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‘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.