Part 1 (1/2)

Tamora Pierce Protector of the Small.

Squire.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

My most heartfelt thanks for this goes to my wonderful editrix, Mallory Loehr, who gave me another hundred pages in which to tell the story - my brain might have melted down without them, because I could think of nothing to cut. Thus, indirect thanks are due to British author J. K. Rowling (nope, don't know her personally), whose wild success with the Harry Potter books has convinced American publishers that perhaps their authors could manage to sell longer books too.

My grat.i.tude goes to Alicia Craig-Lich, manager of the National Audubon Society Important Bird Area in Indiana and Senior Manager of Nature Education, Wild Birds Unlimited, Inc. for her quick a.s.sistance with information on sparrow biology. She and the other folks at Wild Birds Unlimited online () are a tremendous resource for those who want to know more about birds.

Thanks also to my continual support team: my parents, forever answering crazed garden information questions without once suggesting that I need my head examined; my agent, Craig Tenney, who has a delicate touch for what works and what doesn't; Raquel Starace, for horse breeds, riding, and monster creation advice; Richard McCaffery Robinson, for his many instructive thoughts on the nature of royal progresses; and my very own Spouse-Creature, Tim Liebe, who had his hands full with me this time, and offered many sage thoughts on the nature of romance, ordeals, and training relations.h.i.+ps.

To Iris Mori and her family, arigato goziemas.h.i.+ta for j.a.panese names and weapons feedback - errors here are strictly mine.

Finally, I express a debt to Crown, Freckle, Peg, and the house sparrows of Riverside Park in New York City, who have taught me that big hearts and large courage can be found in the smallest of creatures; to Pidge the dove, who taught me that whoever said doves are birds of peace had never been anywhere near one; and to Shortstop the crow, who taught me in a short time the pains and joys of caring for a wild bird.

To Ms. Gloria Barbizan and Ms. Dorothy Olding - strong businesswomen long before women's liberation

one.

KNIGHT-MASTER.

Despite the overflow of humanity present for the congress at the royal palace, the hall where Keladry of Mindelan walked was deserted. There were no servants to be seen. No echo of the footsteps, laughter, or talk that filled the sprawling residence sounded here, only Kel's steps and the click of her dog's claws on the stone floor.

They made an interesting pair. The fourteen-year-old girl was big for her age, five feet nine inches tall, and dressed informally in breeches and s.h.i.+rt. Both were a dark green that emphasized the same color in her green-hazel eyes. Her dark boots were comfortable, not fas.h.i.+onable. On her belt hung a pouch and a black-hilted dagger in a plain black sheath. Her brown hair was cut to earlobe length. It framed a tanned face dusted with freckles across a delicate nose. Her mouth was full and decided.

The dog, known as Jump, was barrel-chested, with slightly bowed forelegs. His small, triangular eyes were set deep in a head shaped like a heavy chisel. He was mostly white, but black splotches covered the end of his nose, his lone whole ear, and his rump; his tail plainly had been broken twice. He looked like a battered foot soldier to Kel's young squire, and he had proved his combat skills often.

At the end of the hall stood a pair of wooden doors carved with a sun, the symbol of Mithros, G.o.d of law and war. They were ancient, the surfaces around the sun curved deep after centuries of polis.h.i.+ng. Their handles were crude iron, as coa.r.s.e as the fittings on a barn door.

Kel stopped. Of the pages who had just pa.s.sed the great examinations to become squires, she was the only one who had not come here before. Pages never came to this hall. Legend held that pages who visited the Chapel of the Ordeal never became squires: they were disgraced or killed. But once they were squires, the temptation to see the place where they would be tested on their fitness for knighthood was irresistible.

Kel reached for the handle and opened one door just enough to admit her and Jump. There were benches placed on either side of the room from the door to the altar. Kel slid onto one, glad to give her wobbly knees a rest. Jump sat in the aisle beside her.

After her heart calmed, Kel inspected her surroundings. This chapel, focus of so many longings, was plain. The floor was gray stone flags; the benches were polished wood without ornament. Windows set high in the walls on either side were as stark as the room itself.

Ahead was the altar. Here, at least, was decoration: gold candlesticks and an altar cloth that looked like gold chain mail. The sun disk on the wall behind it was also gold. Against the gray stone, the dark benches, and the wrought-iron cressets on the walls, the gold looked tawdry.

The iron door to the right of the sun disk drew Kel's eyes. There was the Chamber of the Ordeal. Generations of squires had entered it to experience something. None told what they saw; they were forbidden to speak of it. Whatever it was, it usually let squires return to the chapel to be knighted.

