Protector of the Small Quartet

by Tamora Pierce

  “Yes, Lady Knight,” Kel replied softly. “Daine is trying to find his family now.”

  “Doesn’t his care cut into your training?” asked the lady, tasting the puree delicately. “They need to be fed quite often, don’t they? And they are more like wild creatures than pets.” She nodded at Kel’s hands, which were a tapestry of scratches and scars.

  “He’s wild, yes,” Kel admitted. “But we get along.”

  They spoke of innocent things. If anyone overheard, Alanna’s questions were those anyone might ask. She was well informed about Kel’s weapons skills and training. She even knew about the morning glaive practice and Kel’s years in the Islands.

  When Kel presented the last finger bowl and the Champion rinsed her hands, she smiled at Kel. “Once you’re knighted, perhaps you could teach me to use this glaive,” she suggested. “It sounds like a good all-purpose weapon.”

  Kel walked to the service hall glowing. The lady took it for granted that Kel would win her shield. She wants me to teach her! Kel thought, elated. She picked up a tray with cups and a pitcher of cordial. Me, teach the Lioness—who could have dreamed?

  Alanna had gone when Kel returned. Now she sat with the king, talking to young Lord Sinthya. “Was that so bad?” Raoul asked, pushing back from his chair.

  “You could have warned me,” Kel said reproachfully.

  “I should have,” he admitted, looking sheepish. “I’m just used to you taking whatever comes without a blink. It never occurred to me you might need a warning.”

  Once they were released from banquet service, Kel ate a late supper with her friends among the squires, including Owen, Neal, Merric, and Cleon. Usually some of them walked her back to her tent to watch the griffin’s last feeding of the day. They kept a respectful distance as they looked on. None of them wanted to risk a griffin attack just because Kel’s charge might scratch or bite him. Instead they fed treats to the sparrows and played with Jump as they talked with Kel.

  Another thing all of them did was try to keep Owen’s spirits up. “It’s terrible,” he said that night at Fief Sinthya as he scratched Jump’s tattered ears. “I had no idea most knights think having a squire is a pain. I just want to train as a bandit killer, but either the ones who like that have squires, or they say a squire will slow them down. Do you know what Master Oakbridge said?” he demanded, indignant. “He said Myles of Olau wants a secretary. A paper shuffler! And Sir Myles—well, he’s a good fellow, even if he’s forever saying chivalry is unrealistic and too hard on us, but honestly! I’ll never get any field experience with him, unless it’s in skulking and sneaking and invisible inks.” He looked at his friends, woebegone. “I have to take it. This business of being unattached is worse than shuffling papers. Master Oakbridge makes me run errands and draw seating charts until I think I’ll go mad.”

  “At least Myles won’t bite your head off if you venture a comment of your own,” Neal said gloomily, tickling the queen sparrow Crown on the chest. “There’s a lot to be said for a good-natured knight-master.”

  “Mine’s a decent sort,” Cleon remarked without looking at Kel. “Explains things, doesn’t expect you to read his mind. I’d best get back. He’s in the archery competitions tomorrow, and I think his bowstring’s fraying.” It was a signal for all of the boys to wander off into the night.

  Kel settled the animals and changed into her nightdress, feeling low. And why? Cleon hadn’t tried to kiss her or get her alone. He hadn’t made excuses to linger after the others left. That was good. It saved her from hurting his feelings. Had he followed up on that kiss, she would have been forced to tell him that she was concentrating on her knighthood alone. That would be awkward, unpleasant, depressing.

  I suppose the kiss didn’t mean anything to him, Kel told herself, not for the first time. Or he’s got a proper girl to admire, someone pretty and small, with big eyes, and hands not all clawed and scarred by an ungrateful immortal she dislikes.

  It doesn’t matter, she thought as she lay awake that night. I didn’t like his flirting with me anyway.

  “Yap all you like, dog.” That cold voice stopped Kel as she wound between rows of tents, returning from the ladies’ privy. “But a cur dog is all your house whelps. It’s only a matter of time before you turn on the hand that feeds you.”

  “Lord Raoul doesn’t think so.” That was Lerant of Eldorne’s voice. Kel frowned.

  “Goldenlake is a dolt without two thoughts in his head,” the cutting voice said. “He’s shames his blood, consorting with sand scuts”—the scornful name for the Bazhir—“and wenches and sprigs of traitorous trees like you.”

