“Paige,” the knight supplied shortly.
“Well, Paige, my men and women are just as capable as your regiment in the capital. Ryiah will be in good hands.” Nyx’s gaze fell to someone behind us and she made a momentary gesture. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting to attend. Ray, Ryiah will be serving on your squad with the rest of the newcomers. I expect you to introduce her to Sir Gavin first thing in the morning. Paige, while you are here you can serve alongside your charge so long as you defer to her squad leader’s command. I believe the King’s Regiment orders only decreed Ryiah’s safe transport to and from my keep, did they not?”
Paige grumbled an unutterable reply as I thanked the commander for her time. Nyx withdrew back into the crowded hall and Paige made a sniffing noise beside me.
“I don’t like the commander.”
I stifled a snort. “You don’t like anyone. You don’t even like me.”
“Well, I really don’t like her.”
Ray and I exchanged weary glances as the knight snatched a half-eaten loaf off someone’s leftover plate and began to devour it all the while giving us an irritable expression. “What?” she spat. “I’m useless so long as you are surrounded by ‘capable’ others. I might as well eat. Or is that something else I must defer to this Gavin to do?”
Ray gave me a sympathetic clap on the shoulder. “I’m off to scrounge up a wash before the rest of the men get to the baths.” He jerked his chin in the direction of Paige. “Good luck with… things.”
As soon as he was gone I turned to my guard with a sigh. “You are going to be stuck with me for a long time. A little cheer once in a while certainly wouldn’t hurt your cause.”
“Cheer is for fools with idle minds. I am neither a fool nor idle.”
And that was the end of that.
****
The next morning came much too soon. I had spent most of the evening before catching up with some of the regiment women I had met the year prior during the apprenticeship in our barracks. By the time the morning bell echoed down the keep’s narrow walls I was ready to return to sleep.
Five years of the same routine, and I was still not used to early mornings. “Mmmphf.” I shoved the warm blankets aside, and then subsequently cursed as my toes touched the icy floor.
“Missing your accommodations back at the palace, my lady?” Paige‘s tone was anything but sympathetic.
I fixed her with a bleary-eyed glare. “All this hatred you harbor must be exhausting to maintain.”
“You should have listened to me and asked for a private chamber.”
“I thought you didn’t care for frivolities,” I snapped.
She threw her hands up in frustration. “I was the best knight of my rank and spent six years working up to a promotion in the King’s Regiment—and for what? You haven’t listened to one suggestion I’ve made! I told you to keep west and you insisted on that detour—”
“To see my parents!”
“—Then you bombarded me with banal questions about the weather when you should have been paying attention to the road!”
“I was trying to be friendly, and I was paying attention! Contrary to your narrow-minded opinion I am capable of doing both!”
“My only purpose is to serve as your guard, and you insist on harboring this foolish notion of sleeping out in the open with six hundred other women where I cannot possibly fulfill my duty should one of them harbor ill intentions!”
“Those women are soldiers, mages, and knights like yourself,” I countered. “Hardly the type to wish me ill.”
“How would you know? You are too busy smiling at everyone you meet. There are rebels in this great country in case you’ve forgotten.”
“Ferren’s Keep is our nation’s stronghold. It is the last place a rebel would choose to stay.”
“It is exactly where I would go.”
I yanked my chainmail over my tunic a little too roughly. “Well, it is a good thing you are not a rebel.”
Taking a deep breath I forced myself to reign in my temper. In a twisted way she was only doing her job, even if it was in the most grating way she could do it. “I am sorry, Paige. Please understand I wish to comply with your orders but the king did grant me this leave. I can’t exactly go around demanding my own chamber. I promise to consider all future advice.”
The knight tied her hair in a high knot and then looked past my shoulder. “I don’t hate you.”
“W-what?” She had caught me off-guard.
Paige cleared her throat. “What you said earlier. I may not enjoy your company, but I don’t hate you, my lady.”
And that was as close to an apology as I would get. I handed the knight one of her boots, and she took it without complaint.
Neither of us spoke another word as we trudged down the dank corridor and up the stairwell to the top floor of the keep. I was concentrating so hard on my own thoughts that I almost missed colliding with another in passing.
“Ryiah?” The boy did a double take.
Ian. I stopped and gave a nervous smile. “Surprise.”