The knight puffed silently on the ragleaf, the tip of the roll pulsing in the darkness. Sir Willard appeared to study Harric as if calculating what to reveal.

The Kwendi shrugged. "They with us now, for good or ill. Shall I tell it? We owe it."

Willard frowned. He nodded.

"It's simple," said Brolli. "When your people invent blasting resin and blast a road through the Godswall mountains, they see for the first time the big land beyond. They see only wild animals there, so your queen opens them to settlement and calls them Free Lands. Of course, she is wrong about no one lives there." Brolli bowed, ironically. "For we live there."

"Yes, I know that," said Harric, "but what I don't know is why you and Willard are here with these rings, in the middle of nowhere."

Brolli flashed his feral grin. "I am sent to your queen's court as ambassador, to negotiate a peace treaty."

"And he couldn't stand the place." Willard laughed, softly. "Said it was full of liars and deceivers, each worse than the next. Which it is."

"No treaty is coming from that visit," Brolli said. "I am ready to leave and recommend war to my people when Willard comes to court and seem to me the one honest Arkendian. This gives me hope there might be others. Maybe the liars are only in court."

"I was there for the Day of Pardons, as I am every year," said Willard. He shrugged his iron-clad shoulders. "She never pardons me, but I go anyway. To see...old friends."

"And when Willard leaves, un-pardoned, I follow."

Willard chuckled. "Noticed I was followed by a drunk who could barely keep his saddle. Turned out it was Brolli, and he'd never ridden a horse in his life. When he told me who he was, I tried to take him back to court, but he refused. Said if there were any chance of a treaty, it would come of seeing Arkendia outside the court — "

"I tell him to escort me through his land on the way back to mine," Brolli interjected.

Willard raised his eyes and hands as if in surrender. "What could I do? So I pledged my support, and here we are. Would have been an easy ride north, but those West Isle knights went out looking for him and got lucky. Hence the gang of curs at our heels."

Harric stared at the ambassador, his temples pounding in pain as he struggled to put the story together. Something about it didn't ring true to him. The danger Brolli had put himself in by leaving the court was enormous. Even if he were escorted north by Sir Willard, it seemed a less than reasonable risk for one with whom the peace of two nations lay. But Willard clearly embraced it, so perhaps there was more Brolli hadn't shared.

"I am meaning to ask you," Brolli said to Willard. "Your curse is still active tonight?"

Willard cast a hard look at Brolli, then glanced meaningfully at Harric.

"They're with us now," Brolli said, a slight apology to his tone. "They must know. Your last squire...he is dead of it, yes? There is some danger."

"You had a squire?" Harric said.

A look of pain or regret settled in Willard's face. He closed his eyes, and sighed in resignation. "Tam," he said. "A good lad." He sucked the ragleaf again, the red eye glaring. "I am plagued with a...condition, son. A curse, I call it. When I'm threatened, or...possibly, around women...something happens, to people around me. All judgment leaves them. They do things they wouldn't normally do, and afterwards have no memory of it."

"Like I did in Gallows Ferry," Harric said. "Caris too. We thought we were witched."

A scowl wrapped around the ragleaf clamped in Willard's teeth. "Witched is a strong word, boy."

"And that's what happened to Tam? He did something foolish?"

Willard nodded. "As did I when I gave that ring away. Didn't remember a thing of it. Had to reason it out after the fact."

Harric stared, understanding gradually dawning on him, and a laugh welling up from his lungs. He suppressed it, but it leaked out in lines around his eyes and the corners of his mouth.

"Something funny, boy?"

"Well, no, but it does explain a lot about the origin of the comic bungle in your ballads. These things actually happen to you. It isn't made up."

"They aren't my ballads, boy, and in my experience this curse isn't comic, so you can wipe that foolish smile from your face. People get hurt. Dreams shatter. Lives end." The old knight glared through gouts of ragleaf.

"Sorry," Harric muttered, dropping his gaze. "That was stupid of me."

Willard sighed, and chuckled ruefully. "Hardly your fault, boy. Fact is, it's the very reason for my banishment from court. I'm a bloody lodestone of catastrophes." He stared off for a moment at something only he could see, then his attention snapped back to Brolli. "That clear me of my obligations to this boy, Ambassador?"

The ambassador bowed ambiguously.

Willard turned to Harric. "Well, boy? What do you say? Are we even?"

Harric glanced at Caris, whom Willard seemed to pointedly ignore.

Willard frowned. "It seems not," he said, mistaking Harric's hesitation for discontent. He dismounted the towering Phyros with a grunt, lowering himself from the saddle with powerful arms.

