A/N: May be the last chapter for a while, but I promise, I'll try not to disappear for such a long time again! I'll try, honest!
Chapter TenKel watched as Lerant bristled with anger as they rode into the Own's stables and Joren was cleaning Drum's tack.
"My job," he hissed to Kel.
"Technically it's his!" she hissed back at him as they dismounted and washed down their horses. "Don't even think about challenging him or picking a fight with him. No matter how good you are, he's better."
"How touching of you to say so, Lump," Joren told her.
Dom cleared his throat. "I thought I asked you to try and get along with her?" he said with a glare to both Kel and Lerant. "And Lerant, Kel's right. Don't even think of picking a fight with Joren. If you do that, I'll make Kel's life very difficult."
Lerant swore softly. Dom would know that threatening that would make Lerant obey.
"Oh, don't worry about me," Kel told him cheerfully. "When Dom's not there, I'll help you pick a fight with him. After all, if he's going to make my life difficult, I might as well do something for it."
Lerant grinned, but he knew that he wouldn't be picking a fight with Joren, although he could see a few not-so-friendly sword matches coming up.
"How on earth did you survive a whole year with him?" Lerant exclaimed as they watched the blond squire walk off. He had just been particularly obnoxious to Lerant and Kel was seething and was having a very hard time trying not to run after Joren and punch him firmly in the stomach.
Kel shook her head. "I've really no idea."
"I feel like doing something really evil to him!" Lerant told her as they walked to the page's mess where they were going to meet Neal.
"You know Lord Raoul banned almost everything I can think of!" Kel sighed as she thought of the meeting she and Lerant had been summoned to yesterday with Raoul. He had gone through nearly everything he could think of that they might possibly do to Joren and forbidden it. And that was that. They couldn't do any of those things without defying his orders, something neither of them were particularly keen to do.
"He didn't ban some things that I can think of!" Lerant cried victoriously as they wandered into the page's mess. Over the past few months they had become a common sight there, eating there three times a week and Lord Wyldon had learnt to tolerate them, although he could be very short with them at times. The pages had already started to eat, they didn't wait for Kel and Lerant.
"Over here!" a voice yelled and Kel and Lerant slid into seats opposite Neal. "You're late today."
Kel nodded. "I know, we had a run in with my Lord's squire."
"Ah," Neal replied. "Do you want me to do something to him? Something very painful?" He looked very eager and Kel could help but laugh.
"Sorry, but my Lord already forbade anything like that. Ever since Lerant sent him crying to the healers, we've been forbidden to harm him in any way, shape or form and as my Lord told us, that includes encouraging our friends to harm him," Kel said almost mournfully.
"Spoilsport," a voice muttered as someone plonked a tray of food down on the table.
"Cleon!" Kel cried in surprise. "When did you get back? I thought you and Inness were still in Mindelan." Cleon had arrived at Mindelan only few days after Kel had left and hadn't been seen since, that was over four months.
"Just got back," he told her as he liberally covered his bread in honey. "So my Lord of Raoul banned you and Lerant from taking Stone Mountain into a side alleyway and killing him then?"
Lerant nodded. "I made the mistake of hitting his nose so hard it broke. My Lord forbade us to do anything that might possibly hurt Stone Mountain and then told us to get along with him and gave us a lecture about how we were dividing the company in two."
"He got a point tho —" Cleon started.
"I know he has a point!" Kel told him. "I can see the logic behind it, but Joren makes himself impossible to get along with."
Neal grinned. "He always had. You could resort to something childish, like a frog in his bed!" His eyes danced as thought through the possibilities.
Lerant cackled. "I love that idea!"
Kel sighed, and rubbed her temples. "You are both so immature!" she sighed as she realised Lerant was going to spend the rest of the day looking for frogs.
"You wouldn't love us otherwise," Neal stated with a grin on his face.
"Yes I would!" Kel told them. "Much more than I do now!"
Neal shrugged. "Tough, being immature is fun."
Kel glared at him and returned to her stew. She could see it right now, her and Lerant crawling around the palace gardens looking for a frog.
"Aww, come on Kel! You know you'll find it funny once it's over!" Lerant told her as he withdrew his head from the bushes.
Kel stood behind him, arms folded over her chest and tapped her foot. "I'll enjoy it even better if I don't actually have to look for the frog. I don't see why both of us should get muddy crawling around in the grass when just one of us could!"
"But that takes the fun out of it!" Lerant told her as he parted the wet leaves of another plant and searched through the ground behind it, looking for a frog.
Kel glared at him, but it lost its effect when he didn't look around to see the seething look directed his way. Lerant yelped loudly and she grinned as he withdrew his head from the bush with long cuts down his face. "Forgot to check for briars, did we?"
Lerant glared back at her and she grinned and shrugged it off. But she wasn't grinning when Lerant yanked on her leg and she slipped down onto the wet grass. "Why you little —" she gasped as she pushed Lerant firmly into the bush he had just come out of. She was most satisfied to hear him cry out as he fell into the briars. "That should teach you to try things like that," she told him firmly.
Lerant crawled out of the bushes, looking rather worse for wear. Added to the few cuts he had from his first encounter with the briars, he had one stuck in his cheek, plenty in his cloak and a large on sticking out of the palm of his hand. It really did look like he had been running through a forest with a blindfold on. Blood dripped down his cheek and he regarded it strangely and then dived straight back into the bush he had come out of.
"Knew I'd seen one!" he cried triumphantly as he turned to face Kel again. In his left hand, he held a frog. It squirmed and the blood on Lerant's hand made its escape easier. It hopped off over the grass. "Get it!" Lerant yelled, looking at Kel and pointing at the frog.
She sighed and then set off after it. "Honestly," she yelled back to him. "The things I do for you!"
