Author's Note:

Cross-posting this from archiveofourown, because I'm STILL craving Kel/Neal. Because the site's formatting is different, I recommend hitting the "expand brackets" option until you feel comfortable; particularly because most of this story is written as connecting, but very disparate, scenes.

Credit for inspiring this story goes to:

h_vane for their "Rampant".

Emnot, for their works, including "The Good Heart", "The Tourakom-Goldenlake System of Communication" and "Gods and Their Gifts." In particular, The Good Heart and Rampant both feature the most awesome takes on Wilina and Baird that I've ever read, and got me seriously thinking about what growing up as their son was probably like. My take on Wilina in particular is basically borrowed from h_vane.

Credit is also due to kitsunerei88, for their amazingly compelling character studies of Neal. Lifeincantos' "see me through" gave me so many feelings about Kel and Neal's relationship. Lastly, credit is due to dutchydoescoke for their "fixed point" series, and bracketyjack, because the New Hope series has done so much to flesh out my understanding of Tortallan worldbuilding.

I reread Lady Knight at the beginning of this year, and the scene where Neal asks Kel "What's the matter, love?" absolutely wrecked me. I found myself buried under an avalanche of feelings, and proceeded to try and dig a tunnel out from underneath by writing.

This is the result. I hope you enjoy.

End A/N


Let's talk about Neal, shall we?

And, since we can't talk about Neal without talking about Kel, let's talk about the both of them.

Let's talk about two best friends; who couldn't be less alike, everyone agrees.

Everyone says this. Sometimes laughing, sometimes astonished, sometimes scowling with annoyance.

But they always say it, with the assumption threaded through their voices that it is as self-evident a fact as the sun rising in the east.

(Sometimes, everyone is very shortsighted.)


Let's talk about the girl, the youngest of nine, bullied by one of her elder brothers. Let's talk about the girl who repaid the world for this misfortune by becoming the champion of everyone who couldn't speak for themselves.

Let's talk about the littlest sister, who became the big sister to every person who would cross her path. Let's talk about the girl who learned to show no fear, no terror, no pain. Not to her enemies, not to her audience – and not to her friends.

Let's talk about the girl who began to draw allies to her as a magnet draws iron filings, with her even temper, her cleverness, her sense of humour – above all, because of her compassionate heart that cared indiscriminately, and a loyalty that death couldn't daunt.

But we talk about this girl a lot, don't we?

So perhaps, for a little while, let us talk about the boy.


Let's talk about the boy, who was quick and clever at a young age, and cheerfully coddled. Let's talk about the younger middle child of four children, who lost his childhood and his older brothers in less than a month.

Let's talk about the boy whose sky caved in when he was fourteen, who is terrified to love, and can no more stop caring than he can stop the tide from flowing.

Let's talk about a heartbroken boy; a boy who has turned keeping people at arms-length into an art, but who can't make himself make them leave.

Let's talk about Nealan of Queenscove.


Neal, like every other Gifted person, learns on Longnight, Midwinter, of 451, that anything can happen. Including, but not limited to, the barrier between the Mortal and Divine realms evaporating.

It's not a widely-publicised fact, obviously, but you don't grow up in court, as the son of the Duchy of Queenscove, without a talent for picking up dangerous information.

At first, it's comforting to have an explanation, no matter how outlandish, for the fact that none of the walls of the palace seem real, and that the world keeps spinning, for the rest of the day.

The explanation stops being comforting, when Neal realises that the world has gone utterly, totally mad.

All of the adult mages are needed to fight. The Immortals are everywhere. Every seaport town is at risk of being hit by raiders, aided by stormwings and hurroks. From the land, ravaging the southern coastal fiefs, there are reports of increased spidren attacks, flesh-eating unicorns, tauroses; there are fighting ogres coming over the mountains from Scanra, near the City of the Gods. To fight the immortals, they need every mage they can get.

And they need every Healer.