  Kel heard a thud. She moved up closer until she could peer around an open tent flap to see. Three young men stood over the fallen Lerant of Eldorne. Two wore swords and the silver-rimmed tunic badges of knights: one with the flail and sword of Fief Groten, the other with Tirrsmont’s spear and fist badge. The third was Joren of Stone Mountain, icily handsome in Paxton’s colors.

  The man with Groten’s badge spoke to the Tirrsmont knight and Joren. It was his voice that Kel had heard. “As I said, our leaders are purblind, dazzled by female flesh and foreign wiles. They shelter traitors,” he pointed to Lerant, who wiped blood from his mouth, “and drag those of the noblest blood,” he bowed slightly to Joren, “before a magistrate like common highwaymen.” To Lerant he said, “Too bad you can’t demand satisfaction in the lists, Eldorne, but you’re the degenerate son of a degenerate line. Your sire knew you’d be chewed up and spit out by the Chamber of the Ordeal if you got there. Its power at least remains uncorrupted.”

  Lerant tried to stand. The knight from Fief Groten shoved him down.

  “We couldn’t afford a knight’s gear, that’s why I didn’t become a page,” Lerant growled. He spat blood onto Groten’s boot. “Why don’t we settle this with swords?”

  “Because you’re neither knight nor squire,” Groten told Lerant. “You’re just something to wipe on.” He smeared his boot across Lerant’s tunic.

  Kel stepped into the open. “You speak against our knight-master. You must be shown the error of your ways,” she said. “And Joren’s no highwayman, just a kidnapper.” She offered Lerant a hand without taking her eyes from his tormentor. “If it’s the lists you want, you shall have them. I am a squire, and I want satisfaction from you.” The time-honored phrases of the challenge came from her lips with a sense of strength that grew with each word. Do mages feel like this when they chant spells? wondered Kel.

  “I can defend myself!” Lerant snapped, shoving her hand away.

  “I’m not concerned about you,” Kel said. “For starters, he maligned Lord Raoul. If he weren’t a coward, he’d also name those he says are ‘dazzled by female flesh’—my flesh? Commander Tourakom’s? Or the Champion’s, or the queen’s, do you suppose? Since he doesn’t want to pay for his words, he hides behind his shield. Except now he can’t. If he refuses to meet me in the lists, everyone will know what he is.”

  “I am Sir Ansil of Groten,” snapped the knight. He was a grim-faced man in his thirties with eyes like polished stones. “You will have your meeting, squire. When you lie in the dirt with my lance through your body, all will see what happens when men do the right thing. Tomorrow, at the individual matches. I will enter our names with the tournament clerk.”

  He stalked away, Joren and the Tirrsmont knight trailing him. Joren looked back once to smirk at Kel.

  “Don’t growl at me anymore,” Kel told Lerant. “That had to be done, and he wasn’t going to give you a chance.”

  “He would if I slapped him,” Lerant retorted. “He’d have no choice, then.”

  “All right—when I’m done, slap him and have your fight,” Kel said wearily. A whiff of fish rising from her belt pouch made her grimace. “I have to feed the griffin.” She headed for her tent.

  Lerant followed her. “He says he’ll kill you.”

  “If he does, then the gods don’t want women to be knights. Isn’t that how trial b
y combat works?” Did she have everything for a proper tilt? she wondered, reviewing her list of armor. Raoul had added pieces to it before they left the palace.

  “My lord will be angry,” Lerant pointed out.

  “Why? He said he wanted me to compete in the tournaments. Look.” Kel turned to face Lerant. They were of a height, Kel now five foot ten. She met his angry brown eyes. “I have things to do if I’m to fight him, so let me go do them.” She walked away.

  She was washing her hands after feeding the griffin when Cleon walked into her tent. “Kel, they just put your name up for tomorrow’s jousting lists,” he said, running his fingers through his red curls. He ignored Jump and the sparrows, who were trying to get his attention. “Against Ansil of Groten. Tell me—” He stopped in mid-sentence, looking her over. “It’s true, isn’t it? You challenged a full knight—you, a second-year squire.”

  Kel tried a smile. It didn’t feel as confident as she would have liked. “Oh, well, I had to,” she replied. “The man’s a bully. He insulted my lord.”

