For the first few days it seemed to Romilly that she was always gasping behind a group of girls who were running somewhere just ahead of her and she must somehow keep up. The lessons in unarmed combat frightened and confused her – and the woman who taught them was so harsh and angry of voice. Although, one afternoon, when she had been sent to help in the kitchens, where she felt more at home, the woman, whose name was Merinna, came in and asked her for some tea, and when Romilly brought it, chatted with her so amiably that Romilly began to suspect that her harshness in class was assumed to force them all to pay strict attention to what they were doing. The lessons in swordplay were easier, for she had sometimes been allowed to watch Ruyven’s lessons, and had sometimes practiced with him – when she had been eight or nine, her father had been amused by her handling of a sword, though later, when she was older, he forbade her even to watch, or to touch even a toy sword. Gradually those early lessons came back to her, and she began to feel fairly confident at least with the wooden batons which served in practice.
Among the horses in the stable, she felt completely at home. This work she had done since she was old enough to rub soapweed on a saddle and polish it with oil.
She was hard at work polishing saddle-tack one day when she heard a noise in the street outside, and one of the youngest girls in the house ran in to call her.
“Oh, Romy, come – the king’s army is passing by at the end of the street, and Merinna has given us leave to run out and see! Carolin will march southward as soon as the passes are open-”
Romilly dropped the oily rag and ran out into the street with Lillia and Marga. They crowded into an angle of the doors and watched; the street was filled with horses and men, and people were lining the streets and cheering for Carolin.
“Look, look, there he goes under the fir-tree banner, blue and silver – Carolin, the king,” called someone, and Romilly craned her neck to see, but she could catch only a glimpse of a tall man, with a strong ascetic profile not unlike Carlo’s, in the instant before his cloak blew up and she could see only his russet hair flying.
“Who is the tall skinny man riding behind him?” someone asked, and Romilly, who would have known him even in darkness with his face hidden, said, “His name is Orain, and I have heard he is one of Carolin’s foster-brothers.”
“I know him,” said one of the girls, “he came to visit Jandria, someone told me that he was one of her kin, though I don’t know whether to believe it or not.”
Romilly watched the horses, men, banners moving by, with detachment and regret. She might still have been riding with them, had she gone to her own bed in the stable that night, still at Orain’s side, still treated as his friend and equal. But it was too late for that. She turned about sharply and said, “Let’s go inside and finish our work – I have seen horses enough before this and a king is a man like other men, Hastur or no.”
The armies, she heard, were being moved to a great plain outside Caer Donn. A few days later, she was summoned to Janni, and when she went out into the main room where she had met Janni first, she saw Orain again, with Caryl at his side.
Orain greeted her with some constraint, but Caryl rushed at once into her arms.
“Oh, Romilly, I have missed you! Why, you are dressed like a woman, that is good, now I will not have to remember to speak to you as if you were a boy,” he said.
“Dom Carolin,” Janni said formally, and he turned his attention respectfully to her.
“I listen, mestra,” he said, using the politest of terms for a female inferior in rank.
“The Lord Orain has commissioned me to escort you to Hali and return you, under safe-conduct, to your father,” she said, “and there are two choices before you; I am prepared to treat you as a man of honor, and to ask your preference, instead of making the decision for you. Are you old enough to listen to me seriously, and to answer sensibly and keep your word?”