SQUIRE
BOOK 3 OF THE PROTECTOR OF THE SMALL QUARTET
Tamora Pierce

Copyright

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Copyright © Tamora Pierce 2001

Map copyright © Isidre Mones 2017

Jacket design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Tamora Pierce asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008304256

Ebook Edition © September 2019 ISBN: 9780008304263

Version: 2019-06-25

PRAISE FOR TAMORA PIERCE

‘Tamora Pierce didn’t just blaze a trail. Her heroines cut a swathe through the fantasy world with wit, strength, and savvy. Pierce is the real lioness, and we’re all just running to keep pace.’

LEIGH BARDUGO, #1 New York Times bestselling author

‘Tamora Pierce creates epic worlds populated by girls and women of bravery, heart, and strength. Her work inspired a generation of writers and continues to inspire us.’

HOLLY BLACK, #1 New York Times bestselling author

‘Tamora Pierce’s books shaped me not only as a young writer but also as a young woman. Her complex, unforgettable heroines and vibrant, intricate worlds blazed a trail for young adult fantasy – and I get to write what I love today because of the path she forged throughout her career. She is a pillar, an icon, and an inspiration.’

SARAH J. MAAS, #1 New York Times bestselling author

‘I take more comfort from and as great pleasure in Tamora Pierce’s Tortall novels as I do from Game of Thrones.’

Washington Post

‘Tamora Pierce and her brilliant heroines didn’t just break down barriers; they smashed them with magical fire.’

KATHERINE ARDEN, author of The Bear and the Nightingale

Dedication

To Ms. Gloria Barbizan and Miss Dorothy Olding—Strong businesswomen long before the women’s liberation

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Tamora Pierce

Dedication

Map

Corus, the capital of Tortall; Summer, in the 17th year of the reign of Jonathan IV and Thayet, his Queen, 456 H.E. (Human Era)

Chapter 1: Knight-Master

Chapter 2: The King’s Own

Chapter 3: Centaurs

Chapter 4: Owlshollow

Chapter 5: The Griffin

Chapter 6: Lessons

Chapter 7: Old Friends

December, in the 17th year of the reign of Jonathan IV and Thayet, his Queen, 456

Chapter 8: The Price of a Maid

Chapter 9: Midwinter Luck

Spring, in the 18th year of the reign of Jonathan IV and Thayet, his Queen, 457

Chapter 10: The Great Progress Begins

Chapter 11: Cleon

Fall-Midwinter, in the 18th year of the reign of Jonathan IV and Thayet, his Queen, 457

Chapter 12: Tournament

Chapter 13: The Iron Door

Chapter 14: Friends

In the 19th and 20th years of the reign of Jonathan IV and Thayet, his Queen, Spring 458-Spring 459

Chapter 15: Tilt-Silly

Chapter 16: The North

Summer, in the 20th year of the reign of Jonathan IV and Thayet, his Queen, 459

Chapter 17: The Kraken

Winter, in the 20th year of the reign of Jonathan IV and Thayet, his Queen, 459

Chapter 18: Ordeal

Cast of Characters

Glossary

Acknowledgements

Read on for a Preview of Lady Knight

Also by Tamora Pierce

About the Publisher

Map

Corus, the capital of Tortall; Summer, in the 17th year of the reign of Jonathan IV and Thayet, his Queen, 456 H.E. (Human Era)

CHAPTER 1
KNIGHT-MASTER

Despite the overflow of humanity present for the congress at the royal palace, the hall where Keladry of Mindelan walked was deserted. There were no servants to be seen. No echo of the footsteps, laughter, or talk that filled the sprawling residence sounded here, only Kel’s steps and the click of her dog’s claws on the stone floor.

They made an interesting pair. The fourteen-year-old girl was big for her age, five feet nine inches tall, and dressed informally in breeches and shirt. Both were a dark green that emphasized the same colour in her green-hazel eyes. Her dark boots were comfortable, not fashionable. On her belt hung a pouch and a black-hilted dagger in a plain black sheath. Her brown hair was cut to earlobe length. It framed a tanned face dusted with freckles across a delicate nose. Her mouth was full and decided.

The dog, known as Jump, was barrel-chested, with slightly bowed forelegs. His small, triangular eyes were set deep in a head shaped like a heavy chisel. He was mostly white, but black splotches covered the end of his nose, his lone whole ear, and his rump; his tail plainly had been broken twice. He looked like a battered foot soldier to Kel’s young squire, and he had proved his combat skills often.

At the end of the hall stood a pair of wooden doors carved with a sun, the symbol of Mithros, god of law and war. They were ancient, the surfaces around the sun curved deep after centuries of polishing. Their handles were crude iron, as coarse as the fittings on a barn door.

Kel stopped. Of the pages who had just passed the great examinations to become squires, she was the only one who had not come here before. Pages never came to this hall. Legend held that pages who visited the Chapel of the Ordeal never became squires: they were disgraced or killed. But once they were squires, the temptation to see the place where they would be tested on their fitness for knighthood was irresistible.

Kel reached for the handle, and opened one door just enough to admit her and Jump. There were benches placed on either side of the room from the door to the altar. Kel slid onto one, glad to give her wobbly knees a rest. Jump sat in the aisle beside her.

After her heart calmed, Kel inspected her surroundings. This chapel, focus of so many longings, was plain. The floor was grey stone flags; the benches were polished wood without ornament. Windows set high in the walls on either side were as stark as the room itself.

Ahead was the altar. Here, at least, was decoration: gold candlesticks and an altar cloth that looked like gold chain mail. The sun disc on the wall behind it was also gold. Against the grey stone, the dark benches, and the wrought-iron cressets on the walls, the gold looked tawdry.

The iron door to the right of the sun disc drew Kel’s eyes. There was the Chamber of the Ordeal. Generations of squires had entered it to experience something. None told what they saw; they were forbidden to speak of it. Whatever it was, it usually let squires return to the chapel to be knighted.

Some who entered the Chamber failed. A year-mate of Kel’s brother Anders had died three weeks after his Ordeal without ever speaking. Two years after that a squire from Fief Yanholm left the Chamber, refused his shield, and fled, never to be seen again. At Midwinter in 453, months before the Immortals War broke out, a squire went mad there. Five months later he escaped his family and drowned himself.

‘The Chamber is like a cutter of gemstones,’ Anders had told Kel once. ‘It looks for your flaws and hammers them, till you crack open. And that’s all I – or anyone – will say about it.’

The iron door seemed almost separate from the wall, more real than its surroundings. Kel got to her feet, hesitated, then went to it. Standing before the door, she felt a cold draught.

Kel wet suddenly dry lips with her tongue. Jump whined. ‘I know what I’m doing,’ she told her dog without conviction, and set her palm on the door.

She sat at a desk, stacks of parchment on either side. Her hands sharpened a goose quill with a penknife. Splotches of ink stained her fingers. Even her sleeves were spotted with ink.

‘There you are, squire.’

Kel looked up. Before her stood Sir Gareth the Younger, King Jonathan’s friend and adviser. Like Kel’s, his hands and sleeves were ink-stained. ‘I need you to find these.’ He passed a slate to Kel, who took it, her throat tight with misery. ‘Before you finish up today, please. They should be in section eighty-eight.’ He pointed to the far end of the room. She saw shelves, all stretching from floor to ceiling, all stuffed with books, scrolls, and documents.

She looked at her tunic. She wore the badge of Fief Naxen, Sir Gareth’s home, with the white ring around it that indicated she served the heir to the fief. Her knight-master was a desk knight, not a warrior.

Work is work, she thought, trying not to cry. She still had her duty to Sir Gareth, even if it meant grubbing through papers. She thrust herself away from her desk—

—and tottered on the chapel’s flagstones. Her hands were numb with cold, her palms bright red where they had touched the Chamber door.

Kel scowled at the iron door. ‘I’ll do my duty,’ she told the thing, shivering.

Jump whined again. He peered up at her, his tail awag in consolation.

‘I’m all right,’ Kel reassured him, but she checked her hands for inkspots. The Chamber had made her live the thing she feared most just now, when no field knight had asked for her service. What if the Chamber knew? What if she was to spend the next four years copying out dry passages from drier records? Would she leave? Would paperwork do what other pages’ hostility had not – drive her back to Mindelan?

Squires were supposed to serve and obey, no matter what. Still, the gap between combat with monsters and research in ancient files was unimaginable. Surely someone would realize Keladry of Mindelan was good for more than scribe work!

This was too close to feeling sorry for herself, a useless activity. ‘Come on,’ Kel told Jump. ‘Enough brooding. Let’s get some exercise.’

Jump pranced as Kel left the chapel. She was never sure if he understood her exactly – it grew harder each year to tell how much any palace animal did or did not know – but he could tell they were on their way outside.

Kel stopped at her quarters to leave a note for her maid, Lalasa: ‘Should a knight come to ask me to be his squire, I’m down at the practice courts.’ Gloom overtook her again. As the first known female page in over a century, she had struggled through four years to prove herself as good as any boy. If the last six weeks were any indication, she could have spared herself the trouble. It seemed no knight cared to take The Girl as his squire. Even her friend Neal, five years older than their other year-mates, known for his sharp tongue and poor attitude, had talked with three potential masters.

Kel and Jump left her room to stop by Neal’s. Her lanky friend lay on his bed, reading. Jump bounced up beside him.

‘I’m off to the practice courts,’ she said. ‘You want to come?’

Neal lowered his book, raising arched brows over green eyes. ‘I’m about to commence four years obeying the call of a bruiser on a horse,’ he pointed out in his dry voice. A friend had commented once that Neal had a gift for making someone want to punch him just for saying hello. ‘I refuse to put down what might be the last book I see for months.’

Kel eyed her friend. His long brown hair, swept back from a widow’s peak, stood at angles, combed that way by restless fingers. Her fingers itched to settle it. ‘I thought you wanted to be a squire,’ she said, locking her hands behind her back. Neal didn’t know she had a crush on him. She meant to keep it that way.

Neal sighed. ‘I want to fulfil Queenscove’s duty to the Crown,’ he reminded her. ‘A knight from our house—’

‘Has served the Crown for ages, is a pillar of the kingdom, I know, I know,’ Kel finished before he could start.

‘Well, that’s about being a knight. Squire is an intermediate step. It’s a pain in the rump, but it’s a passing pain. I don’t have to like it,’ Neal said. ‘I’d as soon read. Besides, Father said to wait. Another knight’s supposed to show up today. I hate it when Father gets mysterious.’

‘Well, I’m going to go and hit something,’ Kel said. ‘I can’t sit around.’

Neal sat up. ‘No one still?’ he asked, kindness in his voice and eyes. For all he was five years older, he was her best friend, and a good one.

Kel shook her head. ‘I thought if I survived the big examinations, I’d be fine. I thought somebody would take me, even if I am The Girl.’ She didn’t mention her bitterest disappointment. For years she had dreamed that Alanna the Lioness, the realm’s sole lady knight, would take her as squire. Kel knew it was unlikely. No one would believe she had earned her rank fairly if the controversial King’s Champion, who was also a mage, took Kel under her wing. In her heart, though, Kel had hoped. Now the congress that had brought so many other knights to the palace was ending, with no sign of Lady Alanna.

‘There are still knights in the field,’ Neal said gently. ‘You may be picked later this summer, or even this autumn.’

For a moment she almost told him about her vision in the chapel. Instead she made herself smile. Complaining to Neal wouldn’t help. ‘I know,’ she replied, ‘and until then, I mean to practise. Last chance to collect bruises from me.’

Neal shuddered. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ve got all the bruises off you this year that I want.’

‘Coward.’ She whistled for Jump, who leaped off the bed to follow her.

The practice courts were deserted. Lord Wyldon, the training master, had taken the pages to their summer camp earlier that week, ahead of the traffic that would clog the roads as the congress broke up. The combat teachers had gone with him; Kel saw only servants near the fenced yards where pages and squires practised. She’d thought that older squires might come out to keep their skills sharp, but none were visible.

She saddled her big gelding, Peachblossom, murmuring to him as she worked. He was a strawberry roan, his cinnamon coat flecked with bits of white, his face, stockings, mane, and tail all solid red-brown. Except for the palace horse-mages, he would tolerate only Kel. Abused when he was younger, Peachblossom was no man’s friend, but he suited Kel nicely.

Practice lance in hand, she guided Peachblossom to the tilting yard. There she studied the targets: the standard quintain dummy with its wooden shield, and a second dummy with a tiny black spot painted at the shield’s centre. They were too solid to fit her mood. Though it was a windy June day, she set up the ring target, a circle of willow twigs hung from a cord attached to a long arm of wood. It was always the hardest to hit due to its lightness. Today it whipped on its cord like a circular kite.

Kel rode Peachblossom to the starting point and composed herself. It was no good riding at the ring target with an unsettled heart. Six years of life in the Yamani Islands had taught her to manage her emotions. She breathed slowly and evenly, emptying her mind. Her green-hazel eyes took on their normal, dreamy cast. Her shoulders settled; her tight muscles loosened.

Kel gathered her reins and resettled her lance. Part of the bargain she and her horse had made to work together was that Peachblossom would answer to verbal commands and Kel would never use the spur. ‘Trot,’ she told him now.

The big horse made for the target at an easy pace. The ring flirted in the air. Kel lowered her fourteen-foot lance until it crossed a few inches above her gelding’s shoulders. The lead-weighted wood lay steady in her grip. Her eyes tracked the ring as she rose in the stirrups. On trotted Peachblossom, hooves smacking hard-packed dirt. Kel adjusted her lance point and jammed it straight through the ring. The cord that held it to the wooden arm snapped. Peachblossom slowed and turned.

With a hard flick – the movement took strength, and she had practised until she’d got it perfect – Kel sent the ring flying off her lance. Jump watched it, his powerful legs tense. He sprang, catching the ring in his jaws.

A big man who leaned on the fence applauded. The sun was in Kel’s eyes: she shaded them to see who it was, and smiled. Her audience was Raoul of Goldenlake and Malorie’s Peak, knight and Knight Commander of the King’s Own guard. She liked him: for one thing, he treated her just as he did boy pages. It was nice that he’d witnessed one of her successes. The first time she’d seen him, she had been about to fall off a rearing Peachblossom. That her mount was out of control was bad; to have it witnessed by a hero like Lord Raoul, and ten more of the King’s Own, was far worse.

‘I’d heard how well you two work together,’ Lord Raoul said as Kel and Peachblossom approached. He was a head taller than Kel, with curly black hair cropped short, black eyes, and a broad, ruddy face. ‘I’m not sure I could have nailed that target.’ Jump trotted over to offer the ring to the big knight. Raoul took it, tested its weight, and whistled. ‘Willow? I don’t think I could nail it – the ring I use is oak.’

Kel ducked her head. ‘We practise a great deal, that’s all, my lord. Jump wants you to throw it for him.’

With a flick of the wrist the knight tossed the ring, letting it sail down the road. Jump raced under it until he could leap and catch the prize. Holding his tail and single ear proudly erect, he ran back to Raoul and Kel.

‘Practice is the difference between winning and being worm food,’ Raoul told Kel. ‘Do you have a moment? I need to discuss something with you.’

