Disclaimer: I own nothing here, except from the characters Aric and Zakit. The part in italics directly under the story title isn't mine! That belongs to Tamora Pierce.

A/N: I've always wondered who Raoul's 'sources' were, the ones he talks about in the excerpt below. So I thought, hey! I'll write something about it. I did. Admittedly a very short something, but I felt like it. It's a one-off thing. Enjoy.


Informants


"I hear you and your friends declared war on hazing."

Only six years at the Yamani court, with its iron discipline, kept her quiet. Kel fought to be stone, waiting until she was sure of her self-control before she dared to ask, "How did you hear that, sir?"

Raoul grinned. "The Knight Commander has sources in the palace," he commented all too innocently. "I hear things. I understand some of last spring's squires were the focus of your campaign?"

Page by Tamora Pierce, Chapter Nine

Raoul grinned slightly to himself as he heard the cry of 'Messages!' from the central fire in the camp. Unlike the rest of the men, he didn't rush out and besiege the man that carried the letters from those in the relative safety of the Corus. He was the Commander, and being the Commander gave him special privileges, like his own messenger.

A relative hush interspersed with laughter fell over the camp as men ripped open their messengers and read the letters from loved ones. Slowly, general chatter resumed and Raoul finished cleaning his sword and then slipped it back into its sheath. He strolled out of his tent and towards the cooks' area. Hopefully, if he had timed it right, the cooks would have just finished making the midday meal. He sniffed and from the smell of it, they had. As he walked past the central area on his way to the cooks' tent, he was slightly alarmed to see one of the newest recruits, Domitan of Masbolle, sitting on his own a few metres away from where most of the men sat in small groups talking.

Raoul collected his meal – stew, potatoes and fresh fruit – and walked to sit next to the young man. "Hi Dom," he said as he shovelled stew into his mouth.

The man looked surprised. "My Lord," he replied respectfully as he played with his own food. His brown hair was a little dishevelled, almost as if he had ran his hand through it one time too many. Blue eyes were a little awed and slightly sad.

Raoul sighed. Although Dom had been part of the Own for a little under a year, in reality, he hardly knew anyone there. He had started to get to know the people in Qasim's squad – the squad that Dom had been assigned to – and then they went into battle. The young idiot had tried to save a small child that had got caught in the middle, and nearly paid for it with his life. Raoul himself had sent him home to the palace to recover, a procedure that took nearly ten months. Now he was back, set apart from the other men that been recruited with him because he hadn't fought in the busy year that had just come. "Are you alright?" he asked bluntly.

"Yes, my Lord," Dom replied as he finally started to eat his stew.

Raoul raised an eyebrow, but didn't say what was on his mind, that the young man wasn't alright. "So, what's happening at the palace?" he asked, desperate for anything to keep Dom talking.

Dom seemed to perk up; he sat a little straighter, ate a little faster and grinned. "Plenty, my Lord," he replied.

Raoul laughed. "I know that!"

Dom scrapped the last stew from his bowl with a chunk of bread and put his bowl down at his feet. "Do you by any chance know my cousin Nealan of Queenscove?" he asked.

Raoul thought hard. If he was Dom's cousin, that would make him Duke Baird's son. Wasn't he the one who… "He's a page at the palace, right?" Raoul had met him once or twice recently; he was a cheeky lad who didn't endear himself to Lord Wyldon.

Dom nodded. "Yeah, I got a letter from him today."

"And?" Raoul asked probingly. It seemed Dom's slight sadness was little more than homesickness, something easily cured.

Dom laughed and his eyes lit up. "Up to his usual tricks again, my Lord. He's had to rebuild the stables; I got a lot of complaints about that."

"Rebuild the stables?" Raoul asked in amazement. "Whatever for?"

"He and a few friends knocked it down during a fight with a few other pages, some of the sons of the slightly more conservative members of this realm."

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"You remember the first day I joined the Own? We watched a young girl on a horse that was far too big for her taking runs at the quintain?"

Raoul nodded. "Yes, Keladry of Mindelan." The girl had proven her worth during the Spidren hunt that he had taken the pages on last year.

"Well she's my cousin's best friend. Apparently he and his friends got into a fight with people like Joren of Stone Mountain and Garvey Runnerspring. They destroyed the stables."

Raoul was slightly surprised. He couldn't imagine the quiet girl wrecking everything around her whilst she fought. She seemed more deliberate than that. "I hadn't pegged Keladry for the sort to fight like that," he commented mildly as he bit into an apple.

"She wasn't fighting," Dom replied as he acknowledged Gildes and Zakit who had moved closer to hear his story. "Apparently she and the horses stopped them."

Zakit whistled. "Palace animals are acting so strange, that one day I expect my horse to come up and speak to me."

Gildes laughed. "Zakit, they do speak, you're just not intelligent enough to hear them."

Raoul ignored the good natured punch that the young Bazhir gave Gildes. "So why were they fighting in the first place?" he asked Dom. He wanted plenty of information on this girl. Alanna had already mentioned that she was considering taking Nealan as her squire and would Raoul take Kel? After seeing how well she had handled herself during the Spidren hunt, he was certainly tempted. But not if she was the type to pick fights with people for no reason, that sort of thing couldn't happen in the Own.

Dom smiled his thanks to Zakit as he was handed a cup of juice. After he took a large gulp, he answered, "According to Meathead, they don't need a reason to fight, they —"

"Meathead?" Gildes questioned with amusement clear in his eyes.

"My cousin's nickname," Dom replied.

"I can't imagine anyone liking a name like that!"

Dom shrugged. "He doesn't, but it suits him."

Raoul shifted slightly so that Aric could sit with them. "Anyway, continue with what you were saying," he commanded.

Dom drained the last of his juice and scratched his head. "Apparently the two groups don't need a reason to fight. They've been at war with each other since Kel refused to allow Joren and his cronies to continue their usual behaviour. As my cousin put it, Kel declared war on hazing, because Joren was taking it too far, beating the pages and general nasty behaviour."

"That was just part of being a page," Raoul replied, more interested than it seemed in what Dom was saying. "Even I went through that, although, I think most of the older pages learnt it wasn't too clever to pick on me after a few hard punches were delivered their way."

Dom smiled slightly. "Neal says that Kel doesn't see it that way. She has no problem in running messages and fetching and carrying for people, she even does it for another member of their group, but she has something against people who prey on people smaller than they are."

Raoul nodded slowly. He had never thought of it that way, hazing was just part of being a page, part of earning your way, but maybe the Mindelan girl was right, maybe it was wrong. He yawned and stood up, stretching. "I think I'll crawl into bed now."

The men he been talking with nodded. "See you in the morning," Gildes told him and moved into the spot Raoul had just vacated, closing the circle.

When Raoul looked out of his tent almost an hour later, he saw that the young man that looked so apart from the others only hours before was now laughing and joking. He seemed to have something about him that made others listen to him. "He'd make a good commander," Raoul mused out loud as he pulled the tent flaps shut and crawled into the sleeping bag.

A/N: So, what do you people think? I would be interested to know. That's a not-so-subtle hint to review, please?

Hannah