A/N This was written for the April/May Challenge over at the Tamora Pierce Experiment: Writing Challenges forum. There's a new challenge every month, so head over and check it out! The link can be found on my profile. Thanks to Sweet Sassy Sarah for beta'ing!
The forest was thick on either side of the road they travelled and the sounds of the wildlife seemed vibrant enough to nearly drown out the lecture the Lady Alanna was giving her almost-new squire.
Neal looked at his horse's neck, biting his lip against the remark which threatened to work its way past his resistance. As he worked to keep his traitor tongue from leading him to evisceration at the hands of his oh-so-merciful knight-mistress, Neal's thoughts returned (yet again) to Kel.
Despite his young friend being uncharacteristically delighted (at least uncharacteristically open about said delight) over her own knight-master, Neal couldn't push away the guilt of being the Lioness's squire while she, instead, was not.
On top of that, over the two months of riding with the Lioness's foul temper as company, Neal had slowly come to the decision that he had been a poor replacement for Kel for the Lioness. She hardly spoke to him in the mornings except to bark orders. While on the road they spoke of his university education, his weaknesses in page training, his experiences and strengths and nothing else (Neal had given up trying to fill the silence with rambling observances within the first hour. Even the silences that had him twitching were better than the annoyed looks and snapped answers she had replied with). In the evenings, they sparred until Neal was a mass of bruises, ate a quick soldier's dinner of grains or dried soup, studied healing (mostly healing his bruises of earlier) until he was sure his brain was leaking from his ears, and only then was he allowed to fall, exhausted, onto his bedroll.
Bandits be damned. The Lioness was going to kill him.
Between the brain-leaking and bruise-nursing and all the silence, Neal had come to the understanding that, though she would do her duty by him, Alanna of Olau and Pirate's Swoop had no desire to have Nealan of Queenscove as her squire.
So the silences stretched on as the two of them rode down the eastern coast towards Pirate's Swoop.