As Raoul contemplated what he had seen earlier – the youngest member of the Third Company and the Standard Bearer chasing frogs around the palace gardens – he started to fill out requisition forms for the supplies that the Own needed to stock up on before they were called out.
"If that book didn't suit you, try the history of the Copper Isles," Raoul called as he heard the door open and his squire walked into the room.
"Who's it by?" Joren asked as he gazed through the rows of books.
"Um…Terat, I think."
Joren nodded and slid the book off of the shelf. He was about to leave the room, when his Knightmaster asked, "What would you use a frog for?"
Joren gave the Commander a bemused look. "Nothing, my Lord, at least, nothing I can think of."
Raoul sighed and dismissed his squire with a flick of his hand and for the third time that day tried to fathom exactly why the Third Company managed to get through more uniforms than any other company.
Joren scowled at the maid who brought him his bath water, three minutes late this time. Admittedly it was a two-minute improvement on last time, but it still wasn't on time.
The maid bowed and hurriedly left the room.
As he bathed in the small dressing room that was attached to his room, he thought he heard voices in his room. However, he made the mistake of presuming that Raoul had just left the door open that connected their rooms and was talking with friends in the study that was between Joren's room and Raoul's.
Once he had bathed, he pulled back the covers on the bed and stared in amazement as a frog leapt away, leaving a trail of slime on his bed.
"So that's what you use a frog for," Raoul commented from the doorway. "I thought I'd heard Kel in here a few moments ago."
Joren regarded his Knightmaster with interest then shrugged. He pulled the sheets off of his bed and moved gracefully to the cupboards where spare blankets were kept. Pulling one out, he laid it on his bed.
Raoul studied his squire for a moment or two then left, closing the door carefully behind him.
The Lump? Joren thought with surprise. I had thought she was past immature things like that. She'll find a surprise waiting for her soon.
Wearily, Kel hung her sword up on the hook that had been banged into the wall and unclipped her burnoose, allowing it to fall to the floor where she stood. She had just been horribly beaten by Dom, beaten Lerant – for the first time – and been slaughtered by Qasim in sword matches. The only satisfaction she'd had – apart from beating Lerant for the first time – was that she had thoroughly beaten all three when Qasim had made the mistake of suggesting that she faced them with a pole arm. Because they had become so used to seeing her with a sword after the glaive was smashed, they had almost forgotten she had a glaive, but she had reminded them, and they weren't likely to forget anytime soon.
Too tired to do much else, she flung herself onto her bed, and bit back a yelp. Her bed stank, a stagnate sort of smell, almost like a pond. She felt the sheets and groaned. "It is a pond!" She ripped back the covers and saw green algae on her sheets. Someone had emptied pond water onto her bed, she was surprised there weren't a few water lilies in there as well.
Although the men of the Own liked to play practical jokes on the Riders, they rarely played them among themselves, and if they did it was on a man who was high up in command, not a lowly officer. It wasn't them. Lerant may have an odd sense of humour, but he'd been with her nearly all day and wouldn't have had the chance to carry bucketfuls of pond water from the pond to her room at the far end of the barracks. Neal had been training all day, and anyway, he knew better than to do anything that could result in the two of them facing each other with pole arms, a match Kel was sure to win. The only person she could think of was Joren.
"I would have thought he was past childish things like this," Kel muttered as she pulled the sheets off of her bed in an effort to determine whether her mattress was damp. But then again, I thought I was past putting frogs in peoples' beds. Raoul had made a comment the day after she and Lerant had sneaked into Joren's rooms and deposited the frog – whom Lerant had named Commander in honour of Raoul, a dubious honour if you asked Kel, but that was Lerant for you – in Joren's bed. Raoul had asked about Lerant's briar induced injuries and Kel had told him that he had dropped some money in the bush and had tried to look for it. When he heard that, he raised an eyebrow and replied 'I wonder if he saw any frogs whilst he was looking for that money.' It wasn't a particularly subtle hint, but Kel considered it a good sign. It obviously meant he thought playing tricks was a harmless pastime, but right now, Kel had decided that tricks were far from harmless when they were being played on her.
Kel stood at the door to Joren's rooms and glared at Lerant. "I still say this is a pretty stupid idea!"
Lerant shrugged and pushed his brown hair out of his eyes and bent down to concentrate on the task in hand.
"I mean, why should we continue this line of pranks?" she asked him. "Why don't we just stop? Don't you think this has been going on long enough?"
From the look she got from Lerant, nearly three months of pranks every week wasn't long enough. This was the stupidest one he had thought up yet, and probably the most dangerous.
Kel sighed. She should have known that Lerant wouldn't give up until Joren did, and he wouldn't give up until Lerant did, it was one of those male conceptions of pride. Kel was fairly certain that Joren knew it was Lerant playing the tricks, but he still continued to target only her. "I'm going to kill Neal," she muttered, more to herself than to Lerant, but he looked up anyway.
"Why Neal?" he asked as he reached for the grease.
"Because it was him who suggested the frog," Kel replied simply. She watched as Lerant greased the hilt of Joren's sword, then his axe and mace. When Joren tried to pick them up, they would simply slide out of his hands, and the harder he gripped them, the faster they would slide.
"Oh, I would have thought of something like that soon enough." Lerant stood and carefully placed Joren's weapons exactly where he got them.
"The sword was on a slightly different angle from the mace," Kel told him. "And I don't care if you would have thought of it sooner or later, I'll still kill Neal. Don't even think of interfering."
Lerant smiled almost condescendingly at her and they walked through the door, shutting it quietly behind them. When they saw Joren on the stairway, they both smiled sweetly at him, and in return he made a universally rude gesture.
"Such a rude boy!" Lerant exclaimed and briefly he sounded so like Kel's mother that she couldn't help but laugh.
