Squire

by Tamora Pierce

shukusen: Yamani “lady fan,” silk on steel ribs that are often engraved or pierced with a design. The outer ends of the ribs are very sharp, acting as a thrusting weapon when the fan is closed and as a slashing weapon when it is opened. Traditionally carried by Yamani ladies when they don’t wish to be seen with a weapon.

  Southern Lands: another name for the Carthaki Empire, which has conquered all of the independent nations that once were part of the continent south of the Inland Sea.

  spidren: an immortal whose body is that of a furred spider four to five feet in height; its head is that of a human with sharp, silvery teeth. Spidrens can use weapons. They also use their webs as weapons and ropes. Spidren web is gray-green in color and it glows after dark. Their blood is black and burns like acid. Their favorite food is human blood.

  squad: ten soldiers commanded by a sergeant and two corporals.

  standard-bearer: young man or boy who carries the company flag.

  stockade: wall made of whole logs, the upper ends cut into rough points.

  Stormwing: an immortal with a human head and chest and bird legs and wings, with steel feathers and claws. Stormwings have sharp teeth, but use them only to add to the terror of their presence by tearing apart bodies. They live on human fear and have their own magic; their special province is the desecration of battlefield dead.

  strategy: planning for a battle or war from a distance, working out the movements of armies and setting goals for them.

  string: a group or train of horses on a lead rein.

  tactics: planning for a battle at short range, as it happens.

  tauros: a seven-foot-tall immortal, male only, that has a bull-like head with large teeth and eyes that point forward (the mark of a predator). It is reddish brown, human-like from the neck down, with a bull’s splayed hooves and tail. It preys on women and girls.

  Temple District: the religious quarter of Corus, between the city proper and the royal palace, where the city’s largest temples are located.

  Tortall: the chief kingdom in which the Alanna, Daine, and Keladry books take place, between the Inland Sea and Scanra.

  Tusaine: a small country tucked between Tortall and Maren. Tortall went to war with Tusaine in the years Alanna the Lioness was a squire and Jonathan was crown prince; Tusaine lost.

  Tyra: a merchant republic on the Inland Sea between Tortall and Maren. Tyra is mostly swamp, and its people rely on trade and banking for an income. Numair Salmalín was born there.

  warhorse: a large horse or greathorse, trained for combat—the mount of an armored knight.

  Wave Walker: sea goddess, the goddess of sailors, storms, and shipwrecks.

  wildmage: a mage who deals in wild magic, the kind of magic that is part of nature. Daine Sarrasri is often called the Wildmage for her ability to communicate with animals, heal them, and shapeshift.

  wild magic: the magic that is part of the natural world. Unlike the human Gift, it cannot be drained or done away with; it is always present.

  Yama: chief goddess of the Yamani pantheon, goddess of fire, who created the Yamanis and their islands.

  Yamani Islands: island nation to the north and west of Tortall and the west of Scanra, ruled by an ancient line of emperors, whose claim to their throne comes from the goddess Yama. The country is beautiful and mountainous. Its vulnerability to pirate raids means that most Yamanis, including the women, get some training in combat arts. Keladry of Mindelan lived there for six years while her father was the Tortallan ambassador.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My most heartfelt thanks for this goes to my wonderful editrix, Mallory Loehr, who gave me another hundred pages in which to tell the story—my brain might have melted down without them, because I could think of nothing to cut. Thus, indirect thanks are due to British author J. K. Rowling (nope, don’t know her personally), whose wild success with the Harry Potter books has convinced American publishers that perhaps their authors could manage to sell longer books too.

  My gratitude goes to Alicia Craig-Lich, manager of the National Audubon Society Important Bird Area in Indiana and Senior Manager of Nature Education, Wild Birds Unlimited, Inc., for her quick assistance with information on sparrow biology. She and the other folks at Wild Birds Unlimited online (www.wbu.com) are a tremendous resource for those who want to know more about birds.

