"Fifteen," said the Old Master.
"Master, that's not—"
"Fifteen, and I will make it twenty if you say the next word."
Sito shut his mouth.
He had learned, over the last three months, that the number went up every single time he complained about the number, and that the old man had absolutely no upper limit in mind and was simply waiting to find out where it was.
"Count off," croaked the Old Master. "First fifteen in the line. Blades down, sticks only, and if anybody breaks that boy's arm I will break two of theirs."
---
It took four minutes.
It took four minutes because of Valor, who had spent three years learning the shape of this and had finally worked out that the only thing to do was to refuse to move — to stand exactly where he was, in the middle, and make Sito come and get him.
It worked for about two and a half of those minutes.
"He's still standing!" somebody shouted.
"I'm aware," said Valor, from behind his guard.
Then Sito went past him on the left, which put Valor in the way of three men coming from the right, and the whole thing came apart in about eleven seconds after that.
"Point," said the Old Master.
Fourteen men lay down on the stone where they were and did not get up.
"That's not fair," said Hob, to the sky.
"What is not fair, Master Hob?"
"He's small, Master." Hob propped himself up on one elbow. "That's the whole of it. That's the entire secret. He's the size of a dog and there's fifteen of us and we're all in each other's way and he just… walks about."
"That is true," said Ludo, from the floor.
"It's not skill. It's just simple math."
"It is entirely just simple math," Sito agreed.
"See? He admits it."
"I'm tiny and you're enormous and it's basically cheating," said Sito. "I keep telling you. It's not my fault you're all shaped like doors."
"Exactly. That's what I've been saying."
The Old Master stood leaning on his cane and let the whole of it go by without comment.
Then, when they had gone off to the water dispensers still arguing about it, he said one word.
"Convenient."
"Master?"
"Nothing, boy," said the Old Master. "Nothing at all."
---
He called them out at the end of the session, after the slugs, with the line standing in the dust.
"Machin. Valor. Step out."
The two of them stepped out.
The rest of the hundred went absolutely silent, because everyone in that arena knew what it meant when the old man used a man's name that way.
"You are finished here."
Raymond did not move.
"Master—"
"You have been finished here since the spring and I have kept you because I am selfish and because you are useful to me for teaching the young ones, and both of those are poor reasons and I have run out of patience with myself."
The Old Master's cane tapped once on the stone. "Machin, you will present yourself to the Master of the Guard on Thursday. Valor, the same. You are Royal Knights of Epiria as of Thursday morning and there is nothing further for me to do about either of you."
Nobody cheered.
That was the thing that struck Sito hardest, afterward. In a hundred men there was not one cheer, and the silence was not grief, either. It was the silence of a room full of people who had all just done the same piece of arithmetic about themselves.
"Yes, Master," said Raymond.
"Yes, Master," said Valor.
"Good. Go and pack. You are taking up space."
---
He found them behind the barracks an hour later, sitting on the wall with their gear at their feet.
"There he is," said Valor.
"You didn't say anything."
"When?"
"When he told you. You just said 'yes, Master'."
"What was I supposed to say?" Valor shrugged. "He's been telling me what to do since I was thirteen. You don't argue with that man on the last day, you look like a fool."
Sito sat down on the wall between them.
"So that's it?"
"That's it."
"No — " Sito waved a hand. " — nothing? No ceremony? No, I don't know, a sword?"
"They give you a sword on Thursday," said Raymond. "The Master of the Guard gives it to you in a room with about eleven other men and then somebody tells you where your bunk is. My father says it took nine minutes."
"That's awful."
"It is extremely awful," Valor agreed cheerfully. "I have been looking forward to it since I was fourteen."
Raymond went first, because Raymond was not good at long goodbyes and knew it.
He stood up, and pulled his gear onto his shoulder, and stuck his hand out the way he had done on the day they met.
"My Prince."
"Raymond."
"I want to say a thing and I would like to get it out in one piece."
"Go on."
"When I fought you the first time, you were seven, and I was told not to underestimate you, and I did anyway. I used magic on a child because I could not accept losing to one."
Raymond's jaw was tight. "I have thought about that more than you would believe. And I have spent years watching you go past me and I have not once been able to work out at what point it happened."
