Ok, ok, this was a little slow, so I thought I'd give a summary/explanation because someone said that she couldn't remember what was happening:

So, Danai had been followed home by Fang-who-is-really-Joren's men, so George sent her to the palace so that Kai could help her find a job there and all but then Dal (who was acting like a traitor cuz he thought that Sherra, who he really likes, was a traitor, but Sherra realized that she was on the wrong side and switched back later) kidnapped Kai, Danai, and Lalasa, who just happened to be stuck there, and Ver got kidnapped too cuz he followed Ver. Anyway, Kai woke up and Joren was pretty much like "I know something you don't know!" and Kai and Danai figured out that Dal and Ver and pretty much everyone knew something about them that they didn't. Then Sherra came in and rescued (kinda) them and they all escaped, until they got out and realized that they didn't know where they were going. Then Kel, Neal, and Faleron showed up and then Joren came in with a bunch of his cronies and then Treble came too, and there was that big fight that was written horribly but Kai wasn't allowed to fight but she ended up saving Lalasa anyway. Then Kai was knocked out and Kel fought a little more and then Kai woke up and had to sort out where everyone was going so Sherra, Dal, and Treble went back to the Dove and Ver complained a lot and went with Danai and Kai to the palace. And here's where this comes in:

(Wow, I just realized that my summary didn't summarize much and it really didn't explain a lot either. Oh well. If anyone's confused, you can email me and I'll give a better explanation I hope.)

Chapter 17

"No," Kai said, her face pale.

"Kai, I can't go by myself," Danai protested. "And besides, they're in stalls or something. You can't die walking into the stables."

"I'm not going near those monsters," Kai denied with a shudder.

"But that's the only place Ver will be. He'd never expect us. Come on, don't you want to know what they were talking about?" Danai persisted.

Kai wavered. She was practically obsessed with these secrets that her friends had kept from them for so long, but she also wasn't willing to go into the stables, where Ver had gotten a job- probably for the sole purpose of avoiding her, which sadly, was working. "What if we just waited for him to leave?"

"Kai, you know that's never going to work. He practically sleeps in there, and we'll never catch him outside. This is our chance, while we both have the night off."

"Danai, I know that Esmond hasn't given you anything to do since you got here two days ago."
"I still don't trust all these nobles," Danai said warningly, "And you shouldn't either. Just because they're all nice now, that doesn't mean that they won't become malicious slave-drivers when the fancy suits them."

Kai opened her mouth, and then realized what she would have said. She was going to defend their employers, something that she would have scoffed at just a month ago. But there was a small part of her mind that insisted that Faleron was more than just a person that she was forced to work for, in whatever odd circumstances. They had somehow formed a peculiar friendship that Kai had never even seen coming. But then, who could have foreseen this happening? Kai mused.

It was then that Kai realized that Danai was still waiting for her to say something. "Fine, don't trust him if you don't want to. Your loss, I suppose," she said wearily. Kai was tired of being caught between these two worlds, and she was afraid that she'd snap at the next person who mentioned anything remotely related to prejudices. Danai opened her mouth. "And I'm still not going."

There was a knock on the door. "Going where?" Sholla asked as she walked in. She had become a part of Kai's circle of friends recently, along with Lalasa, who Danai thankfully had no problems with.

"Nowhere; that's the point," Kai said before Danai could explain.

"Kai, don't be such a baby," Danai said, exasperated. "I'll blackmail you into this if I have to."

"Blackmail?" Kai repeated. "That's so…low."

"Well I'm not going by myself, and I'm not going to be stopped because you're afraid of a few horses."

"You're afraid of horses?" Sholla snorted. "I never would have guessed."

Kai glared. "I'm not afraid of them, really. It's just a desperate reluctance to ever come near them in my life again."

"You're afraid of them," Danai said accusingly.

Kai scowled. "Fine, I'll go." She clutched at her temples. "You give me headaches."

"No, I'm helping you conquer your fears. Right, Sholla?" Danai asked.

"Of course," Sholla nodded solemnly while ignoring Kai's furious protests that she wasn't really afraid of horses. "Don't worry, Kai, we won't tell," Sholla promised with a grin and a wink; then turned to the door shaking her head and muttering, "Horses."

"I AM NOT AFRAID OF HORSES!" Kai shouted at Sholla's retreating back.

A moment later, Faleron stuck his head in the door. "Yes you are. Remember the last time you were on a horse?" he asked with a smirk.

Kai felt herself blush. "Y-yes. It was just that horse, though. It was bigger than most of them."

Faleron frowned, and was about to contradict her when Danai said, "Well then, Kai, you'll have no problem going to the stables now, right?"

Kai paled. "R-right now? Can't we go later? I…um…have to do something…for…Faleron! Maybe some other day, Danai."

