The ringing of the Palace bells woke me just as the sun peaked over the horizon. I rolled over and reached for Katla, who always slept beside me while Somerled lay across my legs. But she wasn't there. Opening my eyes, I found myself in an unfamiliar bed. Across the dimly lit room Donovan lay on his back, his breathing deep and even. How he managed to keep sleeping through the cacophony of the bells was a mystery to me.

The first rays of the sun began to seep through the window, casting soft lines of light on the stone floor. I glanced around the unknown room, and my heart began to race. The black shadows in the corners of the room began to overwhelm the sun's fledgling rays and close in on me. I threw myself from the bed without bothering to untangle myself from the sheets and landed hard on the stone floor. As I searched frantically for my pack, panic began to set in as the darkness enveloped me.

But then my hands found the leather straps and I pulled it from beneath the bed, quickly upturning it and dumping its contents on the floor. The familiar, comforting light of Mama's crystal drove away the shadows as I snatched it up and held it tightly to my chest. I willed myself to breathe slowly, and pulled myself back onto the bed.

As I calmed I remembered where I was and why. This was the room Donovan and I had given in one of the servant wings attached to the Royal Palace. I chided myself for my irrational reaction, but the fear didn't leave my heart until the sun rose higher and its light filled the little room.

Donovan woke soon after to find me still sitting in bed with the crystal in my lap. He looked at me once, and then at my steadily burning light, and said nothing. When I was well and truly calm, he walked with me to the baths so we could wash before breakfast.

This time it was Gwenna who sought me out and led me to their table; she seemed to be the only one who was truly awake. She smiled brightly and bid me good morning, but all I got from Heath and Sora were half-hearted grunts as they hunched over their porridge.

"Are they always like this?" I asked.

"Always." She smiled. "They lack our natural resilience and fortitude."

Her joke roused Heath momentarily from his half-sleep stupor. "Shove it."

A hand touched my shoulder and I looked up to see Eyvind of Tirragen smiling down at me. "Mind if I sit?"

"It's your table."

He grinned and set down his tray, taking a seat on the bench next to me. While he didn't seem as energetic and alert as Gwenna and I, he at least was more responsive than the two grumbling automatons across the table. After Lady Valorie stood and said the blessing, Sora and Heath began to shovel their porridge into their mouths and didn't spare us a second glance, while Gwenna and Eyvind supplied friendly conversation.

"How'd you sleep?" She asked me, liberally spreading honey over her thick porridge.

"Well enough," I said. "But I had something of a start when I woke up and didn't remember where I was."

"I would think you'd be used to sleeping in strange places," she remarked. "Don't Shang travel a lot?"

I was sure to word my answer carefully to avoid further questions. "We travel, but not nearly as much as most Shang. Donovan's not much of a wanderer."

Eyvind waited to finish chewing before he asked. "Are there certain places you stay?"

"We spend a lot of time in Port Legann," I replied. It wasn't a lie; it just wasn't the whole truth. "And we visit the Yamani Isles once a year or so."

There was a lapse in our conversation as we concentrated on our meals. I devoured one apple, and then began on another before I carefully diverted the topic away from my living conditions. "Gwenna, you're a first year squire, right?"

She nodded and patted her tunic over her shoulder; the fabric was still bare, without a crest that would identify her as the student of a knight. "That's why I don't have a knight master yet. It's only the beginning of the season, so most of the new squires are still here at the Palace. But a few like Eyvind got lucky and were chosen over the summer."

I looked at the crest of Golden Lake where it was sewn onto the sleeve of his tunic, then up at him. "You're only a first year?"

"I am," he said. "My father and Sir Padriac are good friends, so I already had a foot in the door when it came to being chosen."

"Shouldn't you be out with your knight master, then?" I asked.

"My lord's gentle wife is with child, and due to deliver very soon. He's going to stay here so he can be with her when the time comes, and we probably won't leave until after Midwinter." He smiled. "And since he's busy attending his lady, I get to stay here with my friends."

I nodded and returned to my apple. Vaguely I wondered about what it would be like to be a squire. If I had chosen this path, instead of the way of Shang, what would my life be like now? When I became a squire, who would have been my knight master? I pushed those thoughts away; lingering on the "what if's" of life would do my no good.