"Raymond—"
"I said what I said on that day and I meant it and I will say it again now that it is worth something." He gripped Sito's hand hard. "When the time comes, I will follow you to the ends of the earth. That is not a boy's promise anymore. That is a Royal Knight of Epiria and the son of Duke Machin, and you may hold me to it in front of anybody."
Sito did not have anything to say for a second.
"Thanks," he managed.
"Do not thank me. Thank me when I have done something." Raymond let go. "And stop growing, it is upsetting."
He walked off toward the gate and did not look back, which Sito suspected was deliberate.
Valor stayed on the wall, swinging his heels.
"He rehearsed that," he said.
Sito grinned. "I know."
"He's been rehearsing it for about a month. I've heard him doing it." Valor grinned. "He does it in the wash-house because the echo makes him sound more impressive."
Sito laughed so hard he nearly came off the wall.
"Right." Valor stood up. "Mine's shorter."
"Go on."
"You're going to be the best there's ever been."
Sito stopped laughing.
"Valor—"
"No, let me finish, I've only got the one go at this." Valor picked up his gear. "I'm quick. That's my whole thing. I've been the quickest man on that ground since I was fifteen and I'm going to be the quickest man in my company and that's what I'll be at forty, and I'm all right with that, I've made my peace."
"But I've stood across from you about four hundred times and I want you to know I've watched it happen. You get better every single week. Not some weeks. Every week, for three years, and it has never once slowed down, and I don't think you know that because you're in the middle of it."
"I know I've got better."
"You don't know how," said Valor. "That's the bit. There's nobody on that ground who improves like that. There's nobody in the kingdom who improves like that."
He stuck his hand out.
"So when you're the thing they write about," he said, "I want it on the record that I put you on your back in nine seconds once, and I'd like that mentioned."
"It was seven seconds."
"It was nine."
"It was seven, Valor, and there were three of them."
"Nine seconds," said Valor, "and I will be telling it that way for the rest of my life," and hugged him, hard, and went off up the road after Raymond.
---
The replacements came on the second day.
There were six of them and they stood in a line at the edge of the ground looking like six boys who had been dragged out of six different villages and shown the inside of a castle, which was precisely what they were.
The Old Master had gone out and fetched them himself, the way he had fetched every one of the hundred.
He had spent two months on the road and had looked at, by his own account, four hundred and some newly awakened children, and had come back with these.
They were all thirteen. They had all awakened that summer.
"They're tiny," said Hob.
"They're the same size you were."
"I was never that size."
"You were exactly that size, Hob, and you cried on your third day."
"That was allergies."
---
The Old Master walked the new line with his hands behind his back.
"Names."
They gave their names.
"You will forget most of what you think you know within the month and I will replace it. You will be the worst men on this ground for two years and there is no shame in that but you will feel it anyway." The cane tapped. "You have all awakened. Every one of you is First Circle and every one of you is very pleased about it, and I am going to tell you now that it is the least interesting thing about any of you and I do not care about it at all."
Six boys stood very still.
"Questions."
One of them put a hand up.
"Master. Are we the youngest?"
"No."
The boy looked down the line of a hundred men, none of whom were under thirteen.
"Master, I don't—"
"Boy!" croaked the Old Master, in a different direction entirely.
Sito came over.
The six of them looked at him. He was, by a comfortable distance, the smallest person on that field.
"This is the youngest," said the Old Master. "He has been on this ground since he was five and he will take all six of you at once dozens of times before the winter and you will not enjoy it. Get used to his face. You will be looking at it from the floor a great deal."
"Master, that's—"
"Go and run."
---
They found out who he was that afternoon, because Hob told them, and the noise from the arena when he did was audible from the stables.
---
The name-day supper was at the usual hour, at the usual table, with the usual places set.
"Nine," said the Queen.
"Yes, Mother."
"You will be measured again in the morning. Alfred says you have gone through two more coats."
"Understood, Mother."
Xerxes said nothing until the plates had been cleared, and then Alfred came in and put a long wrapped case on the table, and a folded letter beside it.
"That arrived four days ago," said the King.
"For me?"
"For you. It came through the northern courier with a seal on it." Xerxes pushed the letter across. "Read that first. Out loud."
---
Sito broke the seal.