Neal's father rides to Port Caynn with the King; the realm's Chief Healer will be needed at the siege that is about to hit Tortall's biggest, wealthiest trading port. He, Jessamine and his mother remain, and they watch from the northern gate of Corus, until the horses have long passed from the horizon.

Then Mother takes them back to the townhouse, and leads them to the shrines while they light sticks of incense, for Papa, for Graeme and Cathal, who will all be under siege soon. They are halfway through supper when Jessamine begins to cry, and Neal's eyes burn with her.

Mother draws them from their chairs, into her arms on the floor, and Neal feels her tears soaking into his hair, as they weep on the floor of the house together, as they weep until there are no tears left. They all stumble off to bed, too drained to do anything other than sleep.

Mother wakes him at the crack of dawn, with fire in her eyes, and Neal blinks up at her. She opens her mouth to speak, but is cut-off by the distant sound of screaming, and Neal feels dread sweep over him.

Mother leans down and shakes him by the shoulders. "Listen," she says, her voice blade-sharp. It penetrates the foggy dread, and Neal meets her eyes. "Get up, get dressed. I'll go get your sister. Chain mail and helmet from the armoury, now. The Lower City needs help."

Neal is out of the bed immediately, splashing his face in the basin of water, and scrambling into clean clothes before she's even left the room.


Let's talk about Neal's mother, shall we? She gets less attention than her husband or her son, both of whom barely get much to begin with. But mothers, in a casual, everyday way, shape and break the world. So let us talk, just a little, about the woman who raised the boy.

Duchess Wilina of Queenscove was born Wilina of Haryse. She is the daughter of one of Tortall's most revered generals, and descended by her mother from the haMinch clan, the backbone of the Tortallan army. She absorbed lessons in strategy over breakfast from age four, and channels command as naturally as a pipe does water.

Throughout his life, Neal will forever be amused at the incredibly small number of people who are aware that his mother is also a mage. Unlike his father, she isn't trained as a healer. She isn't trained as a war mage, either.

She is trained as a general's daughter is trained; trained as someone who grew up against a background of raids, counterattacks, whose parental substitutes were corporals and sergeants, not noble, convent-trained governesses. She is an expert with a dagger, in physical and magical dirty fighting; in sideways cantrips, tricks and charms.

From the time he is fourteen onwards, Neal is forever grateful for that legacy of dirty fighting and sideways cantrips.

Six days after the Barrier falls, two days after Port Caynn is officially besieged, stormwings mass in the air above Corus. Their terror and fear ripples through the city, and sentries report a squadron of hurroks flying towards the Daymarket.

The Provost's Guard are armed with batons, not spears, bows, or pole-arms.

That day, Duchess Wilina of Queenscove strides into each temple, dressed in mail. One after the other, she collars the senior Mithran priests, and the senior priestesses of the Goddess, and harries them into offering their wings, all of them, as extra hospital space for the citizens of the Lower City.

The second she strides out of the last temple, she mounts her horse and turns to her children, from where they sit on their own mounts, and leads them to the Daymarket, giving them orders as they ride.

"Stick together," she tells them, sharply. "They'll be aiming to create chaos. It could get as ugly as a riot. Keep your heads low – look out for little ones. Neal, look after your sister. Jessamine, grab everyone you can who is seriously injured, or separated from an adult. Meet me at the Temple of the Goddess!"

They halt outside the Daymarket, all dismounting in unison. Their mother kisses each of them on the forehead, hard and swift, and dives into the crowd, shouting, "Follow me!"

Fear is gripping his throat, but Neal follows his orders.


It's a mess.

They find an infant, fallen from her mother's sling onto a stall-bench still half-covered in turnovers in the chaos. There's something terribly wrong with her skull and she's bleeding, but she's still breathing, Neal senses the flicker of her heartbeat still pulsing, so he grabs two turnovers for whoever they meet who'll need food, thrusts the infant into his sister's arms, and dives from the cover of the stall into the stampede.