‘I’m at my lord’s service.’ Kel stood at ease, Peachblossom’s reins in her hand.

‘I owe you an apology,’ the knight confessed. ‘I’d meant to see you right after the big exams, but we were called east – ogres sneaked over the border from Tusaine. We just got back. If you haven’t accepted an offer from some other knight, would you like to be my squire?’

Kel blinked at him, unable to believe her ears. Over the last four years, when she hadn’t dreamed of serving Lady Alanna, she had slipped in a daydream or two of being Lord Raoul’s squire. It wasn’t that far-fetched – the man had shown he had a kindness for her in the past – but when he didn’t visit after the big examinations, her daydreams had turned to dust. It had never occurred to her that he might have been called away. Palace gossip, usually accurate about who was in residence and who was not, had crumpled under the flood of guests for the congress.

Finally she blurted out, ‘But you never take a squire!’

Jump barked: Lord Raoul still held the willow ring. He flipped it into the air, straight up. Jump gave him a look, as if to say, Very funny, and waited until the ring was six feet from the ground before he leaped to catch it.

‘Oh, all right.’ Raoul sent the circle skimming across the training yard. Jump raced after it gleefully. To Kel Raoul said, ‘I had a squire once, about twenty years ago. Why don’t we sit’ – he pointed to a nearby bench – ‘and I’ll explain.’

Kel followed him over and sat when he did. He took the ring from a victorious Jump and sent it flying again.

‘See, I haven’t needed a squire since I joined the King’s Own.’ The big man leaned back, stretching brawny legs out in front of him. He was dressed not in a courtier’s shirt, tunic, hose, and soft leather shoes, but in a country noble’s brown jerkin and breeches, a crimson shirt, and calf-high riding boots. He shifted so he could watch Kel’s face as they talked. ‘We have servants with the Own, and a standard-bearer, so my having a squire wasn’t an issue. But you know the Yamani princess and her ladies arrive next year.’

Kel nodded. She felt very odd, as if she occupied another girl’s body. Was he asking her out of pity? That would be almost as bad as service to a desk knight – though she’d still take the offer.

‘Once they get here, Chaos will swallow us,’ the man went on. ‘Their majesties plan to take the court on a Grand Progress – do you know what that is?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Kel replied. ‘Master Oakbridge, our etiquette teacher, talked about it all last year. It’s to show Princess Shinkokami to the realm, so people can see the heir’s future wife.’

Raoul nodded. ‘Which means a grand parade throughout the realm. Two mortal years of balls, tournaments, banquets, and other nonsense. Oh, some useful things will get done – they mean to survey the roads and hold a census, paper-shuffling, mostly. I have no problem with that, since I don’t have to do it. But fuss and feathers make my blood run cold.’

Kel’s lips quivered in the tiniest of smiles. The Knight Commander was infamous for dodging as many ceremonies as he could.

‘Servants and our standard-bearer won’t be enough when I have to deal with every jumped-up, self-important toady in the country.’ He thumped his knee with a fist the size of a small ham. ‘And I know nothing about the Yamanis. You lived six years at their court and speak the language.’

Enlightenment struck Kel like fireworks. He wasn’t taking her as a favour, or because he liked her, though that was nice. She would be useful to him, as no one else could!

‘I liked how you handled yourself when we hunted those spidrens, four years ago,’ Lord Raoul explained. ‘You knew when to speak up and when to be quiet. Wyldon and Myles of Olau say you don’t lose your temper. After your fight with bandits three years ago, I know you can keep your head in a fix. You’ll see plenty of combat with us. I’ll warn you, it’s more work than most squires get. Plenty of knights come here for the winter months, but the King’s Own goes where it’s needed, whatever the season. And we’ll be in the thick of all the progress antics. If you want out – if someone else you’d prefer has asked …’

Kel smiled at him. ‘I’m not afraid of work, my lord,’ she replied. ‘I would be honoured to be your squire.’

‘Good!’ he said, grabbing her hand and giving it two firm shakes, beaming at her. ‘Come down to our stables. You can bring the charmer.’ He nodded at Peachblossom. ‘He’s going to move there anyway, and I’d like you to have a look at a mare I think would suit you.’

As Kel scrambled to her feet, Raoul slung an arm around her shoulders and led her out of the yard. Kel made sure to hold out the hand that held Peachblossom’s rein, keeping the gelding on her far side, well out of reach of her new knight-master.

‘See, with the Own, everyone has at least one spare horse,’ Raoul said. They walked down one of the roads that crisscrossed the acres behind the palace. They were in an area of stables: those for couriers, heralds, and officers in the army, those for visitors, and those that served the King’s Own. ‘We live in the saddle. One horse isn’t up to all that. Your Peachblossom is heavy – you’ll need a horse with good wind and endurance to ride. You can keep Peachblossom for combat.’ He looked across Kel at the big gelding. ‘I asked Onua – horsemistress to the Queen’s Riders – to help me find a mount who could get on with your charming horsie.’

The ‘charming horsie’ snorted, as if he understood. Kel gave his reins a tug, a silent order to behave.

‘Here we are,’ Raoul said, taking his arm from Kel’s shoulders. The insignia over the door on this stable was familiar: a silver blade and crown on a blue field, the emblem of the King’s Own. Kel, Peachblossom, and Jump followed Raoul inside. The stable was big. There were three hundred men in the King’s Own: younger sons of nobles, wealthy merchants’ sons, and Bazhir from the Southern Desert. Each was required to supply two horses when he joined, though the company replaced those killed on duty. Kel eyed the ones in the stalls as she walked past. These were some of the kingdom’s finest mounts.

Once the Own had been a cozy assignment for wealthy young men who liked to look good and meet ladies with dowries. Under Lord Raoul it became the Crown’s weapon, enforcing the law and helping local nobles deal with problems too large to handle alone. Since the arrival of the strange creatures called immortals seven years before, enforcing the law and handling problems required every warrior the Throne could supply. Not all giants, ogres, centaurs, winged horses, and unicorns were peaceful; other, stranger creatures saw humans only as meals. Even those who did coexist with humans had to find homes, make treaties, and swear to obey the realm’s laws.

‘Here we go,’ Raoul said, halting. The glossy brown mare in front of them was a solid animal, smaller than Peachblossom. She had broad shoulders and deep hind quarters, feathery white socks, and a white star on her forehead. Kel hitched Peachblossom out of harm’s way, then approached the mare and offered a hand. The mare lowered her nose and blew softly on Kel’s palm.

‘Take a look at her,’ Raoul said. ‘Tell me what you think.’

Kel stepped into the stall to inspect the mare thoroughly, feeling as if this were a test, at least of her knowledge of horses. That made sense, if she was to spend time with some of the realm’s finest horsemen.

The mare’s eyes were clear, her teeth sound. She seemed affectionate, butting Kel in fun. Someone had groomed her; there were no burs or tangles in her black mane and tail, and her white socks were clean.

‘She’s beautiful,’ Kel said finally. ‘Looks like she’ll go forever. Not up to your weight, my lord.’ She smiled at the six-foot-four-inch Knight Commander, who grinned. ‘But she and I should do well.’ Jump crawled under the gate. He sniffed the mare’s hooves, as if conducting his own inspection. The horse turned her head, keeping the dog under observation, but she seemed to have no objection.

‘Very good,’ Raoul said. ‘As your knight-master, I give her to you, as is my obligation. What will you name her?’

Kel smiled at the mare, who lipped her new rider’s arm. ‘I’d like to call her Hoshi,’ she replied. ‘It’s Yamani for “star”.’ She touched the white star between the mare’s eyes.

‘Hoshi it is. Now, why don’t you settle Peachblossom there,’ Raoul nodded to the empty stall beside Hoshi’s, ‘while we discuss other details?’

Kel led Peachblossom into his new stall and unsaddled him. More than anything she wanted to run back to the iron door of the Chamber of the Ordeal and snap her fingers at it. You see, she wanted to tell it, not a desk knight after all!

Neal was out when Kel returned. She stood before his closed door, disappointed. None of her other friends among the first-year squires – Seaver, Esmond, and Merric – were in their rooms either. Her news must wait: she had to pack. Unlike her friends, she would not be returning to the squires’ wing most winters. She was to live in rooms adjoining the Knight Commander’s, in a palace wing closest to the barracks that housed the King’s Own.

She was explaining things to the sparrows who had adopted her when Jump and the birds raced for the open door. Neal walked in. He was dead white; his green eyes blazed.

‘Neal, what’s wrong?’ Kel asked.

He actually wrung his hands. ‘Sit down,’ he told Kel. ‘Please.’

Kel sat.

He paced for a moment. Jump looked at him and snorted; the sparrows found positions on Kel and the furniture to watch. Crown, the female who led the flock, lit on Neal’s shoulder. She rode there for a moment, then peeped loudly, as if telling him to speak.

Neal faced Kel. ‘This wasn’t my idea,’ he said. ‘Remember that knight I was to see today?’ Kel nodded. ‘Well, the knight wants to take me,’ Neal continued, ‘and Father and the king say I should do it. They said that you are getting a very good offer, too. I want you to know I argued. I said it should be you. They say that’s a bad idea. That people might question if you were really good.’

Kel stared at her friend. What was wrong with him?

Neal took a deep breath. ‘Lady Alanna has asked me to be her squire. She’s a healer, Kel. That’s why Father wants me with her. Maybe that’s even why the king stuck in his oar. You know I wish I’d had more training. Lady Alanna says she’ll teach me. But I swear by Mithros I had no idea she was going to ask.’

Kel nodded dumbly. After all her hopes Lady Alanna had taken a squire, though she had done without for her entire career. The problem was, that squire was not Kel. It was Kel’s best friend.

‘Kel, please …’ Neal began. Then he looked around. ‘You’re packing. You’re – why are you packing? You’re not leaving?’ The worry in his face made her heart ache. Yes, he had the place she wanted, beside the realm’s most legendary knight, but this was Neal. They had fought bullies, monstrous spidrens, and hill bandits. They had studied together and joked on their gloomiest days. He’d shown her the palace ropes; she knew about his unrequited passions for unattainable ladies. The only secret between them was Kel’s crush on him.

I can’t turn on him, she thought. I can’t not be his friend, even if I can’t be his love. ‘Lord Raoul asked me to be his squire.’

Neal collapsed into a chair. ‘Raoul? I’ll be switched,’ he said, awed. ‘Lady Alanna told me you were looked after, but this? Gods all bless. Goldenlake the Giant Killer.’ He whistled. ‘This is very good. I love it. Not even the conservatives will question your right to a shield if he’s your master. He may be a progressive, but he’s still the most respected knight in Tortall. Even the ones who claim you’re magicked to succeed will have to shut up.’

‘What do you mean?’ Kel demanded. Sometimes Neal took forever to get to the point; sometimes, even when he got to it, the thing didn’t feel like a point at all. This was starting to feel like one of those times.

‘You’ll be in public view most of the time,’ Neal explained. ‘Not everyone you meet will be your friend, so they won’t lie for you, and some will have enough Gift of their own to tell if magic’s being worked on you. No one will be able to claim you did anything but what was under everybody’s nose after four years in the King’s Own.’

‘If I cared for their opinion, I’d be relieved,’ Kel informed her friend. ‘So you think this is good.’

He nodded vigorously. ‘I’m envious,’ he admitted. ‘Lord Raoul’s got to be the most easygoing man alive. My new knight-mistress is famed for wielding sharp edges – sword, knife, and tongue.’

Kel scratched her ear. She hadn’t considered the Lioness’s temper, though the realm’s sole female knight was infamous for it. ‘You’ll just have to get on with her,’ she said. She knew her words were silly as they left her mouth. Neal couldn’t just get on with anyone. He could no more resist poking at other people’s conceits or ideas than he could resist breathing.

‘I’ll manage,’ Neal said. ‘She and Father are friends, so she probably won’t kill me. Now,’ he went on, changing the subject, ‘why are you packing, if you have such a wonderful knight-master?’

‘I have to be ready to go with him at any time,’ she explained, sitting on her bed. ‘My room’s next to his. I don’t even know how often I’ll be in the palace – he’s on the road all year.’

‘We’ll see each other during the Grand Progress,’ Neal pointed out. ‘Unless – maybe you won’t … I know you wanted Lady Alanna.’

Kel had to make this better. ‘Not see you, when you won’t eat vegetables if I don’t nag you?’ she demanded. ‘I’ll bet Lady Alanna—’ Her throat tightened. Dreams died so hard, and this one she had kept for most of her life. ‘I’ll bet she doesn’t care what she eats, let alone what her squire does. I should send Crown along to peck you as a reminder.’

Neal’s answering grin was shaky, but it grew stronger. ‘As if these feather dusters would be separated from you,’ he retorted.

‘I hope they can,’ Kel told him. ‘I doubt even Lord Raoul will welcome fifty-odd sparrows.’

Neal slung his legs over the arm of the chair. ‘I bet he and Lady Alanna planned this. They’re friends, and she did say you were looked after. And she has to know what people would say if she took you.’

‘That maybe I was right to look up to her all these years? That if anyone can teach me how to be a lady knight, it’s her?’ Kel asked bitterly. She wished she hadn’t spoken when she saw the hurt in his face. Most times I can keep silent, she thought, folding a tunic with hands that shook. But the one time I say the first thing in my mind, it’s to Neal. I should have said that to anyone but him.

His eyes were shadowed. ‘You are angry.’

Kel sighed and straightened to work a cramp from her back. ‘Not with you.’ Never with you, she thought, wishing yet again that he liked her as a girl as well as a friend. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t know what I feel. First I was just about as low as I could be – Neal, I had a vision.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘My dear Kel, I’d say Jump, your sparrows, even Peachblossom are likelier to have visions than you. I have never known anyone who had both feet nailed to the ground.’

She had to smile. He was right. ‘It didn’t come from me,’ she informed him. ‘I was in the Chapel of the Ordeal—’

‘Finally!’ he interrupted. ‘You took your own sweet time in going—’

It was Kel’s turn to interrupt. ‘Do you want to hear about my vision or not?’ She described what had happened when she touched the Chamber’s iron door. ‘And then I went to the tilting yard and Lord Raoul found me,’ she finished. ‘But Neal, it felt just as real as anything.’

He smiled crookedly. ‘Then here’s a word of advice – don’t touch the door again. That Chamber is a law to itself. No one knows how it works. It’s killed squires, Kel. Killed them, driven them mad—’

‘And left plenty to become knights,’ Kel pointed out before his imagination galloped away with him. ‘Like it will us.’ She refused to admit he’d raised goose bumps on her skin. I climbed down from Balor’s Needle, she thought, reminding herself of the day she’d finally lost her terror of heights. I can handle the Chamber of the Ordeal.

Remembering the realness of her vision, Kel shivered. She checked her hands to make sure there were no ink blotches on them, then picked up a shirt.

When Kel’s maid, Lalasa, returned from signing a lease for her dressmaker’s shop, she found Kel and Neal trying to fit Kel’s weapons-cleaning kit into a trunk that was nearly full. After shedding tears over the news – Lalasa was sentimental – she banished them, saying the palace staff would see to everything. There was nothing to do but go to lunch and share their tidings with their friends. They talked there until the second bell of the afternoon about where they all would go.

