First Test. Tamora Pierce

tough. There’s hazing, for one thing. I don’t know when the custom started, but it’s called “earning your way”. It’s just for the first-year pages. The senior ones make you run stupid little errands, like fetching gloves and picking up things that get knocked over. You have to do it. Otherwise it’s the same as saying you don’t have to do what the older pages did, as if you think you’re better than they are. And older pages play tricks on the young ones, and some of them will pick fights. Stand up for yourself, or they’ll make your life a misery.’

      ‘In the rules they sent, fighting isn’t allowed.’

      ‘Of course it’s forbidden. If you’re caught, they punish you. That’s expected. What you must never do is tattle on another page, or say who you fought with. That’s expected, too. Tell them you fell down – that’s what I always said. Otherwise no one will trust you. A boy told when I was a page. He finally left because no one would speak to him.’

      ‘But they’ll punish me for fighting?’

      ‘With chores, extra lessons, things like that. You take every punishment, whatever it’s for, and keep quiet.’

      ‘Like the Yamanis,’ she said, brushing loose hairs from Chipper’s coat. ‘You don’t talk – you obey.’

      Anders nodded. ‘Just do what you’re told. Don’t complain. If you can’t do it, say that you failed, not that you can’t. No one can finish every task that’s given. What your teachers don’t want is excuses, or blaming someone else, or saying it’s unfair. They know it’s unfair. Do what you can, and take your punishment in silence.’

      Kel nodded. ‘I can do that, I think.’

      Anders chuckled. ‘That’s the strange thing – I believe you can. But, Kel—’

      Kel went to Chip’s far side, looking at Anders over the pony’s back. ‘What?’

      The young man absently rubbed his stiff leg. ‘Kel, all these things you learned in the Islands …’

      ‘Yes?’ she prodded when he fell silent again.

      ‘You might want to keep them to yourself. Otherwise, the pages might think you believe you’re better than they are. You don’t want to be different, all right? At least, not any more different than you already are.’

      ‘Won’t they want to learn new things?’ she wanted to know. ‘I would.’

      ‘Not everyone’s like you, Kel. Do what they teach you, no more. You’ll save yourself heartache that way.’

      Kel smiled. ‘I’ll try,’ she told him.

      Anders straightened with a wince. ‘Don’t be out here too long,’ he reminded her. ‘You’re up before dawn.’

      Unlike normal dreams, in which time and places and people did strange things, this dream was completely true to Kel’s memory. It began as she knelt before an altar and stared at the swords placed on it. The weapons were sheathed in pure gold rubbed as smooth and bright as glass. She was five years old again.

      ‘They are the swords given to the children of the fire goddess, Yama,’ a lady-in-waiting beside Kel said, awe in her soft voice. ‘The short sword is the sword of law. Without it, we are only animals. The long sword is the sword of duty. It is the terrible sword, the killing sword.’ Her words struck a chord in Kel that left the little girl breathless. She liked the idea that duty was a killing sword. ‘Without duty,’ the lady continued, ‘duty to our lords, to our families, and to the law, we are less than animals.’

      Kel smelled burning wood. She looked around, curious. The large oil lamps that hung from the temple ceiling by thick cords smelled of perfume, not wood. Kel sniffed the air. She knew that fires were terrible on the Yamani Islands, where indoor walls were often paper screens and straw mats covered floors of polished wood.

      The lady-in-waiting got to her feet.

      The temple doors crashed open. There was Kel’s mother, Ilane, her outer kimono flapping open, her thick pale hair falling out of its pins. In her hands she carried a staff capped with a broad, curved blade. Her blue-green eyes were huge in her bone-white face.

      ‘Please excuse me,’ she told the lady-in-waiting, as calm and polite as any Yamani in danger, ‘but we must get out of here and find help. Pirates have attacked the cove and are within the palace.’

      There was a thunder of shod feet on polished wood floors. Swords and axes crashed through the paper screens that formed the wall behind the altar. Scanrans – men already covered in blood and grime – burst into the room, fighting their way clear of the screens and their wooden frames.

      An arm wrapped tight around Kel’s ribs, yanking her from her feet. The lady-in-waiting had scooped her up in one arm and the swords in the other. Faster than the raiders she ran to Ilane of Mindelan.

      The lady tumbled to the ground. Kel slid out the door on her belly. Turning, too startled to cry, she saw the lady at her mother’s feet. There was an arrow in the Yamani woman’s back.

      Ilane bent over the dead woman and took the swords. Hoisting them in one hand, she swung her weapon to her right and to her left. It sheared through the heavy cords that suspended five large oil lamps. They fell and shattered, spilling a flood of burning oil. It raced across the temple in the path of the raiders who were running towards them. When their feet began to burn, they halted, trying to put the fire out.

      ‘Come on!’ Kel’s mother urged. ‘Hike up those skirts and run!’

      Kel yanked her kimono up and fled with Ilane. They skidded and slipped over the polished floors in their Yamani sock-shoes, then turned down one corridor and another. Far down one passage they saw a new group of Scanrans. Kel and her mother ran around a corner. They tried another turning – it led to a dead end. They were trapped. The walls that now blocked them in on three sides were sturdy wood, too. They could have cut their way through paper ones.

      Ilane turned. Scanrans armed with swords or axes blocked the way out.

      Ilane thrust the gold swords into Kel’s arms and pushed her into a corner, then stood before her. ‘Get down and be quiet!’ she said, gripping her weapon in both hands. ‘I think I can hold them off with this.’

      Kel put the swords behind her and huddled. The men came at her mother, laughing and joking in Scanran. She peeked around the edge of her mother’s kimono. At that moment Ilane swung the bladed staff – glaive, Kel remembered as it swung, they called it a glaive – in a wide side cut, slicing one pirate across the chest. Whipping it back to her left, she caught another of them in the throat. Blood struck Kel’s face; even dreaming, she could smell it. Breathless, the sheathed swords poking into her back, she watched her mother lunge and retreat, using her skill and her longer weapon to hold the enemy off. Ilane killed a third and a fourth attacker before a squad of guardsmen raced around the corner to finish the rest.

      When the pirates were dead, Kel’s mother turned and reached a hand down to her. ‘Let’s go to find your father,’ she said quietly.

      Kel grasped the hand, and let her mother pull her to her feet. Then Kel gathered up the golden swords that had been trusted to them.

      When they faced their rescuers, the guards knelt as one. They bowed low to the woman and the girl, touching their heads to the bloody floor.

      Kel woke, breathing fast, her eyes shining. Her heart raced; she trembled all over. The dream was not scary; it was exciting. She loved it. She loved that it had all been real.

      I want to be like that, she told herself as she always did. I want to protect people. And I will. I will. I’ll be a hero one day, just like Mama. Just like the Lioness.

      Nobody will kill two kittens in front of me then.

       CHAPTER 2