Kel's days flew by in a haze of routine. She took comfort in her daily meditations and physical exercise and meticulously ensuring the shared house was kept clean. Neal's check ups always came after dinner, with a quiet offer for a massage should she want another one.
By the gods did she. But she would turn him down several days in a row before eventually caving in to the desire to feel his hands upon her in an intimate manner.
So, naturally, she was due to have her routine categorically thrown off balance.
It started with the arrival of the next biweekly payment. Kel had expected it to contain fifty gold crowns, as they all had previously for that was the agreed upon amount, excessive as she thought it was. But Roald refused to listen to her protests.
"Are my eyes deceiving me or are there three bags of gold on our table?" Neal asked dryly, for the three bags of coin were very conspicuous.
Together, they split the bags and counted the coins. One contained the anticipated fifty. The other two, totaling a smaller, but unexpected extra, twenty-five gold crowns each, Neal concluded to be their knight's dues.
Given knights their own land to manage in form of payment had fallen out of practice more than a century ago when it had been determined that only nobles could seek knighthood. Previously, it served to provide the new knight with a land to manage, which meant they earned tithes and taxes from the commoners that lived on their land, and thus the means to buy his own equipment. The king could still ennoble a family at his discretion, much like King Jonathan IV had done for Kel's family when her father sealed a peace treaty. They weren't even added to the Book of Copper yet. Compared to the Queenscove line, which was in the Book of Gold dating back more than 400 years.
The law changes in who was eligible to try for knighthood necessitate the crown to find an alternative payment. A knight's wages. A predetermined salary for all knights, calculated on their family history first—because the noblemen of the time wouldn't hear otherwise. Having a son from a Gold family paid the same as a Silver, never mind Copper, was an outrageous insult—and their individual contributions as a knight.
It was a basically a way for the older families to continue to validate that their history and existence meant more to the realm.
Kel had a good head for numbers and calculations, but like most knights, her salary was given to the bank to hold onto until she needed it. She had never questioned the amount of gold in her account, simply assuming that her mother or father had been adding to it as well.
Now, though, she was being forced to reconsider her previous assumptions. Unless Roald had decided her value as a knight increased because she was pregnant with his child—which he better not have. Kel was already formatting a letter to her friend to explain why he couldn't pay her a higher knight's wage that coincided with her being pregnant because no one was supposed to know she was having his baby—a frankly insulting excuse, that meant he had been pay her a higher rate all along.
But she couldn't fathom why. The Mindelan family wasn't even in the Book of Copper. While she had known that a Gold family earned twenty-five crowns because her former knightmaster often had her balance the books for the Third Company, and Raoul usually put his salary towards the company's budget, Kel wasn't aware of how much, precisely, a knight of her history and background should be earning.
She had erroneously filled in the blank, assuming each lower rank earned five less gold crowns than the one above it, as it made more sense for her to be earning fifteen crowns a month and her parents throwing a little extra her way than to imagine she was earning twenty-five from the Crown.
Neal frowned as she explained as much to him when she insisted the extra must be for him.
"Hang on minute. The money is yours, Kel. If anything, Roald should be paying you more."
She stared at her friend, perplexed by his jest.
"You single-handedly helped end the Scanran War by killing Blyce and removing his killing machines from the battlefield."
"But I disobeyed direct orders to go after him," she argued.
"And the Stump 'punished' you by making you assume command of the same refugees you disobeyed him to save," countered Neal.
The Lady Knight smoothed out her grimace before it could fully form. The whole time she was training to become a knight, Kel had fought for fairness and justice. Lord Wyldon would have been well within his rights to remove her from command, dock her pay, have her publicly lashed, and then sent back to Corus to be court martialed.
Not that she was ungrateful, as disobeying her commanding officer, abandoning her post, and marching into Scanran while they were at war could have seen Keladry stripped of her knighthood, and nobility if King Jonathan felt so inclined.
She was relieved to not be stripped of her shield after all the effort she put into gaining it and the numerous trials she had overcome, but she would have understood if it had come to that. And honestly, Kel would have gone after her refugees anyway, because that was what a knight was supposed to do.
But Kel would hear whispers about how Lord Wyldon let her off lightly because she was female. They were quite ironic, for Wyldon of Cavall had been harder on her than any other page. More strict. More critical. Finding new and creative ways to punish Kel for her fear of heights. He was the one who had pushed for her probationary year, even though the king had declared females had the right to earn shields.