When Kel returned to her room, only her night-things remained. Everything else had gone to her new quarters, though she wasn’t to report for duty until noon the next day. ‘I like to sleep late when I can,’ Raoul had explained. ‘It’s not something I get to do often. Neither will you, so take my advice, and sleep in.’

Lalasa sat by the window, sewing basket open beside her, a wad of green cloth in her lap. A stack of neatly folded green clothes lay on a stool beside her.

‘I took the liberty of getting your new things from the quartermasters for the King’s Own, my lady,’ she said as Kel closed the door. ‘These are some of Lord Raoul’s spares – he gave word to use them – but grain sacks have a better fit.’ She clipped a thread and shook out the garment, a tunic in Goldenlake green bordered in yellow. Though Kel would ride with the Own, she served Raoul the knight, not the Knight Commander. ‘Try these, and the breeches,’ Lalasa ordered. She held out both. ‘I measured them against your clothes, but I want to double-check.’

Kel stripped off tunic and breeches and donned the new clothes. Something had changed her retiring Lalasa into this brisk young female. Kel suspected that Lalasa’s getting her shop and dress orders from Queen Thayet may have caused it. They had both changed since their long, frightening walk down the side of Balor’s Needle six weeks ago. Kel thought that Businesswoman Lalasa was a treat; she still wasn’t sure about Squire Keladry.

Lalasa gave the clothes a twitch and nodded. ‘Now these.’ Kel tried on two more sets of Goldenlake breeches and tunics while her maid pinned and straightened. Kel’s shirts, at least, would be the same white ones she’d worn as a page; it was one less piece of clothing to try on.

‘You’re not to take things to those sack stitchers at the palace tailors’,’ maid informed mistress. ‘They come straight to me, and not a penny will I take for the work.’ Her brown eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh, my lady,’ she said, her voice wobbling. ‘Out with all those men, and just a dog and some little birds and that dreadful horse to look after you.’

Kel had to chuckle. ‘The animals look after me just fine,’ she said, offering the older girl her handkerchief. ‘And surely you’ll be too busy to work on my clothes.’

‘Never,’ Lalasa said firmly, and blew her nose. ‘Never, ever.’

Kel looked at the sparrows perched on her bed. ‘I need to talk to you, all who can come,’ she said. ‘Crown? Freckle? Will you get the others?’

The chief female and male of the flock that used to nest outside Kel’s window in the pages’ wing sped outside. The sparrows already in the room found perches. The rest of the flock soon arrived.

Kel shook her head. Even after four years she felt odd talking to them as she would to humans, but they understood far more than normal birds. Ever since Daine, known as the Wildmage, had come to the palace, her magical influence had changed every animal resident. Kel’s dog Jump had refused to live with Daine, and deliberately worked his way into Lord Wyldon’s good graces so the training master would let him roam with the pages. Peachblossom had negotiated his no-spur agreement with Kel through Daine. The sparrows had moved in with Kel, who’d been feeding them, with the first winter snows. In less than a year they were defending her and acting as scouts for a spidren-hunting party. They had even found Lalasa on Balor’s Needle and fetched Kel to help.

‘I mentioned this, remember,’ Kel told the flock. ‘I have to go with my knight-master. It’ll be hard to keep up. I don’t know how often we’ll be here. Do you want to leave your nesting grounds? Salma told me she’ll go on feeding you, so you won’t go hungry. You don’t have to stay with me. It’s not that I don’t love you all,’ she assured the fifty-odd birds. ‘But this isn’t practical.’ She stopped, seeing all those black button eyes fixed on her. They were dressed as soberly as merchants in brown and tan, the males black-capped and black-collared, but Kel knew they were far from sober. She had seen them in battle, their tiny claws and beaks red with the blood of her enemies, or riding gleefully on Jump’s back. Most had come to the flock as newborns, raised in the courtyard and introduced to Kel by their elders.

At last Kel sighed. ‘I can’t think of anything else. Either you understand me or you don’t.’

Crown, named for the pale spot on her head and her imperious ways, hopped to Kel’s shoulder. She chattered at the flock, looking from face to face as a human might. At last she uttered a series of trills. Most of the flock took to the air. They circled Kel like a feathered cyclone, then sped out the window. When Kel walked over to see where they had gone, they were settled in their home courtyard one storey below.

Kel turned to see five sparrows – three females, two males – land on Lalasa’s chair and sewing. The one-footed female named Peg settled on Lalasa’s shoulder with a peep. Lalasa smiled as she stroked Peg’s chest.

‘Who needs to talk?’ she asked, her voice wobbling. ‘I know what you mean. You are all welcome at my home.’

‘Peg fetched me the night Vinson grabbed you,’ Kel said. ‘I suppose she feels you belong to her now.’ She took Lalasa’s hand. ‘You are still part of Mindelan, too. If you need a voice at court, or help, or just a friend, I hope you will come to me.’

Lalasa wiped her eyes on her sleeve. ‘I am still your maid, so it only makes sense that you bring me your clothes. I can never repay you for all you have done. I don’t even want to.’ She stood. ‘If you’ll excuse me, my lady, I need more green thread. You will sleep here tonight?’ Kel nodded. ‘Good. I should have the rest of these done by bedtime.’ She left before Kel could say anything.

‘These aren’t goodbyes,’ Kel told herself. ‘Just the next chapter in our lives.’ She looked at her bed to see who had stayed with her and Jump. Crown, the white-spotted male named Freckle, and ten other sparrows perched there.

‘You’ll come with me?’ she enquired.

Crown nodded.

‘Thank you,’ Kel told them. ‘I hope you like our new quarters. Do you want to see them?’

CHAPTER 2
THE KING’S OWN

Kel needed only a key to enter her quarters, no magic password. It seemed unlikely that anyone would maul her things and paint on her walls, as they had her first year, when the connecting door now led to Lord Raoul’s suite. Once inside, she looked around. This room, bigger than her squire’s and page’s quarters combined, boasted a desk, a bookcase, armour and weapons racks, and a map of Tortall over the desk. A dressing room with its attached privy was opposite the door that led to Lord Raoul’s rooms.

Her belongings were here. Lalasa had set Kel’s collection of Yamani waving cat figures on the mantel. Kel’s old books were beside those already in the case. Her clothespress, weapons, and all the things she exercised with were neatly arranged; her silk painting of two Yamanis duelling with glaives was hung. The bed had fresh sheets and pillows: Kel or Lalasa would bring her nightclothes and blankets in the morning. Even the birds’ and Jump’s dishes were there, filled and ready. The twelve sparrows flew to them instantly.

Looking around, Kel suddenly realized the connecting door was ajar. From inside Lord Raoul’s rooms she heard voices.

‘… isn’t decent. You know court gossips, Raoul. They’ll have you in bed with her before today is done!’

‘Now I’m confused, Flyn.’ That was Lord Raoul’s voice, slow and good-humoured. ‘I thought they’ve had me in bed with other men for years, since I’m not married.’

‘Not around me or the lads, they haven’t,’ was the growled reply. ‘We’ve explained it’s nobody’s business.’

‘Then explain the same thing about Kel and me, Flyn,’ Raoul said. ‘That’s easy enough.’

Flyn – she knew the name. Of course: Flyndan Whiteford, nominally in command of Third Company in the King’s Own, in reality second in command to Lord Raoul, who personally led it whenever possible. Kel had met Flyn three summers ago, during the spidren hunt at the end of her first year as a page.

‘Stop joking, Raoul,’ Flyndan replied. ‘I’ve served with you for fifteen years. I’ve a right to be heard.’

Raoul sighed. ‘You know I listen to you.’

‘Then be serious. The girl will have no reputation, and neither will you. The conservatives will be furious you picked her.’

‘So?’ Raoul asked. ‘They dislike me anyway, just for the changes I’ve made in the Own. How much more can they hate me because Kel’s my squire? And she’s had four years to think about her reputation.’

‘She’s fourteen – she can’t understand all the consequences,’ Flyndan grumbled. ‘As a noble she wouldn’t be thinking about marriage and babies for another couple of years.’

Raoul continued, still patient. ‘But as a commoner she might be married – and producing babies – right now. Stop fussing. She’s intelligent, and she’s steady. Some people always believe the worst.’

‘You only did it because Lady Alanna asked you to,’ snapped Flyndan.

Kel swallowed a gasp. Now she was really glad they didn’t know she was listening. She shouldn’t be. It wasn’t right. Educational, but not right.

There was a sigh in the next room. ‘Alanna mentioned it, but I’ve had Kel in mind since the spidren hunt. Everything I’ve heard just confirms that she’ll do well, given a chance. That’s what I’d like you to do, Flyn – give her a chance.’

Kel knew she had to leave or say she was there. Cat-quiet, she went to her door, then yanked it loudly shut. She walked into the centre of the room, saying, ‘Your food and water dishes are here—’

A man poked his head through the connecting door. He was in his early forties, blunt nosed, with the dark skin, hair, and eyes of a Bazhir. He wore a white cotton shirt and loose dark green breeches, casual dress. ‘Good afternoon, Squire Keladry. Do you remember me?’

Kel smiled at the Bazhir. ‘It’s Qasim, isn’t it? You fed my birds on the spidren hunt.’ He’d been paired with her that day and had treated her just as he had the male pages. That, and the fact that he liked her sparrows, made him a friend in Kel’s eyes.

‘Have you still the little ones?’ he asked.

‘Some. The flock got too big for me to keep them all.’ Kel’s new flock left their dishes and flew to Qasim, fluttering around him. ‘They remember you,’ she said.

He reached into a pocket and withdrew a handful of dried cherries. ‘I hoped they would,’ he admitted with a smile. The birds grabbed the treats. ‘Come.’ He led Kel into Raoul’s quarters.

The Knight Commander occupied a suite of rooms. The one connected to Kel’s was a study, complete with a desk, a number of chairs, and full bookcases. Maps of Tortall and its neighbours were mounted on three walls. Beyond the study was a dining room of sorts, though the table was covered with armour and weapons. From her tour that morning Kel knew Raoul’s bedroom was on the other side, with its dressing room and privy.

Raoul sat at his desk, stacks of paper and books spread around him. He grinned at Kel. ‘I see you remember Qasim ibn Zirhud. He’s a corporal now, in Volorin’s squad. I don’t think you were properly introduced to Flyn, though – Captain Flyndan Whiteford.’

The man who sat in a chair opposite Raoul nodded curtly. He was stocky and fair skinned, his red-brown hair cropped short on the sides and left tightly curled on top. His brown eyes were set under thin brows, over a small nose and small lips. His voice, a light baritone, carried a hint of a northern burr, all but erased by years with the King’s Own.

‘This isn’t a menagerie,’ Flyndan objected as Jump and the birds explored the study.

‘The sparrows carry their own weight, Flyn,’ said Raoul. ‘Or did you forget, they led us to the spidren nest?’ He reached down to pet Jump. ‘Her gelding’s a piece of work, too.’ To Kel he said, ‘I’m glad you stopped by. I forgot to see to your kit. Do you have an hour? I know you’ll want to sup with your friends, but we should handle some things while we can.’

Kel nodded.

‘We’ll see to personal armour tomorrow, but as you know, such things take time. Qasim will help you draw pieces to tide you over when we’re done talking,’ Raoul explained. ‘Until you get your own weapons, use company issue. You need a sword and dagger, a small axe, a shield. That’s a company shield, Qasim – I’m having a proper Goldenlake shield made, but that takes a week. Kel, which are you better at, longbow or crossbow?’

‘Long, my lord,’ Kel replied. ‘And I have a bow, sword, and dagger.’

‘Let Qasim review them,’ Raoul said. ‘He may ask you to use ours for now.’ He nodded to Qasim. ‘Standard field kit. Now, long weapons …’ He gazed at Kel thoughtfully. ‘Lances are good for tournaments, giants, and ogres, but they’re unwieldy in a scramble. Most of us carry spears—’

‘A third use halberds,’ Flyndan added.

‘I know you can use a spear,’ Raoul continued, thinking aloud. ‘Have you tried a halberd?’

Kel hesitated. Lord Wyldon had never let her use her favourite weapon, which was similar to a halberd. I won’t know if I don’t ask, she thought. ‘One moment, my lord?’ she asked. At his nod she returned to her room.

‘She’s polite enough,’ Kel heard Flyndan say.

‘What did you expect?’ Raoul was amused. ‘Wyldon trained her. He’s serious about manners.’

Kel’s wooden practice glaive and a standard glaive hung on a rack behind the connecting door. She took the edged weapon down. The five-foot-long staff was teak, the base shod in iron. The blade was eighteen inches long at the tip and broadly curved. The blue ripples under the polished surface marked it as the best steel money could buy. It was a gift from her mother and Kel’s prize.

‘I can use this, my lord,’ she said as she returned to the next room. The three men were talking. When they stopped to look at her, Flyndan’s jaw dropped. Qasim smiled.

Raoul walked over to her, eyes on the weapon. ‘May I?’ he asked, holding out his hands. Kel gave him the glaive and stood back. He spun it in a circle, as he might a staff. ‘Nice weight,’ he commented. ‘Hey, Flyn, look here.’ He extended his arm and balanced the glaive on one finger. It remained steadily horizontal. He picked up a quill and set the end on the blade’s edge. The steel cut it in half without Lord Raoul pressing the feather down.

Flyndan whistled. ‘What’s this?’

‘It’s a glaive, sir,’ Kel replied. ‘The Yamanis call them naginata. Noblewomen fight with these. Since we were at court, we learned, too.’

‘Can you use it?’ Flyndan demanded. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but that looks awkward for a—’ Flyndan swallowed a word and finished with ‘youngster’.

Raoul handed the glaive to Kel and pushed back some chairs to make room. Kel began the cuts, turns, and swings of a pattern dance. She picked up the pace, until her blade was a silver blur shadowed by the longer dark blur of the staff. She finished with a rapid spin and halt, the blade stopping just short of a chair.

‘Captain Whiteford.’ She offered him the weapon. Flyndan took it in one hand and nearly dropped it; he’d been unprepared for the weight.

‘So you’ve got a long weapon,’ Raoul said calmly, resting his behind on his desk. ‘Chain mail?’

‘I will find something to fit,’ Qasim promised as Kel shook her head.

Flyndan, expressionless, returned the glaive to Kel. Qasim dusted his hands – the birds had eaten every cherry – and jerked his head towards the door. Kel bowed to Raoul and followed Qasim, her animals in their wake. She stopped to put her glaive on the rack.

‘I chose a tent and bedroll for you already,’ Qasim remarked. He pointed to a tightly wrapped bundle on Kel’s clothespress. ‘The bedroll is inside the tent. So too are the stakes and rope you will need. May I see your weapons? I need also to look at your travel gear.’

Qasim checked everything, eyes sharp as he tested edges and cleanliness. He then inspected her travel packs. ‘This is all very good,’ he said. ‘I am envious.’

