The thick, leather-bound volume landed on the wood-paneled floor with a resounding thud. The red-haired woman glared at it from across the room. It was perfectly intact after its brief flight. Too bad, she thought savagely. She considered retrieving it and throwing it again, but concluded regretfully that it probably wouldn't make much difference.
The book had once been a favorite of hers. As a child at Fief Trebond, Lady Alanna had adored the collection of tales about the warrior maidens of ancient times. She had even dreamed of joining their number, becoming the first lady knight to serve Tortall-- or any nation in the Eastern Lands, for that matter-- in more than a century. Foolish childhood aspirations, those had been, just as silly as the tales in that dusty book. Alanna glared at the offending volume again. She had been packed off to a convent school at the age of ten, to study womanly pursuits-- embroidery, etiquette, and the like. Alanna had hated every minute of it, hated being secluded in the mountains, hated having to sit still, hated hearing all of the news months after it had ceased to be new. Why, if her brother hadn't been a page at the palace, she might never have known that the crown prince, only son and heir of King Roald, had been one of the multitude that had perished when the Sweating Sickness struck the capital.
Her brother. Alanna closed her eyes briefly, fighting off a wave of nausea. Thom was gone, too, killed by a Tusaine knight in the Drell River Valley towards the end of his sister's career at the convent school. Her twin had never been much of a warrior. But he shouldn't have been there! It should have been me! It was the same thought that had been plaguing Alanna for years, ever since it had prompted her to write her old family retainer, Coram Smythesson, out of her life shortly after Thom's death.
She and Thom had thought they were so clever, obtaining their village healer Maude's blessing to switch places: Maude would accompany Thom to the City of the Gods to study sorcery, while Alanna would journey to Corus with Coram to begin training as a page. Alanna could still remember how excited she had been that afternoon, under her replication of her brother's pout. She was riding off to study what she loved most in the world, completely confident in her ability to prove herself.
But Coram had decimated all of that. Once he had discovered her, all her careful reasoning and desperate pleading had been of no use. He had changed course immediately, setting off for the convent, where he had deposited a furious Alanna and collected her dejected brother. "I'm sorry, lass," he had said as he and Thom rode away, though Alanna hadn't believed him then.
The words were obviously true when he spoke them again years later after delivering the news that her brother would never return from his first battle. Still, the sincerity of Coram's apology couldn't even begin to atone for the loss of her twin, as Alanna had made perfectly clear to him, in the throes of one of the rages for which she had been notorious among the Daughters. The guardsman had stood stolidly as she railed at him, then departed as quickly as he had come. He had written her later that he had reclaimed his place in the palace guard, though he would return to serve her if she requested. He sent a few more missives after that, but those had petered out by the time Alanna left the convent in the face of her pronounced lack of response.
Once or twice, Alanna had considered writing back, but she had nothing to say to the man who had ruined her life. She had little to say to anyone, as a matter of fact. Her letters to her twin had been prolific, full of complaints about life within the convent and witty mockery of her teachers and fellow students. Thom's responses had sustained her; not only did he sympathize with her misery, but he was able-- however unhappily-- to regale her with tales from the palace, about the pages and their training. She had never given up hope that perhaps she could still commence her own training someday; she'd be several years behind, but others had done as much in the past. Thom, for his part, had never ceased hoping that he could someday abandon his reluctant quest for knighthood and turn his attention to sorcery. After all, the twins thought, life surely couldn't be so unjust as to deny them the chance to fulfill their greatest desires.
But Thom's death had killed all of his sister's hopes, in addition to preventing him from ever achieving his own ambitions. Alanna had realized that a world that could allow her brother to die in battle would have no qualms about withholding her shield. Consequently, Alanna had resigned herself to the fact that she would never realize her dreams of knighthood. She had similarly resigned herself to convent life as well; resisting suddenly seemed futile. Her explosion at Coram was the last of her famed tantrums. Easier to learn the embroidery and etiquette, to cease uttering those frank, cutting retorts for which she had been notorious. She knew that the Daughters touted her as their success story to the parents of prospective students, and that her classmates looked upon her with confusion and disappointment. It bothered her, of course, but she couldn't seem to summon the energy to do anything about it.
Nor could Alanna galvanize herself into protesting when her father arranged a marriage for her soon after she returned to Trebond. There was no necessity for her to relocate to the royal court to catch a husband, he had said in his flat, no-nonsense way, when he could quite easily arrange something with a friend of his, the noted scholar Lord Roland of Northshore, Tortall's northernmost coastal fief.
Part of Alanna had wanted to go to the capital anyway, to meet the young knights and hear their stories of battle and glory, but another had shied away from exposing herself to the pain and disappointment she was sure awaited her there. Besides, she had always despised the convent girls who moved to the palace with the solely to snare a bridegroom. It seemed so conniving. Thus, she had acquiesced to Lord Alan's wishes and found herself lady of another gloomy northern fief, the wife of a man her father's age.
Now, sitting in her husband's library after having hurled away the book that had inspired all of her failed childhood plans, Alanna questioned her choice. Perhaps she should have gone to Corus after all, met her brother's comrades, tried to find some small measure of peace. At the very least, she could have married someone who shared her own interests. But then, maybe she would have only opened old wounds anew, maybe she would have been consumed by jealousy of those young knights, who had been granted her heart's desire by virtue of a mere accident of birth, and who had survived the Tusaine war while her brother lay buried in that godsforsaken valley that was no longer part of Tortall...
Alanna slammed her hand down on the table, breaking the cycle of her thoughts. Enough! she reprimanded herself sternly. What's done is done. There's nothing you can do now. Shaking her head in an effort to clear it of the past and what might have been, she rose slowly. It was late; she had best hurry if she wanted to bid her children goodnight.
Despite her haste, the nursery was already dark and silent when she reached it. Alanna slipped in anyway, leaning over each bed and brushing each little one's face with a kiss in turn. First Thom, the eldest at four years of age, called after her brother. Then Alan, named at Roland's insistence for Alanna's father, who had died not long after her marriage. Lastly Alianne, Alan's twin sister, the youngest by a few minutes. Alanna lingered a few minutes at her daughter's bedside, gazing at Alianne's sweet, sleeping face, unmarked yet by the pain of unfulfilled dreams. She wanted something better for her little girl, something beyond the dreary years at the convent and the arranged marriage. Yet Alanna had already spent her youth fighting tradition, only to have tradition emerge victorious; she rather doubted the fight would be any different a second time around.
I'll do my best for you, she promised Alianne silently. But I don't know if it will be good enough.
A/N: Shortly after I submitted this story, I realized that there were parts that needed a little adjustment. So, I've revised the passages concerning Alanna's change of heart and her marriage.