As soon as she reentered the mess hall, Kel was besieged with questions. How many pretty Yamani girls had come with the princess? Did they all dress so colorfully? Did they all bow so much? Were they all beautiful?
Kel answered questions between bites until Cleon finally growled, “Let her eat! We’ll see plenty of the ladies soon. Master Oakbridge posted the schedule for entertainments today.”
“We’ll hop so hard at those things we’ll be lucky to get a whiff of perfume,” Prosper complained, but Cleon had reminded everyone that supper was growing cold.
Kel looked up, to see that Neal eyed Cleon with interest. She waited to hear the question behind her friend’s look, but Neal saw that she was watching, and smiled at her. “Lady Alanna has been putting me through my paces,” he said, buttering a roll. “I swear, if she hears of so much as a sniffle in the village down the road, she has to drag me there to study the healing of sniffles. Would you like to trade with me?”
Kel suddenly realized that if it were possible to be Lady Alanna’s squire, she wouldn’t do it. She liked where she was. It was a startling thing to know, after thinking her heart would break if she couldn’t serve Lady Alanna.
“If you want my place, you can have it,” she told Neal, straight-faced. “You’d particularly like the tilting practice we have every day when we aren’t in the field.”
Neal shuddered. “Tilt with Lord Raoul? Why don’t I just lie down in front of an elephant and let him step on me? I bet it feels the same.”
“Will you be around later, Kel?” Cleon asked as Kel got ready to go.
She shook her head. “If my lord lets me out of evening lessons, I’ll be visiting the Yamani ladies,” she replied. He looked disappointed. “I’ll see you here tomorrow night, though, if we aren’t called out. Try not to spend too many hours writing poems to Yuki’s eyebrow,” she advised Neal. “Yamani poetry is very different from ours. I doubt she’d appreciate yours.” Grinning, she took her tray to the servers. Behind her she heard the squires discuss where they might find books of Yamani poetry.
Conducted into the presence of Princess Shinkokami, Kel greeted her as any Yamani would. She knelt, placed her palms on the floor, and bowed until her forehead touched the silk rug.
“Keladry, no,” protested Shinkokami, stepping off the dais where she sat with Yukimi and Lady Haname. “I am an Easterner now—you must greet me in your manner!”
Kel sat up and rested her hands on her knees, gazing at the willowy princess. Shinkokami was lovely enough to break every heart in the mess hall, even those already thumping over Yukimi. She was about five feet seven inches tall, her complexion peach-golden. Unlike Yukimi and Lady Haname she wore no rice powder or lip paint. There was a smile in her eyes even when she was worried, as now. Over a cream-colored inner kimono she wore a golden outer one embroidered with scarlet and gold cranes. Her obi was scarlet, with an ivory figurine of a kimono-clad cat hung below her fan. The short knife carried by all Yamani women was thrust into her obi as well. Her hair, worn in the same very simple style as her ladies’, was glossy black and scented lightly with jasmine.
“Cricket?” whispered Kel.
The princess laughed gleefully. “You do know me! I told Yuki I did not think you would!”
“You never said that you belonged to the imperial house,” Kel told the girl who had taught her Yamani children’s games.
“We were in disgrace with my uncle the emperor,” Shinkokami explained. “I loved it that you treated me like an ordinary person, so I never told you. And now look! While you learned from me, I learned Eastern ways and speech from you and your family. Who would have dreamed it would bring us here?” A wave of her hand took in the room, hung with tapestries and furnished elegantly in a combination of Yamani and Tortallan styles.
Kel smiled at her. “Just think,” she said slyly, “no one here will expect you to be the slave of your mother-in-law.”
Yukimi and Shinkokami giggled, their hands covering their mouths. “I was betrothed, you know, before my uncle dissolved that contract and said I was to marry a foreigner,” Shinkokami explained. “My mother-in-law-to-be was a terrible old woman. I was so happy to escape her house that I burned incense at every temple I passed on my way to the ship.” She turned to the oldest of the three women. “Keladry of Mindelan, I do not believe you know my other attendant, Lady Haname noh Ajikuro.”