Two siblings, six and eight, broken arms, and ribs, judging from the pained wheezing coming from one of them. Neal tackles them to the cobblestones, putting himself between them and the hurrok whose hooves had hurt them.

The winged horse is rearing at the impudent little mortal, who has dared to obstruct it, and Neal wants to panic, wants to scream and laugh, but there's no time for that. Instead, he sketches a sigil in the air for sticking, and clumsily shoves it at the hurrok's rear hooves, which are still firmly planted on the cobblestones, with all his strength.

"Run!" he snaps at the little ones, pointing at his sister, and thankfully they obey, thankfully Jessamine is still in the stall.

Neal jumps back as the hurrok lets out an outraged squeal, and brings down its front hooves where Neal had been lying an instant before.

He sketches out another sticking sigil, and it hits the hurrok's front hooves now, but while he's sketching, a big person hits him from the side, pushing him to the ground, and the wind is knocked out of him. When the person runs over him, all of his considerable weight on his rib for a moment, Neal's vision almost goes black.

But adrenaline gives him strength, and the foot leaves his spine, so Neal fights down nausea and moves.

He rolls to his feet, head swimming, and takes a deep breath, letting his vision stabilise. When it finally does, when he can see again, he hears the scream of another child to his left, and he fights through the crowd till he can peer over around the shoulders of taller adults.

He sees another child, four years old, backed against a stall two metres away. Another hurrok has backed it against the stall, and Neal's heart is in his mouth. No time for negotiation: he shoves a path through the crowd with his magic. The child is screaming, cowering, putting his hands over his head to protect himself, and the hurrok has seized the child's arm in its mouth.

Neal jumps, crouches, draws his razor-sharp belt-buckle knife, and slices, aiming for the vulnerable tendons of the hurrok's cannons. This time, another scream of fury from the thwarted immortal, and Neal dives to the side, before it collapses, and then crawls forward, slashing its belly open.

The child is free now, and Neal yanks him forward and out of the hurrok range by his closest arm, the savaged one, while a little voice howls a protest inside of him about how you don't put the patient in even more pain, but the child is alive, and so is Neal, and that's all that matters right now.

"Neal! Over here!"

Somehow, Jessamine's scream cuts through the uproar, and Neal manages to tow the crying child with him back to the stall. Jessamine is still rocking the baby, and the other two children are clinging to her like burrs. Her face is white as a sheet.

"We need to get to the horses," she says, and Neal can only nod in agreement.

As soon as they arrive in the hospital area of the Temple of the Goddess, Neal turns to the side and throws up. As he does, something in his side seems to explode with agony, and his vision goes black, and all he can think is, this again.

When he comes to, Jessamine's little hands are in his hair, tugging on them none-too-gently, and she is snapping orders at one of the priestesses – "Water, a basin, a sop-cloth, tell my mother –" and he manages a crooked smile. Just for her.

"At least I'm conscious," he tells Jessamine, because Neal doesn't yet say polite lies like, "I'm fine."

"Good," Jessamine retorts. "Now you need to stay that way. I need help with the triage, if you can move."

Neal puts a hand to his own side, and manages to quiet the agony so that it's aching. Six on the ten-point scale. He'll cope.

"I can now," he says, giving her another crooked smile.

Jessamine hands him a cup. "Rinse and spit. You've got sick in your teeth."


Jessamine has no Gift, and they are at war. The day after the hurrok-and-Stormwing attack on the Daymarket, he takes her to the family armoury. She comes out with a sword on her hip, and the daggers that she normally keeps tucked in her room hanging on a belt.

Whenever they have a spare moment and enough energy to physically lift the sword, Neal practices with her with determination that would make his old tutors gape.

He also teaches her every dirty trick he knows.

Jessamine adopts them with disturbing speed, develops a few of her own, and returns the favour.


By January 13th, they've become ridiculously good at triage. There have been two more incidents where massed stormwings caused chaos and panic in the streets, leading to people – especially women and children – being injured.

