Part 18 (1/2)
That night Kel was packing when her door burst open. She was reaching for her sword when she saw that the newcomer was not Burchard again, but Owen. His eyes bulged and his curls looked as if he'd been yanking on them. He ignored Jump and the sparrows, who greeted him with enthusiasm.
”Kel!” he cried. ”Kel, I'm a squire!”
She tried not to giggle and succeeded, barely. ”You've been a squire for months.”
”Not like you're a squire, not like Neal. Kel, my brain's going to pop! I'm not in service to Sir Myles anymore. Lord Wyldon resigned, and he's going home a while, and come spring he's going to fight Scanrans. With me! He's going to work me like a horse, he says, but Kel, I'll be a squire to a fighting knight! Isn't it the jolliest? And he'll teach me to breed dogs!”
He launched himself across the room and hugged her wildly, then stepped back, looking sheepish. ”Um, sorry. I didn't mean to, uh, treat you like a girl or anything.”
Kel sank down on her bed, head in hands. She lost the battle to appear serious and laughed until she couldn't catch her breath.
Kel missed the departure of the progress. Raoul took Third Company out ahead to scout the road. Buri rode along with her own Group Askew and two more Rider Groups, the Sixth, called Thayet's Dogs, and the Fifteenth, Stickers. Both Riders and Third Company were detailed to watch the front, sides, and rear of the train, as Glaisdan and First Company stayed close to the monarchs and looked n.o.ble. They were welcome to it, as far as Kel was concerned. She preferred scout detail. For one thing, no court gossips were out here, teasing her to say whether Raoul slept alone these days.
The progress stopped in Irontown for a week, then continued south, leaving the forest to enter drier country, Tortall's grain lands. Crawling on, they reached the borders of the desert. The snows of the north turned to rain. The nights were cold, the days bearable. When they came to the desert itself, the king ordered the units in advance of and at the rear of the progress to rejoin it.
”As if we wouldn't know to come back,” grumbled Dom. He and Kel rode together one morning, guarding the supply train.
Kel grinned at him. ”But we wouldn't have, unless ordered to. You know we wouldn't.”
Dom grinned back, making Kel's pulse speed up. ”Well, yes, but still, he shouldn't treat us like unruly children.”
Kel, who knew the pranks the Own and the Riders played when left alone, raised her eyebrows.
Dom chuckled. ”You look just like my lord when he does that,” he informed her. To Cleon, who rode up, he said, ”Doesn't she look like Lord Raoul when she raises her eyebrows?”
Cleon scowled. ”She looks like herself,” he retorted.
Dom looked at Kel; his mouth curled in a wry smile. He s.h.i.+vered. ”Does it seem cold to you all of a sudden? I believe I'll find a blanket.” He rode off with a wink at Kel.
”That wasn't nice,” she commented as Cleon fell in beside her.
”He was flirting with you,” growled the newly made knight. Kel had worried he would be a.s.signed away from the progress now that he had his s.h.i.+eld, but for the moment, at least, Cleon was allowed to stay. ”I know what flirting is, and he was doing it.”
”Dom flirts with everyone. It runs in the family - you know how Neal gets.”
”Both of them can flirt with someone else,” Cleon snapped. Suddenly he looked ashamed of himself. ”Oh, rats, Kel, don't mind me. I'm grumpy. Lately all we do is wave at each other as we pa.s.s.”
”I know,” she said. ”At least we see each other. We couldn't even do that in the forest.”
Quietly he said, ”I don't know what I'll do if they separate us. There's too much of me to go into a decline, but...”
Kel met his eyes wordlessly. Sooner or later Cleon would be sent away in service to the Crown, probably to deal with the growing pressures from Scanra.
”Hullo,” he said, shading his eyes to look east. ”What's this?”
Kel smiled as a mult.i.tude of hors.e.m.e.n in the white robes of the Bazhir crested the hills. On they came, their tack and the colors in the cords that fastened their burnooses telling their tribe. She counted six tribes among the riders who came over the eastern hills; falling back to look between wagons, she counted three more tribes coming from the west.
”It's the Bazhir,” she told Cleon. ”They're greeting the king. Cheer up - they'll feed us.” She grinned. ”I can't dislike people who welcome guests like the Bazhir do!”
For a week the tribes enveloped the progress, treating their guests lavishly. On the eighth day the train reached a fortress city, a granite monument that sheltered eleven springs and wells inside its walls. ”Persopolis,” Raoul told Kel. ”The only city the Bazhir ever constructed.” He shook his head with a sigh. ”I don't like it.”
”That's because you're a tent boy,” Captain Flyndan, riding beside them, commented in his dour way. ”Me, I like the real beds in Persopolis just fine.”