  Thanks also to my continual support team: my parents, forever answering crazed garden information questions without once suggesting that I need my head examined; my agent, Craig Tenney, who has a delicate touch for what works and what doesn’t; Raquel Starace, for horse breeds, riding, and monster creation advice; Richard McCaffery Robinson, for his many instructive thoughts on the nature of royal progresses; and my very own Spouse-Creature, Tim Liebe, who had his hands full with me this time, and offered many sage thoughts on the nature of romance, ordeals, and training relationships.

  To Iris Mori and her family, arigato goziemashita for Japanese names and weapons feedback—errors here are strictly mine.

  Finally, I express a debt to Crown, Freckle, Peg, and the house sparrows of Riverside Park in New York City, who have taught me that big hearts and large courage can be found in the smallest of creatures; to Pidge the dove, who taught me that whoever said doves are birds of peace had never been anywhere near one; and to Shortstop the crow, who taught me in a short time the pains and joys of caring for a wild bird.

  Turn the page

  for a preview of Tamora Pierce’s

  fourth Protector of the Small book

  LADY KNIGHT

  Now in hardcover from

  Random House,

  paperback coming in 2003

  1

  STORM WARNINGS

  Keladry of Mindelan lay with the comfortable black blanket of sleep wrapped around her. Then, against the blackness, light moved and strengthened to show twelve large, vaguely rat- or insectlike metal creatures, devices built for murder. The killing devices were magical machines made of iron-coated giants’ bones, chains, pulleys, dagger-fingers and toes, and a long, whiplike tail. The seven-foot-tall devices stood motionless in a half circle as the light revealed what lay at their feet: a pile of dead children.

  With the devices and the bodies visible, the light spread to find the man who seemed to be the master of the creations. To Keladry of Mindelan, known as Kel, he was the Nothing Man. He was almost two feet shorter than the killing devices, long-nosed and narrow-mouthed, with small, rapidly blinking eyes and dull brown hair. His dark robe was marked with stains and burns; his hair was unkempt. He always gnawed a fingernail, or scratched a pimple, or shifted from foot to foot.

  Once that image—devices, bodies, man—was complete, Kel woke. She stared at the shadowed ceiling and cursed the Chamber of the Ordeal. The Chamber had shown Kel this vision, or variations of it, after her formal Ordeal of knighthood. As far as Kel knew, no one else had been given any visions of people to be found once a squire was knighted. As everyone she knew understood it, the Ordeal was straightforward enough. The Chamber forced would-be knights to live through their fears. If they did this without making a sound, they were released, to be proclaimed knights, and that was the end of the matter.

  Kel was different. Three or four times a week, the Chamber sent her this dream. It was a reminder of the task it had set her. After her Ordeal, before the Chamber set her free, it had shown her the killing devices, the Nothing Man, and the dead children. It had demanded that Kel stop it all.

  Kel guessed that the Nothing Man would be in Scanra, to the north, since the killing devices had appeared during Scanran raids on Tortall last summer. Trapped in the capital by a hard winter, with travel to the border nearly impossible, Kel had lived with growing tension. She had to ride north as soon as the mountain passes opened if she was to sneak into Scanra and begin her search for the Nothing Man. Every moment she remained in Tortall invited the growing risk that the king would issue orders to most knights, including Kel, to defend the northern border. The moment Kel got those orders, she would b
e trapped. She had vowed to defend the realm and obey its monarchs, which would mean fighting soldiers, not hunting for a mage whose location was unknown.

  “Maybe I’ll get lucky. Maybe I’ll ride out one day and find there’s a line of killing devices from the palace right up to the Nothing Man’s door,” she grumbled, easing herself out from under her covers. Kel never threw off her blankets. With a number of sparrows and her dog sharing her bed, she might smother a friend if she hurried. Even taking care, she heard muffled cheeps of protest. “Sorry,” she told her companions, and set her feet on the cold flagstones of her floor.

  She made her way across her dark room and opened the shutters on one of her windows. Before her lay a courtyard and a stable where the men of the King’s Own kept their horses. The torches that lit the courtyard were nearly out. The pearly radiance that came to the eastern sky in the hour before dawn fell over snow, stable, and the edges of the palace wall beyond.