On the 5th, a group of wyverns had attacked at the southern gate, while spidrens massed in the Royal Forest. They were there in the Temple infirmaries that night, with their mother, who was dragging, supporting, and in one memorable case of a child with a broken leg, princess-carrying injured people in off the streets.

That night, Jessamine had learned how to multitask: to brew soothing teas, and directing new patients to emptier wards, and tell an old anecdote of family mischief to that last child, whose thighbone is sticking out of their leg.

Neal didn't even try to fix the cough that the wyvern gas left people with. He hasn't yet been taught how to deal with lungs, and Papa drummed it into him: the Gift can heal, and it injure. Do not attempt to heal something you haven't been taught.

What he's been taught is almost nothing, a bitter voice inside him says. And the voice inside him that sounds like his father, his mother, like Jessamine retorts: no. He's been taught how to reduce pain and inflammation both, how to soothe the body. So he moves through the wards, calling dark green magic around his hands for the pain of man and woman and child alike, and rambles as he goes.

That's another lesson Papa taught him: talk to the patient. No matter what you say, just talk. They need to know someone is there. So Neal does; he rambles about his books, and historical debates, and has anyone thought about telling wyverns that they should brush their teeth yet? Perhaps they could unleash a squad of noble governesses on them?

Sometimes, his patients laugh, and sometimes, they're merely annoyed. It's a win in either case; they're distracted from the physical pain.

His sister and he are arming themselves with swords and daggers, and so, so much more: silly jokes, lullabies and romantic fairytales, sarcastic remarks and dark humour. More than once, Jessamine has crawled into his bed after she wakes up from nightmares; more than once, Neal has woken up crying.

Their mother looks at them with expressionless eyes, when they finally leave the infirmary that day, but her voice breaks when she says to them: "I am so proud of you."

Unspoken, Neal realises, is that she wishes she'd never had to be proud of them for this kind of reason.

He and Jessamine look at each other for a moment, and in unison, they step forward and hug their mother, and let her hug them back.

Her embrace is tight enough to be painful, and therefore, perfect.


On January the 3rd, they receive a fire-speaking message from Papa and Graeme. In the flickering flames, Papa's eyes are wet; Graeme's are blank, blank, blank, and only his clenched fists give anything away.

Cathal is dead, Papa says. He had been with a squad of Queen's Riders, on the sea walls of Port Caynn, covering a few fishermen with crossbows. Some of the stormwings had decided to risk the arrow fire, and swoop closer; one had sliced his throat open. There had been nothing anyone could do; they could not recover his body.

Mother slowly nods.

"Dead."

"Yes, my love," Papa says, simply.

Mother draws in a deep, shuddering breath, and nods. "And you, love? Graeme?"

Neal can't actually hear the rest of the conversation, after that.

Jessamine begins to cry, little shuddering sobs that give the impression of glass, slowly splintering.

Neal wants to cry. He can't. His tear ducts remain stubbornly empty.

He wants to tease his big brother, turn to him with the raised eyebrow he mastered only a year ago, and say, "What, too afraid of Aunt Roxanne to attend your own funeral?" And he can't, because Cathal is dead.

It's not funny, but the world has gone mad, and Cathal is gone, his brother is gone, and after a few minutes, Mother severs the fire-link that allows them to speak. Papa cannot spend his Gift on spending more than a little time with his family; he has to conserve it for his patients.

Neal bows to his mother and sister, and his mother is nodding at him, her expression understanding, even though her eyes are faraway, as she wraps an arm around his sister. Excuses made, he runs out the townhouse, into the courtyard.

And the words which he expected to find on his tongue, flowing and thick and fast the way they always come, are not there.

The night air is cold. He paces up and down, breathing in the frigid air, ignoring the way it forms spikes in his throat, somehow still aware of the snowflakes sliding down his shirt. Fuck. He really should have gotten his cloak out.

His brother is dead.

He is no longer one of a quartet. It is now Graeme, him and Jessamine. Cathal is dead.

