Protector of the Small Quartet

by Tamora Pierce

  When the griffin lost interest in fish and closed its beak, Kel put the plate aside and glared at her charge. What was she supposed to do without a cage? She certainly couldn’t leave it wrapped in sheets.

  As if to prove Kel’s point, the griffin wavered, blinked, and vomited half-digested fish onto Kel’s bedding. Mutely the healer gave Kel a washcloth and left. Kel used it to gather up the worst of the vomit. The griffin wrestled a paw free and swiped four sharp claws over Kel’s hand. She was trying to think of a merciful way to kill it when a muffled blatting sound issued from inside the blankets. A billow of appalling stench rose from the cot.

  Knowing what she would find, Kel pulled the bedding apart. The griffin clambered out of a puddle of half-liquid dung and threw itself at Kel. When she raised her hands in self-defense, it seized one arm, clutching it with its forepaws and shredding her sleeve as it clawed the underside of her arm. Kel gritted her teeth, shook her pillow free of its case, and shoved the kicking immortal inside.

  The healer had returned. “I’d better leave this with you.” She placed a fresh bottle of green liquid on the stool beside Kel’s cot. “It will clean your wounds and stop the bleeding.”

  Kel yanked her captive arm free and closed her hand around the neck of the pillowcase. The thin cloth would hold her monster only a short time. “If I might have swabs and light oil and warm water, I would be in your debt,” she said politely, onehandedly folding her bedding around the griffin’s spectacular mess. “I need to clean my friend.”

  “Might I recommend the horse trough outside?” the healer suggested, as polite as Kel. “I will bring everything to you there.”

  The glove idea failed. Kel tried falconers’ gloves, riding gloves, and even linen bandages on her hands. The griffin would not take food from a gloved hand, and now that Kel was better, it took food from no one else, either. With regular practice, Kel’s skill at incurring only small wounds improved. She hoped that, with more practice, combining her duties as squire with multiple feedings for her charge would leave her less exhausted at day’s end. Most of all, she hoped the griffin’s parents came soon. There were two of them to care for their offspring. Surely they never felt overwhelmed.

  Five days after she left her cot, Third Company and the two Rider Groups took the road with the griffin and thirty-odd bandit prisoners. Their destination was the magistrates’ court in Irontown. The journey was tense. Everyone knew that death sentences awaited most of the bandits, who made almost daily escape attempts. Twice the company was attacked by families and friends of the captives, trying to free them.

  The Haresfield renegade Macorm was the first to see Irontown’s magistrates. In his case the Crown asked for clemency, since Macorm’s information had led to the band’s capture. His friend Gavan, who faced the noose, testified that Macorm was a reluctant thief who had killed no one. The magistrates gave Macorm a choice, ten years in the army or the granite quarries of the north. He chose the army.

  Kel attended the trials as Raoul’s squire, watching as the bandits’ victims and the soldiers, including her knight-master, gave testimony. She heard the griffin’s history for herself. The centaur she killed, Windteeth, had murdered a human peddler who offered griffin feathers for sale when he saw the man had a real griffin in his cart. Windteeth knew the risk he took, keeping a young griffin, but the prospect of future wealth had meant more to him.

  “Nobody went near him after that,” Windteeth’s brother told the court. “Nobody wants to tangle with griffins, and that little monster has sharp claws, to boot.”

  Not to mention a beak, Kel thought, looking at her hands. Her right little finger was in a splint, awaiting a healer’s attention. The griffin had broken it that morning. Why couldn’t she have left that cursed pouch alone?

  The court reached its verdicts with no surprises, ruling on hanging for the human robbers, beheading for the centaurs. Kel put on her most emotionless Yamani Lump face and attended the executions with Raoul, Captain Flyndan, and Commander Buri. She had seen worse—the Yamani emperor had once ordered the beheading of forty guards—but not much worse.

  Looking at the crowds as they gathered for the hangings, she wondered if something was wrong with her. Many people acted as if this were a party. They brought lunches or purchased food and drink from vendors, hoisted children onto their shoulders for a better look, bought printed ballads about the bandits and sang them. Did they not care that lives were ending?

