The healer at the army outpost was able to patch Merric up and to teach Neal a few new tricks. Neal had time to master them as the pages spent the remainder of the summer camp at the outpost, housed in one of the barracks. Lord Wyldon made sure that they helped the captain, who had claimed the district was cleared of bandits, to actually do the work. It wasn't as jolly, as Owen put it, as the valley fight. The pages were carefully watched and never allowed to be anything but backup archers and scouts. They were paired with soldiers, who made them keep quiet and out of the way.
Kel agreed with Owen, bandits should be caught and taken before the law. Still, she also saw the poverty in their camps. Only the best fighters owned shirts without holes; their children were naked, hollow eyed, and big bellied with hunger. Despite the rivers and lakes in the area, the pages were told, this was the second year of a drought. Farmers who couldn't pay their rent were thrown off their farms. Many thought banditry was the only way to feed their families, but their victims were as poor as they. There were no easy answers, and Kel was glad to ride north and put it out her mind for the time being.
Whatever Lord Wyldon thought of her taking command in the Battle of the Cliff, as her friends had named it, he kept it to himself. Those who thought they could tease the pages who had let a first year take over were corrected in a series of quick, quiet fights. Kel told her friends they weren't doing her any favors by settling matters that way; her friends ignored her.
On their arrival to Corus, they disbanded for two months. Kel and Jump went to Kel's parents' house in the city, which they and the house servants had to themselves. She made sure to keep her necklace on: she didn't want anyone she knew see her when she was rumored to be back in the Yamani Isles. Kel's parents, Adie, and Oranie were away on the summer visits paid by nobility, particularly when nobility had daughters to marry off. Kel did get to spend the last two weeks of September with them when they returned. There was no mistaking her parents' pride-Eda Bell, it seemed, had written to tell them what their nephew had done over the summer.
They took Kel to supper at one of the city's finest eating houses to honor her. She had to go as Kaden, but it was nice to spend some time catching up with her parents. Over the meal they got the tale of the fight and its aftermath from Kel, listening intently and embracing her at its end. They also drew the events of Kel's second year from her, asking questions that showed a great deal of interest. She only left out two major occurrences, and those she told her mother as her father left their private parlor to settle the bill.
Ilane smoothed Kel's hair with a gentle hand. It needs cutting again, Kel noted. Alanna's pendent changes the color of her hair but does nothing to the length. "My poor dear! Breasts and monthlies in the same year, and you not even twelve. Was it very upsetting?"
Kel nodded. "I don't need 'em, Mama. All they do is get in the way," she pointed out. "I'm not looking to have babies, ever."
"I don't recall the gods ever asking women if we want these things," her mother pointed out.
Kel sighed. "No, I suppose not. How old were you when all that happened?"
"I didn't start monthlies until I was fourteen-the healer told Mama it was because I was such a bean pole. Mama said she wasn't much of a healer." Ilane smiled at the memory. Kel did, too: her grandmother would not let anyone speak ill of her children.
"I didn't have much of a bosom until I got pregnant," Ilane went on. "Your sister Patricine, though, she developed at twelve." As Kel's father returned, Ilane added, "Remember-you may be able to do so, but no one can force you to have babies. You do have a choice in these things. I'll get you a charm to ward off pregnancy until you are ready for it."
"Ready for what?" asked Baron Piers, holding the parlor door for his wife and daughter. Kel and Ilane shook their heads, and changed the subject.
After two quiet months in the city, Kel's return to her palace rooms was like coming home. Even though she had visited her sparrows and Peachblossom everyday, and trained in the practice courts, it was still good to settle in at the pages' wing. After she finished unpacking, Kel flung herself on the bed with a happy sigh.
At that moment Owen peered in through the open door. "Kaden, you're back!" Running down the hall, he yelled, "He's here already!"
