A/N: You don't know how badly feel about not having posted since September. I feel AWFUL! Luckily, a wonderful person reviewed and their review said something like: "Great story, keep on writing." I bet you can all guess which part made me feel guilty. So I started frantically writing chapter ten of Farewell the Lioness, which I present to you now. Please review and I hope you enjoy!

Chapter 10: Suspicions Revealed

Alanna buried her face into her pillow, breathing in the scent of fresh linen and the faint tang of lemon soap. She and Sam were assigned temporary quarters in the Royal Palace, and they had been settled in quite comfortably for and hour or so. Grinning up at the whitewashed ceiling, Alanna began to drift off. Never had a mattress seemed so welcoming, nor a quilt so soft, nor a day so tiring...

~~**~~* She was walking down a twisting road that disappeared into the melting sun. Her ash brown hair was cropped to the ears, her once soft, full mouth now hard and cruel. Crouching to the ground, she took a forked rowan twig from a pouch at her belt and scratched an arcane rune in the dry earth. Then she emptied her water bottle into the cracks. A howling, keening sound filled the branches of the bare elms and the earth groaned. She laughed harshly, the long, jagged scar on her cheek buckling grotesquely into shriveled folds of skin. Putting and ancient ivory horn to her lips, she blew; but no sound could be heard. Laughing again, she turned and retraced her steps. Suddenly the air froze and twisted, splitting into two near-identical frames of light. One the same she stood in, the other almost transparent. Again she sounded the horn and leapt into the new, clear frame. The air exploded with violent sound and wrenching, grating shrieks, wailing, screaming, ripping, cracking noise that seemed to split the mind— *~~**~~

Alanna sneezed, once, twice, three times in a row. Her whole body was cold, shivering as one who as spent the last hour vomiting. She shut her eyes for a moment, struggling to regain her composure. Was that just a dream, she thought, or some sort of vague foreshadowing, a prophecy? The girl climbed out of bed and threw open the shutters. Shivering in her filthy green healer's tunic, Alanna breathed in the sharp autumn air, her copper braids teased by the breeze. The burnished gold sun fled behind the clouds.
The girl sighed and turned back to her rooms. She noticed a fresh wool tunic and divided skirt thrown over the privy door. After swiftly changing and warming herself gratefully beside the brazier, she bounced on the bed and suddenly realized, Today I am eleven! She laughed internally. In all the excitement of the past few weeks, she had completely forgotten about birthdays.
Someone banged on the door, and a high-pitched voice yelled, "Come on, Lan, we're late for lunch!"
Alanna slid the bolt back and opened the door. Sam grinned hopefully up at her, and beckoned. "Lord Halles said we can eat with him and his son in the hall!" His smile faltered at her strange, slightly dazed expression, and he frowned a little. "What is it?"
A shadow passed over her violet eyes, but she shook her head and followed him into the corridor. "Nothing. Now where did he say this hall is?"