  Kel’s jaws ached at the end of the day, she had clenched them so hard. For the first time in years she felt like an alien in her homeland. Then she realized that the three human commanders were not at all merry. They ate together both nights after the executions, with Kel to wait on them. Their evenings were spent in review of the hunt and in plans for better ways to do things in future, not in having fun at the expense of the dead.

  The second night Buri followed Kel as she took away the dirty plates and stopped her in the hall outside the supper room. “We do what we must,” she told Kel, her voice gentle. “We don’t enjoy it. Remember the victims, if it gets too sickening.”

  “Do you get used to it, Commander?” Kel asked.

  “Call me Buri. Get used to it? Never. There’d be something wrong with you if you did,” Buri replied. “Death, even for someone just plain bad, solves nothing. The law says it’s a lesser wrong than letting them go to kill again, but it sows bitterness in the surviving family and friends. Bitterness we’ll reap down the road.”

  “Do the K’mir execute criminals?” Kel wanted to know.

  Buri’s smile was crooked. “In a way,” she replied. “We give them to the families of those they’ve wronged, and the families kill them. After all these years in the civilized west, I’m still trying to decide if that’s good or not.”

  Kel thought of Maresgift, fighting his bonds wildly and screaming curses as they brought him to the headsman. She couldn’t decide, either. The only good thing about that execution was that it had been the last.

  The next morning Veralidaine Sarrasri, also known as Daine the Wildmage, came to Irontown in search of Kel and the griffin. She found them with Third Company and the Rider Groups, in the barracks at Fort Irontown.

  “Let’s have a look outside,” Daine said, looking queasily at the walls around them. “I’ve been spying in falcon shape, and this feels a bit too much like the mews.”

  Kel retrieved the griffin and carried him outside, where Raoul and Daine sat on a bench in the shade. As Kel approached with the griffin in his battered leather pouch, she heard Daine say, “No, just for a couple of weeks, but it was enough. I’m afraid I freed every hawk there.” She smiled up at Kel and held out her hands for the pouch. “And this must be as thankless for you as it gets.”

  Kel held the pouch, worried. “Its parents . . . ,” she began.

  Daine smiled, her blue-gray eyes mischievous. “Unlike you, I can talk to them, and they’ll understand me,” she reminded Kel. “Let’s have a look.”

  She lifted the griffin out of the pouch, gripping its forepaws in one hand and its hind paws in the other. Once it was in the open, she handled it deftly, checking its anus, opening the wings to feel the bones, prying open the snapping beak to look into its throat. Kel and Raoul watched, awed. From time to time the immortal landed a scratch or a bite, but not often.

  “We tried keeping him in a cage at first,” Kel said. “The metal rusts to nothing overnight. He just rips through straw and cloth.”

  “No, metal’s no good,” Daine replied. “They learn how to age it young. Even a baby like this can break down an average cage overnight, once they have the knack of it. You don’t really need a cage. He’ll stay with you now that you’ve hand-fed him.”

  “Oh, splendid,” Kel grumbled. “If only I’d known.”

  Daine continued as if she’d said nothing. “Make him a platform to sit on, or get him a carrier like they have for the dogs. He should exercise his wings.” She bounced the griffin up and down in the air. Instinctivel
y he flapped his wings, scattering dander and loose feathers. “Do it like that. He’s got to build them up to fly.” She inspected the griffin’s eyes. “You don’t have to feed him only fish—other kinds of meat won’t kill him, and I know fresh fish is hard to come by. He can have smoked fish and meat, even jerky.” She held the immortal up in front of her face. Kel was fascinated to see Daine’s brisk treatment produce a cowed youngster: the griffin didn’t even try to scratch her now, but stared at her as if he’d never seen anything like her. “Yes, jerky’s good,” Daine said with a smile. “He can chew on it instead of you.”

  “It’s a he?” Raoul asked. He was fascinated. Jump sat at his feet, as attentive as Raoul.

  Daine nodded and opened the griffin’s hind legs, pointing to the bulges at the base of his belly. “Just like cats,” she said as the griffin squalled. She tugged fish skin off one of his feet before she let the legs close again.

