Disclaimer: I own Philip! I /own/ Philip!!! I've actually invented a character who isn't a Mary-Sue! Everything else... Ms Pierce, the great, the good, owns it all...



This chapter is dedicated to Claire and our KITWG conversations. The last place I'd expected to find a fellow Tammy & fanfiction fan!!!





Chapter Eighteen



The pages had assembled, standing in lines in front of Lord Wyldon and two boys, obviously new pages. One was tall, lean and dark-skinned, with tousled, floppy black hair and brown eyes. He was the most attractive person Kel had ever seen, including Roald, and he looked about twelve. The other seemed younger, perhaps ten, and although rather plain he looked bold and confident. His build was short and stocky, his hair almost as red as Merric's, his eyes hazel. Wyldon pointed at the former.

"Your name," he demanded, "and the holding of your family."

The boy smiled with friendly self-assurance at the assembled pages and replied confidently, "Philip of Olau."

They looked at one another in amazement. Sir Myles had a son? When Seaver had chosen to sponsor the handsome new page the training master gestured to the other, repeating his demand. The boy squared his shoulders.

"Thom of Pirate's Swoop," he stated distantly.

This time, the astonished murmur was much louder. The son of a common-born new baron - and that baron rumoured to have been not only a commoner, but a famous thief - and the famed Lady Knight? Who on earth would choose to sponsor him?

Not Kel, she was sure. It would do him no good to be sponsored by someone in Wyldon's black books and, his mother being who she was, she doubted whether Wyldon would allow it anyway. But nobody else volunteered. She had known, of course, that none of Joren's friends would; nor Roald, for all their parents' friendship. But surely someone else...

"I will," said Faleron of King's Reach at last, putting up his hand. Kel raised her eyebrows. Faleron? He had no objection to lady knights, she knew, or the new nobility... after all, he was friends with her! But he hated the system of sponsorship and had refused to be sponsored when he came purely on principle. He thought that it encouraged bullying and hazing by admitting that a new boy needed a protector, yet did nothing practical about the problem since the sponsor was all too often unwilling to get involved in disagreements between his charge and the older pages. Yet Faleron seemed unwilling to wish his sponsorless months on any other new page.

Thom grinned at his new sponsor and moved to stand with him. They, like the rest of the group, left for Neal's bedroom when Lord Wyldon dismissed them.

Kel looked at the two additions to the group. You could see who he was if you looked for the resemblance: Philip of Olau, son of Myles of Olau. But surely that would mean -

"Hullo, nephew!" said he to Thom. Thom snorted with laughter.

"Uncle!" he whined, childishly. He returned to his normal voice. "I thought we'd agreed to drop all that?"

Philip's eyes twinkled with mischief. "You told me so! I don't do things just because my little nephew tells me to, now do I?"

"Not unless you've changed since I last saw you..." said Thom mock-thoughtfully. Kel smiled. She liked Thom's sort of humour.

"Ah, the Lady Page!" announced Thom without missing a beat, wheeling to face her. "I beg your pardon for ignoring you, madam. I was trying to settle some sense in my poor uncle's head. I trust I find you well?"

"If she isn't, she's no less good at beating us up," drawled Neal ruefully, tenderly rubbing a spreading bruise on his cheek, "That hoyden knocked me from the saddle this morning!"

"If you spent more time securing your seat and less securing your elegant looks, you'd do better," retorted Kel, "I beg your pardon, Thom. Er... what relation are you two exactly?"

"Well," Philip said, and had to stop to laugh, "on my father's side, he's the son of my adopted half-sister. That makes him a nephew. If, of course, you count adoption as creating relationships between all subsequent children, and if you didn't, Pa, Mama and Alanna would all kill you. He's also the son of my half-brother - that's my mother's son, George, of course - so he's my half-nephew. We think. The relationship rules weren't set up for the kind of tangle that there is in our family! But it works out that I'm his half-uncle, unless you're a mathematician."

Blank looks all round.

"Two halves make a whole?" Philip suggested to groans.

Thom scowled at his uncle. "The number of times you've tried that one!" He turned to face the others. "I must apologise. It took him so long to think up that joke, he thinks the day wasted when he can't use it." He paused, and enquired, "Is one presented? Or does one introduce oneself?"