Neal lets out a horrified laugh, and it's as though the dam breaks. He breaks, laughing until he cries, letting out short, animal wails at how insane the world has turned.

His father and brother are in a city under siege, there are creatures out of his childhood stories attacking, and Cathal is dead.

He draws a muffling sigil in the dirt – the servants will need to sleep soon – and stands in it, and cries and screams and shouts, until his voice is hoarse, and his mother's hands are around his, dragging him firmly back into the house, and to his bedroom.

Mother methodically helps him undress, undoing buttons and ties that his hands are too cold and fumbling to deal with, and tucks him in like he's four, rather than fourteen.

He goes through the next two days in such a fog, that the official news barely penetrates his ears.

Immortals have taken Royal Forest, and set up nests a mile away from the Southern and Eastern gates.

Come the spring, Corus will be under siege.


The fog, the deep, jarring wrongness of a world without his brother in it, hangs over him heavy throughout the next week, so heavy that he feels like it might suffocate him. Some days, he drags himself to the Temple, helping treat the ailments of the Lower City that never stop, even under the siege. More and more often, he's at the Palace, in the healers' ward, helping ease pain and soothe and to ward off infection, and allowing the healers with more training to use less of their Gift when they do the heavy lifting.

After the third consecutive night of he or Jessamine waking up in tears or with shakes, Neal gives up. He asks the man who used to tutor him his letters for help, and together, they moves his mattress into Jessamine's room, adjacent to her bed, partitioned with a privacy screen.

It saves time; and saved time means saved sleep.

The courtyard of the Queen's Riders used to be filled with teasing, laughter, whoops of trick riding and grunts of effort as they practiced. Now it is quieter; sometimes there's laughter, but they are weary chuffs, not bright peals.

He passes through one day, on the way to the healer's ward, as a group of trainees attached to the Fifth, Thayet's Dogs, are trotting in. And Neal feels, even through the suffocating fog, a flutter in his stomach, as he sees a trainee with shining blue eyes, black hair, and a wry smile on her lips, as she looks over at one of her friends, and says something teasing. For all that there's blood on her jerkin, her eyes are shining still, and laughing, and the sunlight is playing on her hair, giving it a strange, beautiful black-bluish tint.

She turns in her saddle and meets his eyes. Neal blushes, and her smile widens and she winks at him. He smiles back, bright and warm, even as he feels his cheeks grow even hotter.

It's the first sensation of beauty, of joy, of something good, he's had all week.

Four days later, he kneels on the cobblestones of the courtyard, green fire wreathed in his hands, frantically working to stop the bleeding of a head-wound that would turn her black-blue hair red. He succeeds, and then tears himself away from her side to move through the healer's ward, still dazed and trying to shake the images out of his mind.

He pours in a bit of his Gift here, a bit there, a bit there, too terrified to stop, until at last, the healer in charge forces him into a chair, and shoves a glass of juice into his hand.

Neal is too tired to do anything but follow the path of least resistance. He drinks the fruit juice in two swift gulps.

The older mage doesn't so much as bat an eyelash. He refills the glass, and then hands Neal a plate with a sandwich on it. "Eat."

Neal eats the sandwich and finds that, although he has no idea what he has just eaten or drunk, he does feel better. He murmurs thanks to the older mage, and is given a dismissive wave in reply.

"Go home, Queenscove. You're no good to your friends if you kill yourself from exhaustion."

Neal takes the hint, and rides back to the Queenscove townhouse. The sun has set; his mother is out, and the housekeeper tells him that she's consulting with the Queen. Jessamine is attacking a battered practice dummy in the courtyard. He waves to her, and walks straight the bathhouse, in the hopes that the feeling of the blood still being on his hands might vanish, if he only sits for long enough in the warm, soothing water.

It doesn't, although he does almost drown. Thankfully, the attendant drags him out before his head can hit the water, and then towels him off, helps him dress, and shepherds him to bed. Neal lets him. The path of least resistance sometimes involves people comforting you, and Neal is fourteen and too damn tired to refuse, even if it is unmanly.