Kel wasn’t sure if she ought to tell this man, however kindly disposed he was, about her anonymous benefactor. That person had sent her gifts during her page years, from exercise balls to help her strengthen her grip, to weapons. She decided to be quiet for now. There was a Yamani saying: ‘You need never unsay anything that you did not say in the first place.’

They went to the stables, then to the armoury that served the King’s Own. All of the equipment she chose passed Qasim’s painstaking inspection. He loaded her with things she did not have – tack for Hoshi, a chain mail shirt, a padded round helm, even a square leather carrier that fastened onto the back of her saddle. The men of the Own often travelled with hawks and dogs in case they had to hunt or track. Like the company’s terriers, Jump would ride in style.

Putting her gear away, Kel realized that an important moment in her life had come and gone as she chose a riding saddle and inspected shields. For the first time a warrior had thoroughly tested her knowledge of equipment, and she had passed. Qasim had rejected none of her choices. It was all the more startling to Kel because he’d done it in such a matter-of-fact, commonplace way.

Today she’d dealt with two men who took her on her own terms. Thank you, Mithros, for this gift, she thought to the god of war and law. Then she remembered that she was at her window, grinning foolishly. Shaking her head at her own folly, she got back to work.

It was nearly suppertime when Kel finished putting everything away. She had one more thing to do concerning Peachblossom. She had thought to go to Daine – the Wildmage was home, Kel knew – but she chose to talk to the gelding on her own first. She didn’t know if this was because she respected Peachblossom so much that she thought he might listen, or because she resented the idea that he would listen to Daine and not his rider. Whatever the reason, she prayed this would work. Like other palace animals, Peachblossom had grown more intelligent in human terms over the years. By this point, surely, Kel didn’t need Daine to translate.

The stable was deserted. No one was there to snicker at her. ‘Um, Peachblossom? Could I have a word?’ she asked the gelding. She hadn’t brought any treats. This was too important for bribes.

He walked to the front of the stall and, in a rare gesture of affection, thrust his long brown muzzle against Kel’s chest. He snorted at the smell of old iron left by chain mail, but didn’t move away.

Kel stroked him. ‘We’re going to be with plenty of other horses,’ she told him. ‘Hoshi’s just the start.’

Peachblossom threw up his head to eye Hoshi. The mare, quietly eating hay next door, switched her tail as if to say, Go away, boy.

‘Nobody will be able to work if you’re forever biting them,’ Kel said. ‘We could get in trouble if you start fights. They might make me leave you behind.’

Peachblossom fixed her squarely with one eye.

‘I don’t know if they will,’ she amended, scrupulously honest. ‘But it seems likely. We’ll always be together when I’m a knight – surely you know that. But consider getting along here? You don’t have to be friendly. Just don’t make trouble.’

The thought of having to leave him made her eyes sting. She loved every scarred, irritable inch of Peachblossom. She knew she would like Hoshi: she was a gift from Lord Raoul. She also seemed like a horse who could view disaster with a calm eye. But Peachblossom was the friend of Kel’s heart, her staunch ally. She hugged him fiercely around the neck.

‘Think about it,’ she told him, and left him to it.

Kel, Lalasa, Jump, and the sparrows were asleep in Kel’s old rooms when thunder broke through Kel’s dreams. Sitting up in bed, she realized what she heard was not thunder, but someone pounding on her door.

She leaped to answer it without pulling on her robe. Qasim almost rapped her nose when she yanked the door open. ‘We are called away tonight,’ he said. ‘When you are dressed, go to the stable and ready your mounts. I will pack the gear you will need.’

‘But my lord’s armour, his gear and horses – that’s my job,’ she protested.

‘Another time,’ Qasim ordered. Kel was about to close the door when he stopped her. ‘It will be bad,’ he said. ‘Haresfield village in the Royal Forest was attacked by robbers. The messengers say it is a bloody mess. Be ready.’

Is anyone ever ready for such things? Kel wondered as he left. She took a breath and concentrated on what had to be done. Lalasa was placing a basin full of water and a towel on the desk. As Kel washed her face, cleaned her teeth, and combed her hair, Lalasa put out her clothes, including a fresh breast band and loincloth, and one of the cloth pads Kel wore during her monthly bleeding. It had begun the day before.

‘I’ll need more pads,’ Kel said, fastening her breast band and hitching her shoulders until it fit properly. ‘And three days’ worth of clothes – how much do I have here?’

‘More than that,’ Lalasa said. Kel glanced at her. The maid smiled sheepishly. ‘I just wanted to give everything a last look-over,’ she explained. She briskly folded and stacked shirts, breeches, tunics, stockings, underclothes, and, in one of the shirts, more cloth pads.

‘You’d think I rip my seams every day,’ Kel grumbled, pulling on her stockings. By the time she straightened her tunic, Lalasa had put her clothes in a wicker basket.

Kel hugged the girl, who was as much friend as maid, then grabbed the basket and gave her key to Lalasa. ‘Tell Neal and the others I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye,’ she said, and raced down the hall with Jump and the sparrows.

In the stable Kel and over a hundred men saddled riding horses and put lead reins on their remounts. Qasim had left a pack with Kel’s name on it for her spare clothes; she filled it from her basket and gave the pack to the supply officer when he collected them.

Qasim had put a burnoose, weapons, mail, helmet, and shield with her tack. Kel popped out of her tunic, slid into the mail shirt, then pulled the tunic over it. The men of the Own wore burnooses as cloaks. Kel fastened hers at the neck, hoping Qasim would show her how to shape a hood from it and fix it to her head when there was time.

She fastened her shield and weapons to her saddle, then donned her helmet. She was ready. Looping Hoshi’s reins around one hand and Peachblossom’s around the other, Kel walked out of the stable with her mounts and Jump. The sparrows had vanished into Jump’s carrier on Hoshi’s back.

Kel tethered her horses on the edge of the courtyard where the company assembled. The torches, blown by the wind, gave the scene a dreamlike feel as the faces of the men were first brightly lit, then shadowed. The night itself was a cool one, the wind smelling of water and the first hay cutting of the summer.

Kel watched the men unnoticed. Some were thirty or older, but most were young, single men in their twenties – married men were not allowed to join the King’s Own. A third were Bazhir. Of all the realm’s forces the King’s Own had done the best at enlisting the once-scorned Bazhir. That was Lord Raoul’s doing: he had taken the Own to live among the Bazhir for two seasons and recruited new men from their sons.

‘So who’s this youngster?’ someone asked. Hoshi’s bulk shielded Kel from the men’s view. ‘We’ve got Lerant here for standard-bearer.’

‘A squire,’ sneered a young man’s voice.

The one who’d first spoken exclaimed, ‘He’s never wanted a squire—’

Kel stroked Peachblossom’s nose. Eavesdropping had become a vice for her. She strained to hear a whispered remark, but didn’t catch what was said. Then:

‘The Girl?’ someone demanded.

‘I don’t care if she’s the Wave Walker,’ someone drawled. ‘She’s green as grass.’

‘She better not foul us up in the field,’ another voice proclaimed.

‘Don’t you saddle rats have better things to do?’ a gruff voice demanded. ‘Let’s have an inspection. Mithros witness, if I find one strap undone, heads will roll.’

‘But, Sergeant Osbern, sir, I like my head,’ someone muttered.

‘Very well, Gildes of Veldine. Let’s inspect you first and put you out of your misery,’ the decisive voice said.

Now that they were no longer talking about her, Kel emerged from between the horses. Gildes must be the drooping fellow who led his mounts to a blond, barrel-chested man. The others were double-checking their things.

‘Did you eat?’ someone asked Kel. A young man about four inches taller than she approached her. He gave Kel a warm turnover. ‘Just rolled out of bed and came charging on down, I bet. You’ll learn. Eat.’

Kel bit and discovered sausage and cheese inside the turnover. ‘It’s good!’ she mumbled, her mouth full.

The stranger grinned cheerfully at her. In his early twenties, he was broad-shouldered, big-handed, and very handsome. He wore his dark hair cut just below his ears. His mouth was long and made for smiling. He wore the uniform of the Own: loose dark trousers, chain mail shirt, blue tunic with silver trim, and a white burnoose. The crimson band around his biceps showed a dark circle with a black dot at its centre: a sergeant’s badge.

‘I see you’ve still got your overgrown horse,’ he remarked with a nod towards Peachblossom. ‘I was new to the King’s Own that day we saw you tilting. Everybody but me bet you’d come straight off his back when he reared. I won a meal at The Jugged Hare because I bet you’d stay on.’ He bowed to Kel as she wiped her fingers on the handkerchief she kept tucked in her boot top. ‘Domitan of Masbolle at your service, Squire Keladry. Your page-sponsor was a certain mad cousin of mine.’

She squinted to get a better look at him. His eyes – impossible to tell their colour at the moment – were framed by wide, arched brows and set over a long nose slightly wide at the tip. It was Neal’s nose, on someone else’s face. Kel smiled. ‘You’re related to Neal?’

‘Sadly, yes. I call him Meathead. Have you ever met anyone so stubborn?’ Domitan tucked his big hands into his breeches pockets with a grin.

‘He can be difficult, um … Sergeant?’

He shook his head. ‘Technically you’re not in the Own. Besides, he’s written me so much about you I feel like I know you. Call me Dom.’ He offered his hand.

‘Kel,’ she said, taking it. He gave her a firm squeeze, reassuring, not trying her strength as so many young men did, and let go. She felt breathless and tingly.

‘You sure grew into this bruiser,’ Dom remarked. When he offered a hand for Peachblossom to sniff, Kel yanked him back just as the gelding struck. ‘Oh, I see,’ Dom remarked, unruffled. ‘A testy pony.’

Kel giggled, then saw that Lord Raoul, Captain Flyndan, and two men, farmers by their clothes, had emerged from the palace. Stablehands brought horses and remounts forward.

‘We’re ready to do business,’ Dom remarked. ‘Welcome to the Own, Kel.’ He swung himself onto his saddled mount, a dappled grey gelding.

Lord Raoul rode over. ‘All set to give Hoshi a try?’ he asked. Kel nodded. ‘Mount up. Normally our remounts go in a string at the rear – the servingmen lead them with the supply train. We’ll make an exception for Peachblossom. You ride a neck length back on my left, and keep him with you. Behave,’ he told Peachblossom, speaking directly to the horse. ‘Or I’ll muzzle you like a dog.’

Peachblossom shook his head vigorously. Kel hoped that was restlessness, not disagreement. With no time for another word with him, she gave a silent prayer to any listening gods for his good behaviour and swung into the saddle. Hoshi stood patiently as she settled in.

Kel twisted to look into the carrier behind her saddle. ‘You have to move,’ she told the drowsy sparrows huddled there. ‘Otherwise Jump will squash you.’

The birds hopped out. Once the carrier was empty, Kel nodded to Jump: he sprang neatly into the leather box. Hoshi flicked two ears back, then swung them forward again. Not even Jump could shake the mare’s calm.

‘Well, I’m impressed,’ drawled Raoul, who had watched. ‘Come along, Squire Keladry. Time to get your feet wet.’

Following him to the front of the mounted force, Kel took note of the dogs. Thin, fine-boned greyhounds sat on the ground beside three riders. Four other men rode with terriers in carriers like Jump’s. Six wolfhounds stood beside Captain Flyndan, tails wagging. There was no sign of Third Company’s hunting birds – probably they were in carriers, asleep.

Lord Raoul faced his men. ‘Doubtless you know as much as I do,’ he said, his calm, steady voice carrying over the fidgets of horses and the creak of leather. The men fell silent the moment he began to speak. ‘Haresfield in the Royal Forest was attacked by a band of centaurs and humans. We’ve got reports of twenty-three dead. Balim’s squad is there now. Chances are the raiders cleared the district, but they could be stupid enough to stay around. Keep your eyes open.’

He wheeled to face the gates, raised a kid-gloved hand, and brought it down, nudging his big bay mare into a trot. A brunette young man with a snub nose rode on his right, carrying the flag that announced they were Third Company of the King’s Own. Captain Flyndan rode on the standard-bearer’s right. Obeying her instructions, Kel followed Lord Raoul on his left. Behind her she heard the thunder of hooves as the riders took places in a long double column.

Kel felt a thrill of pride. I could be a general, leading an army to war, she thought, and smiled. She had no particular interest in armies, but it was fun to imagine herself a hero from a ballad at the head of a mighty legion.

Except that ballads never mentioned horses like Peachblossom, or one-eared, ugly dogs like the one who sat behind her. Nor did they mention sparrows perched in a neat row on a horse’s mane. Used to these passengers, Peachblossom ignored them. Crown had claimed her place on Kel’s shoulder.

Once they rode through the Least Gate and across a bridge into the greater world, Kel looked back. The company made an impressive display; two columns of fifty men, each in the white, blue, and silver of full members of the Own, followed by ten men in blue and white. These were the servingmen, who led the remounts and supply train. In the predawn light she could see that five of the Own rode with hunting birds on their shoulders.

‘You mind those hawks,’ she told Crown. ‘You’re safe while they’re hooded or caged, but keep out of their sight when they’re hunting. At least we’ll eat well enough.’

‘We do try to eat,’ Raoul called back to her. ‘I go all faint if I don’t get fed regularly. Only think of the disgrace to the King’s Own if I fell from the saddle.’

‘But there was that time in Fanwood,’ a voice behind them said.

‘That wedding in Tameran,’ added the blond Sergeant Osbern, riding a horse-length behind Kel.

‘Don’t forget when what’s-his-name, with the army, retired,’ yelled a third.

‘Silence, insubordinate curs!’ cried Raoul. ‘Do not sully my new squire’s ears with your profane tales!’

‘Even if they’re true?’ That was Dom. It seemed Neal wasn’t the only family member versed in irony.

Suddenly Kel’s view of the next four years changed. She had expected hard work mixed with dread for the Ordeal of Knighthood at the end of it. Never had she guessed that other Tortallan warriors might not be as stiff and formal as Lord Wyldon. Never had she thought that she might have fun.

Thank you, Goddess, she thought. Thank you, Mithros. I’m going to learn, and enjoy myself while I do!

They followed the Conté Road southwest into the forest as the sun rose. About the time Kel used to eat breakfast, Raoul held up his arm. Everyone slowed to a walk, Kel a beat behind the others. She had to learn the hand signals. Maybe Qasim would teach her.

Third Company halted beside a river to rest and water the horses – Haresfield lay farther still inside the forest. Kel dismounted, Hoshi’s and Peachblossom’s reins in her hands. When Raoul climbed down from the saddle, Kel whisked his mare Amberfire’s reins from his grip and led the animals to the river. Caring for a knight-master’s horses was a normal part of a squire’s duties. She glanced back: Raoul grinned and raised his hands in surrender.

Once all three horses had drunk, Kel turned them. Her path to Raoul was blocked by the snub-nosed standard-bearer. He was an inch taller than Kel, a broad-shouldered eighteen-year-old with level brown eyes and a firm chin. He wore his blond-brown hair cropped short at the sides; his fringe flopped over his forehead.

‘My lord only took you because he felt sorry for you,’ he informed Kel icily. ‘I did his chores before you came. I was good at it.’