Faleron shook his head. "Do you? I can't remember saying anything." His smirk widened. "But you should go now because you may be busy all of tomorrow."

"All right then. You heard him, Kai," Danai said, towing Kai through the door. "We'll just go and be right back in less than an hour."

"An hour!" Kai was heard to protest as she was dragged through the halls.

The stables smelled. Badly. Kai wrinkled her nose as she inhaled the damp smell of hay; then ended up stepping in manure. Why couldn't Ver have been a cook?

The horses in the stalls lining the aisle poked their heads out. Kai blanched when she saw that most of their heads were a good three hands above hers. She bet those huge mouths could chop off her arm in one bite.

"Danai, this was not a good idea," Kai insisted, edging for the door.

"Kai, we're already here. No leaving now." She grabbed Kai's arm and started forward in a most assertive and uncharacteristic manner. "VER!" she hollered down the aisle.

A short little boy with a head of shockingly red hair scurried out from one of the back rooms. "Are you two lost?"

"Err…no, we're looking for a stablehand named Ver," Danai explained, tugging Kai's arm when she tried to back away. "Do you know him?" Danai asked. Kai was quite certain that the horse in the stall next to them was threatening them; he was tossing his head and kept snorting. See, she thought, we've been here for one minute and already the animals hate me!

"He's the new one?" the boy asked. Danai nodded; Kai was too preoccupied with staring at the horse. "He's in the back pasture; it's through the doors to the right."

"Thanks," Danai said as she pulled Kai with her past the long lines of stalls and out the back door. It was just past sunset, and the sky was a pale purple washed with blue. On the right was a large grassy field fenced all the way around and filled with six or seven horses, all currently eating grass. Ver sat on one of the fences; he held out a carrot to one of the animals nearby, who lazily lifted his massive head, glanced through half-lidded eyes at the offering, and finally accepted the vegetable and went back to grazing.

Kai tore her gaze away from the beasts and glared at the person on the fence. "Ver!" she shouted.

His head shot up, and, startled, he fell off the fence. "Don't do that!" Ver said loudly. "You'll scare the horses into doing something dangerous," he cautioned with a look in Kai's direction. Her lips twitched; she had been watching them just in case they should decide to stampede over the fence and kill them all. Only one of the horses cared to investigate the noise, but promptly abandoned the idea in favor of the grass.

"How come you never came to see us?" Danai asked in a quieter voice as she leaned on the fence railing.

Ver shook his head. "Too many nobles in there."

"What about George?" Kai shot back from a reasonable distance from the pasture. "He's a noble, isn't he?"

"No," Ver said, shaking his head again as he looked at the horses. "He's a commoner, through and through. He just married a noble."

"But that means he must love the noble," Kai persisted.

"Why are you defending them?" Ver demanded suddenly, turning to glare at her. "Do you defend us when they all laugh at us?"

"They don't laugh at you!" Kai denied hotly.

"How would you know that? Are you in on all their meetings? Are you one of the trusted members of their conspiracy?"

"What conspiracy?"

"Stop it!" Danai interjected. "That's not why we came here, Kai, and she wouldn't listen to you anyway, Ver. I've already tried." Her tone implied that she agreed with Ver, but Kai knew that she was right about their reason for being there.

"What do you and Dal know that we don't?" she asked bluntly. "And why weren't we told before?"

"It didn't matter before," Ver muttered, walking over to one of the horses. Kai wondered if he was doing that just in case she wanted to hit him after this. "And it doesn't matter now."

"If it doesn't matter, why won't you tell us?" Kai inquired.

"George would kill me," Ver explained quietly.

"And why does George care?"

"'Cause he's part of it, and he thinks that you might join them."

"Who?"

"Fang."

"What!" Danai and Kai exclaimed at the same time.

"Why?" Danai demanded.

"It's a long story," Ver said, coaxing the mare in front of him to stand between him and the girls. "And I can't tell you. George would have my ears for his collection."

"I never thought I'd see the day that Ver admitted to being afraid of someone," Danai said scathingly, in a much harsher tone than she had used with Kai when saying the exact same thing. "Come on, Kai. We'll go find George." They began walking away.

"I'm not afraid of him!" Ver shouted, just as they had known he would.

"Are you afraid of us?" Kai asked.

Ver scoffed at the two younger girls. "Of course not."

"Then why are you hiding behind a horse?"

"I'm not hiding," he said weakly. "I'm checking for bugs."

"You're obviously afraid of us," Kai announced, turning around again.

"You two are cousins," he blurted out behind them.

Kai spun around. "What!"

Danai tilted her head as she studied Kai. "We do look alike…a little bit."

