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Still wearing boots and heavy wool stockings under her gown, she went to Neal’s room and pounded on his door. He let her in without a word, but protested when she closed the door behind her.

‘Do you want everyone hearing what I have to say?’ she demanded sharply.

‘If the Stump catches you here with the door shut—’ The Stump was Neal’s nickname for Lord Wyldon.

‘He won’t.’ Kel put her fists on her hips and glared at her friend. ‘You were sixteen last month. You’re supposed to know better. Did you honestly think you were helping me down there?’

He had the strangest look on his face. ‘Are you – Kel, the Yamani Lump – are you yelling at me?’

‘Yes, I am!’ Kel snapped. ‘You didn’t solve anything, you just made it worse!’

He sat on his bed. ‘Maybe, maybe not. I think they’ll reconsider, next time they want to start fights over your virtue.’

Kel blinked at him. ‘What has my virtue to do with anything?’

‘I’m surprised they didn’t try it last year. Oh, I suppose they made dirty little jokes with each other, never mind that a real knight is supposed to treat women decently. Maybe they thought saying you’re a lump, and not as strong, and on probation, was bad enough.’

‘Are you making sense yet?’ Kel wanted to know. This conversation had taken a very uncomfortable turn.

‘But you’re still here. Now they’re really worried. They haven’t changed their minds about lady knights just because Wyldon let you stay.’

‘I didn’t expect them to,’ Kel informed him.

‘Well, so, they decided to try new insults today. And talk of different kinds of sex makes people crazy.’

‘Your point is …?’ she asked. Her mother had explained how babies were made. Nariko had taught the court ladies, including Kel’s family, how to preserve their honour from rapists. That didn’t seem to be what Neal was talking about.

‘See, Kel, if all of a sudden everyone’s getting into fights about your virtue, maybe the Stump will get rid of you after all.’ Neal sighed and finger-combed his hair back from his face.

Fear trickled down Kel’s spine like cold water. Could Lord Wyldon change his mind? Who would protest if he did? The king had allowed her to be put on probation in the first place. No doubt if Wyldon told him Kel had to go, the king would agree. ‘I’m eleven,’ she said at last. ‘That’s too young to be lying with men, Neal. Much too young.’

He inspected a bruise on his wrist, and touched a fingertip to it. A green spark flashed and the bruise faded. ‘Facts don’t matter with Joren and his crowd. Just gossip. Just making your friends angry enough to fight. I reminded them that gossip is a tricky weapon, that’s all. It cuts two ways.’

Kel sighed. ‘I still don’t think you did me any good. I can take a few insults.’

‘You can – I can’t.’ Neal peered out the door. ‘Hall’s empty. Shoo.’ As she walked by, he added, ‘I consider myself chastised.’

She stopped and turned back. ‘What you said about Garvey and Joren – it’s not an insult in Yaman. Some men prefer other men. Some women prefer other women.’ Kel shrugged.

‘In the Eastern Lands, people like that pursue their loves privately,’ replied Neal. ‘Manly fellows like Joren think it’s a deadly insult to be accused of wanting other men.’

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Kel said.

‘It’s still an insult on this side of the Emerald Ocean, my dear. Now, if I may shave before our bread-and-water feast?’

Kel eyed Neal’s cheeks and chin. ‘You don’t need to.’

Neal sighed. ‘I live in hope, as the priest said to the princess. If you don’t mind?’

Kel went back to her room, shaking her head.

CHAPTER 4

WOMAN TALK

Their punishments for the stable fight cooled the hottest tempers. Kel thought just the addition of two more harness weights would have done it. Even the fourth-year pages were not ready for the change, and it was astonishing how much difference an extra pound made. For weeks Kel felt as if her bones had turned to wax. Master Oakbridge, whose etiquette class was at the end of the day, began to hit their desks with his pointer stick to keep them awake. Extra work, given when sleepy pages didn’t finish classwork, piled on top of Lord Wyldon’s physical penalties.

Bread-and-water suppers did not help. Scant meals on their schedule meant growling bellies. Sometimes Kel thought it was hunger and the prospect of added weights, rather than insults that cut two ways, that made Joren and his friends leave her and her crowd alone.

