Chapter 4: Teaching the boys
Adalia groaned as she returned to consciousness. Trying to decide what had woken her, she caught a faint sound coming from the left side of her room, through the wall.
Cursing, she forced herself out of bed, pulled on some fresh training clothes, tied up her hair and stomped out of her room. Knocking loudly on the door to the room from which the noise was coming, she tapped her foot, impatient.
"Who the hell gets up at this un-godly hour and makes noise?" She angrily muttered to the closed door as she heard the occupant scrambling to open it.
As the occupant opened it, Adalia was surprised to see a rumpled Kula brandishing what she recognised to be a glaive at her throat. Adalia raised one eyebrow, a questioning look on her face.
Kula quickly lowered the glaive and said suspiciously "what are you doing up at this hour?"
Adalia wrung her hands and accidentally yelled furiously "WHAT AM I DOING UP?" Then, hearing the disgruntled sounds from all the other rooms, she lowered her voice, her anger still red hot, "what am I doing up? YOU are the one who woke me up with all your gods curst noise!" She crossed her hands over her chest waiting for Kula to answer.
Much to her astonishment, Kula burst into quiet giggles and pulled her into the room. "You sound exactly like Alanna when she losses her temper!" She finally managed to say.
Adalia just stood there, tapping her foot, one eyebrow raised. Her face returning to normal, Kula said composedly, "I am practising my glaive. How did you hear it? I haven't been hitting anything! This has never woken any of the boys! Gods, you must have the hearing of a bat!"
Adalia quietly mused 'not a bat…' quickly banishing those thoughts, she decided to continue on with anger, "OK. So you didn't expect me to have good hearing. But why did you deem it necessary to press that thing to my throat?"
Kula responded, "Oh. In my first week of page training the boys broke in and destroyed my room, and the mean ones are always trying to break in so as to try to beat me up. So I find it useful to be prepared when someone tries to burst in."
Adalia nodded her head, her anger abating. She suddenly looked mischievous. "Hey, Kula, could you teach me how to use that weapon?"
Kula nodded and went over to retrieve a spare glaive for Adalia.
For the next few hours before breakfast, Kula instructed Adalia in the basics of the glaive.
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The two girls trekked down to the mess hall together. They had struck up a friendship – Kula's own brand of disguising her emotions intrigued Adalia, as did her own Player's acting amuse Kula.
At breakfast, the boys dutifully trekked in. As soon as they saw Adalia, they started towards her, muttering curses, angry that she had woken them. As soon as they got near enough to see the steely glint in Adalia's eyes, they quickly turned back to pick seats as far away from her as possible. That is, all except for the boys they had talked to last night.
A rumpled looking Nathan, brown eyes annoyed, slumped down across from Adalia, and was joined by Dameon. A disgustingly happy Charlie dropped into the seat next to Adalia and gave her a small bow, and exclaimed "Oh thankyou, Adalia, for giving us a first hand experience of your temper, which must rival the Lioness's in ferocity."
Adalia raised her head and fluttered her eye lashes at him, "why thankyou, young sir. I am pleased and honoured that you have noticed. I would just like to caution you against messing with me."
"With that temper, I think you will be safe." Daniel put in dryly.
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After breakfast, the pages went to their lessons, mostly conducted by boring Mithran priests. After first proving she could read and write, the priest in charge of that particular subject gave Adalia a stack of work to do, as did the mathematics teacher. Luckily, Adalia had inherited her mother's own rapid mind, so the work was not so much difficult as dreadfully boring.
The morning started to pick up as Adalia noticed that some boys in the back; a large redhead, a mousy-looking boy and a bazhir boy with a large nose - seemed to be glancing towards her and Kula.
Concentrating her crow hearing, she managed to catch "ok. On the count of three…"
Forewarned, Adalia kept her eyes subtly focused on those three, as they chewed pieces of paper. Ok. These boys want to spit stuff at us. How lovely. Can't have this now, can I? She picked up a small wooden ruler, and as the tiny missiles flew through the air, she used her fast crow reflexes to block only those that were actually going to hit her or Kula. This was done so fast that no one who wasn't watching closely would even notice what she was doing.
