First Test (3 page)

Kel nodded and picked up a brush to groom the pony's round sides. "I know. I'll miss him all the same."

Anders leaned against a post. "Kel… "

She looked at him. Since the incident on the river the day before, she'd caught Anders watching her. She barely remembered him before their departure to the Islands, six years ago—he had already been a knight, handsome and distant in his armor, always riding somewhere. In the months since their return to Mindelan, she had come to like him. "Something the matter?" she asked.

Anders sighed. "Do you realize it's going to be hard? Maybe impossible? They'll make it tough. There's hazing, for one thing. I don't know when the custom started, but it's called 'earning your way.' It's just for the first-year pages. The senior ones make you run stupid little errands, like fetching gloves and picking up things that get knocked over. You have to do it. Otherwise it's the same as saying you don't have to do what the older pages did, as if you think you're better than they are. And older pages play tricks on the young ones, and some of them will pick fights. Stand up for yourself, or they'll make your life a misery."

"In the rules they sent, fighting isn't allowed."

"Of course it's forbidden. If you're caught, they punish you. That's expected. What you must never do is tattle on another page, or say who you fought with. That's expected, too. Tell them you fell down—that's what I always said. Otherwise no one will trust you. A boy told when I was a page. He finally left because no one would speak to him."

"But they'll punish me for fighting?"

"With chores, extra lessons, things like that. You take every punishment, whatever it's for, and keep quiet."

"Like the Yamanis," she said, brushing loose hairs from Chipper's coat. "You don't talk—you obey."

Anders nodded. "Just do what you're told. Don't complain. If you can't do it, say that you failed, not that you can't. No one can finish every task that's given. What your teachers don't want is excuses, or blaming someone else, or saying it's unfair. They know it's unfair. Do what you can, and take your punishment in silence."

Kel nodded. "I can do that, I think."

Anders chuckled. "That's the strange thing—I believe you can. But, Kel—"

Kel went to Chip's far side, looking at Anders over the pony's back. "What?"

The young man absently rubbed his stiff leg. "Kel, all these things you learned in the Islands."

"Yes?" she prodded when he fell silent again.

"You might want to keep them to yourself. Otherwise, the pages might think you believe you're better than they are. You don't want to be different, all right? At least, not any more different than you already are."

"Won't they want to learn new things?" she wanted to know. "I would."

"Not everyone's like you, Kel. Do what they teach you, no more. You'll save yourself heartache that way."

Kel smiled. "I'll try," she told him.

Anders straightened with a wince. "Don't be out here too long," he reminded her. "You're up before dawn."

Unlike normal dreams, in which time and places and people did strange things, this dream was completely true to Kel's memory. It began as she knelt before an altar and stared at the swords placed on it. The weapons were sheathed in pure gold rubbed as smooth and bright as glass. She was five years old again.

"They are the swords given to the children of the fire goddess, Yama," a lady-in-waiting beside Kel said, awe in her soft voice. "The short sword is the sword of law. Without it, we are only animals. The long sword is the sword of duty. It is the terrible sword, the killing sword." Her words struck a chord in Kel that left the little girl breathless. She liked the idea that duty was a killing sword. "Without duty," the lady continued, "duty to our lords, to our families, and to the law, we are less than animals."

Kel smelled burning wood. She looked around, curious. The large oil lamps that hung from the temple ceiling by thick cords smelled of perfume, not wood. Kel sniffed the air. She knew that fires were terrible on the Yamani Islands, where indoor walls were often paper screens and straw mats covered floors of polished wood.

The lady-in-waiting got to her feet.

The temple doors crashed open. There was Kel's mother, Ilane, her outer kimono flapping open, her thick pale hair falling out of its pins. In her hands she carried a staff capped with a broad, curved blade. Her blue-green eyes were huge in her bone-white face.

"Please excuse me," she told the lady-in-waiting, as calm and polite as any Yamani in danger, "but we must get out of here and find help. Pirates have attacked the cove and are within the palace."

There was a thunder of shod feet on polished wood floors. Swords and axes crashed through the paper screens that formed the wall behind the altar. Scanrans-men already covered in blood and grime—burst into the room, fighting their way clear of the screens and their wooden frames.