Two Sundays went to rebuilding the pages’ stable. Once that was done, Kel returned to her earlier punishment, forking down hay from a stable loft. For a week she dripped sweat as she pitched hay down fourteen feet to the floor. Her fright turned the distance into miles. Once that week ended, she enjoyed the absence of fear, until the day she was tardy to a class. Lord Wyldon gave her one bell of time to climb to the palace wall and map the ground between it and the temple district.

Every time she was late, or Lord Wyldon found dirt on Peachblossom’s tack, or someone noticed she had lit a candle after lights out, the training master found Kel work on heights. Neal was sure it was torture. Kel argued that Lord Wyldon helped her to become a better knight by forcing her to manage her fear. Prince Roald finally tired of the debate and said it was a little of both; he didn’t want to hear the subject discussed again.

Every morning and every evening when she opened the large shutters, Jump bounced into Kel’s room. Kel’s sparrows made a game of it, clinging to the dog’s fur and trying to stay on as he leaped. Lalasa also seemed to enjoy it – she gave the dog a treat when no sparrows fell from his back.

No matter how often Gower and Kel took the dog up to Daine, Jump returned, to Kel’s room and to the practice courts. Kel dared not speak to him there: she feared that someone would notice and report it. She was lucky that a dog’s presence in the palace was not unusual. The place teemed with dogs – ratters, hunting dogs, even ladies’ lapdogs. As long as none of their teachers thought Jump belonged to any pages as a pet, he was free to come and go as he pleased.

By the time the leaves turned colour, Jump had joined the night-time study group, and Kel had given up on returning him to Daine. What was the use? He always came back, and she knew Lalasa fed him. Instead Kel lit a stick of incense, asking the Great Mother to protect him, and resigned herself to her new companion.

Jump’s snores roused Kel one November morning before dawn. She turned him on his side – he only snored on his back – and waited for sleep to return. It didn’t. Instead she worried. She had plenty to worry about. Once they had the energy, she and her friends had begun their hall patrols, trying to catch Joren and his cronies harassing a first-year. They’d had no success. Neal and Cleon thought Joren’s crowd had given up. Kel wasn’t so sure. Her experience of bullies was that if they weren’t doing one thing, they were preparing something else.

It’s no good fretting, Kel told herself sternly. Whatever it is, you’ll put a stop to it, that’s all. She just hoped she’d catch them soon. The suspense was like an itch she couldn’t scratch.

As soon as she put Joren from her mind, she worried about practice. She had finally got used to the weight of the harness. Only a week ago she had started to hit the quintain properly in tilting; only in the last two days had she returned to hitting it correctly on every pass. Just when she’d got her skill back, what did Lord Wyldon do but announce a change. In another week he would be replacing the lances of the second-, third-, and fourth-year pages with swords two days a week and axes two days a week. Kel wasn’t ready for that.

Had she noticed the senior pages using other weapons from horseback the year before? She had to smile at the thought. Of course she hadn’t. When she concentrated on something, like her long struggle to learn how to tilt, she saw little else.

Her smile vanished. I’ll talk it over with Peachblossom, she decided. He may not understand, but perhaps he’ll appreciate my making the effort. I just hope I don’t bang him with the sword or the axe. I don’t think he’ll like that.

Was it even worth trying to sleep again now? she wondered, eyes on the light grey sky beyond the open upper shutters. Chances were she would doze off just as the bell rang for the day to start.

She rolled out of bed and carefully opened the lower shutters so she could see. If she lit a candle, Lalasa would be awake within moments, asking if she could serve Kel – and this even though the dressing room door was shut. Kel sighed, quietly, and wished it were as easy to like Lalasa as it was to like Jump. Certainly the girl was useful. She smuggled Jump’s food into Kel’s room with no one the wiser. She kept things neater than Kel had ever done. If only she laughed more, and talked about things! She relaxed only with the animals, but not Kel. And she mourned each and every tear in Kel’s garments as if a friend had died.