Kel returned his look with Yamani calm, her emotions hidden. This young man’s words stung a little. She knew that Raoul wanted her Yamani experience on the Great Progress. She also knew many would see it as the standard-bearer did. ‘I’m sorry you feel that way,’ she replied. ‘If you’ll excuse me?’ She took a firmer grip on Peachblossom’s reins. The gelding watched the young man with too much interest for her comfort.

The standard-bearer gripped her arm. ‘Watch your step, squire,’ he informed her. ‘Just because Wyldon didn’t have the brass to get rid of you doesn’t mean we won’t.’

Kel flexed her bicep. He stared at her as muscle swelled under his fingers, forcing them open. With a quick jerk Kel freed herself. ‘Excuse me,’ she repeated, and walked off with her charges, keeping Peachblossom away from the standard-bearer.

Of course he’s resentful, she thought as she joined the column. I’ve taken his place with my lord – or what he sees as his place. There’s nothing I can do about that.

‘You spoke to Lerant of Eldorne.’ Qasim appeared at her side to offer Kel a piece of cheese.

‘No, thank you,’ she said politely, turning down the food. She added, ‘He talked, actually. I listened.’

‘He is a good fighter, and devoted to my lord,’ Qasim explained, eating the cheese. ‘He took an arrow for Lord Raoul last year, when we fought bandits in the Tusaine hills. He was unhappy to learn my lord took a squire.’ He offered some cheese to Jump, who gobbled it.

‘It’s all right,’ Kel said.

‘There is more to it,’ the Bazhir told her softly. ‘He applied for a warrior’s post in the army, the navy, even as a man-at-arms, though his birth entitles him to better. No one would take a son of House Eldorne after his aunt’s high treason. They feared the king’s displeasure. My lord Raoul heard of it, and brought Lerant into the Own.’

Kel felt a twinge of sympathy. She knew what it was like to be unwanted. Lerant’s jealousy was understandable, even if it wasn’t likeable. ‘Thank you,’ she told Qasim. ‘I’ll keep it in mind.’

‘He will come around,’ Qasim assured her as the Own mounted up. ‘His is a good heart, though temper makes him sharp. He regrets it later. You will see.’

Kel led Amberfire to Lord Raoul, steadying his mare as he swung into the saddle. ‘Thanks, Kel,’ he said as he accepted the reins.

Kel remounted Hoshi. Of course she understood Lerant’s feelings. There was no treason in her family, but hadn’t Lord Raoul rescued her, all the same?

CHAPTER 3
CENTAURS

Smoke rose over the wooden stockade that surrounded the town of Haresfield. The wind carried scents of burned, wet wood and cooked meat. Kel knew those odours; she had smelled them often in raided Yamani and Tortallan villages.

They picketed their horses with those of the squad sent to the town earlier, in a field within view of the walls. The servingmen remained to guard them. Raoul explained to Kel that he didn’t want the Own’s tracks to blot out those left by the bandits. Anyone who entered or left the town had to skirt the broad space of trampled mud and grass before the gate, leaving the ground untouched until the raiders’ signs could be properly read. Third Company entered Haresfield on either side of the gate. Once inside, the men formed their squads. Assigned areas by Captain Flyndan, they dispersed to survey the damage.

The headman, a priestess of the Goddess, the blacksmith, and Sergeant Balim, whose squad had arrived before dawn, met Raoul in the square. They led Raoul and Flyndan through the town, showing the damage. Kel followed silently.

Inside its untouched, fifteen-foot stockade wall a third of Haresfield had burned to the ground. Other buildings stood, but fire damage made them unsafe. The blazes had weakened support beams: roofs sagged, upper floors drooped into lower ones. Smoke drifted everywhere, burning Kel’s eyes and filling her nose with the reek of ash and burned flesh. Her stomach had already tried to reject her breakfast twice.

People laboured in the ruins. Bodies were set along the streets, pieces of cloth over their faces. Kel could only glance at those who’d burned; the sight of their swollen black flesh was too much. Worse, in a way, were those who looked as if they only slept: they had suffocated. Some charred animal bodies, mostly dogs and cats, lay with their masters. Every animal of monetary value – horses, cows, goats, poultry – had been stolen.

Raoul crouched beside a dead man who clutched a long-handled war axe. He hadn’t died in a fire: five arrows peppered his corpse. Turning him slightly, Raoul showed that the arrows had gone clean through him.

‘That’s a longbow,’ Flyndan judged, fleshy face set. ‘One of those six-foot-long monsters the king wants archers to train on. Just as bad as crossbows for punching through armour.’

Raoul checked the arrows’ fletching. ‘Centaur work,’ he said. ‘They like feathers from griffins and other winged immortals. They say the arrow flies truer. Kel, feel this, so you’ll know griffin fletching the next time you see it.’

As Kel obeyed, touching a feather like ridged silk, Flyndan commented, ‘Not that they can’t do plenty of damage with human-made weapons. I’ve never seen a centaur miss what he shot at. Or she,’ he added. ‘Festering things are born archers.’

‘This isn’t centaur,’ Raoul said, rising to yank a crossbow quarrel from a shutter. He showed it to the locals, Flyndan, and Kel. ‘A human shot this. Centaurs are snobs – they hate crossbows.’

‘I don’t understand,’ the headman complained. He was an innkeeper, a short man with a barrel chest and straggly beard. ‘We’re on good terms with Greystreak and his herd – they wouldn’t attack us.’

‘They had help,’ said the priestess.

‘You don’t know for certain,’ the blacksmith snapped.

‘I know the evidence of my eyes,’ retorted the priestess, crossing her arms over her chest. ‘Your nephew Macorm and his friend Gavan had gate duty last night. There’s no trace of them, and the gate wasn’t forced. It was wide open.’

‘Macorm’s a good boy,’ argued the blacksmith. ‘Wild, a bit—’

The priestess interrupted. ‘You always defend him!’

‘I know he’s family,’ said the headman, ‘but it looks bad—’

Raoul cleared his throat. The villagers looked at him. ‘Arguing without facts is pointless,’ he said, kind but firm. ‘Flyn, have Volorin’s squad bring this Greystreak in. If it wasn’t his herd, he may know whose it is. Send a squad to the palace for aid: healers, clothes, food, and so on. And I want someone to go to the Riders.’

Flyndan opened his mouth.

‘No jealousies, Flyn,’ Raoul told him. ‘We can use one – no, two, Rider Groups here. Get the rest of the boys to help these people recover what they can.’

‘Two squads to start digging?’ Flyndan enquired.

Raoul looked down the main village street. Bodies lined it on either side, more than the twenty-three reported earlier. ‘Two’s fine,’ Raoul said, his face bleak.

As Flyndan, Balim, the smith, and the priestess went about their business, Raoul continued to view the damage with Kel. The headman left to oversee the inn’s kitchen so those who worked in the ruins might be fed.

When Raoul and Kel had seen the entire village, they returned to the gate. ‘Well, squire?’ Raoul asked. ‘What do you make of this?’ He indicated the ground at the stockade gate.

Kel looked at the churned mud. ‘I’d guess twenty-five, maybe thirty centaurs,’ she replied, not sure if she had read the signs correctly. Lindhall Reed, one of her teachers in immortal studies, had shown the pages centaur hoofmarks in plaster so the pages would recognize their tracks. ‘Twenty or so humans. The humans left their horses outside the gates – there’s marks of horseshoes and picket stakes beside the wall. Centaurs aren’t shod.’

‘Very good,’ Raoul said. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d seen that. Go on.’

‘I agree with the priestess. The gate was opened.’ She motioned to the gate. ‘It’s whole, the hinges are solid, there’s no blood or anyone dead. Even if the guards were fooled into opening up, there’d be signs of a fight. And they’d have shouted. We were told everyone was abed when the raiders got into the houses.’ Something in the mud caught her eye: a doll, half-buried in muck. She picked it up and began to clean it with a handkerchief. ‘Setting fires after they stole, that’s mischief, or settling old scores,’ she remarked. Her hands trembled with rage. The waste and cowardice – robbing their own people in the middle of the night! – had to be punished. ‘They took every animal they could sell. People are saying they cleaned out the valuables before they set their fires. And if folk here recognized the humans with the centaurs, they’re keeping quiet.’

‘They’d have to, wouldn’t they?’ Raoul asked. ‘Villages like this, cut off from most of the world, everyone’s related. A raider could be an uncle, a cousin, a brother.’

Kel nodded, cleaning the doll as people reported to Raoul and the squad bound for the palace left. This was the lowest kind of betrayal, for kinsmen to steal what little people had. She could not understand those who liked romantic songs of highwaymen and pirates. Anyone who took poor people’s life savings was not worth a song.

The centaurs were just as bad. They’d been given homes after they had sworn to heed the realm’s laws. Now they were robbing those who had taken them in.

She waited until Raoul had finished talking with his squad leaders before she asked, ‘My lord?’

Raoul looked at her and raised his eyebrows.

‘They won’t stay local, will they?’ she asked. The doll was as clean as she could get it. Kel thrust it into her belt. ‘They took all they could move. They’re on the run, looking for a place to hole up or another village to rob.’

‘Absolutely,’ her knight-master replied. ‘We’ve got serious work ahead. Don’t worry, though. With help, we’ll bring these muck suckers to bay.’

The local centaurs arrived. Kel watched the introductions, happy not to deal with these creatures, particularly the centaur chief, Greystreak. His black-and-grey hair was twined and oiled into ringlets, a style she disliked. Greystreak wore a dirty wrap-around shirt with a tangle of ribbons, beads, and chains around his neck, wrists, and pasterns, and braided in his tail. Only the belt at his waist was unornamented by anything but weapons. His human parts were those of a fair-skinned man in his fifties; his horse parts were blue roan.

Suddenly the chief broke off greeting Lord Raoul to approach Kel. He walked around her as if she were a filly for his inspection, ignoring Jump’s low growl. On his second circuit the centaur was smiling. ‘A female. A strong one, not a pitiful two-legger stick girl,’ he commented. ‘You will breed easily, perhaps even bear sons of my kind.’ His voice slid over Kel like oil.

She swallowed hard. Keeping her face Yamani-blank, she imagined Greystreak put to dray horse work in the northern mines.

The sparrows leaped from their perch in a nearby tree to dart shrieking at the centaur. Greystreak backed up, trying to shield his face. Jump advanced on him, hackles up, snarling.

‘Jump, enough,’ ordered Raoul, coming over.

The dog shook his head.

‘I need to talk to him. You aren’t helping,’ the knight told the dog.

Jump sighed. He walked away, frequently glancing over his shoulder as if to say, ‘I have to let him go?’

‘This is unnatural,’ Greystreak snapped, still warding off sparrows. No matter how quickly he swatted, he never touched them. ‘Take these things away!’

‘It’s rude to single out the squire and ignore the knight,’ Raoul said politely. ‘I didn’t give you permission to address her. Kel, call off the birds.’

Without a word from Kel the birds flew to her. Crown and Freckle perched on her shoulders. The rest lined up on a branch.

Greystreak looked at Raoul. ‘I will give three slaves for her,’ he announced. ‘Two more if she breeds successfully within a year.’

Kel stiffened. Slaves? There were no slaves in Tortall!

Raoul thrust his hands into his pockets, still the picture of goodwill. ‘You forget our customs, Chief Greystreak. Offer all the horses you like, human females are not for sale. And you can’t have heard – I said she is a squire. A knight-in-training. She’s busy. Now, explain to me how you are not at fault for this.’ He jerked his head towards the ruins of the village.

Greystreak spread his hands as his expression slid from greedy to innocent. ‘These young stallions give me no peace,’ he whined. ‘I cast them from the herd. Some females were silly enough to follow them. They are no longer my problem.’

‘You never thought they’d turn on us?’ demanded the headman. ‘Centaur females leave males who can’t give them gifts. If you kicked young bucks out with nothing, how were they to get presents if they didn’t steal?’

Greystreak looked shocked. ‘I assumed their two-legger friends would warn Haresfield, since they live here. Had I known this would happen, of course I would have given warning. I prize the goodwill I have built up.’ He looked at Kel again and sighed before turning to Raoul. ‘Since I know nothing more, I take myself off. I’m sure you will catch these brigands.’ He shook his head woefully. ‘There will be no trade for us here for some time. I shall have to find another market.’

The headman cursed and snapped, ‘Fair-weather friend, aren’t you, Greystreak? When we can do business, you and your people are in and out all the time. When it looks like we’ll be months restoring what we’ve lost, you’re on your way!’

The centaur raised his brows. ‘My friend, I too have females. Without gifts, they attack males.’ He offered his bare forearms for inspection: they were covered with old scars. Our females can be’ – he hesitated, looking at Kel once more – ‘overly spirited.’

She met his gaze levelly. I’ll show you how spirited human females are, you sideslipping sack of ooze, she thought.

Greystreak walked towards the gate, only to halt. Somehow Peachblossom and Raoul’s warhorse, Drum, had pulled free of their pickets. They stood between the centaur and the gate. Black Drum pawed idly at the ground, as casual as if he had stopped to graze in this bare spot. Peachblossom’s head was slightly lowered, his ears flat to his skull. He kept one eye on Greystreak.

The centaur reared to show the geldings his stallion parts, and hissed at them in his own language. Drum flicked one ear forward and the other back, all equine blandness. Peachblossom waited until Greystreak settled onto his fours, then struck, snakelike, his teeth coming together with an audible click as he missed. Greystreak scrambled to get out of range; he nearly fell.

But they’re geldings, Kel thought, flabbergasted. Geldings don’t face down stallions!

‘Get these slaves out of my way,’ snarled Greystreak.

‘That’s the interesting thing about having the Wildmage about.’ Raoul was relaxed and cheery. ‘Palace animals are changing. Soon most will work for us only if they want to. Some animals are further along, of course.’

More of the King’s Own mounts had freed themselves of the picket lines. They walked through the gate to stand behind Peachblossom and Drum, forming a barrier of horseflesh between Greystreak and escape.

‘I told my lord the other day that horses in particular are showing a smart streak,’ Flyndan added. ‘You’d best be careful, Chief Greystreak. Your own slaves might rebel.’

Greystreak glared at the humans, trembling with rage. ‘Tell them to move,’ he said, his polite mask in tatters. ‘You’ve corrupted them! No gelding defies a stallion, not in the history of horsekind!’

‘You don’t think history gets rewritten, sometimes?’ Flyndan enquired mildly.

‘I’ll ask them to step aside in a moment,’ Lord Raoul told the centaur. ‘There is one thing. I know you weren’t trying to avoid the issue – I’m sure it just slipped your mind – but under your treaty, you’re required to supply a third of your people to help capture these rogues. I know you’d have remembered in a moment. Our horses just saved you the extra steps.’

Greystreak’s fists clenched. Then he smiled, his mask back in place. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I was trying to decide who to send with you, and was preoccupied.’

The wagons from the palace arrived shortly before noon. Kel got to work ladling out soup in a mess tent. Raoul stood beside her to issue bread to the diners as they filed by. Only when everyone else had been served did they eat.