  “Keeping him clean is fun,” Kel said. At least he looked better than he had in Owlshollow. It had meant several days’ work with diluted soap, oil, and balls of cotton, as well as nearly a pint of her blood lost to scratches and bites, but it had been worth the effort. The grease clumps were gone, and his feathers were now bright orange instead of muddy orange-brown.

  Daine looked at Kel’s tattered sleeves and hands. “I’ll show you how to trim his claws, so he doesn’t do so much damage.”

  “Easier said than done,” Raoul pointed out.

  Daine laughed. “You’ve done well by him, and it’s a thankless job. I can see he was hungry for a time, but he’s gaining weight at last.”

  Kel shrugged, embarrassed. “He’s a vicious little brute,” she muttered.

  “I’ll bet you are, just like the rest of your kind,” Daine told the griffin. “Preen his feathers with your fingers—that helps shake out the dander. And I know you’re aware of this, but don’t get too fond, Kel. He’s not like this lad.” She stirred Jump with her foot. He pounded dust from the ground with his tail. “He belongs with other griffins.”

  “You can’t take him?” Kel asked. “Really, he’s too much for me. I can’t even ask for help with him.”

  “If you could—” Raoul began.

  Daine shook her head. “He’s fixed on Kel. He won’t take food from anyone else until he’s with his true parents again. I could try, all the same, but I’ll be on the move, looking for the parents besides what the king asks of me. And I can’t talk to him to make him understand things. He’s much too young.” She plucked a two-inch feather that stuck out at a right angle. The griffin snapped at her, but Daine pulled out of reach. “You have to be quicker than that,” she told him. To Kel and Raoul she said, “I know caring for a griffin is hard, and I’m sorry. He’ll calm down as he gets used to you, and with luck we’ll find his family soon.” She looked at Kel. “Don’t even name him if you can help it,” she said firmly.

  “I know,” Kel replied. “It’s easier to let go if I don’t name him. Not that I’ll be sorry to let go, but still.”

  Daine thrust the feather into her curly hair and gripped the griffin by his paws again, turning him onto his back in her lap. As he struggled and squawked, she took a very small knife from her boot top and unsheathed it. “Here’s how to trim his claws.”

  Not long after Daine left, Raoul took Third Company back into the Royal Forest. In those weeks Kel met the charcoal burners, freshwater fishermen, hunters, miners, and hermits who eked out life in this wild part of the kingdom. She also met more immortals than she had ever seen as a page: centaurs, including Graystreak and his herd; an ogre clan working a mine; winged horses large and small; a basilisk mother and her son; a herd of unicorns; even a small tribe of winged apes.

  This was no tour, however. They captured nearly twenty robbers, burned three nests of spidrens, and killed nine hurroks of a band of thirteen; the others fled. Dom showed her a griffin’s nest—the parents and the yearling watched them from high in the trees, but there was no sign of that year’s chick. Daine had gone there the same day she had examined the griffin. She had returned at nightfall to say that these griffins knew exactly where their current chick was; neither had they heard of a pair missing a child.

  Strangest of all was a Stormwing eyrie. Kel watched the immortals circling their home, sunlight flashing off perfectly feathered steel wings. How did they live when there were no battles? Had they been overhead at Owlshollow? Did they come after the fight to rip at the dead? Kel was ashamed to realize she didn’t want to ask. Surely a squire ought to be tough minded enough to deal with the desecration of corpses.

  Next year, part of her whispered. We made it through those executions; we watched. Next year we’ll be tough minded enough to ask about Stormwings.

  “We’re giving them a chance,” Raoul said as they watched the gliding immortals. “They don’t bother us, we don’t bother them. But I’ll never trust them. Not after Port Legann.”

  Someone called him away. That night, once supper was done, Kel asked her knight-master, “What happened with Stormwings at Port Legann?”

  Raoul told his part of the story of the fight for Tortall’s third richest city in the Immortals War. When he was done, Flyn, Qasim, and some other veterans told their versions. Kel had seen the battle as movements of armies on a model the king and Daine had used in Lord Wyldon’s strategy class. Now she heard what men on the ground had seen. Their maps were sticks, stones, and lines in the earth. On other nights other battles were picked apart, giving Kel and the junior members of Third Company an idea of the many aspects of war.

