Ok, really sorry for the delay. Yes, I know it's vacation and there should be like four chapters out by now, but, oddly, when given free time, I do absolutely nothing, and when I really should be doing my homework or some other stupid-yet-mandatory thing, I'm sitting at the computer. Oh, wait, for Mina, who enjoys finding errors in my writing (don't get me wrong, cc is welcome, I just like being sarcastic to my friends; and I know her personally so I can do that), yes, the word "swearing" from one of the previous chapters shall be duly replaced by the word "cursing" (…as soon as I can figure out how to edit. Does anyone out there know?)

Chapter Nine

It was very early when Kai woke up, just as the fifth bell of the morning tolled outside. She rose, uselessly combing her hair with her fingers and resolving to find a comb very soon before settling for a messy braid that she carelessly rolled into an even sloppier bun. She hated her hair. If she wasn't a performer, and doing so would have led to social abandonment, she would have cut it all off, or at least to some more preferable length. As it was, Danai had strictly forbid her to do so the one time that Kai had complained about it to her, an action sorely regretted by Kai, as she was now berated good naturedly whenever her hair got so long that she recklessly chopped off a hand length or so.

Thinking of her friends brought back a sense of loneliness so strong that Kai climbed on top of her bed, cautiously balancing on her one good leg as she had been taught when she was little, and wrestled the small window open, and, ironically, breathing the perfumed scents of the palace gardens just outside was not at all as comforting as she had hoped. If she was home right now, there'd be the smells of street vendors through the window, or the odors of horses in the winding allies, or the sharp taint of many people in too small of an area as they pushed their way through the crowds, or…

Stop it, she told herself fiercely, turning to jump off her precarious perch on her bed. Too late she realized that her sleeve had caught on the rough stone of the windowsill, and heard it tear as she tripped over her blanket and steadied herself against the opposite wall, which, lucky for her, was not very far away in the narrow room.

She nearly cursed when she examined the shredded fabric of her shirt. It, like every other garment that she owned, was specifically made for street dancers, and, accordingly, was thin, cheap, tight, but brightly dyed. Therefore, it had not taken much for the material to be torn along the elbow, but, even so, she loathed the possibility of wearing something else, especially what she would get here: a maid's uniform. They were starch white, conservatively cut, and extremely uncomfortable, not to mention that that would be admitting to everyone that she was simply another palace worker, not a girl from the streets who was just here for a few weeks at the most. Wearing palace clothes would be, to her, declaring failure, announcing to all her old friends that she was no longer one of them. Keeping her appearance the same, down to her most un-maid-like hairstyle, bold attire, and cheap bangles on her wrists and ankles was her own way of keeping herself her, staying unchanged no matter how long she was here, and was also reminding everyone that she was not just another servant, and that she would do as she liked.

Awkwardly hopping down onto her bed, she rubbed her ankle, which she had accidentally put weight on when she lost her balance and was now taking revenge.

Someone knocked on the door, and, at her call, Faleron came in, rubbing sleep from his eyes as he looked around. "What happened?" he demanded.

Puzzled, she wondered what he was talking about, her eyes involuntarily following his gaze around the small room. "Nothing." She shrugged.

"Then why in Mithros are you awake at this cursed hour…again? I thought you were being kidnapped or something."

Against her will, she winced. "I umm…tripped."

"Off what?"

"My bed," she mumbled.

"Now why were you standing on your bed with a twisted ankle?" he asked in a mock-condescending tone, obviously hiding a grin.

"Never mind," she said with fake aloofness. "Do you know where I can get a needle or something?"

"I don't know," he answered, shaking his head, "If you're going to go performing dangerous stunts without your crutches and then expect me to find you needles…." He made it sound like it was the most outrageous request he had ever heard, she thought wryly. He finally grinned, and said, "I think you can borrow some from Lalasa. Just don't go doing things like that again."

She glanced up at the tone of his voice, wondering if she imagined the concern she heard there.

"Maids don't grow on trees," he commented at her look. His dark eyes were teasing; hers yearned to be rolled, but she quickly suppressed the urge.

"Wow, you make me feel so looked-after."