The next morning, when he drags himself out of bed and down to the breakfast table, there are guests at the table. Queen Thayet and Duke Gareth the Elder of Naxen. Neal blinks sleep out of his eyes, and tries not to pay attention to the way his stomach is dropping into his boots.

He isn't surprised when the Queen tells him, her voice soft, that she regrets to tell them that his brother, Sir Graeme is dead; his father is alive, but wounded, and will be soon returning to Corus.

He isn't surprised, but regardless: Graeme isn't dead. Graeme can't be dead. Graeme is not allowed to be dead.

The Duke looks apologetic, and Neal realises dimly, I said that last bit out loud.

But still, Neal thinks, as though this is a debate at the University, tugging at his hair, as fear rises in his throat. Graeme is not allowed to be dead. He isn't, because if he is, then it's only Neal and Jessamine left.

And that can't be true. He's the third son, the youngest, the one who has comfortably lazed in the shade of his brothers' knighthoods, content to wait for the time when he finishes his training and lights the shadow up, with keen bright intellect and dark green magic.

"It was a mage assault – blood magic, directed at the King, combined with a group of half a dozen ogres that tried to get past the squad of the Own. Graeme accounted for two of them," Jessamine says, softly.

He would, Neal thinks numbly, Graeme had always been a perfectionist on the practice courts, and that thought makes his brittle shield of denial crack, crack and begin to splinter.

Cathal is dead, and Graeme is dead.

His brothers are dead.

Neal shudders, nausea rising in his throat, and Jessamine empties the bread-bowl and passes it to him just in time.

There are only two of them now.

It's selfish and undutiful and all the things he would be scolded for, if – if they were here. Neal doesn't care. See the previous point.

He puts the bowl of sick down, and runs out of the breakfast room, up the stairs to his room, and locks himself in, grabbing book after book of the shelves until there is a stack almost a foot and a half tall on his desk.

He takes a deep breath, sits down in his chair, and grabs the topmost book off the stack, ignoring the sound of his sister knocking on the door.

He can't. He can't. He can't do this.

Hiding like a coward it is.


The sun has set by the time that the shutters bang open, with a blaze of dark green magic. His mother and his sister climb in. His sister looks worried. His mother looks sad, amused, and angry, all at the same time.

She strides over to his desk, hauls him up out of the chair, and gently shakes him by the shoulders, the gesture that's meant: pay attention, before you get yourself killed, ever since he was three. Automatically, he feels his back straighten, and he looks her in the eye.

(Haryses always look someone in the eye.)

"I know you're hurt," she says, general-blunt. "I know it'll never stop hurting, and I know you think life is going to be wrong from now on. And it will be. For all of us, although maybe it will lessen years from now. But Neal, love, we don't get to hide from reality."

The tears that he's been keeping at bay with ink and paper all day are slipping free, at the acknowledgement of reality, and Mother lets him cry. She lets him cry on her shoulder until there are no tears left, and she kisses his hair when he's done.

And then, after a long moment, she hands him a handkerchief.

"Come on," she says. "You need to eat something."


Papa comes home, two days later, and he pulls Neal into a crushing hug the moment he sees him. Neal feels tears in his eyes, and buries his face in his father's shoulder.

They stand like that, for a long, long time, until Baird has to sit down for his injury. Mother shoos them into the sitting room, and Baird collapses into his arm-chair, and beckons Jessamine and Neal over, gesturing to the ground in front of his chair.

Jessamine takes it eagerly. Neal remains frozen in the doorway of the sitting room.

He wants to sit at Papa's feet again. It was where he and Jessamine had always sat, second-youngest and youngest. He wants to be there again, with Graeme in the other big arm-chair, and Cathal lounging on the loveseat, and Mother in her rocking chair.

But he isn't the second-youngest anymore.