After breakfast the pages and squires returned to their rooms. If I remembered what Papa had told me correctly, now was the time for study and pursuits of the mind. Donovan told me I could have the morning to myself, and followed Lady Valorie to observe the classes.

At first I simply explored, wandering through the dorms and making friends with the resident rat-catchers. I walked through the training courts and visited the stables to introduce myself to the horses. I found my new friends' mounts, all beautiful and intelligent animals, but one could expect little else for the well bred children of Tortall's most influential noble families. My pony, Jordi, had been given an empty stall at the far end, and was happily chewing on oats when I found him.

I deserve some rest, he said haughtily. After that mess you put me through I think I should have the week off.

I scratched his nose and laughed. If I let you rest after every little thing you call a mess you'd grow fat and sluggish as an ill-bred mule.

Nonsense, he huffed.

I enjoyed myself in the stables, but it still left me with much of the morning to go. I didn't let myself wander past the page's wing, afraid I'd run into Uncle Jonathan or one of my cousins. As luck would have it, my eldest cousin Liam was up north with his knight master, Sir Wilhelm of Naxen. His younger brother Samuel had opted to train in the City of the Gods in the Mithran Cloisters instead of joining the knighthood, and his youngest brother Roald wouldn't be a page for another year. Uncle Conner's eldest daughter, Lianne, was also a squire and the last I'd heard of her was that she was somewhere south with her mistress, Lady Theresa of Cavall. His son, Cormac, was due to be a page this year but he wouldn't arrive from Conté for another two weeks. I wondered perhaps if Lady Valorie had waited until she knew my cousins would be gone before she'd invited Donovan and me to visit.

Aside from my family I only had to be on the look out for Lady Elaine of Port Legann, and her daughters Bethany and Ellen. Lady Elaine was my father's best friend, and she often invited us to dinner or went hunting with my father when we were staying in Legann. Beth was a squire, but I couldn't remember the name of her knight master, and Ellen was to "come out" this fall so there was a good possibility she was in the Palace. All three of them would recognize me on sight. So just to be safe I gave the rest of the Palace a wide berth.

Finally boredom set in and I returned to my room to retrieve my bow. A few weeks ago while practicing with my father I had clustered my arrows in the center of the target, and then actually sent one arrow straight through another, splitting it in half. Papa had been so proud of me he'd taken the two arrows and put them on the wall of his study. Now I'd see if I could do it again.

I was trained to shoot crossbows, recurved bows and the oddly lopsided Yamani bows, but I was best with the long bow my great grandfather had given me three years ago. I was big enough now that it was just the right size for me and it balanced perfectly in my hand.

When I found the outside archery range used by the squires and pages I took a quiver of arrows from one of the racks and set myself at one end of the range. I braced my feet, knocked the arrow, and drew.

I shot slower than usual, carefully sighting down the shaft and trying to overlap it with the arrow I'd already set in the center. It thudded into the target less than a finger width from my first arrow. I drew again.

Despite my best efforts and patience I couldn't put one arrow into another. I knew the first time I'd done it was probably a fluke, but it was fun to try it again. Practicing with my bow calmed me and helped clear my mind. Donovan liked to say it was my own style of meditation.

I emptied my quiver into the center of the target, with only two of the twelve arrows outside the center mark. I lowered my bow, and suddenly I heard soft applause from behind.

I turned to find Gwenna, Eyvind, Heath and a new squire sitting on the benches behind me. They grinned at my surprise and quickly cross the room to join me.

"Did Donovan teach you to shoot like that as well?" Heath asked.

I shrugged and took a line from one of Grandmama's stories. "I've always been a fair shot."

The new girl looked over my shoulder at the target. "That's more than fair, I'd say."

I regarded her closely. She was tall and muscular, but was also well curved. Her red-gold hair was cut severely short, much like I wished I could cut mine. Her clothes were smeared with dust and her boots were coated with mud, showing that she'd been traveling earlier in the day. She was a year or so older than Gwenna and Eyvind, by my guess. She spoke and moved with a great deal of confidence, but I didn't sense any arrogance. The patch on her arm held the family crest of Meron, the family that ruled the great southern city of Persopolis. She smiled at me jovially, blue eyes twinkling as she held out a hand to me.

"Hello," she said, her voice bright and musical with a hint of a northern accent. "I'm Rispah of Trebond. You must be Melly."