Kel chuckled to herself as Owen raced back with two boys, first years, in tow. "Say, Kaden, will my lord let me sponsor my cousins? One of my cousins? This is Iden of Vikison Lake, and Warric of Mandash. They're both my cousins. This is the jolly boy I told you about, Kaden of Mindelan."
Kel rose and bowed, trying not to grin at Owen's tumbling chatter.
Neal drawled from the doorway, "It's your own fault for encouraging him, you know. Now he thinks he's a human being."
Owen threw himself at Neal. They tussled briefly before they found seats.
"I was thinking maybe I could sponsor Iden and you could sponsor Warric, Kaden," Owen suggested, tipping his chair back until it leaned against the wall.
"Of course I'll sponsor Warric," Kel said.
Boys continued to drop by over the course of the afternoon: Seaver, Esmond, Merric, Faleron (a glorious fourth year now), Prosper. Yancen of Irenroha even stopped in. Faleron disappeared, and returned bearing a basket of pastries and a pitcher of juice. The pages welcomed him with cheers. Boys, Kel thought to herself, mentally shaking her head, were always hungry.
Once everyone had dispersed and cleaned up for dinner, the pages joined Lord Wyldon in the hall outside, to choose sponsors for the newcomers. Owen took Iden, as he had threatened. Kel picked Warric without hesitation.
Then came supper, and Lord Wyldon's speech advising all of them to enjoy their last day of freedom. Afterward Neal remembered that his harness was at the leatherworkers still. He'd dropped it off a week before, to have it let out-and now was a good time to retrieve it. "I might not have another free hour for months," he said to Kel.
"Warric and I will come with you," she replied as they stood to bring their trays to the servers. "It'll give me a chance to show Warric around."
They were cutting through the palace grounds, when they saw a nobleman with a sheaf of papers in his hand. He was tall, heavyset, and pale skinned even at the end of summer, with brown hair that continually flopped into his eyes. Kel recognized Sir Gareth the Younger, the king's closest adviser and friend.
In his turn, he seemed to know their station if not their names. "You're pages, aren't you?" he asked, brown eyes alert.
Kel bowed. Warric followed her lead and bowed as well
"Yes sir," Neal replied after straightening from his bow.
"Wonderful. Would one of you take this to the king for me?" He handed over a sheet of paper to Neal. "He's scrying at the top of Balor's Needle. Don't be nervous," he added, misunderstanding the look on Kel's face. "He isn't doing anything that can't be interrupted."
Kel and Warric bowed again.
"Right away, sir," Neal replied also with a bow.
Sir Gareth left without saying anything else to them.
Neal turned to Kel and held out the paper. "Would you mind running this errand?" he asked her. "I have to get to the leatherworkers before they leave for the day and Warric isn't going to know how to get there."
Damn Neal and his logical thinking. He wouldn't ask me to do this if he knew it was me, Kel thought to herself as she took the paper from him. "Could you take Warric with you then and show him how to make it back to the pages' wing?"
"Of course," Neal responded slinging an arm around the first year's shoulders. He started guiding Warric away. "We'll see you later, Kaden. This way, Warric."
Wiping sweat from her forehead, she forced herself to turn and walk steadily down the path. Balor's Needle was an architectural marvel, soaring a hundred feet over the palace roofs. Sightseers, mages, and astronomers went there because it lifted them clear of magical residues and ordinary smokes from palace and town, granting them a view of the entire valley where Corus lay. From there mages could scry, or see, places and other mages at a distance; powerful mages could actually speak to their colleagues.
She walked into the courtyard before the tower entrance. There were two ways up. One was an iron outer stair, which twined around the tower on the outside, with no walls to protect the climber. People on dares and would be suicides went that way. The outer stair was a beautiful thing, decorative iron wrought in lacy shapes and far stronger than it looked. Kel would admire it only at a distance. She went through the open doors in the base and found the inner stair. It was the twin of the one outside, except that it wound in the opposite direction. There was a magical reason for that, something to do with balancing forces, but Kel couldn't remember what it was.
