Chapter Text
The page's wing of the royal palace was deserted; the first, second and third years had gone to their summer camp with the training master, and the fourth years, having all passed the Big Examinations, had either moved into the squire's wing or left with their knight master.
All save for one, who frowned at his reflection in the mirror as he reached a hand up to gingerly touch his sun burnt cheek. He’d overslept, and in his rush to make it to the training yards where most knights looked to assess potential squires, he’d missed not just his breakfast but the balm that protected his skin. The ruddy color he’d obtained as a result certainly did not compliment his blond hair, bleached white by the summer sun. And it hadn’t even been worth it; the hours he spent outside practicing Shang katas, archery, and titling at the quintain might just as well have been spent in a library, since he was likely to find himself serving Master Oakbridge — or worse, another page year — come September.
He’d been trying to deny it for weeks, but the facts of the matter remained hard and clear. After the scandal his brother had caused four years before, no knight wanted to take Aubrey of Stone Mountain as his squire.
He poked at the bridge of his nose with a healing salve. It wasn’t fair. Whenever any of his sisters spent time in the sun they came away with a healthy flush and a smattering of freckles. Aubrey just looked like a radish.
Maybe an extra year in palace service wouldn’t be so bad. He’d started his page training the fall after Joren had failed his Ordeal, and he’d been a year younger than the other first year pages. This would only give him a chance to catch up. And maybe they wouldn’t make him take the examinations again, so he could focus entirely on building up his strength and stamina.
It sounded ridiculous even in his own head. Almost as ridiculous as pitting underweight, weak-ankled, frequently ill Aubrey against boys at least a year older and in some cases two, and asking him to live up to the best of his elder brother’s career. Aubrey sighed. No wonder his father didn’t even write to him anymore. He was supposed to bring honor back to the Stone Mountain name. Instead he’d only brought more shame.
“The Bazhir make the best sun cream I’ve ever seen,” a voice commented mildly from his doorway. “I’d be happy to bring you some, if you’d like. Qasim always enjoys showing off how well it works on us northerners.”
Aubrey turned toward the speaker— and promptly backed into his dresser in surprise. After a moment, he remembered to bow and invite her in. Regardless of her history with Stone Mountain, Keladry of Mindelan was still a knight of the realm, and the code of chivalry demanded that he show her respect.
“I’m sorry,” she continued, taking a seat at the end of his bed, “I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just that I’ve been meaning to talk to you, and you always seem to be running off to some practice of another, so when I saw you in here, I didn’t want to miss the opportunity.”
“I do try to keep busy, Lady,” Aubrey replied, unsure what else to say. “I should practice while I can. I should be starting my squire duties soon.” He said the last hoping, praying to any listening God—
In vain.
“About that,” Keladry said. “I know you’ve probably got other offers to consider, but if you didn’t,” (and her tone made him sure that she knew very well that he didn’t and was merely being polite), “I could use a squire’s help when I head back to New Hope. Seems every missive we get there’s more work to do.” She gave him an encouraging smile. Aubrey did his best to keep his voice and face emotionless.
“I’m honored to consider your offer, Lady.” It was as polite as he could manage to be.
“Well, I’ll let you consider then.” She stood to leave, and Aubrey bowed again, falling back on formality while he puzzled over the encounter.
Aubrey was running late again the next morning. Before breakfast he had dressed for riding, but then he’d heard a second year squire saying that Jerel of Nenan was going to be in the indoor archery salles settling a bet with his knight master, so then Aubrey had run back to change. He was barreling out of his room again, trying to mentally tally whether Jerel’s last squire had finished last winter or the year before, when he ran full-body into a palace servant coming to deliver him a letter from Stone Mountain.
His mother was calling him home.
“Not permanently,” Gael, the man at arms who had come to escort him, said as they rode through the Corus gates and turned north. “Hey, buck up, kiddo, more knights will be returning in the fall, too.”
Aubrey nodded, miserable.
Rumors ran rampant in the palace. By the time they reached the pages, they were usually more fiction than fact, but Aubrey couldn’t ignore what he could see with his own eyes. His parents hadn’t come to their Corus properties for Midwinter festivities or summer cotillions for the last three years, even though he was at the palace and they had two daughters of marrying age. Word was that his father didn’t even leave their manor house anymore, never mind the fiefdom. Aubrey hated the thought of his father, who had always been loud, ruddy, and boisterous, who had loved hunting and jousting and dancing with his wife, languishing inside his study.
It was a long, tense, and altogether boring trip, that ended with getting caught in a summer rainstorm just as the fief was coming into view. Lady Eleonora, Aubrey’s mother, met them in the entryway and immediately whisked both away to hot baths and meals. He had dinner with his sisters, who peppered him with questions about Corus and page service. Lord Buchard summoned Annalena, his eldest daughter, up to see him first, a pattern that the other three assured Aubrey had become routine. Then Noella went, then Dagney and Mirien. The cook came in to welcome Aubrey home and sneak him a marzipan biscuit. When Lady Eleonora finally came down to tell him that his father had asked to see him, she found Aubrey struggling through pushups; he’d given up pacing the small room as a bad cause, but he couldn’t sit still, either.
Lord Burchard was in his chair next to the fire. The flickering light accentuated the lines that had become etched over his face, and lent an unnatural yellow pallor to his pale skin.