Shinkokami’s request aside, Kel bowed deeply to the lady in the Yamani style. Ajikuro was one of the oldest Yamani noble houses, older even than the emperor’s. Her presence was another sign that Shinkokami’s uncle wanted the match to work. The lady was in her mid-twenties, clad in a cinnamon-brown kimono over a pale blue one, with a rust-colored obi. She wore a variation on the noblewoman’s style, her hair pulled back and tied with a bronze silk bow, the two short, framing locks accenting her pointed chin and serene eyes.
“I am honored to meet the daughter of a redoubtable mother,” Lady Haname said. “She told us of some of your exploits. They promise to outshine hers.”
Kel bowed deeply. It was the only possible reply. She personally thought it would be a long time before she would do anything as brave as her mother had, protecting imperial relics from pirates.
“So, Keladry, have you forgotten all you know of naginata ?” Yukimi inquired. “Or do you practice still?”
Kel smiled at her old friend. “From time to time,” she replied.
Shinkokami sat on the edge of the dais; Haname knelt on her left, while Yukimi scooted forward on her right. Maids came forward noiselessly with the low tables used by Yamanis, who seldom possessed chairs and conducted all business seated on their floors. Once they were comfortable, the maids served tea and small cakes.
“Would you join us for dawn practice?” Shinkokami wanted to know. “We number five. With one more we can pair off.”
Kel bowed. “I would be honored, your highness.”
They were telling her where she could find their practice court when the talk was interrupted by a scratching on the door. One of the guards unsheathed his sword and opened the door quickly, meaning to surprise any intruders. Kel realized she would have to find a tactful way to let the Yamanis know that assassination attempts were rare here. She closed her eyes, resigned, as the guard looked up and down the hall and Jump trotted in past him.
Jump had to be introduced, of course, and the guard soothed. Kel watched her scapegrace dog win cakes and scratches from the Yamanis, and thanked him silently. It was hard even for Yamanis to be stiff and guarded when Jump made an effort to be charming.
Rising before dawn was no trial to Kel. She had done it for all her years as a page, to practice weapons and to do strengthening exercises. The staff in this part of the palace knew when she got up: she always found rolls, a dish of smoked fish or beef for the griffin, and hot water outside her door in the morning. Kel shared the rolls with the birds and Jump, dressed, and fed the griffin, then washed off blood and parts of the griffin’s meal.
Wearing practice gear, trailed by Jump and the sparrows, Kel searched for the Yamanis. Their practice court was near the royal wing, tucked between the king’s stables and an archery yard. She was the last to arrive. The three Yamani women were dressed in their own practice clothes: full breeches bound tight to the leg below the knee, rope sandals, cotton kimonos kilted up, sleeves tied back at the shoulders, and bands around their foreheads to keep their pinned-up hair out of their faces.
Kel had thought the other two present for these mornings would be Yamani maids, but they were Easterners. One wore the Yamani costume. She turned and smiled when Yuki waved Kel over.
“So I have a daughter after all,” Ilane of Mindelan said as she came to hug Kel. “I was beginning to think you were an illusion.”
“Oh, Mama,” Kel said shyly, returning the hug. After years of seeing her mother tower over most people, including Kel’s father, it was strange to find that their eyes were now on the same level. The thought that she might outgrow her mother was u
ncomfortable; the idea that her hair might go white at thirty, as her mother’s had, was frightening. She did wish she had her mother’s deep, musical voice. “I’m sorry—I’ve been busy. My lord doesn’t exactly sit around.”
“So I’ve heard.” Ilane turned to the fifth member of the company and bowed. “Your majesty, I don’t believe anyone has introduced my youngest daughter to you: Keladry of Mindelan.”
Queen Thayet, called by many “the Peerless,” smiled at Kel. She had flawless ivory skin, a ruddy mouth fashioned with a gem cutter’s precision, and crow’s wing black hair that fought to escape its pins. Her green-hazel eyes were direct; a strong nose made her face human rather than inhumanly beautiful. Like Kel she wore the quilted canvas practice clothes issued to the pages, squires, and Riders. In one small hand she held a glaive. “I hope you’ll go easy on me,” the queen said. “I’ve only been training with this thing for a year.”