Like the outdoor stair, this one sported only a thin railing between the climber and open space. All of the inner tower was hollow. Light came from an immense candle and crystal chandelier fifty feet up: servants changed the candles by lowering it. Kel stared at the chandelier, transfixed, then forced herself to look at the stair.
I can do this, she told herself, folding and refolding Sir Gareth's message. Of course I can! It's a stair. I'll just keep my eyes on the steps and the wall. It'll be easier than the climb to that cave, when I had to watch those bandits.
For all her brave thoughts, it was the knowledge that this message was for the king that got her moving. Gritting her teeth so hard she could hear them creak, Kel stepped onto the inner stair. Slowly, doggedly, she began to climb.
Like the outer stairs, these were ornamental iron, wrought in the shape of flowers. If she looked down, she saw the gaps in the steps, and open air below. A couple of mistakes showed Kel that her best course was to focus on the corner where stair met wall. When she halted to rest-she was in good shape, but the stair was steep and seemingly endless-she did so with her eyes closed.
After what felt like years, she stepped onto a level wooden floor, blessedly solid underfoot. She walked through open doors and onto a stone platform. The way to the outer stair was an opening in the platform beside the door-Kel looked quickly away from it and wiped sweat from her face. The wind that blustered up here made it feel cold on her skin.
"Yes?" The king had heard her arrive: he left the waist high railing to walk over to her. "What is it?" As Kel straightened from her bow and the king saw her face, he smiled. "It's Kaden of Mindelan, isn't it? I've been hearing about you, young man."
She murmured the polite phrase, "Your majesty is kind to remember me."
"Is there a message? Though I see you're not in uniform yet."
"My lord Gareth of Naxen knew me for a page, sire." She handed the message over. The wind whipped at it. The king gripped the paper tightly and called a ball of light from the air so he could read. The sun had just set, and natural light was fading quickly.
Kel looked around. She could stare across distances if she didn't look down. At such times she felt no fear, only appreciation of the beauty before her. Ahead lay the hills that separated the capital from Port Caynn. Still, steady glows of light identified houses and inns. Moving globes would be the lanterns of travelers. Darker masses in the growing twilight were groves of trees and the Royal Forest itself. It was like a tapestry of the land at dusk, if anyone had cared enough about only light and shadow to weave such a thing.
"This could have waited until morning," the king remarked dryly, tucking the paper into his belt purse. "That's Gary, though-never put off what can be done right now. This is for you," he added, offering a coin to Kel. "For your courtesy. There is no return message."
Kel thanked him and bowed, tucking the coin in her pocket. She turned to go, and stopped. The opening to the outer stair was just a foot to her left. The stair itself fell away so steeply that Kel could see rooftops below. Her ears buzzed; her head swam. She forced herself to take a step, then another, until she passed through the open doors. Inside, the first thing she saw was the great hollow space on the other side of the platform. Dizziness overcame her. She backed up against the wall by the door and clung to it, trying to tear her eyes from the chandelier's streams of light.
This is ridiculous, she told herself repeatedly. You climbed up and down trees. You climbed down from the cave. Just look where the stair meets the wall. Stop goggling at the space, look at the wall! You're going to count to three and take a step. One, two, three.
Some how her paralyzed legs started to move. Her eyes darted to where the stair met the wall. She silently counted the stairs as she descended, trying to keep her mind from that agonizingly long drop on the other side of the metal railing. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. Her shaky knees were making it hard to keep her balance. She took deep breaths, reminding herself that it was perfectly fine to move slowly, as long as she was moving. Finally she was on the ground once again. She looked up the hollow cavern of the tower and let out a breath of relief.
What if I froze like that someday with people in my care? She thought darkly. I could get them killed, because I can't control myself. I'll just have to find a way to over come it.
Thoroughly depressed, she reached the pages' wing and saw that her door was open. She heard her friends' voices. Kel straightened her tunic and tried to rub color into ice pale cheeks. She wouldn't say anything about this.