Some who entered the Chamber failed. A year-mate of Kel's brother Anders had died three weeks after his Ordeal without ever speaking. Two years after that a squire from Fief Yanholm left the Chamber, refused his s.h.i.+eld, and fled, never to be seen again. At Midwinter in 453, months before the Immortals War broke out, a squire went mad there. Five months later he escaped his family and drowned himself.

”The Chamber is like a cutter of gemstones,” Anders had told Kel once. ”It looks for your flaws and hammers them, till you crack open. And that's all I - or anyone - will say about it.”

The iron door seemed almost separate from the wall, more real than its surroundings. Kel got to her feet, hesitated, then went to it. Standing before the door, she felt a cold draft.

Kel wet suddenly dry lips with her tongue. Jump whined. ”I know what I'm doing,” she told her dog without conviction, and set her palm on the door.

She sat at a desk, stacks of parchment on either side. Her hands sharpened a goose quill - with a penknife. Splotches of ink stained her fingers. Even her sleeves were spotted with ink.

”There you are, squire.”

Kel looked up. Before her stood Sir Gareth the Younger, King Jonathan's friend and adviser. Like Kel's, his hands and sleeves were ink-stained. ”I need you to find these.” He pa.s.sed a slate to Kel, who took it, her throat tight with misery. ”Before you finish up today, please. They should be in section eighty-eight.” He pointed to the far end of the room. She saw shelves, all stretching from floor to ceiling, all stuffed with books, scrolls, and doc.u.ments.

She looked at her tunic. She wore the badge of Fief Naxen, Sir Gareth's home, with the white ring around it that indicated she served the heir to the fief. Her knight-master was a desk knight, not a warrior.

Work is work, she thought, trying not to cry. She still had her duty to Sir Gareth, even if it meant grubbing through papers. She thrust herself away from her desk -

- and tottered on the chapel's flagstones. Her hands were numb with cold, her palms bright red where they had touched the Chamber door.

Kel scowled at the iron door. ”I'll do my duty,” she told the thing, s.h.i.+vering.

Jump whined again. He peered up at her, his tail a wag in consolation.

”I'm all right,” Kel rea.s.sured him, but she checked her hands for inkspots. The Chamber had made her live the thing she feared most just now, when no field knight had asked for her service.

What if the Chamber knew? What if she was to spend the next four years copying out dry pa.s.sages from drier records? Would she quit? Would paperwork do what other pages' hostility had not - drive her back to Mindelan?

Squires were supposed to serve and obey, no matter what. Still, the gap between combat with monsters and research in ancient files was unimaginable. Surely someone would realize Keladry of Mindelan was good for more than scribe work!

This was too close to feeling sorry for herself, a useless activity. ”Come on,” Kel told Jump. ”Enough brooding. Let's get some exercise.”

Jump pranced as Kel left the Chapel. She was never sure if he understood her exactly - it grew harder each year to tell how much any palace animal did or did not know - but he could tell they were on their way outside.

Kel stopped at her quarters to leave a note for her maid, Lalasa: ”Should a knight come to ask me to be his squire, I'm down at the practice courts.” Gloom overtook her again. As the first known female page in over a century, she had struggled through four years to prove herself as good as any boy. If the last six weeks were any indication, she could have spared herself the trouble. It seemed no knight cared to take The Girl as his squire. Even her friend Neal, five years older than their other year-mates, known for his sharp tongue and poor att.i.tude, had talked with three potential masters.

Kel and Jump left her room to stop by Neal's. Her lanky friend lay on his bed, reading. Jump bounced up beside him.

”I'm off to the practice courts,” she said. ”You want to come?”

Neal lowered his book, raising arched brows over green eyes. ”I'm about to commence four years obeying the call of a bruiser on a horse,” he pointed out in his dry voice. A friend had commented once that Neal had a gift for making someone want to punch him just for saying h.e.l.lo. ”I refuse to put down what might be the last book I see for months.”

Kel eyed her friend. His long brown hair, swept back from a widow's peak, stood at angles, combed that way by restless fingers. Her fingers itched to settle it. ”I thought you wanted to be a squire,” she said, locking her hands behind her back. Neal didn't know she had a crush on him. She meant to keep it that way.

Neal sighed. ”I want to fulfill Queenscove's duty to the Crown,” he reminded her. ”A knight from our house - ”

”Has served the Crown for ages, is a pillar of the kingdom, I know, I know,” Kel finished before he could start.

”Well, that's about being a knight. Squire is an intermediate step. It's a pain in the rump, but it's a pa.s.sing pain. I don't have to like it,” Neal said. ”I'd as soon read. Besides, Father said to wait. Another knight's supposed to show up today. I hate it when Father gets mysterious.”

”Well, I'm going to go hit something,” Kel said. ”I can't sit around.”