“What happens when I outgrow them?” I asked Cat. She was watching Sarah take the bastings out of my favorite suit. Red leather riding trousers and a gray-and-red-striped tunic top with a red half cape. “The way I’m going, I won’t be able to wear this more than three or four seasons.”
“I understand that Vorbold’s House provides,” Sarah said, rolling up bits of threads. “When the King pays your way there, he pays for everything, and they see that you’re properly clothed for any occasion. It isn’t just a School, Jinian. It’s—well, it’s a special place. Only for girls, you know.”
I hadn’t known. I wished I didn’t know. Something that was only for girls had a sound to it I didn’t like. “Why?” I asked. “Why only for girls?”
“Because it’s for young women of families who seek alliances,” Cat said in her tart fashion. “To get them out of Games’ way, for heaven’s sake. This Demesne could get involved in some Great Game tomorrow—and knowing your brother Mendost, that’s likely. It’s only we’re so remote from anything or anyone has kept us peaceful so long. If you were here during Game, you could be taken hostage, or killed, or set up in the Game some way. Xammer is neutral territory. No one Games in Xammer. Girls can grow up there, find their Talent—if any—and make some decent or useful choices when they’re old enough to do so.”
I didn’t know she was speaking prophetically, or I might have paid more attention. As it was, I only nodded and humphed. I still didn’t like the “girls only” aspect, but I had to admit it sounded sensible. Murzy had gone to some pains to describe Game to me in terms that were anything but attractive or exciting. Many Gamesmen—and women—seemed to end up dead very young, or worse.
“Besides,” Murzy interjected, “you’ll learn a good deal. Not the kind of thing we’ve been teaching you, but useful stuff nonetheless.” She held up the cape with satisfaction. “We’ll need to put a student’s knot on this.” She meant the green and purple ribbons that students or pregnant women or scholars wear to show they are on neutral business and should not be involved in Game.
“Don’t,” I begged. “We can put it on later, just before we leave. It will clash with the red, and I want to wear it to ride Misquick today.” I had it in mind that Grompozzle and Misquick had never seen me in new clothes, proud and Gamesmanlike, and it would be fun to ride out in something besides the tattered trews and leather shirt I always wore. I was far too big to ride Misquick at all. However, though our Demesne raised horses that were sold all over the world, I had never been given a mount other than the pony. I was allowed to work with the horses, but not to ride them. I think Mother and Mendost made that rule just to be annoying. At any rate, I would have a last ride on the poor pony, just to say good-bye. Joramal, after seeing Misquick, had carefully hidden a smile and promised me a more fitting mount. “When I get back,” I urged Murzy. She agreed. Well. How could she have known? How could I?
So, just before noon I packed a lunch, whistled up Grompozzle, saddled Misquick, and made off for the hills, waving to Murzy as I clattered through the courtyard. I didn’t intend to go far. There wasn’t time, and I didn’t really have the heart for visiting favorite places much. This was more in the nature of a nostalgic farewell, full of bitter-sweet memories, very self-dramatized and all. I had a mental picture of me in the new clothes that probably looked as little like the real me as Grompozzle looked like a real hunting fustigar. I noticed a horseman on the line of western hills as we set out, but I thought nothing of it. The forest east belonged to Stoneflight, or so we say, as far as the ridge line. North is the Old South Road City of the blind runners, and south is only badlands. But the forest west of the Demesne is open country and full of game, so riders are seen there often enough. I headed north. The Season of Storms was notime near, and if I encountered a runner, he would only give me honey cake and send me home. They and I had become fairly friendly over the past several years. Once I asked a runner how they got started on the road. He gargled at me for a long time, and I gathered some great-great-ancestor far back had been summoned to run the road, particularly the bad spots where it was all broken. That’s why they valued the footseeing so, to find the broken places between the stretches anyone could see. They were a very strange people.
Several times as I rode, I saw the same rider on the western ridge. After a time, it began to make me nervous, so I left the open trail and reined Misquick into the trees where we couldn’t be seen. Where we couldn’t have been seen if I’d been wearing my old clothes. I’d forgotten the bright red cape, the red leather trews. Well. Nothing to do about that. The three of us wended our way around a little hill and down into a little valley beyond.
There was a rider east