Somehow she got through the next day-showing Warric around-and the day after that, when the training commenced. Fighting practice helped-with a new piece of equipment, her harness, she barely had the strength to think about her weapons and her horse. She nearly dozed off in afternoon classes.
That night the king came to supper as he did every year to look them over and talk to them briefly. He dined with Lord Wyldon on the dais, then urged the pages to pursue their studies and train hard. In years before, he had left the mess hall before the pages could even rise to bow to him. This year he did not. He waited until they were on their feet, then said, "Might I see Kaden of Mindelan? The rest of you may go."
Kel felt her skin go numb. This was it, she realized. He had some how found out she was a fraud and she was about to be dismissed. Blindly, leaving her tray on the table, she walked to the dais. Jump followed, tail wagging. When she reached the dais, Lord Wyldon and the king were seated. Their page-Yancen, Kel noted-had cleared away everything but a pitcher and three cups, which Lord Wyldon was filling. As Kel bowed to the men, the king raised his brows.
"Pages weren't allowed pets in my day," he commented. "Have a seat, Kaden." He waved her to an empty chair. Kel looked at Lord Wyldon, startled.
He gave her the tiniest of nods and told King Jonathan, "The dog's not a pet, sire-he's a palace stray who attached himself to the pages. I see no harm, if he doesn't distract them. He earned his way several times over during the incident I told you of."
While Lord Wyldon talked, Kel eased herself into the empty chair. Surely if they were going to dismiss her, she ought to be standing. Her nervousness grew when Lord Wyldon put one of the cups before her. It contained grape juice with a touch of spice in it, she discovered as she sipped. She had to grip it with both hands to keep the men from seeing that she trembled.
The king was gently tugging Jump's lone ear, a trick the dog loved. "Yes, that incident. Page Kaden, Lord Wyldon told me what passed this summer between your group and the bandits. I would like to hear the story from your own lips, if you would." The king leaned back in his chair, his very blue eyes on Kel's face. "You were a hunting party, I believe?"
"Just as you told it to me," murmured Lord Wyldon.
She didn't disobey, exactly. She did neglect to mention that the older boys had been too surprised to make the instant decisions that would mean their survival. She told it as if they all had agreed on their course of action-which they had, given a moment to think. Of course Lord Wyldon knew differently. They hadn't even thought to check each other's stories until he'd already talked to Faleron and Neal at the army post. Perhaps the king suspected the truth, too, but he said nothing while she spoke of those frenzied moments on the ground, and the scramble to reach and defend the cave until help could arrive.
When she was done, the king shook his head. "Amazing." He bent to scratch Jump's head: the dog had gone to sleep, his chin on the king's foot. "Certainly you earned all the table scraps you can eat for the rest of your life, eh, boy?" Jump's tail beat lazily on the floor.
Kel was afraid to look up, afraid that this was when her secret would be revealed, afraid this was the moment when he would send her away once again. Instead the king told her, "I admire someone who can keep a cool head in a situation like that. Keep up the good work."
She knew a dismissal when she heard it-and this was not the dismissal she had expected. In her rush to get to her feet, she almost knocked her chair over. Somehow she managed to bow and leave the mess hall without tripping.
Her friends waited outside.
"What did he want?" demanded Neal. "You were in there forever!"
Kel sagged against the wall. "He wanted to hear about the fight, about how we handled those bandits."
"Gods," mumbled Faleron, covering his face.
"I told him how you led us to the cave, and kept blowing the horn for help," Kel said, hoping he wouldn't be offended. "And how Neal and Prosper made it hard to see us, and what we all did in the fight. Then he told me I could go."
"Better you than me," commented Merric, shaking his head. "Talking to royalty makes me sweat. We'd better get to that book Master Yayin gave us if we're to read the first chapter by morning."
"There's something I don't understand," remarked Seaver as they headed down the hall. "Why assign a book about a war fought two hundred years ago?" His confusion was understandable. Master Yayin always gave them books that were literature, reports, poetry, or histories in which battles were seldom mentioned. The pages were certain that the changes in their teaching were made only for the most sinister motives.