No, Lord Wyldon had never been fair to her. Not in his general treatment of her, nor when doling out rewards or discipline.
"I only did what I felt what expected of me. Allowing me to keep my knighthood was a better consequence than I deserved. There's no way he would still be paying me extra five years after the war. Besides, he's already sending more than we need."
Neal threw his hands in the air. "Call it guilt money then!"
She scowled. "I don't want money for my services like I'm some kind of whore." Those rumors had already seen her chased out of the castle. If Roald was paying her more for carrying his heir, he was essentially making her the highest paid whore in all of Tortall.
Neal's green eyes looked stricken. "Graveyard's hag, I didn't mean it that way."
"What's the point?" her tone was defeated. "It's true, isn't it? He's paying me to bear him a child."
His hand slapped on the table. "He's sending money," Neal said firmly, taking care to stress his verbiage, "to see that you are healthy and comfortable. Unless you're telling me that he slipped you a few coppers when he bedded you, this money is meant to ensure you're wellbeing."
Kel was frustrated that the healer didn't understand. "I haven't performed knightly duties in more than two months. All I've done lately is be sick to my stomach. How is that deserving of being paid? If he's still paying me my knight wages than it's because he considers my actions a service to the Crown."
"Kel, I promise you that Roald doesn't think you a whore. He's doing the only thing he can in his position to take care of you and your child. Besides, it would look more suspicious if you weren't receiving any pay."
Neal still believed their mutual friend was a bit of a moron for insisting on trying to present Kel's babe as Shinko's. Unless it popped out of the womb an exact replica of the father, the truth would will out when none of the queen's Yamani features were present. So long as this was what Kel wanted, he was content to keep his mouth shut, but now he was beginning to debate the merit of cluing Roald in to Shinko's deception.
Kel may love the man, but she didn't deserve to be made to feel like a whore for the sake of politics and peace.
"So, you don't think I'm a whore?"
"Well, I don't know about that," he smirked, lips twitching.
"Pardon?"
"You, my dear Lady Knight," he began imperiously, pointing a fork at her second bowl of rice, doused heavily in fish sauce as she had taken to doing, "are a whore for that abomination you call nourishment."
"I don't think you can use the word 'whore' in that manner."
"Which of us studied at the Tortallan Royal University?"
"But you quit," she pointed out cheerfully. Neal relished the satisfaction he felt at breaking through her stone mask and bringing the female knight out of her funk.
Neal stuck his nose up in the air. "I'm still more educated than any who would dare call you a whore. As such, I do declare that the only manner in which you are debasing yourself is by subjecting your poor taste buds to that horrendous concoction—and are those pickles in there?! By Mithros, why?"
Kel nonchalantly took a bite of her meal, enjoying the way her friend's face scrunched up in mostly exaggerated disgust. "You're the one who suggested them."
"In place of the fish sauce! Not in addition too. If you're consuming that much salt and acid, I'll have to see about adding more fruits and vegetables to your diet."
Neal muttered to himself, getting up to search for the log he had started to track what she ate. Thankfully, the nausea had started to ease off somewhat, and her appetite increased as a result, removing one worry from the both of them now that Kel was eating more regularly and keeping it down.
Though Kel was amused to be on the receiving end of the importance of eating your vegetables lecture since that had always been her role.
Kel moved to tuck away her bag a gold, putting it out of sight and out of mind. Roald was already giving them an exorbitant amount of gold to maintain their daily needs—truly more than two people needed.
Neal was likely right, and her insecurities were probably getting the best of her. But it was impossible not to spiral. All the secrecy to cover up the babe's illegitimacy because they intended to pass it off as born out of the queen's womb.
Hush money.
She resolved to stash it away in case of emergencies, with the intention of giving it back when she could. The truth would only condemn her as well, and Kel didn't have the protection of being royalty.
And Roald never spoke of what would happen after. Though Kel had never asked. Her emotions had won over her logic because her friends were asking her for something her heart had traitorously yearned for and Kel had felt crushed for Shinko to know the other woman was unable to have children.
Kel pulled out a sheaf of parchment and set to writing a letter to Lalasa, her former maid turned dressmaker. She would be able to get a second letter, which would be included within, to Roald and Shinko.