The boys and Kel looked at one another. They had never met anyone quite like these two! Neal, taking the law into his own hands as usual, named each of the group. Most, Kel included, were quite well impressed with the latest additions to their ranks, though, as Kel sagaciously informed herself, only time will tell what they're really like.

Having dealt with their business, King Jonathan's private council began to drift out of the chamber. But just as the King's Champion got up to go, Jonathan coughed meaningfully.

"Alanna! Er, Alanna..." he began delicately, "can I have a word?"

"Why, of course, my lord king," she replied, face bland and innocent. She was rewarded by a snort from Gary, turned and grinned at him

"Alanna! This is serious," snapped Jonathan. "It's about... your son."

Alanna raised her eyebrows, not quite seeing the point he would make but certain it would not be a happy one. "You are a knight, Jonathan," she replied carefully, "and your son is a page. It's not as if I've put Kara or Eleni forward, although that would also be allowed under your laws Surely any member of the nobility, especially a knight which I am, is entitled to send his or her son to court as a page?"

"It's not that." he told her, "It's the company he keeps."

Alanna apologised silently to her husband. "Worse than the king of the thieves, my lord king?"

That made him smile, despite himself. "You haven't lost your tongue for pert answers, have you? No, but I mean it. He often speaks to Keladry of Mindelan."

Alanna's violet eyes widened. She had been prepared for squalls, but this was a bit much. Her voice was cold and rather angry, but she wasn't raging yet. "Jonathan, I don't quite see the problem. Her best friend is Baird's son; she knows Roald well; and if Thom is getting to know her, then Myles's Philip will certainly make friends with her as well. You aren't speaking like this to Baird and Myles, are you? And you're certainly not forbidding Roald to have contact with her. Why am I being singled out?"

"For one thing, Thom is your son and thus is in a particularly - difficult position. For another, he spends a lot of time in Keladry's company -"

Alanna lost her shaky grip on her temper. "And what does that prove?" she yelled, "That he has good enough taste in friends to choose a page with ideals, and not only ideals, the strength of will to make them come true? That he has joined a group of the best pages in the palace, a group that includes your son? Why can't he be friendly with Keladry? Did I miss a clause in the law, that the son of a lady knight cannot make friends with a lady page?" She stopped, fighting for breath and the King leapt into the breach.

"Alanna! Listen to me! You're not being reasonable. People will talk. He has the Gift, he might..."

"Shut up!" screamed Alanna with all her might. "Why did you pass that law if this is how you're going to cripple it, blind it, tortuously avoid it? Why can't my son have a conversation with a fellow-page without you saying that he's witching her for me? You've been a good king, but you've lost all your feeling for people that made you so if you can't see that this is just plain wrong!" Exhausted, she slumped back into her chair.

"Alanna! Are you all right?" asked Daine anxiously at this point in the knight's recital. "You can't still be drained? It's nearly two months since you... since then!"

"I'm all right! Well, pretty much so. But I get tired so cursed easily. Especially when I've been screaming at a thick-headed monarch!"

Daine smiled, but she wouldn't be distracted from her concern for her friend. "You ought to rest. Really, you should."

"Rest! That's what Baird says. I know I ought to. But" - and Alanna banged the table between them with her fist to emphasise her point - "I'm a knight! I don't do rest!"

"I know the feeling, Alanna. Believe me, I know it well!"

"Why? You're all right, aren't you?" Alanna, worried, looked sharply at the other woman.

Daine pulled a face. "Lilline tells me that I'm doing too much. She says that if I keep on as usual, I'll be in a bad state later on. But all the books say do all you can, just rest when you're tired. Which I'm not. But I mean it, you really ought to rest more."

Alanna held up her hands in a gesture of peace. "Stop fussing! I'm not tired now, anyway. Just angry - very angry. The King won't budge from his position and I was too exhausted to carry on arguing."

"What does he want you to do?"

Alanna's violet eyes were dangerous. "He gave me an ultimatum. No contact between Thom and me, or no contact between Thom and Keladry. I told him that he'd be breaking all the laws of noble privilege if he went through with it. Then I walked out."

"You haven't got through a year yet! And even after you saved Thayet - are you going to leave Court?"

"It was a deadly insult. I'm not speaking to him until he apologises. It was wrong to start with, I showed that and I took away my objection by returning and apologising. I'm not going to make that mistake again. If it means another quarrel, another departure, then so be it. And it does."