As Willard stepped toward Harric, Molly aimed a vicious bite at the old knight's neck, as if she'd grab him and shake him like a rag. Willard crammed a mailed fist blindly in her teeth, halting her attack and barely interrupting his limping path to Harric. Molly snorted. She shook blood from her lips, evidently decided against another lunge, and went back to sharpening the long blood tooth in the left side of her jaw against a stone.

"Willard assures me that's completely normal for a Phyros," said Brolli.

"It is," Willard grunted. "So keep your distance."

Willard loomed above Harric, his bulk broad and dark, lined face illumined by a spray of moonlight. "Son, I owe you an apology for the events today. Things didn't work out as planned, but I intend to make it up to you." His tone altered subtly toward the formal. "I've come to a decision. I wish to make you my man-servant. My valet-squire, if you will. You're too old for training as a proper squire, but as a valet you'll have to know how to handle a blade, and if you show promise in arms we can talk about other possibilities."

Harric gaped. Rag whinnied and tossed as if Caris had lost concentration.

"Moons, girl!" Willard hissed. "You want the whole valley to hear us?"

Caris blinked as if stunned. Her hands covered her ears and she bent double as if to block out the words. Rag calmed, but continued to toss her head in agitation.

"You're — serious?" Harric said to Willard.

The knight stepped back, evidently pleased with Harric's awe. "Lost my squire on the road, as you know. You'll take his place. Do you accept?"

"Of — course I do."

"In that case let me inform you that if anything should happen to me it becomes your duty to escort ambassador Brolli and his wedding ring safely to his people in the north."

Harric bowed deeply.

"Those rings are valuable and dangerous," said Brolli. "Those who want them will torture and murder to get them. With them they can force your queen to marry. Instant king, you see? And once she take a king, her power is lost."

Why did you bring them in the first place? Harric wondered. He wanted to ask it, but his focus diverted to Caris, who stared resolutely at the earth between her feet as if her gaze could bore a hole to swallow her up. It must have become clear to her that the old hero did not recognize women in his trade. She'd approached several knights of his kind since she came to Gallows Ferry, soliciting them as mentors only to be scorned and rebuffed. He could see she had no intention of shaming herself and Willard both by asking it of him.

"Very good," said Willard. "Now, I gather that moon cat's your pet...."

"Actually, I've never seen him before tonight. He just hitched a ride."

"Name him yet?"

"Spook."

"Then you'll have to keep him." Willard smiled at his own joke. "Peasant folk think them associated with the moons and magic. If we get out on the open road and it brings trouble, the cat goes."

"Among my people, this does not matter," said Brolli. "We have fond tales of Moon Cat, the hero trickster. Be careful, or he will steal your eyes and ears," he added, chuckling.

"Good," Willard grunted. "Then I believe I can safely say my debt is paid."

The seed of an idea sprouted in Harric's mind. "Ah...your debt?" Harric echoed, setting the bait.

Sir Willard frowned. "Son? What is it? Out with it."

The seed grew rapidly in the fertile soil of his mother's training: Seek your opponent's blind spots, and in them lay your traps. "Sir Willard," he said, calculating the formality of his tone and manner carefully, "I do have a boon to ask."

The old man responded instantly to the heightened tone. "I see my debt is not fully paid," he said, drawing himself up. "Name what boon you will, and I will grant it."

Caris's head snapped up as if she'd been stuck with a pin.

Anyone who knew the ballads would recognize what had happened; there was even a ballad titled, "Sir Willard and the Rash Boon."

Harric bowed again, formally. "Then I ask that you take Caris as your apprentice. It's what she wants, though she's too proud to ask it. And it's what she deserves even without your debt to her."

The old knight blinked as if to clear his vision. Caris's mouth parted in blank wonder as she turned to Willard, who gaped, then startled as if she'd appeared there from thin air.

"Hah —  Her? A girl?" He nearly inhaled the dwindling stub of ragleaf. "Well, throw me down.... Is that your way, boy?" He raised his steeled arms and dropped them to his sides in a gesture of dismay. "That's the way of our queen, but you too? First her father learns 'em letters, and now it's women fighting wars. Maids in court have books and tutors till book-learning is common as knitting! Bust my girths, it isn't right! Next she'll ask the men to have the babies!"

"It's what she deserves, Sir," said Harric.

"What she deserves!" Willard's eyes bolted from his head. "And she as late as you in life? Impossible! And it isn't natural, I tell you. It's out of the question."