His feet feeling heavy as stones, Neal stumbles over, into the arm-chair that Graeme used to sit in. A flood of expressions sweep through his father's face: confusion, anger, realisation…

Pain, and Papa closes his eyes, and lets his breath out slowly.

When he opens them again, he leans over and cards his fingers through Neal's hair, and then leans down and rubs Jessamine's shoulder gently.

"I assume I've missed a lot," their father says, his voice as soft as his touch. "Tell me everything."

And so they start to tell him, about what has happened in Corus, until their rivers of words run dry.


The funerals are quiet remembrances at the Queenscove townhouse, on the 23rd of January. It is packed to the rafters, because everyone in Corus, from every branch of the family, is attending, be they Haryse, haMinch, or Masbolle.

(Neal is grateful, so grateful that Dom's blue eyes hold no pity, because otherwise, he would have to punch him, and he can't stand to think of punching anyone related to him right now.)

They dedicate the first half of one day to Graeme, and the second to Cathal.

Letters have trickled in, over the month, as the news makes its way through the military grapevine. Letters from peers, from teachers, from regular Army soldiers and Queen's Riders and members of the King's Own. Person after person shares their memories of a joke, a smile, a laugh; a practice bout, a helping hand, a mischievous lesson, a powerful left hook. The elders of the family read them all aloud, one at a time, and Neal is fighting back tears by the fifth missive.

They were his brothers, his, and it will never stop hurting, and they were so very loved by seemingly everyone they met. And there are so many never wills, he realises.

He will never see Graeme married; he was betrothed to a girl from Blue Harbour, but he will never marry her.

He will never be teased by Cathal about it again, nor will Cathal stand as Graeme's best man, or Neal's, nor vice versa.

They will never, as three brothers, gang up to give a playfully intimidating welcome to whomever Jessamine chooses.

They will never find out if Graeme would thrive looking after the estate, or chafe at it.

They will never discover whether Cathal would decide to pursue further training for his Gift, or if would be content with what he had already learned.

They will never see him ride a griffin or rescue a princess, as he'd solemnly informed Neal that he would, when he had been nine, and Neal had been four.

Cathal was only knighted last Midwinter.

This last realisation makes Neal feel chill all over, and somewhere in the back of his mind, a part of him realises that: this is it, this is one of those moments, after which your life is never the same.

"You alright?" Dom asks him, out of the corner of his mouth, his voice low.

Neal's reply is raspy. "As much as I can be."

He still does not believe in polite lies.


"Why did you become a knight?" he asks Papa, on the 26th of January, as they wash their hands in the Palace infirmary together. He's just watched his father ease broken lungs, arms, and legs, with the same steady, practical hand that Neal's always seen in his work.

It is only now that they are at war that Neal really notices the sword at his father's hip, and remembers that his father studied as a page, a squire, and then, when his paint was still wet on his shield, had obtained permission from Jasson the Conqueror himself to study at the Imperial University in Carthak.

Papa's smiles, dry and sharp. "Oh, there was never any question that I would do otherwise. There has always been a Queenscove knight, after all. Legacy, and all that.

He cracks his neck from side to side. "But a wise man listens, when the Goddess tells him not to waste the gifts the gods have given him. So, as soon as I could get my things in order, I begged King Jasson's permission to study in Carthak. I quite scandalised my own parents. But they recovered. And I really have no regrets."

"Do you ever wish you hadn't trained as a knight?" asks Neal. "You could have gone to Carthak younger."

Papa shakes his head, smiling. "No, I don't. I did in the early years of my training, but then I found that the training I'd done as a knight helped me as a healer. I've stopped believing in wasted time. And, more practically speaking, a healer who can survive walking into a fight is a healer who's that much closer to the wounded." He blinks, and then looks at Neal intently. "Why do you ask, son?"

"I was just wondering," Neal says, defensively, feeling the paper-thinness of the excuse.

Papa raises his eyebrows, and says nothing.

Neal keeps looking back, feeling his face set, and crossing his arms.