Faleron yawned. "Well, on the positive side of things, I think you've beaten the palace staff in waking up."

This time she did roll her eyes. "No I didn't. I bet you everyone is already awake, they just don't happened to be rushing here to clean the floors." She fussed with her sleeve, wondering where she could get a pin to keep it in one piece until she could somehow figure out how to sew it shut.

"I bet they aren't awake because no one in their right mind would be up this early," he countered quickly. "And, you could just get a new shirt that isn't half-ruined from the head housekeeper. They're free for everyone," he said, as if that would be the deciding factor.

"Yes, and you could also go walk around the streets in Bazhir robes, but I don't think that you will." She hardly even noticed that they were joking again, like old friends, and that her tone was hardly servile.

"You know, if you start talking to nobles like that, you won't like what comes of it," he warned. "Especially if you do it dressed like that."

"What's wrong with this?" she demanded.

"You look exactly like the guards just pulled you off the streets."

Kai raised an eyebrow. "And you would prefer…"

"I don't…that's not what…no one…" he stuttered. She was slightly shocked at the way he took the simple question, then realized how it must have sounded to him. "It's just not the best way to be in hiding if anyone who's looking for you can find you that easily," Faleron answered finally.

" 'That easily'?" she repeated. "I never thought I was supposed to be hiding. Really, if no one thinks to look for me in the palace, or that other squire I ran into before…"

"Zhahir," he supplied helpfully.

"…doesn't tell them, then I don't think that my not dressing like a maid will be all that important."

" 'Never give your enemy any advantage that you can prevent,'" Faleron quoted. He yawned again, and asked, "Do you really want to go to the practice courts this early? We can't go to the kitchens, the cooks probably aren't awake."

Kai decided not to even debate that last point, and instead said hopefully, "The vendors in the streets have already been open for an hour."

"Yes, but the vendors in the streets demand my money, while the palace does not." He disappeared into his room, returning with two apples and tossing her one. "Breakfast," he announced. Kai shrugged mentally, she had made do with a lot less. "So do you want to go the practice courts?" he asked again as she bit into the fruit.

Her shrug was physical this time. "I normally stretch this early, but I don't care. Unless there's anywhere else to go around here."

"Not much," he admitted. "I have the morning off. The gardens, I suppose; all the court girls love them." At her glare he reconsidered. "There's the woods."

"The woods?" She had only been out of the city walls once, and then they hadn't strayed from the road. She had heard, of course, from people who had been outside in the wilderness that it was beautiful, as long as there were no spidrens or any other not-so-pleasant creatures around. "Aren't there immortals out there?"

"Yes, but they're always tracked, so we know where most of them are at all times. Then we can warn nearby villages if we think some of them might be too close, or send out help. For Corus, though, raids keep them out of a certain area, just for safety reasons. You've never been out of the city?"

"Of course I've been out of the city. Just not into the woods."

"Fine, there's a new path I wanted to see, anyway. I'm sure Stephen will let you borrow a horse…" He trailed off at her expression, and then carefully amended, "Or we could walk."

She nodded, trying to overcome the relief that was forcing its way out; she smiled reluctantly. "Now what time will everyone be waking up?" she asked.

"Well, the morning bell is the seventh of the morning, so we have about," he squinted out the window, "An hour and a half."

Kai shook her head wonderingly. Through the window, they could faintly hear the sounds of morning traffic, already well begun and promising only to become heavier as the sun rose. Most people outside the palace would probably have been awake for an hour; by now many were well into the day's work. The baker would have bread in his oven; the smith would be done with a good amount of the nails some construction worker in the city had ordered from him; the weaver already done with a hand's width of the blanket a young mother wanted for her children. There would be customers bustling in the shopkeeper's store, farmers in their fields, carpenters would building their wares, and musicians tuning their instruments for the long day. She barely kept a sigh in, feeling very lost and out of place here.

They passed no one in the halls, though when Kai remarked on this, Faleron reminded her of the not-so-secret hallways behind the walls for the servants who would be the only other ones up this early. They left not through the same courtyard as they had come in just last night, but a large doorway that opened into an actual yard: grass, trees, and all. From this there was another gate, behind which was the forest.

