Ignoble
Chapter 1:Meet Arianna
Part of a drabble series, in conjunction with torikkusuta's Audacious; our little slice of Tamora Pierce's amazing world! Hope you enjoy!
"Mother, Father, I have an announcement to make," began Arianna of Windheights, youngest daughter of the Baron and his Lady of the Fief Windheights in the middle of Tortall. At age 15, it was the time when she should have been married off profitably like her older sisters or at least doing something useful like her brothers. Instead, the Baron and his Lady were left with her…
"I have decided on a course of action in my life. I will join the Queen's Riders," she stated.
Her father sat down his accounting book, her mother the tea cup imported from the Yamani islands, and exchanged a look.
"I believe that will be for the best, child," said her father at last.
Arianna knew exactly what they meant. She had overheard her mother complaining about the task of making a lady out of a girl who had been left to her own devices too long while she found suitable marriages for her older siblings. Why, she slept in trees and kept frogs in her room, had brambles in her hair most days, kept company with dogs and horses rather than other sociable young ladies, and spent her time riding her beloved ponies. Her family had, quite frankly, not known what to do with her, and since she had no inclination to become a noble wife or a delicate lady…This was definitively for the best.
So she left that next day with her two ponies, a couple of bags full of clothes and possessions, a pouch of money and instructions to write but not to visit without writing first. But she smiled and patted the neck of her pony, a dark brown gelding with a long black mane, and clucked to her dappled grey mare, and set off on her own journey.