I accepted her grip. "A pleasure to meet you."

She folded her arms over her breasts. "I just got in this morning, but when I heard you bested Eyvind I knew I just had to meet you."

I blushed. "He put up a good fight."

"You're too modest." Gwenna said. She glanced over my shoulder at the target. "We came to keep you company."

"Don't you have classes?" I asked.

"Since we're squires, they're not really mandatory anymore." She smiled. "We tried to sneak Sora away but his teacher wouldn't allow it."

Eyvind took a step forward, looking at the bow in my hand. "Have you been at this all morning?"

I shook my head. "No, just for half an hour or so. Before that I just looked around a little and looked in on my pony in the stables."

"You have a pony?" Heath asked, surprised.

I didn't hold it against him; they thought I was a commoner and most commoners didn't own their own horse. "Yes, his name's Jordi. I'm starting to outgrow him, though. Donovan says I'll need a horse in another year or so."

That sparked Gwenna's interest. She began asking questions about Jordi and my general knowledge of horses, her blue eyes lighting up when she discovered that I knew a good bit about them.

"My father breeds chargers back home at Northwatch, the kind used by knights in full plate armor." She told me, then asked to see Jordi.

I followed my new friends to the stables and introduced them to my moody gelding. Tall for a pony, he was a mix between the sturdy mountain ponies used by the Queen's Riders and the long distance runners kept by Royal scouts. He was a bay with a wide strip of white covering most of his face and black socks on all four ankles. Papa had given him to me when I was eight.

"He's lazy as a mule sometimes," I said.

His ears perked up he snorted at me. Don't compare me to one of those pack animals.

I laughed, confusing my friends. Shaking my head to ward off questions, I told him their names and he promptly stuck his head over the stall to sniff out possible treats. Like a bloodhound on a trail he went straight to Rispah, who grinned and pulled an apple from her pants pocket.

"Found me out, did you?" She joked as she fed it to him.

I like this one, he told me.

You'd like anything that gave you food, I teased.

After that they took turns introducing me to their own horses, even though I'd already met them earlier that morning. Eyvind's horse, Hannah, was a beautiful black mare with a cool disposition and the same intense stare as her master. The only bit of color on her was a small white star at the tip of her nose and a single white sock.

He smiled softly when I asked about her name. "I had a younger sister," he said. "Her name was Hannah and she died of fever a year before my father gave me her."

I felt a pang of guilt at bringing up such a painful subject. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry."

He shook his head. "It's all right, I don't mind."

Next was Gwenna's horse, a chocolate brown gelding with a black mane and white at the tip of his tail. He was an absolute sweet heart, nosing me gently and blowing into my hand. I had to laugh when she told me his name was Blade. Such a mild, peaceful animal didn't deserve such a fierce name.

"I think when my father named him he was hoping he'd grow up into a fearsome warhorse." She admitted. "But it was easy to see that would never be, even when he was a colt. All he likes to do is nap and lay in the sun."

Heath was leading me to his horse's stall when the great bells rang, dismissing the pages from class and calling them to their midday meal. I walked back with them to the mess hall. Sora was waiting for us at the door.

"What'd I miss?" He asked as we got in line.

"We discovered that Melly here is a crack shot with her bow," Heath told him.

I shrugged when Sora turned his questioning gaze to me. "I'm told it runs in the family."

Eyvind waited until we were all seated before he asked his question. "You remember your family? I thought Shang warriors chose their students when they're still very young."

"They do," I said. "Donovan found me when I was four. But my family lives in Port Legann, so I get to see them now and then."

It was pretty much an outright lie, and it felt horrible to say it, but if I told them that Donovan had chosen to live with my family, it would have led to questions about their identity. I liked the simplicity of just being Melly, not Melisande of Conté. If they knew I had royal blood in me, I was certain they would begin to treat me differently.

They accepted my answer, and I diverted the focus away from myself by asking about their own homes. Sorata's father was the Royal Physician, so he'd grown up in the Palace. He was Gifted with healing magic, but he'd decided he wanted to be a knight instead of a mage.

"Alanna the Lioness was a great healer," he told me. "But she was an even better knight. I want to be like that."