  The scant light showed a big girl of eighteen, broad-shouldered and solid-waisted, with straight mouse-brown hair cut short below her earlobes and across her forehead. She had a dreamer’s hazel eyes, set beneath long, curling lashes, odd in contrast to the many fine scars on her hands and the muscles that flexed and bunched under her nightshirt. Her nose was still unbroken and delicate after eight years of palace combat training, her lips full and quicker to smile than frown. Determination filled every inch of her strong body.

  Motion in the shadows at the base of the courtyard wall caught her eye. Kel gasped as a winged creature waddled out into the open courtyard, as ungainly on its feet as a vulture. The flickering torchlight caught and sparked along the edges of metal feathers on wings and legs. Steel legs, flexible and limber, ended in steel-clawed feet. Between the metal wings and above the metal legs and feet was human flesh, naked, hairless, grimy, and in this case, male.

  The Stormwing looked at Kel and grinned, baring sharp steel teeth. His face was lumpy and unattractive, marked by a large nose, small eyes, and a thin upper lip with a full lower one. He had the taunting smile of someone born impudent. “Startle you, did I?” he inquired.

  Kel thanked the gods that the cold protected her sensitive nose, banishing most of the Stormwing’s foul stench. Stormwings loved battlefields, where they tore corpses to pieces, urinated on them, smeared them with dung, then rolled in the mess. The result was a nauseating odor that made even the strongest stomach rebel. Her teachers had explained that the purpose of Stormwings was to make people think twice before they chose to fight, knowing what might happen to the dead when Stormwings arrived. So far they hadn’t done much good as far as Kel could see: people still fought battles and killed each other, Stormwings or no. Tortall’s Stormwing population was thriving. But this was the first time she’d seen one on palace grounds.

  Kel glared at him. “Get out of here, you nasty thing! Shoo!”

  “Is that any way to greet a future companion?” demanded the Stormwing, raising thin brown brows. “You people are getting ready to stage an entertainment for our benefit up north. You’ll be seeing a lot of us this year.”

  “Not if I can help it,” Kel retorted. Grimly she walked across her dark room, stubbing her toe on the trunk at the foot of her bed. She cursed and limped over to the racks where she kept her weapons. When she found her bow and a quiver of arrows, she strung the bow and hopped back to her window. She placed the quiver on her window seat and put an arrow on the string. Outside, the courtyard was empty. The Stormwing’s footprints in the snow ended right under Kel’s window.

  Scowling, Kel looked up and around. There he was, perched on the peak of the stable roof, a steel-dressed portent of war. Kel raised her bow. She wouldn’t actually kill the creature, just make him go away.

  He looked down at her, cackled, and took to the air, spiraling out of Kel’s range. He flipped his tail at her three times in a mockery of a wave, then sailed away over the palace wall.

  “I hate those things,” grumbled Kel as she removed the bowstring. The thought of anyone’s dead body providing Stormwings with entertainment gave her the shudders. And she knew chances were good that she might become a Stormwing toy very soon.

  There was no point in going back to sleep now. Instead, Kel cleaned up, dressed, and took down her glaive. It was her favorite weapon, a wooden staff five feet long, filled in iron, cored with lead, and capped by eighteen inches of curved, razor-sharp steel. Banishing all thoughts, opening herself to movement, she began the first steps, thrusts, lunges, and spins of the most complicated combat pattern dance she knew.

  Her dog, Jump, grumbled and crawled out of bed. He leaped out of one of the open windows to empty his bladder. The sparrows, fluffed up and piping their own complaints, fluttered outside to visit their kinfolk around the palace.

  Raoul of Goldenlake and Malorie’s Peak, Kel’s former knight-master and present taskmaster, was not in his study when Kel arrived there after breakfast. Another morning conference, she thought, and sat down with chalk and slate to calculate the number of wagons they’d need to move the King’s Own’s supplies up to the Scanran border. She was nearly done when Lord Raoul came in, a sheaf of papers in one ham-sized fist.

  “We’re in it for certain,” he told Kel. He was a big man, heavily muscled from years of service with the Own. His ruddy face was lit with snapping black eyes and topped with black curls. Like Kel, he was dressed for comfort in tunic, shirt, breeches, and boots in shades of maroon, brown, and cream. He slammed his bulk into one of the chairs facing the desk where she worked. “You know, I thank the gods every day that Daine is on our side,” he informed Kel. “If ever we’ve needed a mage who can get animals to spy and carry messages, it’s now.”