She smiled satisfactorily at the frustrated looks on the boy's faces. Throughout that lesson they continued to try to hit them, and she continued to ensure that they failed miserably.
At the bell went that signalled the end of the class, she stood up yawning and left the room. She almost burst out laughing at the astonished look on the boy's faces as they saw the large piles of spit balls around her desk, and at that exact moment the priest decided to check the floor.
She sighed satisfactorily as his furious yells followed the pages on the way to lunch.
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"How did you do that?" demanded the ever-curious Kaden as they all took their seats.
"Do what?" She asked, allowing interest to creep into her features, to confuse the boy.
"Stop all those spit balls." Cut in Charlie. Adalia looked up to see them all staring at her. Oh damn. I swore to myself that they would not find out I have certain abilities, and I have blown it all to stop spitballs.
"I have no idea what you are talking about."
"Yes you do." Kula was looking at Adalia strangely. "Last year, every single lesson, no matter what I did, I always left that class covered in spit balls. I even saw volleys of them flying across the room today. How did you manage to get us both out of there clean?"
Looking around, she saw that they were not inclined to be distracted from this subject.
Silently Adalia reached into the pile of papers she had collected from her first morning of lessons. She sighed as she presented them with her ruler. They just looked at it quizzically, and she turned it over. They gasped as they saw a lot of spitballs stuck to one side of the ruler.
"How…" began Kaden.
Adalia noticed those same three boys having one last shot at them, and she blocked all of the missiles, and then presented the others with the ruler.
"That explains that then." Daniel said quietly. "How are you so fast?"
"That I won't answer. Honestly, you should leave a girl a few tricks." Stated Adalia, falling back into her teasing manner. She quickly changed the subject and by the time lunch was over, she was relatively convinced that she had managed to divert their attentions.
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Lord Padraig stood up and barked, "Ok girls it's time to get your muscles pounded. Everyone out. Before we even let you near a staff you are going to run the wall that circles the palace and the out buildings." At this, everyone groaned, but none complained as they excited the hall and followed Lord Padraig towards the gates.
As they were running, Adalia joined her group of friends and remarked, "he said girls like it was some kind of insult!" the others looked at Adalia and saw that she was furious.
"I am going to show him that sometimes a girl can be the worst competition he can ever have!" At this she sped off, surprisingly fast.
The group stared after her, and Charlie managed to say, "do you think she even remembers how long this wall is?"
"Probably not." Kula responded.
"Do you think there is a limit to that temper?" Nathan enquired.
"No." They all said, and then laughed as their eyes followed the girl who was sprinting up to, and then passing, Lord Padraig who prided himself on constantly being the only one in any group of youthful pages that joined him to run the entire wall, and always finishing first.
The pages looked on as they, running at a constant speed, ran out of breath and slowed even more.
To be fair, they were laughing so much at the struggling Lord Padraig, who at first had assumed that Adalia would quickly run out of breath, had made the decision to speed up as it became apparent that she did not seem to slow. It was an amusing sight, to say the least.
They laughed even harder as they saw that Adalia seemed to be very much at ease, and that she was goading the man by always running the exact same distance away from him; no matter if he managed to speed up, the girl would perfectly match that and continue running a few meters ahead of him.
As their group became slower and slower, they looked on amazed at the fact that the girl seemed impervious to the fact that she must have ran miles, the group was almost half of the way around the wall.
Lord Padraig will learn not to insinuate things about girls! Adalia thought to herself as she continued to run around the wall. She was annoyed at Lord Padraig, but also at herself, because she may as well have plastered a sign on her forehead telling everyone she was different. This notion was confirmed as she sprinted past the guards on the wall; as they first saw her, they looked at her oddly, and upon spotting Lord Padraig out of breath grimly running behind her, trying to catch up to her, they burst out into incredulous laughter.
No doubt no one has managed to knock this gasbag off his perch. Adalia thought bitterly.