"No," Kai shook her head. "I don't know who my parents were, and neither do you. Therefore, our nonexistent parents couldn't possibly be related." Then she too looked at Danai. Their hair were almost the same shades of dark brown, but Danai's eyes were hazel, while Kai's were green, and Danai's face was much longer than Kai's, which had always been too round for her liking.

"Wait," Danai said suddenly. "Is that it? That's the big secret that no one could tell us?"

Ver shrugged. "I told you it wasn't important."

"So why does George care about this?" Kai asked. "You said he was involved. And what about the daggers?"

"What daggers?" Ver asked innocently.

Kai took one of them out of her pocket and tossed it upwards. Ver reached over and caught it by the hilt.

"You really shouldn't be playing with weapons," he told her.

"Faleron's been teaching me how to use them," she said, plucking the blade out of his grasp.

"You want a noble to show you?" he asked incredulously. "Why didn't you just ask one of us?"

"Stop changing the subject," Kai ordered. She tore off the canvas so carefully stitched over the crest on the handle. "What is this?"

"Family crest," Ver said after a quick glance.

"I know that," Kai shot back. "It's a noble family crest, too, isn't it?"
"Yes."

"Why do I have this?"

"I don't know. What are you doing with it?" he parroted back at her.

"Stop," Danai ordered. "We want answers."

Ver glanced from one to the other with a frown; then he sighed. "It's a Yamani family. Kai's father gave it to her mother fourteen years ago at the start of the rebellion."

"What rebellion?" Kai asked eagerly, sitting up straighter.

"The one she started." He smiled. "Aunt Liza always did like things her own way."

"WHAT?" Kai and Danai both cried.

"'Aunt Liza'?" Kai repeated. "That was my mother. That would make you my cousin, so you must be Danai's…"

Danai stood up. "WHY DIDN'T YOU EVER TELL ME YOU WERE MY BROTHER?" She looked like she wanted to slap him, but was just containing herself. Kai marveled at how outspoken Danai was becoming today.

Ver shrugged. "Would it have made anything different?" he asked her. Danai stopped and frowned too. "Would we have been better friends or would you have thought of me differently?"

Danai shook her head. "I guess not."

"No, wait," Kai interrupted. "Danai doesn't know her parents, and neither did I. And why didn't you and Danai grow up with the same people, then?"

Ver looked thoughtful. "I remember when we came to Tortal and Mum got sick. I was just a little kid then," he smiled fondly, "running around in the Dove and stirring up trouble. I remember that when she died, she told Sera to give Danai to Cara to raise, since Sera could barely support herself and Kai."

"Sera…Sera Beecher?" Kai repeated. "Was she my mother?"

Ver shook his head. "It's a long story and I really should be working." He glanced at the feeding horses as if to prove his point.

"What are you supposed to be doing?" Danai asked.

"Grazing the horses."

Kai tilted her head. "And how would this be different than what they're already doing?"

"Never mind. You city girls wouldn't understand."

"As opposed to you, who has lived in the city all his life?" Kai asked.

"Not all my life," Ver said. "I've lived other places. The Yamanis, Pirates' Swoop, part of Carthak for a few days…"

"Why?" Danai asked.

"I was in the Yamanis for four or five years, and then when Mum brought us back to Tortal, we had to hide out in Pirates' Swoop for a few days, and Carthak was at some point when I was three, I think."

"You don't really remember anything, do you?" Kai asked with an eye roll.

"I remember more than either of you two."

"Prove it."

Ver narrowed his eyes at her. "Don't you remember when you were only babies and we crossed the Emerald Ocean and there was a huge storm and you both spent the entire trip in the cabin howling?" They both shook their heads; Ver raise his voice. "What about before that when Aunt Liza went to join the rebellion and never came back and Mum spent days in her room crying about it?" Another shake of the heads. "What about afterwards, when Uncle Keroni never came back home and his relatives threw Mum out and she had nowhere to go?" His voice was breaking. "What about when she came back to Corus, her homeland, the only place where she had friends, and found out that she was wanted by the Watch? You don't remember any of that, do you?"

"I'm sorry, Ver," Kai said quietly, wishing that she hadn't asked. Kai really knew nothing more than she had before, but she didn't want to ask for the full story now. "We didn't know."
"Exactly," Danai said. "No one ever told us. Is it just because no one wanted to talk about it? I think we deserved to know."

Ver patted the horse's head. "What else?" he asked wearily.

"Do you know the whole story?" Kai asked cautiously, taking a seat on the fence.

"Not everything," he shook his head. "All I know is what I remember from thirteen years ago and what I managed to weasel out of George." He looked at their patient expressions and sighed. "Fine, but if I get in trouble for not working, I'm blaming it on you."

"Family crisis," Kai commented.