An arm wrapped tight around Kel's ribs, yanking her from her feet. The lady-in-waiting had scooped her up in one arm and the swords in the other. Faster than the raiders she ran to Ilane of Mindelan.

The lady tumbled to the ground. Kel slid out the door on her belly. Turning, too startled to cry, she saw the lady at her mother's feet. There was an arrow in the Yamani woman's back.

Ilane bent over the dead woman and took the swords. Hoisting them in one hand, she swung her weapon to her right and to her left. It sheared through the heavy cords that suspended five large oil lamps. They fell and shattered, spilling a flood of burning oil. It raced across the temple in the path of the raiders who were running toward them. When their feet began to burn, they halted, trying to put the fire out.

"Come on!" Kel's mother urged. "Hike up those skirts and run!"

Kel yanked her kimono up and fled with Ilane. They skidded and slipped over the polished floors in their Yamani sock-shoes, then turned down one corridor and another. Far down one passage they saw a new group of Scanrans. Kel and her mother ran around a corner. They tried another turning—it led to a dead end. They were trapped. The walls that now blocked them in on three sides were sturdy wood, too. They could have cut their way through paper ones.

Ilane turned. Scanrans armed with swords or axes blocked the way out.

Ilane thrust the gold swords into Kel's arms and pushed her into a corner, then stood before her. "Get down and be quiet!" she said, gripping her weapon in both hands. "I think I can hold them off with this."

Kel put the swords behind her and huddled. The men came at her mother, laughing and joking in Scanran. She peeked around the edge of her mother's kimono. At that moment Ilane swung the bladed staff—glaive, Kel remembered as it swung, they called it a glaive—in a wide side cut, slicing one pirate across the chest. Whipping it back to her left, she caught another of them in the throat. Blood struck Kel's face; even dreaming, she could smell it. Breathless, the sheathed swords poking into her back, she watched her mother lunge and retreat, using her skill and her longer weapon to hold the enemy off. Ilane killed a third and a fourth attacker before a squad of guardsmen raced around the corner to finish the rest.

When the pirates were dead, Kel's mother turned and reached a hand down to her. "Let's go find your father," she said quietly.

Kel grasped the hand, and let her mother pull her to her feet. Then Kel gathered up the golden swords that had been trusted to them.

When they faced their rescuers, the guards knelt as one. They bowed low to the woman and the girl, touching their heads to the bloody floor.

Kel woke, breathing fast, her eyes shining. Her heart raced; she trembled all over. The dream was not scary; it was exciting. She loved it. She loved that it had all been real.

I want to be like that, she told herself as she always did. I want to protect people. And I will. I will. I'll be a hero one day, just like Mama. Just like the Lioness.

Nobody will kill two kittens in front of me then.

Wyldon of Cavall nodded to Baron Piers, but his eyes were on Kel. He looked her over from top to toe, taking in every wrinkle and spot in her tunic and breeches and the fading bruise around her eye.

Kel met his gaze squarely. The training master was handsome, for all that he was completely bald on top. He wore what was left of his light brown hair cropped very short. A scar—so red and puffy, it had to be recent—ran from the corner of his eye across his right temple to dig a track through his hair to his ear. His right arm rested in a sling. His eyes were brown, his mouth wide; his chin was square with a hint of a cleft in it. His big hands were marked with scars. He dressed simply, in a pale blue tunic, a white shirt, and dark blue hose. She couldn't see his feet behind the big desk, but she suspected that his shoes were as sensible as the rest of him.

Even the Yamanis would say he's got too much stone in him, she thought, looking at the scuffed toes of her boots. He needs water to balance his nature. Peering through her lashes at the training master, she added, Lots of water. A century or two of it, maybe.

Wyldon drummed his fingers on his desktop. At last he smiled tightly. "Be seated, please, both of you."

Kel and her father obeyed.

Wyldon took his own seat. "Well. Keladry, is it?" She nodded. "You understand that you are here on sufferance. You have a year in which to prove that you can keep up with the boys. If you do not satisfy me on that count, you will go home."

He's never said that to any boy, Kel thought, glad that her face would not show her resentment. He shouldn't be saying it to me. She kept her voice polite as she answered, "Yes, my lord."

