That was why I now stood in the middle of the odd empty room feeling horribly vulnerable. I wished I had my suit of chain mail despite its being really heavy. My own breathing seemed ridiculously loud in the silence of that room as Brianna studied me carefully.
“Bring up your power,” she said when I guess she thought I was ready. “Now concentrate on the forearm of the arm you use to hold your shield.”
I already knew where she was going when she said that, so I called the power into my arm and created a round shield of it, and I looked at Brianna over the edge of it. It weighed nothing but looked as if it were made of solid gold. She smiled with approval.
“Make it more dome shaped,” Brianna suggested, and I subtly altered the shape. “Now I’m going to launch levin bolts at you, and you are going to deflect them. For right now, I will center my attack on your shield.”
That was so I could get used to how the attacks felt, I guessed. I’d been in such a panic with the Dark Fae that I’d been working on pure instinct and fear, and all I remembered was the pressure on my impromptu shield trying to push me back. Now I understood her approach. Brianna intended to teach me how to handle an attack exactly the way Sir Delacar was training me—deal with any attack by paying attention, analyzing, and planning counters.
She thrust out her hand, and what looked like a ball of white fire hurtled from her toward me. I held steady; it hit my shield and splattered off, as if it had been a ball of liquid.
I felt the impact as a definite jolt in my arm. And the shield got hot for a moment before cooling again. Brianna nodded at me, I nodded back, and she repeated the attack.
Each time she sent a levin bolt hurtling at me, I understood a little more. Not the “thinking” sort of understanding, though. This was more feeling than thinking, and the feelings had to have time to work their way up into my head so I could take them apart. It’s power that acts like fire, I realized. Except it has weight and it hits me like a stone about the same size, and it also acts like water. Like molten metal, I guess. She continued to send these levin bolts at me, and I held steady, braced against the impacts.
My shield became warm, then uncomfortably warm, but I didn’t dare dismiss it, not while those fiery levin bolts hurtled toward me. I had to do something about that heat. A few more of those things hitting me and I was going to get burns! Can I make the shield more reflective? Like a mirror?
The second I thought that, the shield obeyed. The next levin bolt that hit splashed off with a lot more show, and the shield cooled a little. Brianna smiled ever so slightly and let her arm drop down to her side.
I let out a huge sigh and absorbed the shield back into myself. Sweat dripped down my back and clumped my hair, and my muscles ached exactly as if I had been working out under Sir Delacar. “Now tell me what you’ve learned so far,” Brianna ordered as I sat right down on the floor.
“What you used on me wasn’t like what the Dark Fae was using,” I replied. “It had weight and heat—like molten metal.”
“That’s a good analogy,” she replied. “And the levin bolts would have gone right through that instinctive shield you used with the Dark Fae. I suggest you try not to use that crude tactic again, at least not in that form. You did it in front of nearly every Dark Fae in the kingdom, and even the few who didn’t attend the christening will know what you did by now.”
I sighed. Of course they would.
“So tell me more,” she continued.
“The physical shield you had me make started to get hot, so I made it reflect more. But why am I so tired?”
“Because you aren’t in my realm anymore, where using Fae magic is more effortless. You’re in the human realm, where it is harder for you to control Fae magic. The only reason you can in the first place is your Fae blood—here your human blood works against you. That was why you were completely exhausted after you defended your sister.”
“Please tell me that this gets easier with practice,” I begged.
Brianna laughed. “It does. It’s just like your weaponry practice. You’ll strengthen your ability to wield Fae magic, and your control will become more precise.” She gestured at me to stand. “Now let’s get back to practicing. This time I want you to make that shield so reflective that none of the heat penetrates to your arm.”
We worked all afternoon until I was ready to drop, soaking wet with sweat, and Brianna finally called an end to our practice. She did do one thing for me that Sir Delacar couldn’t, though.