"I've trained before now," Caris said, voice and head lowered reverently. "And there are other woman knights. This year Her Majesty knighted two and started the Star Company — Sir Miyda and Sir Kethla. I've even heard it said that — "

"Yes, yes. You heard it, girl. All the world has heard it. And she nearly lost her crown in the outrage that followed. I guess you didn't hear that, did you? Our queen moves too fast, and she has enemies, blast them all. And blast these bugs too, while you're at it." He swatted his neck, and sucked fiercely on the ragleaf, which was so small he had to pinch it between thick fingers.

"I have training," Caris repeated, quietly. "I've got the family and blood as well. Cobalt," she said, though the knight seemed deaf to it.

"Training?" Willard drew the greatsword from its sheath with a musical chime. Belle. The fabled weapon of Willard's days as Champion. "What's this?" he asked, holding the weapon before him at an odd angle.

"Widow's ward," said Caris, softly.

"Bah." He snapped the blade to another position above his head.

"The Plowman."

He grunted again and held it behind his head, the tip angling back and into the earth.

Caris smiled. "Queen's Ward, or Sir Gregan's Lie. Often followed by a Reaper."

The knight stared in consternation. "Gregan's Lie?" He let forth a furious cloud of ragleaf. "I invented that one. Gregan only popularized it." He snapped the greatsword into its sheath, and dug another rag-roll from his saddle.

"It might bring favor with the queen," Harric suggested.

Willard squinted at Harric as he lit the ragleaf by puffing it against the end of the tiny fragment between his lips. A corner of his mustachio burned, shriveling whiskers like retreating antennae on a snail.

"Who said I need favor?"

"Well, your armor — "

"Enough quibbling." The knight fixed his gaze on Harric, as if seeing him, too, for the very first time. "I promised. It's done." He spat a bit of ragleaf. "For good or ill, it's done."

Caris fell to her knees and kissed the old man's armored gauntlet, which he retracted as if from a snake.

"You can keep the theatrics, girl."

"You won't regret it," she whispered. "You'll never regret it."

"I already regret it. But no matter. You won't last a week."

Caris blinked as if slapped. She dropped her gaze and clenched her jaw. "You'll see I can take it as well as Harric can. Maybe better."

"You'll have to do better than that, girl. You'll have to be better than everyone. And not just a little better either — ten times better! Twenty! — because they'll all be after you and itching to prove you the weak, foolish thing they know you are. You'll fail, girl. Fancy blue armor doesn't make a knight. You'll quit of your own right."

Tears of anger filled her eyes, but she would not blink and send them down her cheeks. "I'll be the best student you ever had," she said, fiercely. "I'm better than all of them."

Willard returned her glare, but something in her words or her face seemed to reach behind his bluster, and his eyes softened. He sighed. "It isn't you, girl. It's your sex. Look at that arm," he said, tugging her elbow from her side and holding it out to expose the profile. "You're strong — horse-touched strong — I'll give you that. But the best knight's arm is bigger, and burly like a root. The kind of strength you'll never have."

"I don't fight with strength."

"Is that so?" Willard's eyes sparkled over his smoking moustache. "So tell me what you'll do when a knight with shoulders like a bull is raining blows that could fell an oak?"

"Like Sir Yolan?"

"You won't always have him by the cloak."

"Then I'll use his strength against him. Like you do."

"You're flattering me, girl."

"I don't flatter. I saw you fight."

A complicated expression flickered briefly in the old man's face, impossible to read. Curiosity? Scorn? He studied her face intently for a moment, as if he might read her fate in her eyes. Then the mask of bemusement returned, and he sighed gruffly. "Did you see that, Brolli? A woman as my prentice. What would Gregan say?"

"What do the balladeers say?" said Brolli.

"Cork it, Ambassador."

Brolli laughed. "But what you say is true. There is no respect for woman among your people, so your women wish to be men."

Caris's jaw clenched briefly. "I don't want to be a man. I want to be a knight."

"But as Sir Willard says, the warrior's way is a mystery of manhood; you can understand some, but you cannot know all, just as he cannot know mystery of birth."

"Queen's knight," Willard muttered. "I give her a week, at most."

"We shall wager on that?" the Kwendi asked.

"Of course. What stake?"

"A favor to be asked at a later time."

"Done." Willard turned from Brolli to Harric, and nodded with an air of instruction. "First lesson as my valet, boy: ambassador's favors are valuable things. Remember that. And if you ever snare me again with a boon like that one I'll denounce you as a jack and trickster and leave you hanging at the nearest gallows. "

There was humor in the old man's eyes, but his words had an edge to them. Caris's dark eyes searched Harric's face, strong emotions moving behind her gaze.

 "I'll remember that, Sir Willard," Harric said. "But with regard to trickery, I'm afraid I don't know what you mean."

 *************************************

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