My irritation spikes again. How dare he dismiss my father’s valor! “Efea’s enemies are always attacking us. We have to fight lest we be overrun by people who want to steal the grain out of our fields and the gold and iron from our mines.”
With a heavy sigh he starts climbing, and I match his steps even as I feel the ache of a bruise coming in where the spear-butt jabbed me.
“I mean no disrespect to your father, the hero of Maldine. But it isn’t that simple, Doma. The noble ancestors of our king and queen fled the empire of Saro over a hundred years ago.”
“Yes, I know. That was when the last emperor was murdered and the empire fell apart.”
“Most of the people we fight are really just our distant cousins, the ones who stayed behind and built the kingdoms of Saro-Urok, West Saro, and East Saro out of the old empire. It’s like one huge, nasty, bloody, generations-long family quarrel.” He waves a hand airily. “The point is, I’ll never be allowed to learn what I need at my family’s Fives stable.”
“Why not?”
“Because my uncle doesn’t want me to run the Fives. Unlike your father with you, he can’t stop me running, not as long as my grandmother allows it. But the trainers at Garon Stable know it will displease him. They can’t go against his wishes.”
“You feel trapped too!” I say eagerly as I forget I am talking to a lord.
“Yes!” As our gazes meet, a spark of understanding flashes between us. “Please tell me where you train. I’ll do anything.”
We reach the top of the stairs, which give onto the promenade. Soldiers guard every avenue that leads off the terrace into the city. Patron carriages are lined up, waiting to be given permission to exit. Everyone looks nervous.
Amaya stands by the carriage next to Polodos. He surreptitiously slips a folded scrap of paper to her. Can stolid, boring Polodos possibly be Amaya’s secret suitor, the one who writes execrable paeans to her beauty on scented rice paper?
The brush of Kalliarkos’s fingers on my elbow jolts me.
“Please,” he says. “I know you understand.”
“I do understand.” I am sure the sky will open and the gods’ judgment pierce me with a mighty arrow for talking to him when Father told me not to. “But you see how it is with me.”
“Plenty of girls and women run the Fives.”
“Yes, Commoner women do, and if I were a Commoner my family would be proud. But Patron women do not.”
“Your father is the hero of Maldine. Surely that counts for something.”
“His daughters must be the most proper Patron girls of all, even if we will never truly be Patrons.”
He frowns, thinking over a situation a highborn youth like him has never faced. “Of course you’re not a Patron girl. You’re a mule.”
I flush at the word.
“Forgive me, I meant no insult.” That he blushes in his turn shocks me. Why does he care? “Of course I see your father feels he must be doubly strict given the peculiar nature of your circumstances. Considering how good you are, that must be frustrating for you.”
His unforced sympathy opens my heart. “It is frustrating. I train at a little stable run by a woman named Anise. It’s near Scorpion Fountain.”
His eyes widen. “That’s a bad part of town.”
“No it isn’t. Maybe you’ve heard it is because only Commoners live there. Anise takes any comers, even Patrons. She won’t treat you differently from the others just because you’re a lord’s son.”
“I don’t want to be treated differently because of who I am.” His expression is so serious I believe he believes it. Were a lowborn Patron like my father to attempt to rescue a Commoner girl from a mass arrest it could kill his career, but such magnanimity in a lord’s son is charming eccentricity.
“Anise doesn’t run adversaries in trials like the competitive Fives stables do,” I add. “She’s not interested in reputation and making money like everyone else is. She’s not like the palace stables, competing for royal favor and a seat closer to the king’s throne if their adversaries win. All she does is train those who want to learn. That’s why she’s got no fame. That’s why I can train there.”
He clasps my hand warmly. “Thank you! I’ll meet you there, won’t I?”
The pressure of his skin on mine makes my chest tighten in a strange way that Amaya would tease me for were she to see me now. Which she will, if she happens to look this way. I am suddenly aware of how many people swarm the promenade, any one of whom might recognize him and then me. And tell Father, or use gossip to harm Father’s reputation.