"To Xerxes Meridius, King of Epiria, and to Amestris Meridius, his Queen, from the house of Sylvaen and Lirien of Vradia. Greetings.
"We hope this finds your kingdom well and your winter kind. The clearing works proceed and our overseers report that your men are patient with them, which we understand from Lord Benedictus is not a thing your men are famous for."
"That is Marcus," said Amestris.
"It is entirely Marcus," said the King. "Go on."
"It has come to our attention that the ninth day of your month of Weodmonth is the name-day of your son, and that among your people this is a thing that is counted and marked.
"We do not count them here and we are told that we ought to. We send the enclosed with our regard, and with our wish that the boy who sang on our terrace should have an instrument worth the singing.
"A happy name-day to your son, and our good wishes to your house."
Sito stopped. "That's the end."
"That is very kind of them," said his mother. "Open the case."
The case was black wood with brass at the corners, and when he got the lid up there was an intake of breath from somewhere behind him, which turned out to be Alfred Cagle, who had not meant to do it.
It was a rook.
The body was a deep red-brown with a grain in it that moved when the light moved, and the neck was longer than his was — noticeably longer, made for a hand that had not finished growing — and the whole thing was so plainly, obviously better than the instrument he had been carrying around for six years that he did not touch it for a moment.
"It's too big," he said.
"It is meant to be," said Amestris. "Somebody has measured you and then guessed at the rest. Rather well, I should think."
Sito lifted it out.
It was lighter than it looked. The strings were already on and already true.
"They tuned it," he said.
"Hundereds of miles away," said the King.
"They tuned it and then they packed it and it's still—"
"Play something," said the Queen.
So he played something.
Four bars, and then he stopped and took a second to appreciate how beautiful it sounded.
Xerxes and Amestris looked at one another across the table.
"Hm," said the King.
---
Sito turned it over in his hands afterward, while his parents were talking to Alfred about the courier.
There was a line of it on the back of the body, down near the base, in writing so small that he had to take it to the candles.
sellavaer. n.
He stood with his back to the room and his face absolutely still for about four seconds.
Then he put the rook back in the case and shut the lid, and said, "May I be excused, Father?"
"You may."
---
The kitchen was full when he got down there and it went up like a barracks.
"HERE HE IS!"
"Nine years old!"
"Look at the size of him—"
"Damien, look at the size of him, he's gone through another coat—"
Sito got hold of an apron before anybody could stop him.
"Oh no," said Damien. "No. Not tonight."
"I always help."
"You always help on ordinary nights. This is not an ordinary night. Put the apron down."
"I want to help."
"It is your own cake, my prince, you cannot help with your own cake, it is a rule—"
"Whose rule?"
"Mine," said Damien, "and I have been head chef in this kitchen for twenty-two years and it is the only rule I have ever successfully enforced, so put it down—"
He did not put it down.
He never put it down. It had been the same argument most evenings for four years, and it had always ended the same way, and it ended that way again — Damien throwing both hands in the air and stalking off to shout at somebody about a sauce, and Sito rolling his sleeves up at the end of the long table.
He had come down here the first time years ago out of boredom. He had kept coming because it was fun.
He loved the art of cooking and seeing people's eyes widen when they tasted how good his food is.
Lately he did the vegetables and half the butchery and all of the knife work for four courses if they were short-handed, and the kitchen had long since stopped treating it as a novelty.
Yoko leaned over to check his hands out of habit and then stopped bothering.
"You've got faster."
"I've been practicing."
"You do the onion thing better than Hollis and Hollis has been here nine years."
"Hollis rushes."
"Hollis does rush." Yoko straightened up. "You know, if you weren't a prince you'd make a phenomenal chef."
"I keep telling him that," said Damien, from three tables away, without turning round. "I have been telling him that since he was six and it seems to be the only opinion I have ever held that everybody in this room agrees with."
"You'd have to start at the bottom, mind you," said Yoko. "Scrubbing pots and floors."
"I'd be all right at that."
"You'd be insufferable at that. You'd be head of the pot room in a month and then you'd want my job."
---
The cake came out at the end.
Aaliyah carried it in from the far pantry with a face of total innocence and set it down in front of him.
"Where did that come from?" said Sito.