Papa sighs. "Just tell me when you're ready, son." He claps Neal on the shoulder, and keeps his arm there. "No point standing about. Let's get some lunch while we can."

Neal nods, and follows his father to the kitchens, Papa's arm around his shoulder, the notion of a legacy still rolling around in his head.

There has always been a Queenscove knight.


Neal argues with himself. A great deal.

It's a quirk that his tutors and teachers at the Royal University deplore, because, in his final exasperation, Neal often ends up rejecting the question's framing, rather than picking a side.

It's a quirk which confuses his classmates, who never understand why he can't just let part of the story alone.

It's a quirk which, bless Mithros and the Goddess, his family indulges, and always has. So that night, in the courtyard of the townhouse, with the snow still falling and his cloak warm on his shoulders, Neal paces and argues with himself.

There's always been a Queenscove knight.

"I've never wanted to be one!"

But that was when I was the youngest son, when I knew I wasn't the heir or the spare. That was when I knew that I would never have to be a knight.

"I've never liked fighting," he says, weakly.

Does that mean I have a choice? Jessamine doesn't. She never wanted to learn the sword, but she has to, now. Tortall is under siege; we need every fighter we can get.

The practice courts aren't about showing off anymore. They're about survival.

"I'll be too old to start."

Papa started training at the Imperial University when he was older.

Neal groans, and runs his hands through his hair. More than anything, he wishes his brothers were here right now. He wishes for Cathal's cheerful optimism, and Graeme's stern cool-headedness. When Neal argued, with his cynicism and passion both, they balanced him.

And that's the rub, that's the issue, that's what this boils down to.

Cathal and Graeme aren't here.

Graeme and Cathal are not here.

Papa might not believe in wasted time, but that's all Neal can see. The years ahead that should have belonged to them, the years that they will never have, the life that was cut short, before Cathal was even of age, and Graeme was only just barely so.

Graeme and Cathal are not here, and the only shoulders left to carry the legacy of Queenscove knights are Neal's.

Girls are allowed to train as knights, that inner contrarian of his pipes up, and Neal swears, loud and foul, because no. No. He knows that Jessamine could, and that's not the point. Neal is not going to dump his duty on his baby sister, of all people.

He catches his breath, and the decision he has made settles in his mind, soft and cold, like the snow falling onto his cloak.

I need to leave the university.

It hurts, even the thought of leaving his life there. The halls filled with argument and debate, his classmates who come from every walk of life in the realm and outside of it, his studies in healing and illusions. It hurts like a dagger between the ribs.

Neal thinks of Graeme, taking out two ogres before they could reach the King, of Cathal dying on a Stormwing's razor wing, and he clenches his hands into fists.

Is he really going to protest, in the middle of a war, that duty isn't painful?


It takes a week and a day of intense conversations with his father, who is horrified; three days with his mother, who is surprised and concerned and uncomfortable, not because she does not understand, but because she does. It takes several more conversations, in the same week and a day, with aunts, uncles and assorted meddling clan elders.

The only people who don't object, seemingly, are:

1. Uncle Glaisdan. Rather than look surprised or concerned, he gives Neal a look of approval that makes him want to find some tradition to upend, purely on principle.

2. Cousin Domitan. When Neal tells Dom, Dom wraps an arm around his shoulder, and, after a long moment, tells Neal: "I'm going to enrol in the King's Own."

3. Jessamine. When Neal stands in the doorway of her room, and tells her, "Jessa, I'm going to become a page," her face is white and terribly drawn for a moment.

He steps forward and wraps her in a hug, and Jessamine hugs back, so hard that Neal's ribs hurt.

She says, a hitch in her voice: "I guess you'll have to stop fighting dirty, then."

Neal smiles and shakes his head. "Never," he tells her, solemnly. "I'm planning on being a knight, not a hero."

"Good," she says, her voice hitching, as their minds both flash to their heroes, their brothers. "We need you, you know."


On February the 4th, Nealan of Queenscove formally withdraws from the Royal University.