telling pages to start classwork if they hadn’t done so already. As Kel opened the door for her guests, Iden asked, “Would you mind doing a little bit with us tomorrow, like you did tonight?”

  “For a while?” added Warric.

  “Just till we get it,” Iden promised.

  Kel sighed inwardly. She hated to lose the little time she had to herself, but they were gazing at her like starved puppies. Only a monster would refuse, she thought. “I’ll be happy to,” she replied, thinking, Sometimes even knights have to tell white lies.