Neal drew to the rear of the pack and pulled Kel aside as the others turned into the pages' wing. "So why do you think we've been assigned a book about old battles?"
"You mean there has to be a reason for the masters to give us hard work?" she retorted. "I thought that was their idea of fun."
Yayin's change to the type of reading that Owen classified as "jolly" was not the only difference in how they were taught that fall. The next evening, as the pages and a handful of squires finished supper, Lord Wyldon stepped up to the podium.
"I would like to announce a change in our present schedule. Sunday nights, during the first bell after supper, I wish the fourth year pages to report here. We will explore combat tactics-how to use ground to your advantage in the positioning of troops, which types of weapon achieve certain effects in battle, and so on." He held up a hand; the pages stifled their groans. "This is not a course on which you will receive marks; it is required only for the fourth years, though any other pages or even squires who wish to attend will be welcome. Sunday evening, the first bell after supper. You are dismissed."
"As if we needed more studies," Seaver grumbled to Prosper.
Neal ran his fingers through his hair, thinking. "Well?" Kel asked him. "I want to go, at least to see what it's like."
"I think I'd like to go, too," he replied, surprising her. "Wonder why they're doing this? Usually they leave that kind of teaching for knight masters and squires. Of course, the army has an actual school for officers, to teach battle tactics and strategy."
"Tactics and strategy? I thought they were the same thing," Kel commented.
Neal shook his head, a comma of hair flipping into his eyes.
"Tactics is what you did with those bandits. It's immediate planning for the immediate problem. Strategy is the long view, the movement of armies and a plan that covers an entire battle or war." Seeing her inquiring look, Neal grinned, shamefaced. "My mother's father was one of old King Jasson's generals. He used to tell me about their battles, and all the things that went wrong."
Owen drifted back to walk with them. "Things go wrong?" he asked, startled.
"Grandfather Emry said once the battle starts, everything goes wrong," Neal told him. "You plan strategy and tactics ahead so they won't go as wrong as they could."
"Your grandfather was Emry of Haryse?" cried Owen, delighted. "He's a hero!"
"Yes," Neal said dryly, making a face, "I know."
Sunday night came. Faleron attended the new class-as a fourth year he had to. Neal, Kel, Owen, Merric, and Esmond went out of curiosity. They found something totally different from their other lessons. Lord Wyldon had servants set up a model on a table: it showed the city of Port Legann during the climatic battle of the Immortals War. Metal figures shaped like soldiers, knights, immortals, ships, and catapults were placed to show the positions of each. Daine and the king were there, too. They explained how troops were employed, and asked the pages to suggest why certain types of soldiery had been put in one spot and not another. They learned that Daine had seen the area around the city, mapping enemy positions from dragonback. The thought of flying made Kel feel sick, but she could see that Daine's work had given the Tortallans a tremendous advantage.
The next bell rang too soon. Some pages complained and would have stayed, but Lord Wyldon asked them if they had completed their classwork. By then enough assignments had gone half done that only Neal had no extra work; they were sent back to their rooms to study.
"Boring," announced Merric with a yawn as they left the mess hall. "I can put the time to better use." Kel shook her head. How could anyone describe the lesson as boring? She would have been happy if it had gone on all night.
Kel was still preoccupied by the battle of Port Legann during her dawn exercise. Would it have been different if relief forces from the Copper Isles had beat the queen's army to the city? "Oh drat." The first bell of the day began to ring. She looked around and found her weighted harness lying on her bed. Kel looked at it and sighed. She still wasn't used to the new weight it added. Most of the other pages didn't put theirs on until after breakfast. Couldn't she wait until then just today?
One day leads to another, she told herself wearily. Next thing you know, the boys will get used to it first, and I won't be able to keep up. She picked up the harness and let its weight slide over her shoulders.