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“I doubt Ralon ever threw up after he beat someone smaller and younger than he was.”
Alanna frowned. “You think so?”
“I’m sure of it.” Myles nodded. “Alan, there will come a time when you, a knight, will have to fight someone less well trained than you. It can’t be helped, and it doesn’t make you a bully. It just means you learn to use your skills wisely.”
Alanna thought about this. At last she sighed and shook her head. It was too much just then.
Myles ruffled her hair. “So now you’ve proved you’re a warrior to the whole palace. Surely you want to celebrate.”
Alanna made a face. No matter what Myles said, she had used fancy tricks to beat Ralon, that was all. She was still a girl masquerading as a boy, and sometimes she doubted that she would ever believe herself to be as good as the stupidest, clumsiest male.
The door opened. “Sir Myles. You beat me here.” It was Prince Jonathan. “How’s Alan?”
Myles stood. “I think he’s tired. Alan, I’m going, but I wish you’d think about what I said.”
“I always think about the things you tell me,” she admitted. She gave him her hand. “Thanks, Sir Myles.”
The knight bowed to Jonathan and left. The Prince looked at Alanna. “What was that about?”
Alanna shrugged. “I think we were talking about what makes a bully.”
“A bully fights people littler and weaker than he is because he thinks it’s fun,” Jonathan said flatly. “Did you enjoy fighting Ralon? We’ll forget for now that he’s older than you and a squire.”
“When we were actually fighting—maybe,” she replied slowly. “After—no.”
“You won’t find anyone smaller than you are, so you can’t beat on them,” the older boy said practically. “And after today we’re all going to think twice about whether you’re the weakest. Look, young Trebond—what did you think studying to be a knight was about?”
Suddenly Alanna felt much better. “Thanks, Highness.” She grinned. “Thanks a lot.”
He put a hand on her shoulder. “You may have noticed my friends call me Jonathan, or Jon.”
Alanna looked up at him, not sure what was going on. “And am I your friend, Highness?”
“I do believe you are,” he told her quietly. “I’d like you to be.” He offered her his hand.
She took it. “Then I am—Jonathan.”
4
DEATH IN THE PALACE
DUKE GARETH’S LECTURE THE DAY AFTER ALANNA fought Ralon was long and impressive. He spoke to her about the duty one noble owes another noble, about keeping the peace on the palace grounds and about people who became bullies. He informed her that fighting with the hands was an undignified pastime taken up by commoners, or an art practiced by Shang warriors—and that she was neither a commoner nor a Shang warrior. She had to make a formal, written apology to Ralon’s father, and she was restricted to the palace for two months.
Alanna stood at attention, listening. She loved the way the Duke talked. She knew he was pleased that she had beaten Ralon, not angry. She also knew he could never tell her so, because she had broken the rules, and that she had to take her punishment without complaint, because she had known the rules when she broke them. Alanna’s world was governed by rules, with a rule to cover every situation. Fighting a fellow noble in the palace was breaking the rules, and Gareth had to teach her that. Yet the rules governing what a noble could take in the way of insults said that Alanna had to fight Ralon, and Duke Gareth was proud of her because she had protected her honor as a noble.
Once you know the rules, she thought as she listened to the Duke with one ear, life is pretty simple. I don’t get mad at Duke Gareth because I know he has to obey the rules just as I do, and I know he isn’t truly angry with me anyway. Maybe our Code of Chivalry isn’t such a bad thing.
On the second day of the eight-day-long Midwinter Festival, King Roald made Gary, Alex, Raoul and several of the other fourteen-year-old pages into squires. Each squire was placed in a knight’s service. They still waited on table, but afterward they took their meals in the squires’ hall. If they were needed, they also served the nobles during the evening parties, when the pages were dismissed. Alanna helped her friends move to their new quarters—rooms connected to those of the knights they now served—and wondered how big a change this would bring to her life.
Things changed, and they didn’t change. The squires joined Alanna and Jonathan in what little free time they had, but Alanna missed them during the classes she had with the other pages. There was no more Gary to make wicked jokes in Deportment, and no more Alex to explain the snarls of mathematics.
Then one night Jonathan came by her room with his book on battle histories. He’d gladly help her with mathematics, he explained with a grin, if she’d show him how the battles that were so dull in the book were fought. He’d noticed in class that her way of explaining them made them seem real and interesting.
Alanna was more than happy to accept her new friend’s offer. Many evenings after that they could be found in each other’s rooms, their heads bent over a map or a piece of paper.
The Sweating Fever struck in March without warning. It spared no one: people in the city, palace servants, priests, even the queen. Duke Gareth was next, and the Lord Provost. Sir Myles stayed healthy. “There’s so much wine in me that I don’t have room for any sickness,” he told Alanna. “So now will you stop telling me not to drink anymore?”
Alanna herself was fine. She was working harder than she ever had before; each time another servant got sick, her chores increased. There were no classes; most of her teachers had the sickness. Instead Alanna made beds, washed dishes, cleaned the stables. She had been taught from birth that no job was too dirty for a true noble. Now the theory was put into practice.
The pages and squires—the youngest, healthiest people in the palace and the city—were the last to fall ill. It was then that the Dark God came to the palace to take his pick of fever victims. In the city, where the sickness had started, so many had died that the Dark God’s priests took the dead away in cartloads. Within a week, the God of Death had claimed three pages, five squires and the Lord Chamberlain. Raoul was the first of Alanna’s close friends to get sick. When Alanna stopped for a visit, he grinned weakly at her.
“I feel silly, lying in bed when I should be working,” he confessed. He shivered beneath his heavy blankets. “How are
you? And how’s old Coram?”
“We’re both fine.” She tucked the covers more firmly around him.
“And Jon?”
“Not even a sniffle. He stays a lot with the king.”
“I don’t blame him. Mithros willing, the queen will get well.” He let Alanna wipe his sweating face before giving her a shove. “Get out of here, before you catch it.”
Alanna found then that she couldn’t sleep because she couldn’t forget Maude’s warning to use her Gift for healing. She knew the gods punished people for ignoring magical abilities. Yet the thought of using sorcery gave her the shakes. She and Thom each had more magic than anyone she had ever known, and she knew if she used her magic and lost control of it, she would destroy herself and anyone who was nearby. Thom liked that sort of power—she didn’t. She was never sure of her control over her Gift.
Gary, Francis and Alex got the fever within two days of each other. Francis was the sickest, delirious by the end of the first day. The palace healers could do nothing. Alanna overhead one of them saying that those stricken so badly the first day usually died. And there were more frightening stories—stories that the Sweating Sickness was caused by sorcery, that it drained the healers of their healing magic until they were too weak to help anyone.
Alanna had just fallen asleep one night when Coram woke her. His news was bad—Francis had just passed into the hands of the Dark God.
Alanna hurried down to the chapel dedicated to the god of death. Jonathan was already there, waiting with his friend’s body. Alanna knelt in the back, not wanting to disturb the Prince. She shook as she looked at Francis lying on the altar. He might still be alive if she had done something.
Alanna was ashamed of herself.
Sir Myles knelt beside her. His hair and beard were mussed from sleep. “I’m sorry, Alan,” he murmured. “I know you and Francis were friends.”
Alanna looked at the knight. He was her friend and he was an adult—he would understand moral questions. And she trusted his opinion.