If only she wouldn’t be so skittish, thought Kel, slipping her weighted harness on over her nightgown. She creeps about like a mouse, flinching whenever you look at her, till you just want to give her something to flinch about. She’s afraid of me. What have I done to deserve it? Only thought about smacking some life into her, and I know she can’t hear my thoughts. If she could, she’d know I felt bad just thinking that.

Her job with Kel was safe: Baron Piers and Lady Ilane had sent money for the girl’s wages for a year. Kel had paid Lalasa then and there. There was no reason for the girl to think Kel might dismiss her, after receiving a year’s wages. She said little to Kel but ‘Yes, my lady’ and ‘No, my lady’, or for a change, ‘I’ll see, my lady’. Kel was a friendly girl; it hurt that Lalasa couldn’t be easy around her. It was also uncomfortable, tiptoeing about her own rooms for fear she might startle her new companion.

Kel bent to touch her toes and heard a rip. Her nightgown, more than a bit snug around the shoulders these days, had got caught under the harness and torn. Wriggling, Kel tried to get a more comfortable fit out of gown and harness. Could leather shrink? The thing had been perfectly comfortable when it was first made.

She touched her toes again. The seam that had ripped a moment ago tore further. She growled a Yamani curse and tugged the harness again.

‘My lady, that won’t help.’ Lalasa walked out of the dressing room, a robe clutched over her nightgown.

This time Kel thought a whole string of Yamani curses. Keeping her face calm, she said, ‘You really don’t have to be up. You know I won’t need you till the bell rings.’

Normally something that close to a reprimand would have sent Lalasa scurrying from the room. Now, however, she strode forward, hands outstretched. ‘If you please, my lady?’ She actually touched Kel, sticking her slim fingers under the shoulder straps of the harness and lifting it off.

Lalasa inspected the harness in the very dim light, exploring its seams and joins with her hands. Kel, intrigued, poked up the fire and lit candles.

‘I can do nothing about this,’ the older girl said, putting the harness down. ‘You need a new one, and that’s tanner-work. If my lady pleases?’ She motioned, and Kel turned. Lalasa touched the ripped seam between Kel’s shoulder blades, then plucked at sleeve holes, collar, and cuffs. She turned Kel and knelt to pull on the gown’s hem.

‘As I thought,’ she said at last. ‘My lady has grown an inch since this was made. I thought you had trouble tying your points yesterday.’

Kel made a face. ‘I’ve been having a cursed time getting my hose up high enough for me to tie them properly,’ she admitted. ‘Even my breeches are short.’

‘It’s easy to get new clothing for practice and classes, my lady,’ Lalasa said. ‘We just trade the old things for new at the palace tailors’.’ She stood and glanced at Kel, then coughed lightly into her fist. ‘Um – my lady, you have grown elsewhere, too.’

‘My shoulders,’ Kel said gloomily. ‘That’s why the gown split, and why I can’t settle that harness comfortably. My waist’s a little smaller, though.’

Lalasa shook her head. ‘Your shoulders are filling out, but those aren’t the only things.’

Kel rubbed her nose. Finally she said, ‘You know, I understand better when people tell me straight out what they’re thinking.’

Lalasa’s large, dark eyes met hers. She hesitated, then said, ‘Most girls pray for this, my lady. You’re getting them young. I didn’t show until I was fourteen.’ Realizing that Kel still didn’t understand, Lalasa cupped her breasts and let them go.

Flabbergasted, Kel stared at the front of her nightgown. Sure enough, there were two slight bulges in the proper area for such things. When had this happened? They weren’t large enough to be visible under her loose clothes, but how could she have missed them when she bathed?

I hurry when I scrub, she thought, fighting the urge to cross her arms and cover her chest. And I’m always thinking about classwork or practice.

A cold thought overbore everything else: They’ll never let me hear the end of this. She accepted that as soon as she thought it. There was little she could do about the boys’ future comments, except choose her clothes with care and hope her new, inconvenient badges of womanhood grew slowly.

Lalasa ducked her head. ‘My lady will need breast bands.’

‘Oh, splendid,’ Kel replied. ‘Just what I need – more clothes.’ She rubbed the back of her neck. ‘When you get those new things from the tailor? Make sure they’re loose, all right?’