Nearing the two-thirds mark of completing the circuit of the wall, she began to sink into her running, and out of her temper. Relaxing a bit, she ignored the struggling man and smiled at all the guards she passed, waving to them. She heard a huge eruption of giggles from behind her, and she turned to be jogging backwards, not slowing down an iota.
Too late did she realise that smiling and waving was not the expected response from a page that had been forced to run a very long way, and at the same time that Lord Padraig would probably take this as an insult.
Oh well. That will be an added bonus. She thought grimly. After all, he can't exactly punish me for enjoying a run. She shrugged and turned back to face the rest of her run.
Little did she realise that the guards started to point her out to the nobles who happened to be strolling around the gardens. They all thought that this was brilliant. A page, the Lioness's granddaughter in fact, was in the process of spectacularly defeating Lord Padraig, reducing him to a spluttering walk.
Alanna and Jon, who just happened to be discussing business on the wall, heard the gossip before they saw the girl, violet eyes blazing, black hair flying out behind her as she sprint up to them.
Blatantly realising who Jon was, Adalia stopped and bowed, and said quite pleasantly, "Good afternoon, your Majesty, Grandma." Then she glanced behind her and started running again, having spotted the others come around the bend.
Alanna and Jon stood there shocked as they saw the condition of the others that were supposed to be running with her. They were all breathing heavily, most of them clutching their sides.
When they saw the two, they seemed to be in such a haze of exhaustion that they could only wave and continue doggedly running along the wall.
Jon turned to Alanna and said calmly "Adalia wasn't even sweating."
Alanna glanced in the direction of the running girl, and nodded in agreement. "I think we will need a much larger wall to exhaust that one, Jon."
With this, they both broke out laughing, and continued on their way.
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Seeing the end of the wall, Adalia broke out into earnest running (or at least what a human would consider speed) and sprinted the home stretch, then quickly glanced around to check that the coast was clear before leaping up to sit on the arch above the door leading into the castle.
She knew she didn't have to do this, but she felt that if she was going to be punished for some little thing down the track because of this event, she might as well rub salt into the wounds. At least she wouldn't have to pretend to be out of breath; the others would just assume she had enough rest before they caught up.
A few minutes later, she glimpsed the motley group of pages and the one man struggling to complete the whole track running.
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Their breath hard in their throats, the pages were finally nearing the end of the wall. As they reached the door that led into the castle, they realised that they could not see Adalia. But at the moment, the only thing that mattered was breathing.
An extremely irritated Lord Padraig had other plans, "ADALIA. WHERE ARE YOU?" He shouted, his cry ringing throughout the palace grounds.
"Right here, my lord."
The pages and Lord Padraig froze at the closeness of her voice, and looked around. They could not see where she was, although she sounded to be right next to them.
"Ah, I'm up here." Adalia said almost apologetically. At this, the entire gathering below slowly lifted their heads at exactly the same time. Adalia almost laughed at the look on Lord Padraig's face.
"What…how…when…" was all the shocked man could utter. The pages seemed to forget their exhaustion as they took in this unique sight. They all were looking around to see how the hell she had managed to get up there. There was at least a four-meter drop, and no way to climb up.
She was stretched out, looking the image of being totally relaxed and contented. She was propped up on one elbow, one leg dangling over the edge. She was staring at Lord Padraig idly.
Trying to get the upper hand, Lord Padraig realised that there was no easy way for her to get down. Suddenly much more confidant, he said "Well hello Adalia, nice of you to wait up." Adalia nodded at this, silently accepting his statement. He turned an even deeper red.
"Fine. Tell me how you plan to get down, or better yet, show me. We are moving to the practise courts momentarily." Sure that he had caught her out, he allowed a triumphant smile to creep onto his face.
Adalia just sighed, "Do I have to? I was enjoying the breeze."
This was the last thing he had expected to hear, but he noted that she didn't seem overjoyed at the prospect of getting down. "Yes. Now, if you please."
Adalia just shrugged gracefully, sat up, and jumped off.
The others just stared at her as if she was mad as she landed on the ground safely. They kept looking all the way up to where she had just been, and then to her, standing safely upon the ground in front of them.