“Hold very still for a moment,” she said, and I obeyed. She made a few little gestures with her hands, and I nearly jumped out of my skin as my sweat dried and my hair unbraided itself, floated around me in a cloud, then braided itself back up as neatly as you please! And suddenly there was a scent of lavender about me instead of the stink of sweat. I looked down at myself. I was as neat and clean as if I’d been spending the afternoon in the solar reading.
“There,” Brianna said, nodding. “That should keep you out of trouble with your fearsome guardian.”
I had to laugh at that. “She is a bit of a dragon,” I agreed. “Do I walk all the way home?”
“This late? Of course not. You’d arrive late for dinner, and your dear father and mother would probably be certain that something dire had happened to you. Go back to where you entered the forest and ‘look’ for the door in the tree you came here by. You’ll find yourself in the palace garden again.” She made a shooing motion with both hands, and I didn’t hesitate.
Sure enough, when I went out and retraced my steps, I made out a very faint glow of magic from one of the trees just off the path. I opened the trunk door, and it let out into our garden from the oak. I stepped through.
Since I didn’t need to change, I went straight to the nursery. Melalee had Aurora lying on her stomach on a lambskin on the floor. Her little arms and legs waved happily; it was clear that she liked the new position. I plopped down on the floor next to her, and for once, Melalee didn’t humph in disapproval. Aurora looked straight at me, held out her arms, and said “Mi mi.”
Melalee and I both stared at her in astonishment. “Was that her first word?” I gasped. Melalee nodded, dumbstruck for once.
I picked Aurora up and turned her to look at Melalee. Aurora crowed, and said, “Meh meh.” Quite different from “Mi mi,” and it was clear that she had said both our names and that it wasn’t just random baby babbling.
“What a good girl!” I told her, and jounced her until she laughed, then put her down on the lambskin, where she wiggled all her limbs happily. “If you don’t tell Mama, I won’t, either,” I said to Melalee conspiratorially. “‘Mama’ should be her official first word.”
The nurse nodded, and I headed down to dinner.
I wasn’t as exhausted as I had been after my first couple of weeks of weapons practice, but I was definitely too tired for dancing and entertainment once dinner was done. I excused myself and started for the privy stair, but to my surprise, I found Giles waiting for me there. With the door closed and the only light coming from the candles lighting the landing, it was surprisingly private and a lot quieter than the Great Hall.
“Are you all right?” he asked with concern.
“I just feel as if Sir Delacar singled me out for extra bouts today,” I replied, and sat down on the bottommost stair. He took the hint, edged past me, and sat down a few steps above me. “Hey, I’m curious. Have you been taken off kitchen duties?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, waving the question off. “I’m officially a squire now. I rank right there with Nat and Rob.” He eyed me. “So… you avoided the question. Are you all right? You’ve left dinner early every night since we started fighting lessons.”
“I’m…” I hesitated for a moment, then decided that it wouldn’t hurt to let Giles know what my afternoons were filled with. Outside of the Privy Council, Belinda and Melalee, and the King and Queen, no one knew what I was studying in the afternoons. “One of the godmothers took me as a kind of ap
prentice. So in the afternoons I’m learning how to use magic to protect Aurora.”
His eyes got huge. “Really? You’re learning magic? I didn’t know you had wizard powers!”
I hesitated again. Should I tell him? I hadn’t been told that I was allowed to.…
But I hadn’t been told that I wasn’t allowed to. And this was Giles. If I couldn’t trust him, whom could I trust?
“I don’t know about the wizard powers, though I may have that,” I said slowly. “But according to the godmother, I’m at least a quarter Fae-blooded. Maybe half.”
I’d thought his eyes had gotten big before. Now they practically covered half his face.
“How is that even…” Then his mouth snapped shut.
“Father,” I said softly. “So now I know why his mother took him straight to Sir Delacar.” I’d shared that story with him as soon as I had learned it.
Giles stared at me for a very long time. “Do you think she enchanted Delacar into accepting him as a squire?” he finally asked.
“I don’t know,” I confessed. It was something that had been bothering me. What if Father’s mother was a Dark Fae? Because none of the Light Fae seemed to know who his mother could be.