  Her tent had never felt this small before. She liked mathematics, her mind babbled. It was impossible for there to be less room inside a tent with just her and Cleon there than there was when Merric, Neal, and Owen were present as well. Her brain was rattling. In a moment she would start to babble out loud. Instead Kel began to refill the sparrows’ seed dishes. She needed to do something with her hands.

  “He’s asking a winner’s purse of ten gold crowns,” said Cleon gravely.

  “I have that money from Joren. I can pay if I lose.” When I lose, she thought as she put out the filled dishes. She glanced at Cleon, then looked down. It always surprised her to see him in her family’s colors of blue, cream, and gray, wearing the Mindelan gray owl crest.

  She knew she ought to find something else to do with her hands, but she looked at Cleon again. He looked good in those colors. Perhaps it wasn’t the colors. Perhaps it was the way his shoulders filled out his cream linen shirt, or the way his chest pressed against his blue tunic.

  She looked up: his eyes were on her. Warmth flooded Kel’s body. Hurriedly she grabbed her breastplate and a polishing cloth. “I have to go over my gear,” she mumbled.

  Big hands tugged breastplate and cloth from her grip. Cleon put them aside and told Kel softly, “Was I wrong? I thought you liked it when I kissed you but you’ve avoided being alone with me ever since.”

  She hung her head. “Midwinter was, it was, nice,” she said, cringing inside at her idiotic reply. It was very warm in the tent. “People would talk, if we—if they saw. They might not know it was friendly. They might get the wrong idea.”

  “Here I am, hoping one person will get the right idea,” Cleon explained.

  Even with her eyes on her shoes, Kel could see his legs; he stood that close. His clothes smelled of orris. The warmth of his body spread to envelop her. “If someone sees . . . ,” she whispered.

  “Jump, close the flap, there’s a good fellow,” Cleon said. The dog obeyed immediately.

  “That isn’t what I meant,” Kel protested. Where was Raoul? If he were in his tent next door, he might hear and interrupt. Obviously Jump and the sparrows weren’t going to stop whatever was going on, she thought wildly. As chaperons they were useless if they liked the person who was confusing her so. “I meant we shouldn’t be, you know, alone,” she said, dry-mouthed.

  “Please look at me, Kel,” Cleon asked.

  She was ready to refuse, but he’d said “please.” It would be churlish not to look up, so she did, meeting his gray eyes with her hazel ones. He was smiling. That was a dirty trick. It was impossible to remind him she was a fellow squire, sexless, when he smiled with so much liking that her insides melted. He lowered his head just a few inches to press his mouth to hers.

  Oh, my, thought Kel.

  He took his lips away. “That wasn’t too bad, was it?”

  She was glad to hear his voice crack. She wasn’t a complete dolt if this upset him, too.

  “Neither of us turned into anything awful,” Cleon went on hoarsely, “the tent didn’t collapse, even the animals are quiet.”

  Kel looked around. All eyes—the sparrows’, Jump’s, the griffin’s—were on them. “I . . . ,” she began, not sure what to say.

  Cleon wrapped big hands around her elbows, leaned in, and touched his mouth to hers once more. Kel gasped, then forgot almost everything else as Cleon drew her snugly against him.

  A mocking voice sounded in her mind. It was Joren’s, from a talk they’d once had on the palace wall. “You’d make a fine wife for one of those big fellows—Cleon, for instance. You could settle down and raise young giants.” Kel stiffened.

  Cleon released her instantly. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “You have to say if I push too hard. I’ve just been thinking about this for such a long time—”

  “You have?” Kel asked shakily.

  “Remember the night you took me to your room to give me a letter for Mindelan, since your brother and I were going that way?” Cleon grinned. “I wanted to kiss you then, but your maid and her friend were there.”

  “Oh,” Kel whispered. I sound stupid, she thought, furious with herself for saying doltish things and for blinking at him like a thunderstruck deer. I had plenty to say to that Groten swine, she thought. Lerant, too.

  Cleon kissed her again.

  “Kel?” Raoul called. He sounded close. “Are you here?”

  They sprang apart like startled rabbits. By the time Raoul entered Kel’s tent through the flap that connected it to his own, Cleon sat on the cot, offering seed to Crown, as Kel finger-groomed the griffin.