"I have no idea."
"Aunt Lia."
"It appeared. These things happen in kitchens." She sat down opposite him. "It has honey in it and it has the cinnamon from the north that you like and I do not know anything else about it whatsoever."
"You've got flour on your sleeve."
"That is a very serious accusation," said Aaliyah, "and I shall be taking it up with my laundress."
Then she sang.
She sang it cheerfully, the way she always did, in a kitchen full of people who all joined in on the second line, and Damien banged a ladle on a pot, and Hollis and two of the girls did a descant that was not in any way a descant, and somebody's dog got in and was removed.
---
They made him play afterward, and he went and got the new one.
It went round the whole room before he got to play a note. Damien held it like it was a baby. Yoko turned it over and found the writing on the back and said "what's this little scratch?" and Sito said "no idea" without any change in his face at all, and Yoko said "well, that's shoddy of them" and passed it on.
Then he played.
He played the road one, and the horse one, and half the kitchen had both of those already because he had been playing down here for years. He played a thing he had been working on and had not finished. He played the sparrow song last, and Aaliyah sat with her chin on her hand and did not look away from him once.
"That instrument," said Damien afterward, "is worth more than this kitchen."
"It's worth more than the kitchen and the stables," said Yoko.
"Who sent it?"
"Elves," said Sito.
"Elves," said Damien. "Well. That explains the wood."
---
Aaliyah walked him up.
"They tuned it before they sent it," he told her, on the stair. "It traveled all that distance and it's still perfect. I don't know how you even do that."
"Mm."
"Aunt Lia, the neck's longer. They made it longer on purpose so I'd grow into it. Somebody had to work out how big my hands are going to be."
"Somebody did," Aaliyah agreed.
They got to his door.
"You are keeping the old one," she said. It was not a question.
"Course I am."
"It is a very bad instrument."
"It's a terrible instrument. The box is too shallow and the woods don't agree with each other." Sito shrugged. "It's mine, though."
Aaliyah stood there for a moment with a face he could not read, then she leaned over and embraced him tightly.
"You're growing to fast."
Sito hugged her back. "Princes have to grow fast."
"Just know I'll always be here by your side. Wether your nine years old or ninety years old you'll always be my little prince."
She let go of him and put her forehead against his as she smiled and pinched his cheek.
"Go to bed, mister nine-year-old."
---
The crystal lit before he had got his boots off.
"Well?"
"Hello, Naeva."
"Do not 'hello Naeva' me. Did it come?"
"Did what come?"
There was a silence of a kind he had learned to be frightened of.
"Sito."
He smiled. "It came."
"And?"
"It's the most beautiful thing anybody's ever given me," he said, "and my father read your father's letter out loud at supper, and I have played it for about two hours and my hands hurt."
Naeva let out a breath.
"Good," she said.
"How long have you known about this?"
"Since the spring."
"The spring?"
"It takes a very long time to have a rook made, Sito. There are two people in Thelvarion who make instruments and only one of them is any good and he is nine hundred years old and he does not hurry for anybody."
She was talking very fast now. "I had to tell him how tall you are. I had to tell him how tall you are going to be, which he made me guess at, and I said you would be taller than your father and he said how would a child know that, and I said because I have seen the size of his hands."
"You did all that in the spring."
"I did all that in the spring and then I had to sit here and say nothing to you about it for months, which was the worst thing that has ever happened to me."
"Naeva."
"What."
"There's writing on the back."
"Is there."
"Down by the base. Very small."
"How strange," said Naeva.
"It says sellavaer. And an N."
"Does it."
"Naeva, the whole court is going to see this thing. Everybody in my kitchen has already had it in their hands. Damien held it up to a lamp."
"And did anybody ask?"
"Yoko asked. She thought it was a scratch."
"Then it is a scratch," said Naeva, "and it is a very small one, and you may tell anybody who asks that elven instrument makers sign their work, which is true, and nobody in your entire kingdom knows what that word means."
There was a pause.
"I don't know what that word means," said Sito.
"No," agreed Naeva, sounding extremely pleased. "You do not."
"You put a word I can't read on a thing I'm going to carry around for the rest of my life."
"Yes."
"That's—"
"Happy name-day, Sito," said Naeva.