It was not simply another court garden, sculpted to appear natural. This was what the storytellers dreamt of. This was wild, untouched beyond the rough paths, completely unknown to her. The trees were taller than the city walls, vines knotted unchecked around everything; bushes reared higher than a man could stand; flowers bloomed in shades that not even the most expensive jewels could match.

A bird called sang somewhere, and even though she had heard it from the birds that nested in the city countless times, here it felt different: freer, joyful even. Kai felt a smile grow on her face in reflection of the plant life around her, and slowly turned around until her skirt became tangled in her crutches and she almost tripped.

"You're very easily pleased," Faleron told her, stopping her from falling.

She stood quickly, untwirling her skirt without taking her eyes from the scene in front of her. "Do they-" she nodded to indicate the palace walls, "All know that this is out here?"

He shrugged. "Most of them. They just like their walls and fancy titles and whatnot."

"But it's so…"

"It's always been here," he said, seeming to share the opinion, "So most people think it'll always be here. A lot have been out here so often that they hardly even notice it."

She stared at him, amazed, and mentally tried to memorize the view so she cold tell Danai all about it tonight when they…

No, she stopped that train of thought quickly. She would not see her friends tonight, or, most likely, for a very long time. Trying to shrug off the sudden loneliness, she resolved even more determinedly to remember everything about this unknown outside world, so the next time she did she her friends, she would be able to tell them.

"What was that?" she asked, trying to keep the trepidation from her voice as a small, brown creature bolted from the safety of a tree's roots across the path in front of them.

"Chipmunk. Harmless. They never go into the city, too many people, I think." He was grinning, and she realized how ignorant and fearful she must have sounded.

"Fine, and when a spidren shows up, I fully expect you to deal with it."

He laughed. "What happened to the girl who went and tried to beat up Zhahir?"

"Are you comparing him to a chipmunk or a spidren?"

"Chipmunk," Faleron said definitely as one chattered nearby. "He makes enough noise to be one."

She found herself laughing, and said, "Well I don't go around beating up innocent chipmunks." After that didn't hesitate to inquire as to everything else that she had never seen. The conversation strayed from natural life to occupations, songs, and childhoods.

"My brother was always tagging along after us," Faleron said at one point. "He had a dog that would always start barking if we left without him, or if we were doing something wrong. My friends and I tried sneaking back into the keep after dark, when we should have been back, and my brother had waited up for us, so the dog started howling and brought the entire household running."

"You must have been close."

"No more than any other siblings. You don't have any?"

She shook her head. "Not that I know of. There were whispers when I was little, that I wasn't supposed to hear, that my father, some street acrobat, and my mother got into a big fight just after I was born and he left her."

"That must have been terrible." His voice was sympathetic, but there was no pity there. She looked up from the flowers she had been weaving into a chain, trying to shrug nonchalantly.

"You can't miss someone you never knew."

"I guess." He didn't seem reassured, and she wondered why she had even told him. Danai, Hedi, and only a few others knew if her past.

"We should get back," Faleron said, glancing at the sun. "Just imagine what everyone will say when they awake to find that the two of us have run off together! The scandal!"

She blushed. "Or they'll think that we've both lost our senses and fled the city for Carthak."

"No, I don't know Carthaki and boats and I never got along. It'll have to be Galla," he decided, as if they were actually leaving.

They stopped as she wrestled her crutch from between a rock and a root in the trail, and so neither noticed the sound of others walking towards them.

"I really think you should reconsider this," a male voice suddenly said very loudly, sounding frustrated.

"No, if you want to trade me off for money go ahead, but don't expect me to like it!" The second voice was female, and very close.

"They're dying! This is our only chance!"

"Why can't you get more healers, medicine, something?"

At that exact moment, Kel strode into view on one of the adjoining trails, followed by a taller, but obviously related, man. She stopped at the sight of them, her face instantly becoming blank, and asked, "What are you two doing here?"

Not much of a cliffie, I know. But on the up side I got to use the word whatnot in a sentence (first time for everything). If someone could please tell me how to edit an already posted chapter, I'd be forever grateful. Umm, other than that…please please please review!