She went up to her room, pulled a chair up to her window, and sat gazing out her window at the snow- covered meadow below the Tower, not really thinking, just letting her mind roam. She sat there the rest of the morning and on into the afternoon, before thoughts crystallized out of her musings. Uncomfortable thoughts.
The King was calling in his brother, and Daren would be leaving in the morning, which left her the only student at the Tower. There wasn’t much more that Tarma could teach her now that she wouldn’t learn just as quickly through experience. There were things she needed to learn now that only experience and making her own mistakes would teach her.
In short, it was time for
At that moment, someone tapped on her door, shaking her out of her trance. “Yes?” she said still partially caught in her web of thoughts, and the visitor opened the door slowly and cautiously.
“Kero?” Daren said softly, shaking her the rest of the way out of her inertia.
“Come in.” She turned away from the window, searching his face, though she really didn’t know what she was looking for. “Are you—”
“I’m all right,” he said, walking toward her, slowly. As his face came into the light, she saw that he looked a great deal calmer. In fact, he looked as if he had come to terms with the news, and with his own feelings. “I really am. They told me that Faram wants me home.”
As he said that, his face changed, and there was hope and a bit of excitement beneath the mourning.
“That—I was kind of afraid Faram had forgotten me,” he said shyly. “It would be awfully easy to. And—and I thought, he’s had one brother turn on him, he might not trust me anymore either. I wouldn’t blame him, you know, and neither would anyone else. I’d be tempted, if I were in his place, and I knew he was safely tucked out of the way with two of my father’s old friends keeping an eye on him. I thought that might even be the reason Father sent me out here in the first place, to get me out of the way, with someone he trusted making sure I didn’t turn traitor on him. I thought maybe that was why he didn’t send for me when Thanel went off to Valdemar.”
Kero nodded, slowly. That was sound reasoning; in fact, in his place, she’d probably have suspected the same thing.
“But Faram wants me. More than that, he wants me to apprentice to the Lord Martial.” There was suppressed excitement in his voice, and a light in his eyes. “It’s just about everything I ever dreamed of, Kero —”
“And you deserve it,” she interrupted him, with as much emphasis as she could muster. “You’ve worked for it: you’ve earned it. Tarma herself would be the first to tell you that.”
“And now you can come with me,” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. “There’s nothing stopping me from having you with me. Faram studied under Tarma, he knows Kethry, we won’t even have to go through that nonsense of getting you ennobled so we can be married—”
“Do you want me enough to have me apprenticed alongside you?” she asked pointedly.
He stared at her in shock, as if he could not believe what she was saying. “You know that wouldn’t be possible!” he exclaimed. “You’re a girl! Women can’t do things like that!”
“I’m your equal in blade and on horseback,” she replied with rising heat. “I’m your better with a bow and with tactics. Why shouldn’t I work at your side?”
“Because you’re a
“Well, what would I be able to do?” she asked. “Sit on the Council? Act as military advisor?”
“Of course not!” He was shocked—despite all their talking, all the things they had done together—by the very idea.
“Well, will I be able to keep in training?” She waited for him to answer, and didn’t much care for his long silence. “All right, what
“Ride some, and hunt—genteel hunting, with hawk and a light bow,” he said, obviously without thinking. “Nothing like the kind of hunting we have been doing here. No boar, no deer, good gods, that would send half the