"Fine," Ver agreed. "You know that Mum was a flutist, right?" They shook their heads. "Well she was, a good one, too. Her and Aunt Liza had a double act together, and they got to be the most famous entertainers in the city at one point. Mum had already married Da, who was…" he glanced at them, "a thief," he said quickly, as if it hadn't been his original intention.

"So eventually word spread to up here that they were as good as they were said to be, so they got the official king's invitation to perform. Now, Aunt Liza," he looked pointedly at Kai, "Your mother, hated nobles. She refused to do it until Mum and Rukas," he was the king of the Rogue, "persuaded her to so that they could spy on all the nobles. George told me that that was where Aunt Liza met Uncle Keroni, and they were married a few months later. His family was…displeased that he went to Tortal and came back with a commoner for a bride, since they were really rich, I was told, but he was the younger son and happy so it hardly mattered. So Liza and Mum and Da moved with Uncle Keroni to some remote part of his inheritance in the Yamani Isles. Da got a job in the city and then was when you two were born.

"Mum and Liza went back to Corus that year. I went along, but I don't recall most of it. I remember that they got really mad about something, some small error of the Watch involving their close friends. I think some of them we killed wrongly. That was when they began researching Tortal's law system. George said that they began getting really mad at the amount of crime happening on the streets. Like murder and stabbings," he explained at their confused expressions. "Aunt Liza petitioned the government to change some of the laws, which he said were pretty important. They were denied an audience with the king and Liza got really angry. When we got back to the Yamanis, she ranted and complained to Keroni about the injustices. And Keroni, being a young, headstrong nobleman, roused his troops and began a rebellion."
"A rebellion?" Kai demanded. "Just because of that?"

Ver frowned. "I think there was a long history of unjustified deaths or something." He shrugged. "I don't know a lot about politics."

"That doesn't matter!" Kai burst out as she stood. "You don't care that my mother may have started a rebellion and caused a hundred deaths over something completely trivial? You're just going to ignore it because it's remotely related to nobles? I can't believe you! You know that your uncle was a noble!"

"Yes, and he's the reason your parents and mine are dead!" Ver shouted. "If he hadn't gone and taken Liza so seriously, when she was just complaining about not getting her way; then Da wouldn't have died in the fighting and Mum wouldn't have had to raise us herself. Don't you get it? Liza tried to stop him when he told her about it; this was all his fault!"

"Relax, Ver," Danai ordered. "I know you hate nobles, but you also can't take one man's mistake out on anyone with money."

"What about the government?" he shot back. "What about the people who were after your mother just because her sister complained to her husband about the law? How many commoners are advisors to the king?"

They remained silent because he had a point.

"I told you that none of this matters; it's just bring up ancient history," he finished. "So think twice about who you're dealing with, Kai."

Kai nodded, just because she felt bad about bringing all this up. "No more avoiding us?" she asked.

"No more nobles?" he asked back.

Kai felt sudden anger flush through her veins. "Are you refusing to speak to me if I talk to anyone you think is a noble?" she asked incredulously.

"You know everything that happened and you're still willing to associate with those…" she glared at him until he stopped.

"Ver," Danai broke in, ever the pacifist, "you can't expect her to change in a day just because you say she should; and Kai, you can't demand for him to be around people he hates; that's like you needing to come past all those horses to talk to him today."

"But he shouldn't hate them, and neither should you," Kai protested. "What did they ever do to either of you?"

"Why should we let our guard down so that they can do something?" Ver retorted. "The only reason that you're not dead is because George is there all the time so they can't murder you in your sleep!"

"That's not true!" Kel's voice rang out before Kai could deny it herself. The squire strode forward from the stable doors with an uncharacteristic expression of anger. "You think that we, just because we were born into different families than you, would ever plot to kill anyone just because they have less money than us? You still don't trust us even though Kai and George do, and we gave Kai and Danai jobs? Faleron saved Kai three times!"

"From your own kind!" Ver retorted spitefully. "They-we-never asked for your help, and would have been fine without you all poking into our lives."

"I see," Kel said icily, her features rearranging themselves into their customary blankness. "So you would have been happier if your cousin was dead?"

"How do you know that?" three voices demanded at once.

Thus, the long-awaited explanation chapter! So what if nothing really happened, it was eight pages long on Word.

Bigbigstarr: Err...hope that cleared up a little bit of it but I'm sorry if my summary was...long...

Kara Adar: Thanks, and I'm glad I'm not the only one with troubles on fight scenes.

GreatMotherG: I'm glad you're not dead, or a zombie or something. Sorry, that sounded really weird, but I was just talking to my cousin, and he's a little...never mind. Ver and Kai are cousins, as this chapter said.

Syl Rose: Was the big secret ok? I'm worried that it was a little anticlimatic, but it wasn't as bad as the first three drafts (I hope). Thanks for the review!

Please review!