  There were a few amenities on this sweep. They often stayed in villages, hunting for meat and adding their supplies so the inhabitants didn’t suffer with extra mouths to feed. They paid women to launder and mend their clothes. Baths were still cold—Kel had gotten hot baths in Irontown, but few villages were big enough for bathhouses. Most people made do with tubs in their homes.

  Kel’s guardianship of the baby griffin improved when she made leather sleeves to protect her arms from wrists to shoulders. Some accidents resulted when the griffin found he could hook his rear paws through the laced openings between the upper and lower guards to dig at her elbows, but Kel got better at blocking him. Her hands were still vulnerable. With time she acquired scars on every finger.

  six

  LESSONS

  When the leaves began to turn, the Own returned to the palace. All the way there Kel daydreamed of hot water. As soon as she had tended Raoul’s horses and armor, then her own, and had settled the griffin in her rooms, she headed to her usual bathhouse. There she soaked until her fingers looked like flesh-colored raisins. In the morning, filled with virtue, wearing a leather jerkin and arm guards, she gave the griffin a warm bath.

  Now Raoul gave orders for Kel’s formal instruction as a squire who rode with the King’s Own. Qasim and Dom showed her through the Own’s barracks, mess hall, and storehouses. In the mess they introduced her to the stiffly dignified Captain Glaisdan of Haryse, Commander of First Company. He regarded Kel as if she were a beetle, treatment Dom assured her Glaisdan gave everyone whose degree of nobility came after The Book of Silver. Dom, whose family was in The Book of Gold, was safe; Kel, whose family had been ennobled only two generations back, was not in any of the noble genealogies. She wanted to meet Captain Ulliver Linden, in charge of Second Company—she’d heard he was nearly as deadly in hand-to-hand combat as any Shang warrior—but couldn’t. Captain Linden and his command were on the border shared by Tortall, Scanra, and Galla. He was not expected before winter set in, if then.

  On their second day in quarters Raoul told Kel to report after breakfast. When she arrived, he took her to the master smith in charge of armor for knights. There Raoul watched as Kel was fitted properly for her own breastplate, a chain mail shirt, and chain mail leggings.

  “A coif, my lord?” the armorer wanted to know.

  Raoul shook his head. “She’s been wearing a round helm in the field—let’s get her that, made to fit. To
o many things come at us from overhead,” he explained to the smith and to Kel. “Having someone dig links of chain mail out of your scalp is not pleasant.”

  Kel winced.

  “Leave some allowance in the sleeves and legs, an inch or two,” Raoul instructed the armorer. “She’s been shooting up like a weed—I’m not sure she’s done growing yet.”

  Kel made a face. She had gone from five feet one inch to nearly five feet ten inches in four years, growing so fast that she half-expected to hear her clothes straining. She was thankful that a knight-master outfitted his squire. Her parents’ budget, with dowries, school fees, and other expenses, could never pay for all the armor squires and knights required.

  “Now, sword and dagger. Let me see yours,” Raoul said when the armorer finished with Kel.

  Qasim had inspected them originally; Raoul had not. Kel handed the weapons over.

  The big knight whistled as he looked the weapons over and peered at the underside of their cross-guards. “I thought so,” he said. “Raven Armory.” He showed Kel an enameled raven on the bottom of the cross-guards. “The best in the realm. Lerant has a dagger from them that’s a family heirloom, passed down through four generations. Your parents must have sold two children to pay for these.”

  Kel hitched her shoulders. “It wasn’t them, sir. I don’t know who gave them to me.”

  “You didn’t find them in the street,” he joked. He balanced the sword on his finger, flipped it in the air, and caught it by the hilt as it came down.

  Kel told him about the anonymous well-wisher who’d sent her gifts over her years as a page. “I still don’t know who it is,” she finished. “Was it you?”

  “It never occurred to me, I’m sorry to say.” He shook his head. “I can’t give you better,” he said, handing the weapons back to Kel. “Now, how about some practice? Have you ever tilted at another person before?”

  An hour later Kel rode Peachblossom to a tilting yard used by squires. Qasim had come to help: he put a coromanel tip, one that spread the force of the strike over a greater area, on Raoul’s lance and Kel’s. He then secured padding around them to further lessen the shock of impact.