Shinkokami hurriedly assured the queen that she did well for someone who had not started with the weapon as a child. “And you outshoot me all the time,” she assured her future mother-in-law.
“That makes me feel a little better,” the queen said wryly. “How shall we start?”
Dealing with three Yamanis whose training had not been interrupted as hers had, Kel thought she did rather well that morning. She did have to mind her strength, something she had never considered before. While the other women were fast and tireless, Kel had added months of building her muscles to keep up with males.
At first the queen unnerved her. Thayet finally had to dump Kel on her behind so Kel would stop worrying about the bloodlines of her opponent and conduct a proper defense.
Morning practice became a ritual for all six of them, a quiet time to exercise and prepare for the day. Shinkokami, who had been a lively girl, was shy everywhere in her new home but on the practice court. Kel began to take her walking after the six of them ate breakfast. On those walks she gave Shinkokami tours of the palace. They also discussed the things she sensed made the princess nervous: what Roald was like, the power hierarchies in the east, new gods and religions, even fittings for Eastern-style clothes. Once Shinkokami knew that the brisk dressmaker was Kel’s Lalasa, and saw how Lalasa treated Kel, she was more comfortable having clothes pinned and shaped to her form. Lalasa, in turn, liked any female that Kel liked, and took up the shy, reserved Yamani’s cause with the palace servants.
The princess was worried about her reception by the country during the coming Grand Progress of the realm. Kel was not. She knew the Tortallans would love her. She even suspected that Prince Roald, when he came home from his knightmaster’s castle at Port Legann, would too.
A dry summer and a delay in the winter rains in the south bred problems. First the hill folk near Fief Shaila tried to rebel, laying siege to the local army fort. Third Company rode to free the garrison and hunt those responsible. No sooner had Raoul punished the worst troublemakers and gotten pledges of loyalty from the rest than word came from the village of Sweetspring: forest fires, in the hills between the village and the Drell River. Third Company rode hard to get there and worked harder still to clear wide strips of ground, trapping the fires within them. For two weeks they labored beside hill people, Bazhir, soldiers, and the other inhabitants to save forests and villages. At last the rains came, adding a layer of mud to the soot ground into Kel’s skin.
Once the danger was past and the locals back in their homes, Raoul met with his second in command and his squad leaders. He hoped to take Third Company to pass the winter in the south at Kendrach or Pearlmouth.
“I’m sure we’ll find plenty to do,” he told his audience in his most charming manner. “Smugglers, flood relief, and so on. And we’ll be warmer than in Corus.”
“My lord, you know we can’t do that,” Flyndan told him as Kel served hot cider to the men. “Things are busy at the palace. I’m sure his majesty wants us there.”
“Exactly the reason I want to go south,” retorted the Knight Commander. “Me dressed in silk and velvet and ermine like a players’ bear, while you carouse in the city. You don’t have matchmaking mothers after you. Me? I’m a hive and they’re bees. Kendrach won’t turn away a hundred extra swords, not with the Carthakis still fighting over Emperor Kaddar’s rule. In Pearlmouth we can help with flooding in the southern Drell, or Tyran smuggling.”
“So get married and lose the mothers,” Flyn replied without sympathy. “You’re the only one who can marry and stay in.”
“I don’t want to,” Raoul said flatly.
“Sir, think of the rest of us,” Dom said pleadingly. “There’s the Midwinter parties, and not all mothers look down their noses at younger sons—”
“At least, not younger sons with money,” quipped Lerant, his nose buried in his cider.
“If you’re so poor, how’d you finance that pretty dagger, eh?” Dom retorted, pointing at the ivory-hilted blade hanging from Lerant’s belt. “If that isn’t Raven Armory work, I don’t know what is.”
“I hear the two Yamani ladies with the princess aren’t spoken for,” Lerant said, grinning at Dom. “Thinking you might wangle an introduction, Sergeant Domitan?”
“I hoped my good friend Kel might take pity on me,” Dom replied with a wink for her.
Kel’s heart turned over in her chest, just as it did whenever he noticed her. It wasn’t fair for Dom to be so good-looking, she thought, or worse, so nice.