But nothing I had ever heard about him or seen for myself could make me think that he was bad. And he had died trying to save another knight. Surely a Dark Fae would not have done that.
We both sat there and looked at each other as the music from the minstrel’s gallery filtered down to us in the stairwell. “Does that make a difference?” I said. “Between us, I mean.”
“No.” The way he said it lifted a load of worry off my shoulders. It wasn’t too quickly, as if he wasn’t sure. And it wasn’t too slowly, as if he’d had to think about the answer for too long. It was just good old solid Giles. “No. We’re the Companions, right?” Then he shook his head. “Actually, that makes it better, ’cause if we have to defend Princess Aurora against more Dark Fae, I’d really rather we didn’t have to wait for your wizard to totter down out of his tower to come to our rescue. So what are you learning?”
“It’s kind of strange stuff,” I confessed, and gave him the shortened version of everything I’d done. His face lit up when I described what I’d been doing with the magic shield earlier that day.
“I wonder if we could do that with our shields,” he mused. “Make them shiny, I mean. Would they reflect magic too?”
“I can ask tomorrow. But I bet we can get enchantments put on them that would do the same thing. Maybe I can learn how.”
“That would be a really good idea—” He stopped when I yawned. “You should go to bed.”
“Yes, I should. If I’m going to be fit for anything except getting shouted at by Sir Delacar in the morning.”
“Then I’ll let you do that.” Giles got up and started to sprint down the stairs, then turned back for a moment, his face full of unsuppressed excitement. “Do you realize how incredibly terrific this is?” he gushed. “My best friend! Is half Fae!”
Then he ran off, leaving me to take my time getting to my room and my lovely, lovely bed.
“Is it true?” asked Anna breathlessly. Her dark eyes flashed with an excitement that I had no explanation for. What sort of gossip had she overheard yesterday when I was busy working myself to a lather with Brianna?
“That you’re half Fae!” she exclaimed, her dusky cheeks flushed. “Is it true? Giles says it’s true!”
I gaped at her. Then I turned to stare at Giles incredulously. I mean, I hadn’t sworn him to secrecy or anything, but I hadn’t expected him to blurt it out the moment he saw the others this morning! This could be a problem. There was a reason why Gerrold didn’t socialize much. A lot of people don’t like magicians and magic—they don’t like power they can’t see and don’t understand. And Fae magic was worse than human magic in that regard.
Anna continued to stare at me as her curly black hair slowly escaped from the topknot she’d tried to tie it up into, her expression equal parts glee and excitement.
“Uh—yes, I guess.” Which was all that I managed because Anna and Elle squealed and began hopping up and down like a pair of overexcited crickets, and the boys pounded one another’s backs for no good reason, grinning like fools. And in another few moments, the rest of the squires were going to come into the yard, and they’d want to know what the fuss was all about and then—
Well, I didn’t know what would happen then except that the rest of the squires would know, and by lunchtime, the whole palace would know. I got hot all over and would very much have liked to sink into the ground at that moment. “Look,” I said to all of them. “Don’t spread this around. Not everyone in the Court trusts the Fae, even the Light ones—”
It was fortunate that Sir Delacar emerged from the Knights’ Tower at that moment and bellowed, “What’s all this, then?”
Everybody froze except me since I hadn’t been doing anything. But Giles blurted out, “It’s Miri, sir! She’s half Fae!”
“And what of it?” he growled back, amputating their excitement. “Fae blood doesn’t make her stronger or quicker. It doesn’t make her smarter. And she’ll have a hell of a lot more to learn before Fae tricks do her any good in fighting.” He cast a sour glance at me, but I just shrugged, trying to convey without words that I wasn’t the one responsible for all the nonsense. He grunted, looked at me with narrowed eyes, then nodded brusquely. “You all seem to have plenty of energy this morning, so ten rounds of the courtyard at a trot in your mail. On the double!”
I groaned inwardly. It wasn’t fair! I wasn’t the one who’d been bouncing up and down on my toes! I wasn’t pretending to be anything special!