Gwenna had spent her entire life at Northwatch where she helped her father breed horses. She'd had to fight tooth and nail to convince her parents to let her become a page; they'd wanted to send her to the convent in the City of the Gods. Her older brother was already knighted, and her younger sister had gone to the convent in her stead.

Heath, like Gwenna and me, had grown up in a remote setting. Kennan was a small but prosperous fief near the southern coast. Having spent most of his life tending livestock and learning to tend fields, he hadn't even known how to read when he'd first arrived. Since then he'd become a notorious bookworm.

Rispah was perhaps the strangest of us all. Outgoing and bright, she had a coarse charm that I'd never seen in a noble before. She was an only child and heir, set on making a name for herself as a knight. Her hero was, unsurprisingly, Alanna the Lioness, who was originally of Trebond. She had plans to ride off to the far reaches of the world on a great adventure, like the one the Lioness had gone on to recover the Dominion Jewel for King Jonathan IV.

But it was Eyvind's story that interested me the most. Although I hadn't thought of it at first, I'd realized earlier that Tirragen was one of the noble houses that had risen up in an attempt to usurp Jonathan from the throne and place his cousin Roger in his place.

"I'm the first of my family that has dared to show their face in Corus or the Palace since the shame of Alexander." He said quietly. I saw his hands clench into tight fists in his lap. "I want to reclaim our honor, so my family can once again walk with their heads held high and my sisters will have decent prospects for marriage."

He looked at me and smiled, bitterness in his black eyes. "They have men watching me, wherever I go, and they watch my family at home. The king allowed me to become a page but I know he's worried that I'll try to pick up where my cousin left off. If I make one step in the wrong direction I'll be banished back to Tirragen."

I felt sympathy for him well up in my heart, but at the same time shock filled me. Grandfather was a kind, wonderful man. I knew he would never be so cold hearted as to deny a young man his chance at redemption. I had to bite my lip to keep from leaping to his defense.

But at the same time I saw the truth in Eyvind's eyes. He was not lying or telling me this just so I would pity him. It was the bare truth, a cold reality that he accepted because there was nothing he could do to change it.

Except to prove them all wrong.

"I'm sorry," was all I could say.

He smiled again, and this time there was no bitterness, only sincerity. "Don't worry yourself over it, little Shang. I came to terms with it years ago. As long as I have my friends and I obey the laws of chivalry I know I can reach my goal."

Lady Valorie stood and dismissed us to the training yards. Our conversation was abruptly halted when Rispah and Heath began to speculate about what Donovan would show them today. When they turned to me for answers, I made myself smile and did my best to tell them the most likely things he had in store for them.

But for the rest of the day I thought about Eyvind and the fact that Grandfather actually had men spying on him and his family. It had been almost a century since Alexander of Tirragen had turned against the throne, and he was still worried about his family seeking vengeance. What would he say now if he saw me talking and laughing with the young man he saw as a threat?

Eyvind's situation lifted a curtain of naïveté from me. Despite my best efforts to not think about it, I realized that to everyone my grandfather was not a wonderful, loving man. To everyone else he was the king, cool and calculating. Despite his compassion towards his people, he still used them like chess pieces to achieve what he saw as for the good of Tortall. The fact that Eyvind was an honest, hardworking young man who only sought to reclaim honor for his family meant nothing to him. Grandfather only saw the traitor's blood running in his veins, and that was all that mattered.

When that realization hit me, I wanted to cry.

I think this is a record update for me, so celebrate! There might not be another for a few weeks because I'm going to be very busy. I'm in the middle of making a kimono for Otakon, and it's eating away at my time and money. But I'm still putting aside a little time every day to sit down and write, or at least brainstorm on what's to come. I have a good idea of what I'm going to write next, so hopefully it won't be too long.

I can't thank you enough to the reviews. I'll do my best to live up to your expectations. I do have plans for the older bloodlines like Alanna's family, but they come in later. Working with the less developed families made it easier for me to make original characters.

I realize it would be very easy to turn Melly into a Mary Sue, but I swear I'll be dead and cold in the ground before I let that happen. When I started thinking about this I didn't so much have a character in mind, but a combination of bloodlines. And when I put them all together I realized all of the things she'd get from each of them. I want to make her extremely talented, but at the same time extremely flawed, and thus perfectly human.

Thank you all very much! Until next time, take care.