“I still prefer—” Raoul was saying when a sodden messenger walked into the tent. He clutched an oilcloth envelope in his hand. Kel took it, noting the seal: a crossed gavel and sword. Where had she seen that before?
The parchment inside, also sealed, was addressed to her knight-master. She handed it over. Raoul frowned, then broke the seal as Kel ushered the messenger outside.
She made sure he and his mount were cared for, then returned to the meeting tent. The men were leaving.
“Here’s Kel,” Dom said. He chortled as he clapped Lerant on the back. “Two exotic Yamanis, one for you, and one for me,” he told the younger man as they walked away.
“We’re going to Corus?” Kel asked Raoul.
He gave her the parchment. “They’ve found who paid those two rogues to kidnap your maid in April,” he told Kel. “We’re going back for the trial.”
December, in the 17th year of the reign of Jonathan IV and Thayet, his Queen, 456
eight
THE PRICE OF A MAID
The trip to Corus was hard. Outside the Royal Forest the rains that had turned the roads into rivers of mud became snow that deepened with every step. Warhorses were sent ahead of the riding horses to break the trail. Kel worried about that, but Peachblossom did his part without sharing his displeasure.
Some weeks before Kel had acquired a big leather pouch for the griffin to travel in during bad weather. Always worried about his health and how much cold and wet he could stand, she had lined the pouch with fleece to keep him warm. Inside the Royal Forest, even this wasn’t enough. When she checked him at mid-morning on their second day, the small immortal sat huddled, feathers fluffed out. Gathering her courage, Kel unwound her thick wool scarf, unbuttoned the heavy quilted coat issued by the quartermaster, and opened the top of her fleece-lined jerkin. She took the griffin from its pouch with gloved hands, thought a prayer, and slid him into the front of her jerkin between the fleece and her wool shirt.
“If you savage me, it’s back to the pouch for you,” she informed her guest, shifting him so his head poked out of her jerkin and coat. The griffin’s answer was to tug his head inside the jerkin. Kel rebuttoned her coat and put her scarf on again, leaving a small opening so the griffin could breathe. Either he did not want to return to the pouch or he was so cold he didn’t want to do anything at all, even draw Kel’s blood. He remained inside her clothes for the rest of the trip.
During the slow ride Kel had time to remember the events of last April. Her old rage at the injustice of it returned. Someone had paid thugs to kidnap Lalasa
the night before Kel was to take the great examinations. After holding Lalasa—and Jump, who had refused to leave her—all night, the kidnappers had taken her to the top of Balor’s Needle, the tallest structure in the palace. They left her bound, gagged, and blindfolded on the exposed observation platform. Jump was tied up there, too.
If Kel searched for them, she risked being late to the tests. The rules were clear: pages who were late would have to repeat at least one year, perhaps all four, of their page terms, depending on how late they were. The one who’d paid for the kidnapping had bet that Kel would do her duty by Lalasa and Jump and search for them, then give up her dream of a knight’s shield rather than repeat her page years. If Kel had left the matter to people who didn’t owe Lalasa protection, like the palace Watch, the whole world would learn she had shirked her duty.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the kidnappers, or the one who paid them, had waited until Kel walked onto the observation platform, then locked the door to the inside stair of the tower. Their employer knew Kel’s terrible fear of heights. Lalasa, Jump, and Kel were forced to descend the outer stair. With Lalasa’s help Kel had done it, and lost her fear of heights as well.
The actual kidnappers were caught by the palace dogs before they left the grounds. Now the Watch had found the kidnappers’ employer. Kel wanted to see his face. She wanted Lalasa to get justice after being terrorized for no better reason than she worked for the wrong person.
They reached their headquarters in a winter twilight two days after the trial started. Lalasa and her close friend Tian were already waiting for them, seated on a bench in the hall outside Raoul’s and Kel’s rooms. They took one look at the snow-soaked, weary knight and squire and went into action. They sent orders for hot water, tubs, and food for humans and animals. Then they swept into Raoul’s and Kel’s rooms. As the dazed pair watched, they lit candles, built fires in every room, put out fresh clothes, and began to strip Raoul and Kel of their wet things. Only when they reached underclothes did Raoul recover enough to retreat to his own dressing room to await the arrival of his bath.
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