  “It’s Cleon of Kennan, isn’t it?” Raoul asked Cleon, who got to his feet and nodded. Raoul continued, “Aren’t you two hot with the flap closed? Kel, someone put your name on the boards for tilting tomorrow.”

  “That’s right,” Kel replied as she went to open her front flap. “I had a philosophical discussion with Ansil of Groten. We couldn’t resolve our differences, so we decided to settle it with the lance.” Like a page’s excuse for having a black eye—“I fell down”—philosophical differences were always to blame for a quarrel settled in a joust.

  “Well, come into my tent when you have a moment,” Raoul said. “We’ve some points to discuss. Kennan.” He saluted the older squire and went back into his tent.

  It was a dismissal, albeit a polite one. Cleon frowned. “You have to do this?”

  “Yes,” Kel replied firmly. “If you’d been there, you’d agree.” She met his eyes, willing him to look at her, to see she was also Squire Kel, not just his friend Kel, not just the girl he had kissed.

  “Oh, blast,” Cleon said ruefully, hooking his hands in his belt. “I’ve jousted five times already since this progress began.” Meeting Kel’s eyes, he tried to smile and put the lie to the worry in his face. “Shall I wait for you here afterward? I’ll wear a yellow silk tunic and a crown of willow leaves, and carry a bottle of horse liniment to salve your wounds.”

  The image of him thus dressed and equipped made Kel giggle helplessly. She stopped only when Cleon pulled her into a corner invisible to passersby and kissed her again. Then he strode out of the tent. Kel pressed her fingers to lips that throbbed from this new and different use. Finally she went to see Raoul, Jump and the sparrows following in her wake.

  Raoul sat at his camp table with a pitcher of juice and two cups. He motioned to the second chair. Obediently Kel sat.

  For a long moment Raoul scratched Jump’s ear. At last he said, “I hear this from women of the Queen’s Riders, the ones who want to command. Men who join the Riders are able to fight alongside females, or they don’t last. But what the women say is that if they take Rider men as lovers, and it’s found out, they encounter trouble. Men who dislike their orders offer to work it out in bed. Jealousies spring up, particularly if the woman and the man are in the same Rider group. If the woman is in command and the man isn’t, they’re both mocked by other men, and the woman get
s treated like a trollop.”

  Kel looked down. “Sir—”

  “Nobody makes men surrender private life when they take up arms, Kel,” Raoul said, filling their cups. “We only ask that such lives happen off duty. It’s more complicated for women. It’s not fair, but I think you already know the world isn’t.”

  Kel nodded, sipping grape juice. How many knight-masters would have done this differently, even hurtfully? How many would have said nothing until Kel was so deeply in a mess that she would never get out of it? Only Raoul would treat it as another lesson in the intricacies of command.

  “I understand, sir,” Kel told him. “I do know there could be problems.”

  Raoul fiddled with his cup. “As for issues of the body—sex, pregnancy, and so on—perhaps you should discuss those with a woman.” He cleared his throat. “If you want to discuss them with me, it is my responsibility—”

  “No, no!” Kel interrupted, alarmed. She didn’t know which of them would be more embarrassed. She didn’t want to find out. “I’ll ask Mama, truly I will!”

  Raoul grinned at her, his cheeks redder than usual. “Oh, good. I’d probably make a botch of it. I’ve talked with young men, of course, but even that’s been rare. Usually by the time I get them they know where babies come from.

  “Now, Ansil of Groten. He’s a hesitater. Right when he should set for his impact, he flinches. You can use that.”

  After that night’s service Kel visited her mother. They had talked about lovers and pregnancy, how these things happened, and how important it was to decide if she wanted children when she chose to bed a man. Still, then it had been all theoretical. With Cleon looming in her mind’s eye, she wanted her mother’s practical advice.

  The gods were with her: Ilane of Mindelan was alone in the tent she shared with Kel’s father, Piers. She looked up from the book she was reading and smiled at her youngest daughter. “This is lovely,” she said as they kissed one another on the cheek. “I haven’t had you to myself in ages. How goes all?”

  Kel feared that if she didn’t blurt the problem out right away, she might lose courage later. The story spilled from her lips in a muddle, one that Ilane needed a few questions to straighten out.