‘You won’t get a traditional squire’s education with me,’ he told her between mouthfuls of soup. ‘Serving refreshments in meetings, well, you’ll do that. It’s the best way for you to hear what’s said and who says it. I’ll want your impressions afterwards, so be sharp. But waiting on me hand and foot is plain silly. So’s caring for my horses in the field. For one thing, I like to do it. For another, you’ll be too busy. Tend to your own mounts first.’

Kel nodded. After she swallowed a mouthful, she asked, ‘Why Rider Groups, my lord? Aren’t there enough of us?’ He had led all one hundred warriors of Third Company into the forest that morning, not counting the servingmen.

‘A different tool for a different job,’ explained Raoul. Flyndan, seated across from them, made a face and nodded. ‘We’re conspicuous, in our blues with the pretty silver mail and all,’ Raoul continued. ‘Our horses are big – good for open ground, slow over broken terrain and forest. Third Company does the main sweep, talking to other villages and making noise. The Rider Groups scout on our left and right flanks – our sides. Their little ponies will cover rocky terrain, marshes, and so on. The enemy will be on the move. Once we know where they are, we’ll send half the company around to their rear, to set up a trap. Then we drive ’em into it.’

‘We’ve done it before,’ Dom told Kel. He sat with Flyndan, polishing his empty bowl with a crust of bread. The smile he directed at Kel made her heart turn over, just as Neal’s smile did. ‘We clank around, make a lot of fuss, let the bandits think they’ll always be two steps ahead. Then we close the net and haul them off to royal justice.’

‘They’ll have to sing a sweet song to get out of a hanging,’ Raoul said grimly, picking up his empty dishes.

Kel shuddered: she hated hangings. No matter what the crime was, she saw no malice in those hooded and bound silhouettes dangling against the sky. Worse, to her mind, was the thought that the condemned knew they were to die, that a day and time had been set, that strangers planned each step of their killing.

Flyndan misunderstood her shudder. ‘That’s right. It’s not glamour and glory. It’s hard, mud-slogging work. If you wanted it easy, you should have taken a desk knight.’

‘Stop it, Flyn,’ Raoul said, his voice firm. ‘See her in action before you judge.’

‘I know, she rallied those lads while we handled the spidren nest. You’d think she’d be over this warrior thing by now.’ Flyndan carried his dishes away.

‘Kel?’ Raoul asked.

Kel was buttering a roll. She knew what he wanted. ‘I’ve heard it before, my lord.’

Raoul patted her shoulder and took his dishes to the scrubbers.

‘He’s not the easiest second in command, but he’s good at it.’ Kel looked up to meet Dom’s very blue eyes. ‘You need someone a bit stiff to offset my lord. He’s too easygoing, sometimes. Flyn will let up, once he sees this isn’t a hobby for you.’

Kel shrugged. ‘I don’t need to be liked, Dom. I just need to work.’

When she rose with her dishes, he did as well. ‘And you’ve a knack for it. I heard what you did with the spidrens, your first year. And then with the hill bandits, your second summer.’

Kel glanced up at Dom, startled. ‘How did you know about that?’ She handed her bowl, plate, and cup to the dishwashers. One of them was Qasim. He smiled at Kel and Dom, and meekly bore a scolding from the village woman beside him, who said it took more than a swipe with a cloth to get a bowl clean.

‘How did I know?’ Dom asked, and chuckled. ‘My cousin the Meathead, remember? He wrote about both in great detail. I feel sorry for him these days, though.’

‘But he’s got the Lioness for knight-master!’ protested Kel.

Dom grinned down at her. ‘You think that’s fun? Maybe we’re not talking about the same Lioness. The one I know rides with us a lot – my lord’s one of her best friends. She’s the one with the temper. And if Neal’s learned to keep his opinions to himself, it’ll be more than any of us were ever able to teach him.’

Kel started to argue, and changed her mind. Dom was certainly right about Neal.

‘Trust me,’ Dom said, resting a hand on Kel’s shoulder, ‘I bet he wishes right now you had his place!’ He went to help some men carry a heavy beam down the street.

Kel resisted the temptation to rub the spot where Dom’s hand had rested. She needed to find work. Was she some kind of fickle monster, that Dom’s smile and touch could make her giddier than Neal’s had? Was she one of those females who always had to moon over a man? Did other girls’ emotions flop every which way? Lalasa had never mentioned it, if hers did, and she was quite good at explaining such things.

‘That’s my doll.’

Kel looked down. A small girl stared up at her with accusing brown eyes. She was streaked with mud and soot; there were charred places on her skirt, but there was nothing afraid or weary in those eyes.

‘I looked and looked and looked. I thought Gavan stole it because he knew I would cry. She’s my favourite.’

Kel had forgotten the doll she had cleaned and thrust into her belt. Now she gave it to its owner, who informed Kel that ‘Mama needs help lifting.’

‘Take me to your mother, then,’ Kel said.

The girl’s home was a shambles. Soot streaked the walls above the windows. Men and boys were on the roof, tearing off burned thatch as they searched for hidden fires. A figure the size of an infant lay in front of the house, covered with a cloth square.

‘That’s my brother,’ the girl said, her face stony. ‘We were running across the street. The house was on fire, and men were shooting arrows, and one hit him. He died.’

She led Kel into the house. A woman whose eyes were red and puffy from weeping struggled to right an overturned table. A toddler clutched her skirt. Kel got to work with the table while her guide took charge of the toddler. The young mother was happy for the assistance, and asked nothing of Kel past her name.

They had set the room in order and put the beds out to air when Kel heard someone yell for her. She apologized to the family and ran out, to find Lerant in the street.

‘What have you been doing, rolling in muck?’ he demanded scornfully, looking down his short nose at her. ‘Well, never mind. The Rider Groups are here, and the centaurs, the ones who are going to help search. They’re in a tent outside the main gate. My lord wants you to wait on them. The wine service is in the bags with the blue rawhide ties, with the packhorses. There’s two small kegs of wine in general supplies.’ He trotted away, not giving Kel time to reply.

She drew a bucket of water from a nearby well and poured it over her head to rinse off most of the dirt. Then she went to find the supplies outside the stockade.

The packs lay on the ground. Raoul’s personal ones had his crest pressed into the leather. Those with blue rawhide ties lay beside them. She had gone through one and was opening the second when a man shouted, ‘Hey! You! What are you after, grubbing in the captain’s things? Get out of there!’

A servingman ran over to grab Kel’s arm. ‘You think you can steal whatever you like, is that it? Well—’

‘Hold it, Noack,’ someone interrupted. It was the burly Sergeant Osbern. ‘What’s this noise? They can hear you at the council tent.’

‘He was in Captain Flyndan’s bags, and I’m not to squawk?’ the man Noack demanded.

‘Squire Keladry?’ Osbern enquired. Kel nodded.

‘Squire?’ cried the testy Noack. ‘Squire or no—’

Osbern raised his eyebrows. Noack went silent and let go of Kel.

‘I was told my lord’s wine service was here, and that I should bring it and the wine to the council tent,’ Kel said evenly. ‘I didn’t know those were Captain Flyndan’s bags.’

‘Who told you?’ the sergeant enquired.

Obviously Lerant was having fun at her expense, but she would keep that to herself. ‘One of the men, Sergeant,’ she replied. ‘I don’t know the names yet.’

Osbern pursed his lips. ‘Too bad, because I would have a thing or two to say to that man,’ he told Kel, his voice dry. ‘It isn’t just the captain’s bags, Squire Keladry. My lord doesn’t drink spirits, and he doesn’t serve them. He says he had a problem as a young man, so he doesn’t care to have liquor about. Captain Flyndan likes a glass or two. He serves it in his tent, but only when my lord isn’t there. A water service will do today.’

Kel nodded and found the pitcher, tray, and cups in Raoul’s general supplies. The company mages had declared the town’s wells to be clean, with no sickness in them. Kel used the well nearest the gate to fill her cups and pitcher, then carefully took the whole into the council tent.

Its sides were raised to accommodate five centaurs, who stood with the humans around a large table on which maps had been placed. These were younger than Greystreak, and looked to be in their twenties and thirties, though with centaurs it was hard to tell. Their youth lasted for two centuries; like other immortals, they never aged past mature adulthood. Unless an immortal was killed by accident or in a fight, she or he might live forever.

There were four human newcomers in plain white shirts, brown tunics and trousers, and riding boots. They wore the emblem of the Queen’s Riders, a crimson horse rearing on a bronze-coloured field, circled by a ring. One Rider wore a crimson ring around his badge, the sign of a Rider Group commander. Two wore a crimson ring with a thin black stripe in the middle: they were second in command. The Riders had a looser command structure and did not follow traditional military rankings.

The fourth Rider was a woman with golden brown skin and straight black hair. She was five inches shorter than Kel, with a short nose, firm mouth, and level black eyes. She was stocky and muscular. Her hair, braided tightly back from her face, framed high cheekbones and a square chin. The ring around her Rider insignia was gold.

Kel blinked, surprised. As she set cups before the guests, she eyed the Commander of the Queen’s Riders. Buriram Tourakom – Buri, as she was known – was as famed as Lord Raoul or the Lioness. She’d been made full commander during the Immortals War, when Queen Thayet, the previous commander, had seen she was too busy as queen to serve the force she had created. Buri had been Thayet’s guard before she was queen; she had been co-commander since the Riders’ creation, and had done most of the everyday work in the company. She was a ferocious fighter, armed or unarmed. No one tangled with her, given a choice. When Kel placed a cup before her, Buri murmured her thanks.

Once everyone was served, Kel stood at ease behind Raoul and listened. These centaurs, three females and two males, were very different from Greystreak. They were eager for the hunt and the fight to come.

The meeting ended late. Kel fought yawns as she followed Raoul to the inn where he, Buri, and Flyndan had been given rooms. While the inn was largely intact, the scent of smoke filled it from cellar to garret. Kel didn’t care; neither did the others, she suspected. The men and Buri went to their rooms immediately. As Raoul’s squire Kel opened her bedroll in front of his door. The sparrows protested this odd way to sleep, but found places around Jump. Kel was pulling off her boots when someone down the hall whispered, ‘Pst!’

She looked up, squinting. The wall lamp was nearly out of oil; its flame barely cast any light.

‘Pst!’

Kel unsheathed her sword and walked towards the noise, stockinged feet silent on the wooden boards. If she had to go out of sight of Raoul’s door, she would wake him. This could be an attempt to draw her off, an attempt on his life.

The attempt was only Lerant, standing at the top of the stairs. ‘What do you want?’ Kel demanded, in no mood to be polite. She wanted to sleep.

He glared at her. Kel turned to go back to her bed. ‘No, wait!’ he whispered.

She turned back as she considered smacking him with the flat of her sword to teach him respect. Such thoughts only told her how bone-tired she was. Normally the idea would never occur to her.

‘Why didn’t you tell?’ Lerant kept his voice low.

‘Tell what?’ she asked, her own voice barely audible.

‘Come on. I heard Osbern set you straight. You didn’t tell him who steered you to the packs, or he’d’ve had me up before Flyn.’

‘You couldn’t ask in the morning?’ she demanded, cross.

‘I want to know now!’

Kel sighed. ‘I don’t tell on people,’ she said. ‘Good night.’ She walked back down the hall, sheathed her sword, and crawled into bed.

CHAPTER 4
OWLSHOLLOW

If the Haresfield renegades were new to forest robbery, the centaurs and other humans with the band were not. Lord Wyldon had taught the pages much about tracking, but the next two weeks saw Kel’s education expand ferociously. Whenever the robbers could mask their trail by walking in streams and over rocks, they did. It reached the point where the hunters moaned at a glimpse of water or a patch of stone. The robbers often split into five or six groups to confuse their trackers.

The centaurs used magic to hide their passage and their appearance in scrying crystals. They buried or hid loot so it wouldn’t slow them down. The Riders found two caches; Dom’s squad found a third. Everyone knew more was hidden away, because the bandits attacked every village they could, no matter how slim the pickings. In one village they sold loot from other raids, taking it back with everything else of value when they struck that night.

Clean clothes became a delirium dream. Kel washed hers cold and wore them wet, thanking the gods she didn’t get sick easily. She learned why Raoul had said she would do few of the things that squires normally did for knights. She barely had the strength to care for their mounts and weapons. Waiting on him as he ate and putting out his clothes for the morning would be ridiculous.

On the ninth day they ran out of the lotion that repelled insects. Lord Raoul growled under his breath and sent a party to the palace for supplies, for Riders and centaurs as well as Third Company.

By and large Kel thought the centaurs who hunted with them were decent people. They worked hard and never complained.

‘Rogues make us look bad,’ Iriseyes, their female leader, told Dom, Qasim, and Kel one night as they gnawed stale flatbread. ‘Enough two-leggers call us animals as is, without this crowd making it worse. We told Greystreak he ought to cull Maresgift, Jealousani, Edkedy, and their crowd, but he wouldn’t do it. I suppose it’s hard to cull your own brother.’

‘Cull?’ Dom asked.

‘Kill ’em,’ Iriseyes said. ‘Herdmasters like Greystreak can do it. You don’t want bad blood in the herd, particularly not in the slaves. It ruins the slaves, so you have to get rid of them, too. That’s probably what Greystreak’s doing now, culling the slaves that bred with that crowd.’

Kel got up abruptly and walked away. Killing horses because they’d been mounted by wicked centaurs was obscene, she thought, hands shaking as she washed her dishes. It was as obscene as babies’ being shot as their families ran from danger.

That was the eleventh night. The next morning the party with fresh supplies found them. Clean garments and insect repellant gave everyone, including Kel, a more cheerful outlook. She could even talk to the centaurs, though she had to banish the word ‘cull’ from her mind when she did.

On their fifteenth night they got a piece of luck: Osbern’s squad picked up Macorm, a Haresfield renegade. The young man was filthy and afraid. A bite on his arm was infected. He was bound hand and foot, wounded arm or no. Osbern told Raoul it was to protect Macorm as much as hold him: Osbern’s men had not liked what they saw in Haresfield. They knew Macorm had been one of the two who had opened the gate.

‘It wasn’t what I imagined, my lord,’ the prisoner told Raoul. ‘There was no feasting or pretty girls or wine. Just take and run, and run. Gavan likes it, but he likes killing, too.’ A tear ran down his face, drawing a clean track in the dirt. ‘All I did was ask to go home. I swore I’d never tell, but they didn’t believe me. They said they’d cull me at sunset for the Mares with Bloody Teeth—’

‘Our goddesses of vengeance,’ explained Iriseyes. She and two other centaurs were listening to Macorm’s tale.

‘They said they’d eat my heart. I believed them. They tied me up, but I got away.’ More tears followed the first.

‘We’ll just shackle you, then,’ Raoul said. ‘To keep you from repeating the experiment.’

‘I know where they’re bound next,’ Macorm told him, desperate. ‘They thought I ran straight off, but I went up a tree. They never thought I’d stay close, let alone right on top of them, and I hid my scent with pine sap. I heard them talking after the searchers went out. For the king’s mercy I’ll tell you what they said.’

‘If we catch them, we’ll speak to the king,’ Raoul said after a moment’s thought. ‘If you lie – if it’s a trap—’

‘Gods, no!’ Macorm began to weep in earnest.