They were joined at supper that night by Lady Alanna and her husband, Baron George Cooper, who had just arrived with Neal in tow. They were still relating news from the western coast when a man at the table asked, ”Did you hear about Lord Wyldon's resignation?”
Alanna's face hardened; she drummed her fingers beside her plate. The baron covered her hand with his and smiled at the questioner. ”The world knows, surely. It's good for the lads to change teachers - gives them a broad training base. Don't you agree, squire?” he asked Kel. She, Neal, and Merric were not servants at these Bazhir-hosted gatherings, but guests, seated with their knight-masters. The Bazhir took care of serving.
Kel looked at Raoul. ”It's very educational, my lord Baron,” she told George Cooper gravely.
Alanna grinned at her own squire, seated beside Kel. ”So, Neal, do you feel educated?”
”Incredibly,” Neal replied in his wry drawl. ”Why, words simply fail me about how educated I'm getting.”
Everyone laughed. The possibility of a famed Lioness explosion over Lord Wyldon faded. The talk turned to the news from Scanra and Carthak. The new Scanran warlord troubled the knights. Everyone was praying that the northern clans, notoriously difficult when it came to working together, would arrange his downfall. ”Preferably during the winter,” Baron George said, ”so they'll be accusing and killing each other come spring.”
Kel woke at her usual hour the next morning. First she had glaive practice, then sword practice with her fellow squires. She had to clean Raoul's weapons and her own afterward, then go riding with her friends.
”Jump, Crown, Freckle,” she said quietly. ”Time to get up.” Chances were that she wouldn't wake Raoul in the next room, but with no door to close between them, she didn't want to chance it. He and Buri had been out late. ”Jump.” Kel nudged her dog, who slept draped over her feet. He grunted and flopped over, freeing her. She turned to the sparrows, who slept between her and the wall. They were already awake and looking at her.
All but one. Crown lay on Kel's pillow on her side, eyes closed, tiny feet curled up tight. Kel touched the bird with a gentle fingertip. Crown didn't move. When Kel picked her up, she found the sparrow was cold.
She took the small body to Daine. With the griffin restored to his family, the Wildmage was now a permanent member of the progress, and easier to find.
”I'm sorry,” Daine said, tears in her eyes. ”But Kel, understand, she was eight or so. For a sparrow, that's old. Some that are pets last longer, but the wild ones have six or seven years, that's all.” She put a hand over the small body. ”Do you want me to take care of her?”
Kel shook her head and bore Crown away. She rode to a public garden in the city, attended by Jump, the other sparrows, and Peachblossom, and buried Crown under an olive tree. Olives symbolized healing and peace. Crown had earned both.
Kel stayed away from people for the rest of the day. She didn't weep after she buried her fierce sparrow, but she wanted to be quiet with her animals. And she wanted to remember Crown's bravery in the safety of silence.
Around sunset Cleon found her. He held her, then took her to supper. Kel hadn't eaten all day. Neal joined them; so did Yuki, Roald, s.h.i.+nkokami, and Merric. The group was leaving the feasting hall when a man approached Kel and slapped her with his glove: Sir Hildrec of Meron. Kel throttled the urge to pick the man up and throw him at a tree.
”I'm sick of this,” she snapped. ”Call me what you like, say I'm without honor, I don't care. I'm not getting on any more horses to whack you people with a stick.”
She walked away.
Two mornings later she found Freckle's body on her pillow. She had not expected him to outlive his mate for long. In a way Kel was grateful that he'd died in Persopolis so she could place him beside Crown. This time Cleon went with her. Once she had scooped earth over the sparrows, Kel blew her nose. ”It's the only bad thing about animals,” she told Cleon. ”Most don't live as long as we do.”
”I know, sweet,” Cleon said, kissing first one of her eyelids, then the other. ”But think how bleak life would be without them.”
fifteen.
TILT-SILLY.
The progress left Persopolis, turning east into the hill country, then south. The succession of events and meetings with people from Tusaine and Tyra blurred together, along with the names of those who held large and small fiefdoms along the way. Fed up, Kel still refused all challenges and matches, no matter how many insults her would-be foes paid her. Instead she practiced her weapons with her own circle.
Kel did enjoy some new things they encountered, like dishes of rice studded with raisins, almonds, and peas, or b.a.l.l.s of chickpea batter fried and served with a creamy sauce. But it seemed to her that grape leaves stuffed with ground lamb, and hot mud baths for the skin, were jokes the locals played on gullible northerners. The markets of Pearlmouth, just across the border from Tyra, were interesting, particularly those that showed the work of Carthaki smiths. Kel wanted one of those blades. She loved the rippled tempering that made art out of steel, art that helped it hold on to its edge longer. Someday, she told herself, if she did so great a service that the Crown gave her a purse of gold, she would buy such a blade for herself.