"You will get no special privileges or treatment, despite your sex." Wyldon's eyes were stony. "I will not tolerate flirtations. If there is a boy in your room, the door must be open. The same is true if you are in a boy's room. Should you disobey, you will be sent home immediately."

Kel met his eyes. "Yes, sir." She was talkative enough with her family, but not with outsiders. The chill that rose from Wyldon made her even quieter.

Piers shifted in his seat. "My daughter is only ten, Lord Wyldon. She's a bit young for that kind of thing."

"My experience with females is that they begin early," the training master said flatly. He ran a blunt-tipped finger down a piece of paper.

"It says here that you claim no magical Gift," stated Lord Wyldon. "Is that so?"

Kel nodded.

Lord Wyldon put down the paper and leaned forward, clasping his hands on his neatly ordered desk. "In your father's day, the royal household always dined in the banquet hall. Now our royal family dines privately for the most part. On great holidays and on special occasions, feasts are held with the sovereigns, nobles, and guests in attendance. The pages are required to serve at such banquets. Also, you are required to run errands for any lord or lady who asks.

"Has she a servant with her?" he asked Kel's father.

"No," Piers replied.

"Very well. Palace staff will tend her rooms. Have you any questions?" Wyldon asked Kel.

Yes, she wanted to say. Why won't you treat me like you treat the boys? Why can't you be fair?

She kept it to herself. Growing up in a diplomat's house, she had learned how to read people. A good look at Wyldon's square, stubborn face with its hard jaw had told Kel that words would mean nothing to this man. She would have to prove to him that she was as good as any boy. And she would.

"No questions, my lord," she told him quietly.

"There is a chamber across the hall for your farewells," Wyldon told Piers. "Salma will come for Keladry and guide her to her assigned room. No doubt her baggage already is there." He looked at Kel. "Unpack your things neatly. When the supper bell rings, stand in the hall with the new boys. Sponsors—older pages who show the new ones how things are done—must be chosen before we go down to the mess."

After Kel said goodbye to her father, she found Salma waiting for her in the hall. The woman was short and thin, with frizzy brown hair and large, dark eyes. She wore the palace uniform for women servants, a dark skirt and a white blouse. A large ring laden with keys hung from her belt. As she took Kel to her new room, Salma asked if Kel had brought a personal servant.

When the girl replied that she hadn't, Salma told her, "In that case, I'll assign a servant to you. We bring you hot water for washup and get your fire going in the morning. We also do your laundry and mending, make beds, sweep, and so on. And if you play any tricks on the servants, you'll do your laundry and bed-making for the rest of the year. It's not our job to look after weapons, equipment, or armor, mind. That's what you're here to learn."

She briskly led the way through one long hall as she talked. Now they passed a row of doors. Each bore a piece of slate with a name written in chalk. "That's my room," Salma explained, pointing. "The ground floor here is the pages' wing. Squires are the next floor up. If you need supplies, or special cleaning and sewing, or if you are ill, come to me."

Kel looked at her curiously. "My brothers didn't mention you."

"Timon Greendale, our headman, reorganized service here six years ago," Salma replied. "I was brought in five years back—just in time to meet your brother Conal. Don't worry. I won't hold it against you."

Kel smiled wryly. Conal had that effect on people.

Salma halted in front of the last door in the hall. There was no name written on the slate. "This is your room," she remarked. "I told the men to put your things here." She brushed the slate with her fingertips. "Your name has been washed off. I have to get my chalk. You may as well unpack."

"Thank you," Kel said.

"No need to thank me" was Salma's calm reply. "I do what they pay me to." She hesitated, then added, "If you need anything, even if it's just a sympathetic ear, tell me." She rested a warm hand on Kel's shoulder for a moment, then walked away.

Entering her room, Kel shut the door. When she turned, a gasp escaped before she locked her lips.

She surveyed the damage. The narrow bed was overturned. Mattress, sheets, and blankets were strewn everywhere. The drapes lay on the floor and the shutters hung open. Two chairs, a bookcase, a pair of night tables, and an oak clothespress were also upended. The desk must have been too heavy for such treatment, but its drawers had been dumped onto the floor. Her packs were opened and their contents tumbled out. Someone had used her practice glaive to slash and pull down the wall hangings. On the plaster wall she saw written: No Girls! Go Home! You Won't Last!