Raoul and Flyndan traded looks. Flyn raised his brows; Lord Raoul nodded. ‘Time to call the Riders in,’ Flyn said with a thin smile. ‘Buri would never forgive us for leaving her out of the party.’

‘I’d never forgive myself if she were left out,’ Raoul told his second. ‘Kel, get Noack up here with his tools,’ Raoul told her. ‘I want shackles on this lad. If you’re good, we’ll feed you,’ he told Macorm. To Kel he added, ‘We’ll need Emmet of Fenrigh.’ He’d named one of the men with a healing Gift. ‘He’s out of—’

‘Aiden’s squad,’ Kel said.

Raoul grinned. ‘You learn fast. Under thankless conditions, I might add. Off you go.’

She went to find the men he’d requested.

The Rider Group under Commander Buri came just after sunset; the second Group arrived soon after. Maps were produced, laid flat, and anchored by stones and cups of steaming tea. Kel was kept busy pouring tea and bringing food for the hungry Rider leaders. She even served Macorm, chained to the tent pole for this conversation. Raoul had asked her to do it, though what she wanted to do was take him to Haresfield and rub his nose in the streets filled with the dead, like a bad puppy. Two things stopped her: she was on duty, which meant keeping her feelings to herself, and she knew that Haresfield had surely finished burying the dead by now.

From what she had overheard, a village called Owlshollow was to be the next target. A human bandit had heard the son of that village’s biggest fur merchant, apprenticed to a tanner in another town, talking drunkenly. The son complained that the old man wouldn’t die and let his son inherit while he was young enough to enjoy it. He was too miserly to buy a horse for his heir to ride. He mistrusted fast-talking Corus goldsmiths and their banks, and hoarded the coin he took from each year’s fur harvest. Probably his cronies did the same: they all lived as meanly as they could, and whined about the foolish young.

That was enough for Maresgift’s bandits. They would descend on Owlshollow and clean it out. If necessary, they would torture the fur merchants into revealing where they’d hidden their gold.

Macorm was taken away under guard after he finished. Once he was out of earshot, the blond, blue-eyed Evin Larse, in command of the second Rider Group, produced a crystal from his sleeve. It glowed a bright, steady gold. ‘It would have turned black if he’d lied outright, grey if he’d lied even a bit.’

‘You’re sure it works?’ Flyn asked. ‘I don’t trust bought magic. I like to see it worked right in front of me.’

‘It works,’ said Larse. ‘It ought to. I paid enough.’

‘We did reimburse you,’ Buri pointed out.

‘Half,’ retorted Evin. ‘At the rate I use it for the Riders, they ought to pay me double.’

‘He only bought it to find out if the ladies he courts have husbands,’ Buri’s second in command put in.

There was a chuckle from the people in the circle around the maps. The air emptied of the tension that had filled it while Macorm was still present.

‘Here’s their last known position.’ Buri marked the place on the map with a blunt brown finger. ‘If they’re bound for Owlshollow, travelling at …’

The hunters broke into a flurry of talk, figuring the bandits’ speed based on what was known. Suddenly the mud-streaked, hollow-eyed, grim bloodhounds had become a lively group of humans and immortals again. The end of their chase was in view.

They calculated the robbers’ present location, leaving a margin for error. Raoul sent Kel for a large leather tube packed with his things. When she brought it, he pulled off the cap on one end and slid out a heavy roll of sheets. He looked through them, checking marks on the corners until he found the one he sought, then drew out the sheet and opened it on their worktable. It showed part of the Royal Forest, the district that contained Owlshollow.

Reaching into his shirt, Raoul produced a gold key on a chain and pulled it over his head. Using the key, he drew a circle around the dot labelled Owlshollow. It included the bandits’ last known location. When he closed the circle, the map vanished. They were looking down at real terrain, forested hills, streams and rivers, marshes. Owlshollow appeared as a small town at the junction of two roads and a river. It was situated on rocky bluffs, protected on two sides from raiders who came by water.

‘Show-off,’ murmured Buri. ‘Bought magic still isn’t as good as what you do yourself.’

‘As if you did any,’ retorted Raoul.

Iriseyes ran her fingertip from the bandits’ last known camp, where Macorm had left them, to Owlshollow. ‘Well, well,’ the centaur said, showing teeth in a predator’s grin. ‘Look at this.’

‘The river blocks them outside the town,’ said Flyn.

‘Marsh blocks the southern escapes,’ Buri said, her eyes glittering. ‘The stone ridge boxes them in on the north.’

‘I know this town,’ Volorin said. He wore his dark hair long and braided, with ivory beads carved like skulls at the ends of the braids. ‘No one can get through the marsh, and that ridge is a hard climb, not easy for centaurs. If we spread out in an arc …’ He sketched the arc on the map with his finger.

‘We’ll have them,’ said Evin Larse.

‘We split up,’ said Raoul. ‘Our hunter force takes position at Owlshollow, where they’ll seal off the river escape routes. The rest of us will form a crescent of hounds, and drive our playmates to the hunters.’ He looked around at the others; all were nodding.

The Rider Groups, the centaurs, and half of Third Company were given places along the crescent. Raoul would command the fifty men of the Own in the field. Flyndan and the rest of Third Company would make a fast ride at dawn, slipping far around the bandits to reach Owlshollow. The robbers would never realize the trap was set until it closed.

As everyone prepared to go, Raoul said, ‘Kel, you’ll report to Captain Flyndan and his sergeants.’

Kel and Flyn stared at him. Flyn protested, ‘She’s your squire, my lord—’

Raoul shook his head. ‘I want her with you.’

One of the first lessons pages learned was never to question a knight-master’s command. One pleading look was all Kel allowed herself before she began to clean off the table. By the time she was done, everyone had gone to their beds. She went in search of hers.

Raoul crouched between his tent and Kel’s, giving Jump a thorough scratch. ‘Walk with me,’ he told her, rising to his feet. They strolled across the large clearing that held their camp.

Raoul finally stopped to lean against a massive oak. ‘You want to know why I’m sending you with Flyn.’

‘Sir, I’m to obey without question,’ Kel pointed out, though she did want to know.

‘That’s fine if you’re to be a lone knight – you have to figure out things yourself,’ he said quietly. ‘But if you get extra duties someday – like command – you should know why you’re asked to do some things, particularly those that aren’t part of regular training.

‘Putting you with Flyn at Owlshollow accomplishes two goals,’ he explained. ‘You’ll deal with his not liking you. He’ll probably give you scut work. You need to show you’ll do your part no matter what. Plenty of nobles won’t take orders from a commoner, and they baulk when there’s no potential for glory. You need to show that you’ll do what’s needed, not just for me, but for others. And I’ll see how Flyn manages you, if you change his thinking at all. I know you want to be among the hounds, but trust me, this is important.’

Kel nodded. She understood his reasoning, though she hated the assignment. And she still couldn’t argue, because proper squires didn’t.

Raoul clasped her shoulder lightly and let go. ‘There will be other chases,’ he said. ‘Now get some sleep.’

Owlshollow was larger than Haresfield, and better fortified, with a double stockade wall to shield it. Late that first morning within the walls Flyn called a meeting with the men of the Own and the town’s officials. The squads would wear farmers’ clothes over their mail and work in the fields, so anyone who scouted would think all was normal. Flyn gave each squad a position, then looked at the townsmen. ‘Did we forget anything?’ he asked. ‘Any side trail, any hole that might let a few escape?’

The chief herdsman was in a whispered argument with the son who had accompanied him. Finally he sighed and looked at Flyn. ‘My son Bernin reminds me of the old game track, b’tween the bluffs an’ the marsh. It’s overgrown – I don’t know how bandits from outside would know of’t, or see’t to escape.’

‘If I’ve learned nothing else in my years of service, master herdsman, it’s that the unexpected always happens,’ replied Flyn. ‘I would hate for even a single louse to escape.’ He looked around until his eyes found Kel. ‘Have your son show this track to Squire Keladry. That will be her post when things warm up.’

Kel left with the shepherd lad Bernin, swallowing disappointment again. She’d hoped that Flyndan would relent and let her take part in the main fight. There’s a waste of hope, she thought bitterly.

As Bernin led her through the gates, he kept peering at her. Finally, as they trudged around the outermost wall, he asked, ‘I’n’t Keladry a girl’s name?’

Bernin was right. The trail was clearly still used, by animals if not people. Someone desperate could take it to reach the river. A bridge two hundred yards downstream would provide a clean getaway if a fugitive got that far.

She wasn’t sure she could hold it alone, so she asked Captain Flyndan to look. He had done so, then told Kel, ‘Just be ready to take anyone who actually makes it here. I doubt they will.’

They waited for the rest of that day and through the next. Word finally came that Maresgift’s band had camped just a few hours’ ride from Owlshollow. Raoul’s hound forces in the forest would start their push at dawn. Maresgift would have two choices: to stand and fight, or to run for Owlshollow – and Flyndan.

The next morning the raiders came. Lonely at her post on the bluff, Kel heard the battle chorus: horn calls, yells, the clang of metal, the scream of horses. It would be a desperate fight in the fields. The bandits knew that capture meant hanging.

It was maddening to guess how it was going from sounds blown to her through the tangled briars that hid the trailhead above. She stood on a broad ledge halfway between the town and the River Bonnett. It was reachable only by the track down from the heights or up from the river. Here she had flat dirt and room to fight. The river’s edge was all tumbled stones, where it would be too easy to break an ankle.

Kel got a coil of thin, strong rope and took it down the trail from the top of the bluff. Using spikes to anchor it, she stretched the rope at knee height across the trail, six feet above her guard post. It would bring any fugitives tumbling onto the ledge, where she would be ready for them.

She kept her fidgets to the occasional walk to the edge of her post, where she could look at the swift, cold Bonnett thirty feet below. When she caught herself at it, she felt sheepish. You act like the edge is going to creep up on you till you fall, she told herself sternly. Now stop it!

The morning she had climbed down the frail, rusted outer stair on Balor’s Needle had marked the end of her fear of heights, though she still disliked them. Looking at the Bonnett from her ledge was like wiggling a loose tooth with her tongue – it was silly, but she had to remind herself that she would no longer freeze in panic at the sight of a drop. She also wanted to be sure her body would remember that a cliff lay only ten feet behind her.

The battle sounds grew louder. She smelled smoke: had the bandits set the fields on fire? If she climbed to the top, she might see. Her orders were to keep quiet and mind her post. She ought to be like Jump. He crouched at her feet with the patience of the born hunter, ready for game to be flushed. The sparrows were among the briars above, preening, sunning, and doing whatever birds did when bored.

Suddenly they zipped down the bluffs past Kel, screeching the alarm. Gravel rattled down ahead of whoever was on the trail. Kel settled her hold on her glaive and checked her stance. She heard scrambling feet …

Was that a child crying?

Someone shrieked. Stones flew as the fugitive hit Kel’s rope hard enough to rip it from its anchors. A centaur skidded onto the ledge half on his side, tangled in her rope, brandishing a short, heavy cutlass.

Kel, hidden by a large boulder where the trail met her ledge, lunged into the open, driving her glaive down. She halted her thrust a bare inch from a squalling girl tied to the centaur’s back by crossed lengths of rope. A cool part of her mind noted that this was why no one had shot the centaur: they had feared to kill the child.

The centaur hacked at Kel with his cutlass as he wallowed, fighting to get to his feet. Kel’s moment of panic – had she cut the girl? – ended. She jerked away from the sweep of the enemy’s blade and cut the rope that held the child. ‘Jump!’ she yelled. The dog leaped over the fallen immortal, seized the child’s gown in his powerful jaws, and dragged her free.

‘Get her out of here!’ Kel ordered him. The centaur heaved himself to his feet and backed against the stone, cursing breathlessly. She ignored what he said: she had one eye on Jump, who towed the shrieking child back up the path, and one eye on the centaur’s blade.

The immortal sidled, trying to find room for his hindquarters as he fumbled to yank a saddlebag over his head. He tossed it to one side, out of the way. Its contents thrashed and squealed like a large, frightened animal.

The centaur chopped at Kel, trying to draw her away from the opening where the trail continued down to the river. Kel blocked his cutlass, keeping herself between him and escape. There was nowhere for him to go on her right, unless he were mad enough to try that thirty-foot leap to the foaming, rock-studded river. If he ran that way, she half-thought she’d let him go. It would be a quicker end than hanging.

The centaur groped at a heavy leather belt around his waist with his free hand. He yanked out a throwing-axe.

My luck, thought Kel. He comes the way no one’s supposed to come, and he can use weapons in both hands.

He hurled the axe. Kel dodged left, still between him and escape, and stepped in with a long slash across his middle. He blocked it with his cutlass and hacked down at Kel’s head. She caught the blade on her weapon’s hard teak staff, angled the glaive, and rammed the iron-shod butt straight into the spot where the creature’s human and horse parts joined.

The centaur went dead white, uttering a gasping whine. His eyes rolled back in his head. Kel swung the glaive’s blade around, placing it where the centaur’s jaw met his neck. She pressed until a drop of blood ran down the razor edge.

‘Yield for the Crown’s mercy,’ she ordered.

Even as he snarled a reply the centaur kicked out with his forelegs, ramming Kel back. Her right side was on fire; her left thigh hurt so fiercely she thought she might faint. Instead she clung to her glaive and staggered to her feet.

The immortal charged, cutlass raised, and nearly speared himself on Kel’s blade. Kel silently thanked the Yamani armsmistress who had bruised her all over to teach her one simple rule: never drop the weapon.

Pain made her weak – she tried to ignore it. Her main attention, her serious attention, was on the foe.

He spun and kicked, his back hooves showering her with rock and dust. Kel shut her eyes just in time. She whipped her glaive in a sideways figure-eight cut to keep him back until she could see. Warm blood trickled down her cheek where a stone had cut her. The sparrows shrieked. Kel knew they were at the centaur’s face. Terrified he might kill them, she opened her eyes. The creature roared his fury, shielding his face against the birds, forgetting his cutlass as he spun, wildly hunting for an escape route.

Kel lunged, sinking the eighteen-inch blade deep below the centaur’s waist and yanking up. His belt dropped, cut in two; his forelegs buckled. Kel pulled her glaive free as her foe went down, clutching his belly. Blood spilled around his hands. From the stink, she knew she’d hit his human intestines.

He would die even if a healer could be found. No healer could save anyone from a belly cut. The foulness in the intestines spread, infecting all it touched. Kel gulped hard and cut the centaur’s throat, a mercy stroke. Blood sprayed, spattering her with drops that burned. He was dead when she lowered her glaive. His eyes never left hers. Even after he died, they were still wide, still fixed on this human who had brought him down.

Kel braced her glaive on the ground and hung onto it, swaying, her ribs and leg on fire. Her stomach was in full revolt over the mess she had made of the centaur – Kel swallowed rapidly until she defeated the urge to vomit. She prayed that no more fugitives came her way. She wouldn’t be able to stop them.

‘Jump?’ she called softly, not wanting to attract attention from the battlefield above. ‘Jump, where are you?’