  Kel nodded. Unlike other generations, hers did not have to wait for Scanran information until the mountain passes cleared each year. Daine, known as the Wildmage, shared a magical bond with animals, one that endured even when she was not with them. For three years her eagles, hawks, owls, pigeons, and geese had carried tidings south while the land slept through winter snows, allowing Tortall to prepare for the latest moves in Scanra.

  “Important news, I take it?” Kel asked.

  “I’m glad you’re sitting down,” Raoul said. “The Scanrans have a new king.”

  Kel shrugged. Rulership in Scanra was always changing. The clan lords were unruly and proud; few dynasties ruled for more than a generation or two. This one hadn’t even lasted a full generation. She was surprised that Raoul would be concerned about yet another king on what was called the Bloody Throne. Far more worrisome was the threat that had emerged a couple of years before, a warlord named Maggur Rathhausak. He had studied combat in realms with real armies, not raiding bands. Serving as one clan’s warlord, he had conducted enough successful raids in Tortall that other clans had asked him to lead their fighters as well. With more warriors he had won more victories and brought home more loot and slaves, enough to bribe other clans to swear allegiance to him. It was Rathhausak that the Tortallans prepared to fight this year, not the ruling council in Hamrkeng or its king.

  “So they’ll be fighting each other all summer instead of . . .” Kel let her voice trail off as Raoul shook his head. “Sir?” she asked, unsure of his meaning.

  “Maggur Rathhausak,” Raoul told her. “He’s brought all Scanra’s clans into his grip. This year he’ll have a real army to send against us. A real army, trained for army-style battle, instead of a basketful of raiding parties. Plus however many of those killing devices he can send along to cut our people to shreds. The messages from the north report at least fifty of the things, wrapped up in canvas and waiting for the spell that will make them move again.”

  Kel set her chalk and slate down. Then she swallowed and asked, “The council let Maggur take over?”

  “They weren’t given a choice. Maggur had nine clans under his banner last year. The word is he smuggled them into the capital at Hamrkeng after the summer fighting and, well, persuaded all the clans to make him king.” Raoul tossed hi
s papers on the desk with a sigh. “We knew it was to be war this summer, but we thought we’d be facing half the warriors in the country, not all. Jonathan’s sending messengers out to all the lords of his council. He wants our army to start north as soon as we can manage it.” The big man grinned, exposing all his teeth, wolflike. “We’ll prepare the warmest reception for our northern brothers that we can. Once they cross our border, they’ll think they’ve marched into a bake oven, by Mithros.”

  Kel stared blindly at the papers Raoul had just thrown onto the desk. It was decision time: await the Crown’s orders, or slip away to wait for the northern passes to clear so she could track down the Nothing Man? She didn’t know enough; that was the problem. She needed information, and there was only one place she could think of to get it. “Sir, has anybody ever entered the Chamber of the Ordeal a second time?”

  For a moment the only sound was the crackle of the fire in the hearth. Raoul froze. At length he said, “I must tell the bathhouse barber to clean my ears tomorrow. I could have sworn you just asked me if anyone has ever returned to the Chamber of the Ordeal. That’s not funny, Kel.”

  “I didn’t mean to be funny, sir,” she replied. Shortly after her Ordeal and knighthood, Raoul had commanded her to address him by his first name, but “sir” was as close as she could bring herself. She clenched her hands so he couldn’t see them shake. “I’m serious. I need to know if you’ve ever heard of anyone going back there.”

  “No,” Raoul said firmly. “No one’s been mad enough to consider it. Most folk can tell if once is more than enough. Why in the name of the Great Mother Goddess do you ask?”

  Kel swallowed. If he didn’t like her question, he really wouldn’t like what she was about to say. “I need to talk to it.”

  Raoul rubbed his face with one hand. “You need to talk to it,” he repeated.

  Kel nodded. “Sir, you know me,” she reminded him. “I wouldn’t ask anything silly, not when you bring such important news. But I have to know if I can enter the Chamber again. I need to find something out.”