"My son," he said, so softly that Aubrey had to move closer to hear. "You've come home to me."
"Yes, father." Aubrey laid his hand gently over Buchard's. "I'm here."
They both started at the contact. His father’s hands were cold despite the fire, and Aubrey noticed that he no longer wore the jeweled ring that had been given to the family by Roger III; it was probably too heavy to be comfortable. Then Burchard suddenly turned and gripped Aubrey’s hand with an unnatural strength for his bony fingers, and stared wildly up into his face.
"There is something I must say to you,” he said, speaking very fast, as though afraid he would run out of time to do so. “You must hear me."
Aubrey tried not to let his unease show in his voice. "Of course, father."
“No matter what I have said to you, no matter what I have done, you must know that I am not ashamed of you, Joren.”
For a moment, Aubrey’s heart had leapt, only to fall into the pit of his stomach and be replaced by an awful, hollow feeling. He doesn't even know me anymore, he realized. And he wanted to scream at his father, tell him that Joren was dead, that he was sorry he couldn't be as perfect a son as Joren had been... but he couldn't. His father was still holding his gaze with that haunted, pleading look, and Aubrey could only blink his tears back furiously and pretend.
"I know, father. Thank you."
Buchard seemed content. He gave Aubrey’s hand another, meant-to-be-reassuring squeeze, and told him to sit in the chair opposite him while they talked.
Aubrey was barely listening to his father, though. He was thinking, and he made a decision. When he went back for his shield, he would make sure that no one else in his family ever forgot him again.
He stayed a month at the fief, while more extended family arrived and Lord Burchard slowly deteriorated further. For all that he loved his family, Aubrey spent as much time as he could outside of the house, away from his aunts who softly suggested that he might prefer a university education, and his mother who barely looked him in the eye. He wondered if she had known when she summoned him back from Corus that his father had forgotten him. It was almost a relief when Burchard finally passed, and talk changed to funeral arrangements; at least that meant that they all had something to do.
They made other plans, too. Aubrey would ride back to Corus accompanied by Annalena and their uncle, who would oversee cleaning up the Corus townhouse and reestablishing the family’s social standing. Noella and their mother would come for Midwinter. Dagney and Mirien, still in school, spoke wistfully about the palace celebrations no matter how many times Aubrey told them that they weren’t really that exciting.
He was helping his eldest sister to pack when she commented mildly, “Are you really only taking one trunk with you?”
“I left things at the palace,” Aubrey said carefully. “And it’s a knight’s duty to outfit a squire.”
Annalena made a non-committal sort of noise and told him to send servants to her directly if he needed anything. She was only seven years his senior, but sometimes she treated him more like her child than her brother.
It was September when they arrived back in the capital city. Aubrey rode on alone through the palace gates. He passed the training yards and saw that the pages had resumed their daily lessons. If Lord haMinch noticed him returning, he didn’t show it. Aubrey stabled and groomed his horse, and then asked the first servingman he saw where he could find Lady Keladry. He was lucky that as a hero of the recent Scanran war, everyone was always talking about her. He was directed to a training yard used by knights and squires, and found her chatting with a red haired knight and a sergeant of the King’s Own while some other knights jousted on the field behind them. She caught his eye as he approached, smiled, and excused herself from the conversation.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Aubrey,” she said quietly. Then, in answer to his confused expression, she added, “Word travels faster than people, I’m afraid. It’s alright, you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.”
Aubrey told her anyway. He hadn’t meant to, but as soon as he opened his mouth it all just spilled out. He felt two warm tears roll down his cheek before he could stop them. “And now I’m crying like a— like a girl. No wonder you wanted to take me as squire.”
Keladry fished a handkerchief out of her pocket and handed it to him. “Aubrey, I wanted to take you on as my squire because I saw the way you practiced. Every day, no matter what. I asked Sir Myles, he says you’ve always been that way. No matter how much homework you had, you found time for an evening run. No matter the weather, you went outside. You want your shield. Girl, boy, I don’t care. If I’m going to take a squire, that’s the kind of squire I want.”
Aubrey blinked away the last of his tears, and said simply, “Oh.”
“I’m telling you this because if you accept my offer, nothing you do for the next four years will be easy. It won’t be the traditional squire’s education you’ve been trained for. But I don’t believe earning your shield is about that— at least not only about that. Joren had the talent, and that didn’t help him during his Ordeal.” Aubrey flinched a little at the comment. "I don't mean to poke at a fresh wound,” Keladry added, “but I need to know you understand what you’re signing up for.”
“I do want my shield,” Aubrey said after a moment. “I think what scared me was only getting it because someone felt sorry for me.”
“I don’t expect a lot of people will envy your position,” Keladry said, a small smile playing at the corners of her lips. “You are getting stuck with ‘the Girl.’”
Aubrey chuckled a little at her joke. “Fianola might be jealous,” he said, naming the only other girl in his page class. “When would you like me to start?”
Keladry glanced back at the tilting lane, her smile faltering a bit. “I suppose you could help me arm up right now,” she said. “And then you can tell me I’m insane, still practicing against Lord Raoul.”
The Bazhir suncream really did do wonders, Aubrey thought, eyeing his reflection in the mirror as he was fitted for new tunics in Midelan blue and gray.