But squires don’t argue with their knight, so I darted into the armory, shrugged on my padded surcoat and heavy chain-mail coat, and began trotting around the courtyard with everyone else. Meanwhile, the rest of the squires finally came to the courtyard to start their practices and gave us a look of sympathy as we circled the courtyard. After ten rounds, I was mortally glad to shrug out of the surcoat and armor, and sit panting on the bench in the armory while my sweat dried.
Delacar was fair; he let us get our wind back and get a couple of dippers of water before we returned to work. Which was, since we had just finished sweating in them, dunking our padded surcoats in diluted limewater to clean them, then rinsing them in clean water. A pole went through the arms, and the surcoats were hung on the wall of the courtyard to dry in the sun.
It occurred to me at that moment that an awful lot of a squire’s job was cleaning. Even when we weren’t cleaning our knight’s armor, we were cleaning our own. Then again, we had to know how because what if we were all on our own with no servants to help? Like if the palace was under siege and the servants were all doing more important things and helping those manning the walls? Cleaning your armor, as Delacar told us often, was the same as cleaning your horse. If you don’t clean your horse after he’s had a workout, he gets sick. If you don’t clean your armor after you have exerted yourself, it will rust, and rust means weak spots, and weak spots get you killed.
“Since you’ve gone all flibbertigibbet this morning, I expect every lesson I’ve taught you has been driven straight out of your heads,” Delacar growled as the last of the surcoats got heaved up on the pegs set into the wall. “So it’ll be the pells for the rest of the morning for the lot of you while I decide what’s left of my careful training.”
The pells, of course, was the proper name for the marked poles we used to practice sword strokes and quarterstaff against. I found working on the pells soothing, though I knew a couple of the others hated it. Sir Delacar came to each one of us in turn while the others practiced attack and defense patterns, and he called out sword moves at a lightning pace, moves that we were supposed to execute as soon as the words were out of his mouth, while he stood there frowning fiercely. He rattled all of us, but at least we were able to give him a credible show, and no one fumbled or, most heinous of sins, dropped his or h
er weapon. By the time he gave us the curt signal to stop, the other squires had left—no doubt wondering what we’d done this time that had gotten the old man so riled up.
Delacar put a hand on my shoulder to hold me back while the others put their padded weapons away and made their escape. I looked up at him, but his stony expression gave me no hint of what he was thinking.
“I didn’t tell them, Sir Delacar,” I finally said. “I mean, I told Giles, but I didn’t think he’d tell the others.”
Delacar sighed. “Well, that horse has escaped now, and it’s no use closing the stable door. We’ll just have to see what comes of it.”
“What should I do?” I whispered.
“I don’t know,” he replied frankly. “Hellfire and damnation, I didn’t even know your poor father was Fae-blooded until the King told me after the christening! I just—I just thought the lady who came to see me had been extraordinarily persuasive.” He pulled a kerchief out of his sleeve and mopped his brow with it. “Truth is, I don’t remember much about that, only that it seemed important that I take your father as my squire after she left.”
I understood immediately just how unsettling this might be to the rest of the Court. They’d had my father among them for decades. He’d been the King’s Champion. And all that time he’d been Fae and nobody had known. People would wonder if he had known and why he’d seen fit to keep it secret. And what did that mean about me?
“People are going to wonder about that,” Delacar continued. “So I’m going to be in for it too. After all, I’m the way he came into the Court. And they’re going to wonder why one of the Fae placed her child among us in the first place.”
I gulped, because I didn’t have any answers. Brianna didn’t know—in fact, she didn’t even know who Father’s parents could have been. A web of unknowns stretched in front of me, and I knew instinctively that some of the answers to all these questions might be very bad.
“We’ll just have to make the best of it, I suppose,” he said, which wasn’t any kind of answer at all. “Just be yourself. You’re a good child. You want to protect your sister. Just keep telling yourself that and try to ignore people who look at you sideways. Maybe this will all blow over.”
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