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I found Mari just before one, ignoring Charlene’s baleful look as I held the door for Mari and followed her outside to the archery grounds. The children were happy to see her and they welcomed Cathy eagerly when she came out to practice as well. I noticed with pleasure that Mari was getting along much better with the others than I’d expected. Clearly she’d learned some about how to make friends and get along with others, since she hadn’t known much about such things last summer.
After an hour and a half, I stepped forward and called a halt, and after many groans they obeyed, calling good-bye to each other and promising to see each other tomorrow. I took Mari back to the library, and Charlene wasn’t there. I rolled my eyes, sure she was sulking somewhere, and checked the sheet Tatum had left. “All right, Mari, what do you have left to do?”
“Law,” she said promptly.
I grimaced. “Are you going to need help?”
She laughed. “Not from you!”
I made a face at her. “Anything else?”
“No.”
I checked down the list. “So you’ve finished the math?” I knew it was the subject she hated the most and the one she was most likely to lie about.
“No,” she grumbled. “I haven’t done finances yet.”
I tapped the list. “You have to finish everything on the list, Mari. If you don’t, then you don’t get to practice outside. If you fall behind, Tatum will stay longer and you will have to study with him and it’ll be your fault your friends can’t practice.”
“But...” she started to whine.
“Mari...”
She pouted.
“Just finish your lessons and then you’re done for the day. You only have a page of finances to do.”
“But finances are boring!” she complained.
“Do it anyway.”
She almost glared at me, then caught herself and pouted instead. I left her pouting and wandered about the library. When I checked on her, she was working, albeit a bit sullenly, but she was doing it. She called me down a couple times to help with the math, and once, teasingly, to have me help with law. When my eyes started to glaze over, she laughed and I realized she didn’t actually need help.
“How are you a guardswoman if you don’t know law?” she teased.
“I uphold the law, I don’t make it,” I explained. “Besides, those are the laws that are no longer in existence and why they’re no longer in existence.”
Mari shrugged. “I like it.”
“Good. That’s why you’re royalty and I’m not.”
Charlene came in as Mari finished her math problems and I slipped out of the room. It wasn’t going help to engage in a confrontation, which would surely happen if I stayed. Instead, I stood out in the hall. Mari finished her lessons a half hour later. Charlene left and I went inside to find Mari was reading for fun. When Cathy peeked inside a little later, she picked up a book herself and joined us. While Mari’s book was for fun, and mine was a recommended history book by the other guards to help me figure out life on this side of the gate, Cathy was busy reading a manual on anatomy. She’d always loved science, and as long as she was reading, I was going to leave her to it.
Time slipped by, and it was the most peaceful time I’d spent in Valeria yet, undisturbed by everyone. When the bell rang a quarter till five, I put my book up and got the other two moving. “Come on, girls,” I said. “We need to get ready for dinnertime.”
“Are you eating with us?” Mari asked.
I shook my head. “I’m eating with the other guards.”
“Okay,” Cathy said cheerfully.
The guards were gathering at the table and I slid in with them, claiming a drink and passing the pitcher to the person next to me, who happened to be Liam.
“Oh,” a younger guard said in disappointment as he came in and saw me.
“Oh, what?” his friend asked.
“She’s here,” he said, pointing to me. “Now we have to use manners.”
I looked down to hide a smile.
“Planning to have another eating contest?” Mark asked.
“Well, we were,” the first one said.
“Just wait until I leave,” I said hastily. “I don’t want to see or hear it. Or smell it when one or both of you throws up.”
“But that’s the best part,” another guard protested.
I didn’t bother to hide my grimace. “Yuck.”
“Don’t think about that,” Neal said with a challenging grin. “Think about how I’m going to make Randall lose his bet.”
I laughed as he took the seat across from me. “Don’t eat too much. I’d hate to win because you were waddling around like a stuffed duck.”
“Win? Betting?” A different guard perked up. “Are you two fighting? What’s the bet? Can I get in on it?”
“Randall’s betting that she can take Neal in a minute and a half,” Remy said. “Two hundred.”
There were guffaws at that.
“It’s a shame,” I said regretfully.
“What’s a shame?” they asked.
“That I’ll only get to do this once. No one’s going to take me after this.”
“You can’t win that fast!” Neal protested.
I shrugged. “I don’t know much about your fighting, but Randall does and if he thinks I can take you then I’ll trust him.” I took a bite of salad.
I ate light, listening to amusement to the other bets being placed over dinner and the debate over our skills. Finally, Neal pounded the table. “All right, Joan. Let’s do this.”
A trail of guards and servants followed behind us, growing as we passed through the hallways towards the back of the castle. We stepped outside, and I paused and whistled in amazement. “How have I never seen this?”
There was a large building out back, a beautiful, shining white, and at least two stories tall. I hadn’t seen it before and I’d been all around the castle last summer. Actually, now that I thought of it, it had looked like it had been old and about to crumble last year, at least the parts I’d been able to see. The outside had been broken boards covered in dust, no windows, looking like it needed to be torn down.
“We hid it,” he explained. “We stored ammunition and it was where all the battle plans were. We’d just started to build it before the war broke out, so the Lendians didn’t know we had it.”
“How did Olson not know about it? How did I not know about it?”