Seeing all of their looks, she rolled her eyes, "You'd think you never saw someone survive a small drop."
They just gaped, and Adalia could almost hear all of their minds stuck on processing her dismissal of her leap as a 'small drop.' Oh the hilarity of the situation.
Lord Padraig visibly collected himself and addressed all the pages, "uh, good. Now that we are all done with that little run, lets get on with the staff straining." The pages all groaned and slowly followed him, furtively glancing at the satisfied smile plastered over Adalia's face as she joined her group of friends.
"That'll learn him not to insult girls, because if he does, I can just point out that he was beaten by one!" Adalia triumphantly whispered to her friends.
They looked at her, and she noted a new element of respect in their eyes, as well as a touch of awe, which she was not so comfortable with. Then they all shook their heads, and Charlie commented dryly, "Remind me not to get on your bad side. You're crazy when you have something to prove!"
Adalia just rolled her eyes and continued on.
Lord Padraig showed the first year pages the beginning drills of staff fighting, and had them repeat it incessantly. Adalia was paired with one the boys that had pathetically failed to hit her with spit balls earlier in the day. He was the tall bazhir with a large nose. She discovered his name was Taj ibn Nazir, and she was on the lookout the whole lesson for a repeat of his ill feelings towards her.
Sure enough, as soon as Lord Padraig turned his back, he started to hit harder. He kept contact with her staff and attempted to use his superior height and weight to force her out of line. Adalia, smirking a little, just used a small amount of her true strength to quickly shove him out of place, and he confusedly fell back, just as Lord Padraig turned around. The man turned red and barked for him to get back into place.
He stared at her for the rest of the lesson, trying to work out where she had gotten the strength to do that from, or if he had imagined it.
The red haired boy who had been conspiring with Taj to hit her with spit balls, whose name was Dale of Nond, was the next to try to get her. As Lord Padraig moved down to the farthest point in the line, he 'lost his grip' on his staff, and Adalia noticed it spinning towards her.
Humph. You would think they would be a little more creative – and subtle in their attempts she mused. This did not worry her an iota. Acting like she had all the time in the world, she snatched it out of the air and slugged it into a very large tree by the yards. She had seen – and done – much more dangerous things than stop a staff.
Lord Padraig turned around and saw the staff spin into the tree. He swept his gaze over the line of pages, and was somewhat disappointed to see that it was Dale who had lost his staff, instead of one of the girls.
The pages giggled as they watched Dale climb slowly up to retrieve his staff. While he was still in the tree, the bell rang, indicating that they had to move on to their hand-to-hand combat lessons. They moved out, leaving Dale stuck up the tree. No one seemed concerned.
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As they all lined up, a tall Yamani man and an old woman approached them. The man announced himself the Shang Horse, and the woman the Shang Wildcat. Yet again they splint off and began to learn the basics of this type of fighting.
Adalia learned fast, and found it hard not to use all of her strength to fight. Sure, she had pretty much given herself up as unusual to the other pages, but not too much so. The only thing that she found useful was that while all the other pages were exhausted, she was relatively fresh, having much more stores of energy. She was polite and let the boys throw her, although while the others gained bruises, she did not.
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After dinner, her group of friends gathered in Nathan's rooms and got to work on the piles they had gained from the morning. Adalia could not wait to have the riding lessons tomorrow; she would be able to ask the horse Alanna had gotten her its name. (She could not speak to animals like Daine did, but in the way each animal could talk to one another)
As she commented that she was tired, the others decided it was time to go to bed as well. As she was heading towards her rooms along with Kula, Adalia stopped dead.
Kula, noticing the stop, stopped as well, and silently asked Adalia what was wrong, but looking at her.
Adalia gestured to the floor, and Kula was shocked to see a large pile of what looked suspiciously like oil. Adalia silently took Kula's arm as they skirted the pool, and they entered their separate rooms.
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Next chapter: Discovery
Disclaimer: Yet again, I am not Tamora Pierce.
I hope you liked this chapter. It was a little long, but I couldn't resist making it so. The next chapter should be good. Please rate and review