She heard a scrambling noise on the trail, and a human whimper. The dog walked onto Kel’s ledge with the rescued toddler’s wrist held gently in his teeth.

‘Guard the path,’ Kel ordered. ‘Don’t let anyone take us by surprise.’ Jump wagged his tail, freed his charge, and trotted back the way he had come. The little girl ran over and clutched Kel’s injured leg. Pressing her face into Kel’s leather breeches, she began to cry.

Pain made Kel turn grey; sweat rolled down her cheeks. The girl clung to Kel’s bad leg with all of her strength, sending white-hot bolts of agony shooting up Kel’s thigh. Using the glaive for support, she gently prised the toddler’s arms open and lowered herself onto a stone. Once down, she pulled off her tunic and wrapped it around the girl, listening to the sounds from above. Either the battle was moving away or it had ended: she heard a handful of horn calls, and no clanging metal at all.

‘We’ll be fine,’ Kel told her companion. The girl curled up on the ground, sucking her thumb, with Kel’s tunic for a blanket. She was asleep almost instantly. For a moment Kel looked at her own thumbs, thinking it might be reassuring to do the same. But centaur blood was on her hands. Also, the thought of the teasing she would get if anyone found her doing it kept her from tucking her thumb into her mouth.

A shrill, quavering shriek reminded her of the centaur’s leather pack. Looking at it, she saw the pack thrash. Something was alive in there. Kel carefully got to her feet, moving like an old lady. Using her glaive for a crutch, she hobbled over until she could grab the pack.

‘Calm down,’ she told the occupant, lurching back to her seat. ‘It’s all over.’ Settling the pack on her lap, she opened the buckles that held it shut and thrust a hand inside. Later she would wonder where she had misplaced her common sense. She had known too many animals in her life to grope blindly for one. All she could think was that pain and exhaustion had betrayed her this once.

The creature in the pack took exception to her hand. It clamped a hard, sharp beak on the tender web between Kel’s thumb and index finger. Kel yanked her arm free. The creature hung on, emerging with Kel’s hand. It was an orangey-brown bird, its feathers caked with dirt and grease. Blood welled around its beak as it held onto Kel. She didn’t want to hurt the thing, but she did want it to let her go!

Kel shook her hand, to no effect. She tried to press the hinges of its beak to open it. Catlike paws armed with sharp talons wrapped around her captive wrist, gouging deep scratches where they found flesh. She pressed harder on the hinges of that murderous beak until it popped open. Kel yanked her hand free.

The creature leaped free of the pack to wrap fore-and hind paws around Kel’s mail-covered arm. Kel grabbed its curved, yellow beak with one hand to keep it shut. She yanked her captive arm free of the creature, pressed it onto her lap, and wrapped the leather pack around it to neutralize the thing. Only when she was certain it couldn’t free itself did she pick it up to look it in the eyes. They were the hot orange of molten copper. She’d never heard of an animal with copper eyes.

The creature hissed. Its body, paws, and tail were all rather feline, except for the feather covering. The head, beak, and wings looked eagle-like, though she wasn’t sure. Unlike most nobles, Kel didn’t like falconry and had never tried to learn it.

‘Cat paws, cat tail, eagle …’ she murmured, then stopped as the hair stood up on the back of her neck. ‘Oh, no,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, no, no, no.’

The baby griffin stretched out its head and grabbed a lock of her hair. She yelped as it yanked, and dragged her hair free before stuffing the griffin into its pack. The small immortal protested its renewed captivity at the top of its lungs. Somehow the little girl at Kel’s feet slept on.

Kel tried to think as she wound a handkerchief around the still-bleeding wound between her thumb and forefinger. Griffins were protected by law, but that didn’t stop poachers. The traffic in both griffin parts and live griffins was deadly, but not because of the law. If a griffin’s parents smelled their offspring on a stranger, even years afterwards, they would kill the person. Whatever made up the scent, it could not be washed off. Mages weren’t even sure the parents detected an actual smell. The fact that it stayed for years seemed to indicate the scent was magical rather than actual. It didn’t apply to those who handled claws or feathers, only to those who had held an infant griffin. This one’s parents would have to be found, and someone would have to explain to them what happened before they ripped her to pieces.

Kel put her head in her hands. She straightened instantly as pain stabbed her ribs. Not now, she thought, despairing. I don’t need this now.

CHAPTER 5
THE GRIFFIN

Kel sat bolt upright with a gasp. In her dream the centaur had come alive again, scaring her out of sleep.

She was in the dark, cased with sun-dried cotton that carried a fishy scent. She was not hot, sweating, dirty, or in pain. Now she remembered: they had lifted her up the hill on a loading platform and brought her to a makeshift hospital. She’d warned them about the griffin before someone else could touch it. A healer had told her she’d broken bones, then given her something vile-tasting that put her to sleep. She was in the hospital now. It was night. A few oil lamps supplied the only light.

She was just wondering how the others had done when the healer brought her another dose of medicine. After that she slept well into daylight until she woke, alert and ravenous. Someone had put a metal cage beside her cot. Inside it was the pouch, the griffin, a dish of water, and a dish of what smelled like fish scraps. If the immortal had eaten, she couldn’t tell.

They must have just stuck the pouch in the cage and let the griffin crawl out, she thought, yawning. She could see the small gate in the side closest to the dishes: whoever had fed the griffin and given it water could just change the dishes that way. If the griffin didn’t mind the cage, perhaps Kel could transport it that way until she found its parents. Her hands throbbed from the mauling they had got from those claws. Kel would rather not let it have any more of her blood, if she could help it.

A woman brought Kel a bowl of clear broth.

‘The bandits?’ Kel asked her, forgetting what she had been told when the others found her.

‘Captured, them that aren’t dead,’ the woman replied with grim satisfaction. ‘They’ll face the Crown’s justice soon enough.’

Kel nodded and finished her broth. Within a few moments of handing the bowl to the woman, she was asleep again.

It was nearly sunset when the baby griffin’s squall roused Kel. She peered at him over the edge of the cot. He was flapping half-opened wings, objecting to the cage. When he saw Kel, he peered up at her through the openings in the metal.

Kel flopped onto her back. I wanted that to be a dream, she thought.

Another woman brought Kel water and a bowl of noodles in broth. Kel was so hungry she nearly inhaled the food, looking around as she ate. She counted twenty beds, most filled with sleeping men. The two beside Kel held female Riders.

She was about to put her bowl on the floor when something small and wet struck her cheek. She wiped it off, then inspected it: a ragged bit of fish skin. With a frown Kel wiped it onto a napkin. She put the bowl next to her cot; when she straightened, something wet struck her eye. Kel removed it. More fish skin.

She looked into the metal cage. ‘Stop it,’ she told the griffin. She was impressed with the little thing’s aim. It must have taken innate skill or lots of practice …

Inspection of her blankets revealed pieces of scaled skin and fish bones in their wrinkles. Kel touched her pillow and the sheets around her head, to find more samples of the griffin’s target practice. She leaned over to glare at the creature.

A large, smelly scrap hit her squarely in the mouth. Kel picked it off with a grimace and dropped it into the cage. The griffin bowed its shoulders, lifted its head, opened its beak, then spread and fluttered its wings. Kel had raised young strays; she knew begging when she saw it.

‘Ridiculous,’ she told the griffin. ‘You’ve been feeding yourself from your dish. Keep on feeding yourself.’ She lay down with a thump. A gobbet of fish entrails landed in her ear. She sat bolt upright with a cry of disgust, wrenched off her blanket, and threw it over the griffin’s cage.

The griffin began to shriek. Even with the blanket to muffle it, the hall echoed. Seeing other patients sit up, Kel snatched the blanket off the cage.

The griffin opened its beak and fluttered its wings.

Kel lifted the cage onto her lap. ‘Little monster,’ she growled. She opened the grate and reached in for the dish. The griffin lunged and clamped its beak on the tip of her index finger. Kel bit her tongue to keep from waking anyone with a scream. She fought the griffin for possession of her finger. The moment she shook it off, the griffin assumed the begging position.

Kel glared at her charge. It was still filthy, shedding feathers, its keelbone stark against the skin of its chest. It was half starved. Keeping a watchful eye on it, she took a fish off the plate. The griffin opened its beak and tilted its head back. Kel let the fish drop. In three bites the prize was gone. Once again the griffin begged. Kel fed it two more fish without problems. When she fumbled getting the next fish out of the cage, the griffin hissed and swiped at her arm, leaving four deep scratches.

‘I guess you’ve had enough,’ Kel said grimly. She closed the cage and put it on the floor. The griffin began to scream again.

Five fish, a bitten finger, and three more scratches later, the griffin stopped begging. It closed its eyes and went to sleep in its cage. This time, when Kel put it on the floor, it didn’t protest.

She was still picking fish remains out of her bed when the nurses came to light the night lamps. With them came the shepherd’s boy, Bernin.

‘You look better,’ he told Kel frankly, parking his behind on a stool beside her cot. ‘You was green when they brung you up.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ Kel replied. ‘I felt green.’ Her ribs and leg were bruised, but the deep aches were gone. The vile liquid must have been a healing potion.

‘The mayor di’n’t even want you here, ’cause o’ that—’ Bernin pointed to the griffin. ‘My lord roared at ’im an’ the mayor changed his mind.’ He grinned so infectiously that Kel had to grin back.

‘I’d do what my lord said if he roared at me,’ she admitted.

‘Well, you got to, bein’ his squire, an’ all,’ he pointed out. ‘That little ’un you saved? The girl?’

‘Jump saved her,’ Kel said firmly. ‘I just distracted the centaur.’ Jump, asleep on the opposite side of her cot from the griffin, thumped the floor with his tail.

Bernin rolled his eyes at this city girl nitpicking. ‘Anyways, her folks is charcoal burners, caught in the woods by them bandits. They took a bunch of lone folk, them that on’y come into the walls for winter. Cowardly pukes.’ He spat on the floor, winning a disapproving glare from a healer. ‘But the little’s fam’ly wants to show you gratitude. They wanna know what they could do.’

Kel winced. She’d done nothing to be thanked for. Jump had saved the child. She’d simply killed a centaur and almost got killed herself, because she had forgotten he was part horse. Any thanks would only grind it in that it was a miracle any of them had survived.

‘If they want to give Jump a bone, or thank Captain Flyndan, who put me there, that’s fine,’ she told the boy, smothering a yawn. ‘I just did what I was told.’

‘Don’t you want to be thanked?’ Bernin asked, baffled. ‘I’n’t that what you go heroing for?’

‘No,’ replied Kel. Remembering her manners, she added, ‘Say I thank them for thinking of me.’

Bernin wandered off, shaking his head. He passed Raoul on his way out. Kel watched her knight-master walk along the rows of beds, talking with those who were awake. Hers was the last cot he reached.

For a moment he looked down at her, hands in his breeches pockets, shaking his head. ‘Young idiot,’ he said, amusement in his sloe-black eyes. ‘You forgot the forelegs, didn’t you?’

Kel smiled wryly. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘You’ll remember next time.’ He spotted Bernin’s stool and lowered himself onto it. It was so short that his knees were at the level of his chest. He straightened his legs with a sigh. ‘A pretty trap, though. The rope was a nice touch.’

‘I got lucky,’ Kel said, shamefaced. ‘If he’d fallen wrong, that child could’ve died. Or my friend, here.’ She nodded at the griffin’s cage.

‘You can “if” yourself to death, squire,’ he said, patting her shoulder. ‘I advise against it. You’re better off getting extra sleep. Once you and the others are up and about, we have to take these charmers to the magistrates for trial.’

He grinned as Kel made a face. ‘When people say a knight’s job is all glory, I laugh, and laugh, and laugh,’ he said. ‘Often I can stop laughing before they edge away and talk about soothing drinks. As for the griffin …’ He looked down at the cage and sighed. ‘I’m surprised he’s still in there. Griffins usually don’t put up with cages for long. We heard testimony from the robbers we captured. They knew about the griffin, of course – the centaur killed the pedlar who stole it from the parents. Did they teach you about griffin parents killing anyone who’s handled their young?’

Kel nodded.

‘Until we find them, I’m sure the Own can protect you long enough that we can explain things. And I’ve sent for Daine. She can search for this one’s family.’

Kel sighed with relief. She had thought she might have to leave Lord Raoul’s service and work in the palace until the griffin’s parents were found. ‘Then I can go on tending it, I suppose,’ she said, not looking forward to that beak and those claws.

Raoul grinned. ‘Think of it as a learning experience, Kel,’ he advised, eyes dancing with mischief. ‘I’d suggest you get a pair of heavy gloves like the falconers use.’ He got to his feet. ‘Now sleep. I expect you to be walking around in the morning.’

In her dream, Kel faced Joren of Stone Mountain, Vinson of Genlith, and Garvey of Runnerspring, the senior pages who were her greatest enemies in the palace. They had made her first two years as a page into a running battle with first Kel, who could not stand by while others were bullied, then with Kel and her friends. Vinson had even attacked Kel’s maid, Lalasa. Once they became squires, with knight-masters to answer to, Garvey and Vinson seemed to lose interest. Joren changed, too. He claimed to have seen the error of his ways and wanted to be friends.

Although she rarely saw them, Kel still dreamed of them, and they were still her foes. In this dream Joren – white-blond, blue-eyed, fair-skinned, the loveliest man Kel had ever seen – grabbed Kel’s left ear between his thumb and forefinger. Smiling, he pinched Kel’s ear hard, fingernails biting through cartilage to meet. Kel sat up with a yell. Her dream vision of the older squires vanished. The red-hot pain in her ear went on. She grabbed for it and caught a mass of feathers and claws that scored her hands. The griffin had got out of its cage, climbed onto Kel’s bed, and buried its beak in her ear.

She tugged at him, making the pain worse. She stopped, gasping, and fought to clear her mind. It was hard to do: the monster growled in its throat, distracting her, as did the complaints from the other patients.

Breathing slowly, trying to forget the pain and distractions, she found the hinges of its beak and pressed them. Her fingers slipped in her own blood. It took several tries until she could apply enough pressure to make the griffin let go. The moment it did, Kel wrapped both hands around it and stuffed it under her blankets, rolling it up in them briskly. She then grabbed the cage.

It fell apart in her fingers. Only a handful of metal strips, badly rusted, and a pile of rust flakes remained. The dishes that had held the griffin’s water and fish were whole – they were hard-fired clay.

‘Griffins don’t like cages,’ she muttered. ‘That’s not how I would put it.’

One of the nurses hurried in with a plate of fish. She thrust it at Kel; the moment Kel took it, the woman fled.

Kel got to her feet. Someone had laid fresh clothes on the stool next to her cot. Using her nightshirt as a protective tent, Kel dressed under it, muttering curses on griffins as she tried to keep blood off her clothes. When she shed her nightshirt, she found a healer standing there. The woman bore a tray that held swabs, a bowl of water, cloths, and a bottle of dark green fluid.

Kel peeled away enough blankets to free the griffin’s head while the rest of it stayed under wraps. As she fed it, the healer worked on Kel’s ear.

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-defence, 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, one-handedly 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 pedlar 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?

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