‘Most girls rejoice at this,’ Lalasa pointed out softly. ‘They regard it – and their monthly bleeding – as signs they enter womanhood.’

‘Most girls don’t have a covey of boys whacking them with sticks every morning. Most girls don’t want to be knights.’ Kel plopped onto the bed. Jump wriggled until he could stick his blunt head under her hand. ‘If this keeps up, eventually I can stop wearing dresses to remind them I’m a girl. I hope it takes a while. A long while.’ She tucked her chin to look at her front. Lalasa muffled a noise with her hands. It sounded remarkably like a laugh. ‘I’m glad you find it funny,’ Kel told her with a wry grin.

‘I have to take my lady’s measurements afresh,’ Lalasa said, going into the dressing room. ‘And I need to draw coin from Salma to buy cloth,’ she called as she opened the box where she kept her sewing things. ‘I can let out many of your personal garments, but nightgowns, and breast bands, and stockings must be paid for from your own purse.’

Kel went to her desk and wrote a note to Salma on her message slate. When she had finished, Lalasa approached with a measuring cord. As she slid it around Kel with brisk efficiency, Kel was startled to see they were exactly the same height. She had grown an inch in three months.

‘I don’t know when I can get that harness let out,’ she commented.

‘Leave it for me when you come for your bath,’ Lalasa assured her. ‘I will take it to the tanner.’

‘You’ll need to give him some encouragement,’ Kel remarked. If people wanted fast work from palace servants, they paid bribes. ‘In fact—’ She wiped out her note to Salma and wrote a fresh one, asking her to give Lalasa Kel’s pocket money for the quarter. ‘This way you don’t have to apply to me, and I don’t have to apply to her. You can keep it here and draw what’s needed.’ She handed the slate to Lalasa, who held it with a stunned look on her face.

‘What is it?’ Kel asked, picking up her glaive. The bell would ring soon; she had to start her practice dances. When Lalasa didn’t reply, Kel looked sharply at her. ‘What’s wrong?’

Lalasa was trembling. ‘Aren’t you afraid I will steal it?’

‘No,’ Kel said, trying deep knee bends to loosen her legs. Each bend was marked by another tiny rip. It seemed her nightgown had decided to give up completely. ‘You didn’t run off when I paid you for the year.’

‘All nobles think that servants steal.’

Kel tucked her nightgown’s skirt into the side of her loincloth. ‘People who believe servants will steal usually get servants who do.’ She swung her glaive. ‘You never give me any reason to doubt your honesty.’

For a moment Lalasa said nothing. Then she uttered a soft ‘Oh’ and set a pot of water over the fire to heat.

For the first time since Kel had taken her as a maid, she stayed in the room as Kel performed the complex swings, thrusts, turns, and rolls of a practice dance. She put out fresh seed for the sparrows and laid out Kel’s morning clothes. Only when the water on the hearth began to steam did she collect the pot and take it into the dressing room so Kel could wash when she was done.

That afternoon, in the pages’ class on magic, Tkaa the basilisk began to speak of how the Yamanis practised magic. Knowing of Kel’s six years there, he called on her. When Kel mentioned that she had a spirit bag, an amulet created for her by a Yamani shaman, Tkaa asked if she would let the class see it. Kel bowed to him – she had got over the strangeness of having an eight-foot-tall grey lizard as a teacher months before – and went to her rooms.

About to turn into the pages’ hall, she felt an itch and halted, making a face. The breast band she had on was crisp new linen, and it itched. She glanced around: no one was there to see. Hiking up her tunic, she scratched her ribs through her shirt.

From the pages’ wing she heard a man say, ‘Don’t be shy. If you’re nice, I’ll get you a better place than working for that crazy Mindelan girl.’ He spoke quietly, but he couldn’t have been far away. ‘You waste your prettiness toiling after a mad page.’

There was a reply, in a female voice far softer than the man’s. It was Lalasa and she was frightened. Quickly Kel tugged her tunic over her hips and walked into the pages’ wing. A man in servant’s clothes had backed Lalasa up against Kel’s door. He leaned against it, trapping the maid between his arms. Her eyes were huge as she stared up at him. In one hand she held a brand-new weighted leather harness.