“Only a few people knew. I guess there just wasn’t a need to tell you.” He opened the door and gave me a moment to take in the inside. I could see stairs leading upward to the second floor, but this was certainly spacious enough. It was at least three football fields long and five football fields wide. They could have parked a jet in here without much difficulty. The room was partitioned off, different fighting arenas in different parts of the room.
“The second floor is for exercising,” Remy said, coming up behind me as I continued to stare and try not to gape. “And in the far corner are a pool and a steam room and a shower room. There’s a separate room for men and women, although you might be one of the first to use the women’s side. This place has only recently reopened, since we had quite a bit of cleaning to do.”
“We? You cleaned?” I asked with a smile, knowing he hadn’t done any cleaning.
“We helped with manual labor,” he said. “That counts as cleaning.”
Neal was already on the mat, preparing for the fight. I stepped on the mat, already taking off all jewelry and making sure my hair was braided and out of the way. Neal left his guard uniform on, so I did the same, kneeling to tighten my shoes before standing up and facing him.
“No low blows,” Neal chided me, crouching into position.
“When have you ever seen me use a low blow?” I asked, starting to stretch my arms and legs.
“When you fought Jak.”
“Then I suggest you don’t get me in a choke hold,” I said sweetly. I bounced a little to test the mat, judging the amount of space we had to fight on. “And don’t go after my sister.”
He snorted. “I’m not an idiot. We all know you and your sister are capable of making us limp around in pain for weeks.” He was still in position. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
“Clock’s ready!” Liam called. “Go!”
Neal came at me as the crowd roared. I ducked his blow, twisting to the side, dropping to the floor and knocking his feet from under him with a swipe across the ankle. He responded by grabbing my ankle and keeping me on the floor so I couldn’t get up. I let him start to get up, then I lashed out with my other foot, connecting to his elbow with enough force that he let go of me, but not enough to actually hurt him. We both got to our feet. He started to circle, but I didn’t circle, going on the offensive. He was taken momentarily off-guard and was a little slow in blocking my punch. He scored a hit to my shoulder and another to my arm before I grabbed his arm, twisted it, then had to let go and jump out of the way of his other fist.
I suddenly smiled. “I’ve got you now.”
“Not yet,” Neal panted. He charged again, and then he was on the floor, on his stomach, and I was kneeling on his back, both hands locked in my grip.
“Do I have to pin you a certain way or does this mean I win?” I inquired.
“Time,” Randall said in amusement.
Liam was gaping at me, then got ahold of himself. “One minute, twenty-seven seconds.”
“That’s humiliating,” Neal mumbled, his face in the mat.
I let him go and offered my hand to help him up. “I warned you. No hard feelings, right?”
He offered a grin. “Right.” He took my hand and let me help him up. “That was something.”
I bowed in proper fashion, the same way I bowed after each Tai Kwon Do match, and a flash of surprise went across his face. “You studied in martial arts?”
“Third-degree black belt,” I responded.
Neal stared, open-mouthed, then bowed back in proper fashion.
“If it makes you feel better, Court Jester Freddy Lichen didn’t last a minute.”
“Eric lasted longer,” he accused.
“That was to make a point,” I reminded him. “He wouldn’t have lasted near as long otherwise.”
He rubbed his thigh ruefully. “I walked right into that attack. If I’d known you were a black belt, I wouldn’t have done that.”
“Now you know. I doubt I’ll be able to take you so quickly next time.”
Now that the match was over, others decided they were inspired. I’d fought several others and had watched others fight as well when Charlene rushed into the fighting chamber, covered in what smelled like horse manure, eyes blazing. “You!” she shrieked at me.
I looked at her, eyebrows raised. “Wow, Charlene. What happened to you?”
“As if you didn’t know,” she spat.
I looked around. “Should I know something?”
“You set this up! I know you did!”
“Set what up?” I asked, bewildered. Behind me, Remy was struggling not to burst into roars of laughter. I was working hard myself. Charlene was absolutely covered in horse manure. Her clothes were spotted with it, it was in her hair, it squished out of her shoes, leaving shoeprints wherever she walked, and it streaked her face as well, clumps falling off her clothing, leaving a trail to go along with the shoeprints.
She pointed a shaking finger at me. “You...sent a page...to call me outside...and then...” She almost couldn’t speak with rage. “I found a pile of horse manure waiting to drop on me!”
I held up my hands. “Charlene, I’ve been in here for the last hour and you...well, it smells like this happened recently.”
I heard laughs turned into coughs and faint giggles and bit my cheek. I was trying to be polite, but it was hard when Charlene looked like that. Her face, already red with rage, turned even redder at all the laughter.
“You’re just jealous!” she shouted. “You can’t handle that Martin chose me over you!”
“I had nothing to do with it, Charlene,” I said quietly. “And you have no right to accuse me without proof.”
“Who else would have done this?” she demanded. “You did this to get even with me! Well, it’s not my fault that Martin clearly didn’t find you good enough and that he moved on! And if he didn’t have the guts to break up with you or tell you that he wanted to, then that’s not my fault either! Maybe you should just accept that he doesn’t want you!”
It took all I had to keep my face blank. Now everyone knew I hadn’t been good enough for Martin. The humiliation burned. “As I said, Charlene,” I said quietly, “he’s yours. If he wants you, he’s free to go. I’m not holding him back.” I saw Randall start to move toward me and stepped away, turning and walking silently across the room among the shocked and furious whispers until I disappeared out the door and couldn’t hear anything anymore.