***

Sam sighed with pure bliss and dug into a large tureen of vegetable stew. He slurped at his goblet of mulled cider and spluttered contentedly.
The tall, broad-shouldered page sitting across the table glanced apprehensively at Alanna, who winced slightly and eyed her plump, crimson apple with distaste. She leaned across a dish of fruit to the lad, Raoul, Lord Halles's son, and a page several years her senior. She whispered confidentially into his ear, "I believe he's had a very trying childhood of late. He finds a sort of mutuality, a comforting understanding, in the culinary arts."
Raoul frowned, amused. "He cooks?"
She laughed, shaking her head as Sam shoved an entire loaf of bread into his already crammed mouth. "I'm afraid not. One day he'll be renowned—Samuel the Ravenous, scourge of all good and undeserving kitchens!"
The page chuckled, but said "One day, you say? I think not; he already has fulfilled the title you give him. Little tyke..." He choked, nearly spraying Alanna with cider as he shook with mirth at the sight of moist bread leaking out of the gorging Sam.
Lord Halles strutted over pompously and sat down next to his son. "Mithros be blessed, there's some drunkard with gray hair and baggy hose that tried to lecture me on the Code of Chivalry. Wouldn't let me go until I'd listened o his opinions on the thing—and they weren't complimentary, I can tell you that." He took a deep draught of mead from his goblet.
Raoul suspiciously poked his baked squash with a knife. "That would be Sir Myles of Olau. He's a professor of history...I think." Seeing his companions' questioning looks, he added, "He teaches a sort of mash of history and strategy. The King's chamberlain must have been a bit vague on the job description, or else Myles was drunk when he was offered the position."
Halles shrugged, and turned to Alanna. "Duke Baird—you know, the chief healer in Corus—says he would be happy to train you in the Royal Infirmaries again. Naturally he was less than optimistic at first, hearing of your disappearance up near the border, but upon hearing your story he was quick to agree." His falsely pleasant demeanor changed rapidly as he placed a hand on Sam's shoulder (the boy was currently devouring a bowl of peach trifle with clotted cream). Halles growled deep in his throat. "And you," the man whispered, his unctuous, oily voice suddenly gone cracked and cold. "We shall have to do something about you, won't we. Perhaps you can come back to Goldenlake with me." It was a command, not a question, and Sam shook under the burly man's grip.
Alanna half-jumped up, her eyes widening. No harm had the boy done to Halles, but she dreaded the thought of what the noble might do to the boy if he had custody of him. "No, my liege, that will not be necessary! He'd do better to come with me, or at least stay with a friend in the city."
Halles narrowed his eyes like a hideous vulture eyeing a moldering carcass. "And what would a snippet of a country girl know of cities? You will leave him to ME, and no other!" His grip suddenly tightened like a vice on Sam's shoulder, and the boy began to thrash and struggle.
Alanna bristled. She now felt she knew what Halles meant to do with the boy. I should not have told him of Sam's parentage, but she collected herself and scowled up at the bulky nobleman. "Unhand him, NOW!" she yelled, and the hall suddenly went quiet.
A shaggy-haired, saggy-hosed noble (apparently said Sir Myles) took a few steps menacing steps towards Lord Halles, who plastered a toothy grin on his fleshy face and shoved Sam aside. As soon as the hall burst back into nervous chatter, Sir Myles glared piercingly, although somewhat drunkenly, at the smirking lord. "I would advise you not to do that again," he said icily. "King Roald is not particularly...pleased with your conduct after the incident last summer." The knight turned to Sam, who was hiding his face in Alanna's pressed yellow tunic, and woozily ruffled the boy's hair before making as if to leave.
Alanna however, pried Sam off of her waist and hurried up to Myles. "Sir, what 'incident' do you refer to?"
The man looked at her strangely for a moment. "Are—are you? What?"
Alanna stared, puzzled, at him for a moment, then laughed. "Oh! My brother Thom is in page training here. He's my twin."
The knight breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, that's good. For a moment there I thought that I was so drunk I was seeing double. Well, my most revered Lord Halles of Goldenlake over there was accused of setting up arms and weapons commerce with the Scanrans, on friendly terms, no less! He was tried this past summer and found guilty, but he bribed the Provost into pronouncing his innocence."
Alanna raised a ginger brow, and Myles smiled apologetically. "They never actually found proof that this was the case, but—" he said this mysteriously, "I have my connections." He coughed, swayed a bit, and patted Alanna gently on the head. "So, what might such a pretty twin-to-a-magic- obsessed-page's name be?"
She grinned cheerfully and offered a hand to be shaken. "Alanna, sir, Alanna of—of Trebond."
Sir Myles frowned thoughtfully. "That...that would make your male parental unit—your father, sorry, that would make your father be Lord Alan?"
She nodded wryly.
He smiled happily, although it might have been the drink getting to his head. "Nice, scholarly chap, that one. Been a long time, it has..." He nodded tipsily to Lord Halles who was glumly downing tankard after tankard of spiced mead. "Never was too friendly with that one, though...Can't really blame him. The young Halles was always playing dirty tricks on the first- years..."
Alanna, reminded suddenly of Myles' account of Halles' trial, opened her mouth to ask a question, but froze in a horrified silence. Halles, subdued the moment before, was staring hard at Sam, his pale, damson-hued eyes ringed with livid orange fire. The boy clutched at his throat, his face turning the shad of an eggplant, his skin shimmering with the same orange flame. Magic, Alanna thought furiously, and hurled herself at the pallid man. Time seemed to hang in the air as both she and a howling Raoul bowled the lord over, and Sam's eyes rolled up in his head as he collapsed.
Alanna gritted her teeth with anger as she checked Sam's pulse. "Great Merciful Goddess! What a complete idiot! And a smart one, no less..." Still fuming, she laid a hand over the boy's forehead, shut her eyes, and willed him to wake.
He coughed, spluttering and wheezing. "What—what happened, Lan?" Sam grimaced, rubbing his aching head.
The redhead scowled and helped him to his feet. "Bloody lord tried to strangle you. I didn't know he even had the Gift—wasted on the pig, if you ask me."
Sir Myles approached them, now ashen-faced and shaking. "But Miss Alanna, that's the thing—he doesn't!"
Alanna frowned. "Doesn't what?"
Raoul sighed, rubbing his temples in confusion. "He doesn't have the Gift. My family is magic-less." He exchanged a long glance with the knight, and put his head in his hands. "And the only person I know of with that color magic is Prince Jonathon's uncle—Duke Roger of Conte."

A/N: The plot thickens...(
Well, please review; I hope you liked it! I've got a lot planned for you, so with any luck I'll post at least once a month...huh, with an awful LOT of luck...oh well, may as well be optimistic. Cheers!
~**Leah