Kel strode forward briskly. ‘What is your name, and what business do you have with my maid?’ she demanded, sharp-voiced. ‘Step away from her at once.’ It didn’t matter that he was a grown man. She was a noble, and she knew her rights.

He looked at her. He was in his early twenties, with a wiry frame. His dark eyes flashed with annoyance as he drew away from Lalasa and bowed. ‘I am Hugo Longleigh, if it please you, my lady. We were just having a friendly chat—’

‘It didn’t look friendly to me. What palace service are you in?’ Kel asked.

He frowned, but he dared not defy a noble, even one who was only a page. ‘I am a clerk in Palace Stores. We have an understanding, Lalasa and me—’

‘My lady, I swear, I was just getting the harness, and he approached me.’ Lalasa’s eyes were frantic. ‘I wasn’t idling and we don’t have an understanding!’

Kel felt very cold inside. How dare he frighten Lalasa! ‘If you are in Palace Stores, Hugo Longleigh, then no doubt they miss your work,’ she said, her hands on her hips. ‘If you bother Lalasa again, I’ll report you. Be about your business.’ She met his eyes squarely, letting him know he didn’t frighten her in the least. He looked like the sort who enjoyed other people’s fear.

The man hesitated, then bowed grudgingly and left. Only when he was gone from view did Lalasa say, ‘My lady, please, I didn’t want him and I wasn’t lazing about—’

Kel fished out her key and put it in the lock. ‘I know you weren’t.’ She unlocked the door and went to her desk. ‘It’s plain as the nose on my face that you wanted him a thousand leagues away.’ She found the shaman bag and tucked it into her belt purse. ‘As for idling, you really don’t have to stay here all the time. Don’t you have friends to visit or errands to run?’

Lalasa tugged at the straps of the harness. ‘I like to stay here. Nobody bothers me but the dog and the birds, and I like them.’

‘Well, think about it,’ Kel said. ‘Honestly, I’m not your jailer. And if that Longleigh comes near you again, tell me, understand? I mean it.’

Lalasa nodded, but Kel wasn’t convinced. There was no time to argue, though – she’d already taken longer on her errand than she should. She ran back to class, thinking every step of the way.

That night, when she went to her rooms after supper, she brought Neal and left the door open. ‘I don’t care if you don’t like it,’ Kel told Lalasa sternly. ‘We’re going to show you holds that will help you, um, discourage someone from bothering you.’ Lalasa stared at Neal, who rubbed the delighted Jump on his belly, as if he were an ogre. ‘At the very least you’ll convince them that you meant no when you said no. Page Nealan?’ she asked, prodding her friend with her foot.

Neal looked at her, eyes filled with mischief. Something – something odd – filled Kel’s chest for a moment. Why did she feel giddy?

‘If this isn’t friendship, what is?’ he asked cheerfully. ‘After people abuse my poor body all morning in the courts, I’m going to let you bruise me some more.’ He offered Kel a large, bony hand. It felt uncommonly warm in hers as she pulled him to his feet. Once he was up, she dropped his hand as if it were a hot brick.

‘I won’t bruise you much. Stop complaining,’ she ordered. ‘Lalasa, stand close so you can see what I do.’ Lalasa circled Neal as if she thought he was a hot brick, until she stood behind Kel. ‘You won’t see a thing if you look at the floor,’ Kel chided her. ‘Neal, grab my arm and get ready for pain.’

When he obeyed, Kel showed Lalasa several ways to get free. She bent Neal’s finger back, dug her nail into the crescent at the base of one of his fingernails, pinched the web between his thumb and forefinger with her nails, thrust a fingernail between the veins and tendons of his wrist, and gripped his hand with both of hers, forcing the thumb or little finger against his palm. She made Lalasa try each defence on her, since the maid refused to touch Neal. They showed Lalasa how to turn an attacker’s arm until she forced it up behind his back. Next they demonstrated how to stamp on an enemy’s instep when she was seized from behind, as well as eye gouges, nose and throat punches, and even the simple knee to the groin. By the time they had walked the cringing Lalasa through it all, an audience had gathered at Kel’s open door.

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