Together, Til and the girl return to training with renewed vigor. That is, for a couple of rounds, until the girl is nearly falling over from exhaustion and getting more wrong than she gets right. Throughout, though, there’s a curious lack of complaints. And when he tells her she can stop, she drops to the ground panting, sweat soaking her.

  Til allows himself a proud smile; she’s managing to move past her pride, well, for now, at least. And she seemed more eager to learn even in this stretch of exhaustion than she had at the start.

  Her improvements had also grown in leaps and bounds, even managing to return to the right poses without prompting when he had her switch poses without warning.

  Someday, she would be a force to be reckoned with.

  Now though? Now, she was an overworked little girl who needed to sit down and eat before she fell down for real.

  Til guided her to sit on one of the logs, checking that she wasn’t going to fall over before pouring her a bowl of soup. Handing it to her, though, is more dangerous than he anticipated, and he has to check that he still has all his fingers, given the aggressive enthusiasm she shows as she takes it from him to dig in.

  Reassured that he still has all his digits, Til takes the baby from Noan, telling the other man to eat while he changes the baby and feeds him. Til would feed himself later, when the others had their share and had gone to sleep.

  For now, though, he realizes that he’s all but kidnapped this girl, taken her miles from her home village, taught her the basics of fighting, and fed her for the evening, all without telling her his name or asking her own.

  Shaking his head, Til waited till she was done eating before speaking just loudly enough to be heard, well aware that it’s, well, a rather strange place that they’ve found themselves in. “I think, that we might have done things a bit backwards. We probably should have learned each other's names well before I started teaching you to fight.”

  She snorts, an inelegant sound for an inelegant girl, “It’s Ray.”

  Noan pipes up from the other side of the fire. Til had thought he had already gone to sleep. He was laid out like he was. “Like ‘Ray of Sunshine?’”

  “No.” The girl, Ray, crosses her arms, the daggers in her eyes not much more effective than the dagger in her hand had been earlier, but it had no effect on the wizard languidly lying a few feet away. “Like Ray.”

  “Don’t worry, Sunshine, I’ll remember it.” The man goads, likely good-naturedly, but he had done nothing to earn the girl’s respect or favor, and in his relaxed state doesn’t seem to notice the waves of rage that practically dropped off the girl’s, Ray’s small body.

  Huffing, Ray stands, pausing only long enough to pick up the dagger that almost looks like a proper weapon in her hand.

  “Where are you going?” Til asks, not quite standing yet, as that would require setting down the babe, and he was sure if he did that now, the result would be tears.

  “To find somewhere to sleep.” Is the curt reply.

  Til nods, watching her as she starts to move further from the fire. When she’s nearly out of the light, he calls, “Stay close enough we can see you. Would hate it if you were kidnapped and we didn’t know til the morning.”

  “Oh, that’s comforting.” She huffs again, but doesn’t go any further.

  “It’s the truth.” Til shrugs, not taking his eye off her.

  She moves around the edge of the fire for a bit, periodically looking at Til or the road before settling down at the base of a tree with what almost looks like a cradle in the twisted roots. The space is just big enough for the girl to fit herself in, and once she’s settled, dagger in hand, Til is sure that if he didn’t know where she lay, he wouldn’t know she was there but for the glint of the blade in the dark.

  “Sleep well.” He calls softly.

  Ray turns away from them in her wooden bed without answering. But she moved no further. Til would count it as a win for now, choosing to see her turning her back on them, not the wilderness, as a sign of trust, rather than the brush off she intended for it to be.

  Til sees as Noan props himself up to smile at the small glint of steel in the firelight, before looking at Til with a softness on his face that Til wasn’t sure that he wanted to name, not that he was even sure he could name it if he wanted.

  Instead, he turns away, looking back at the babe as he tells Noan, “Better be careful with that one. She might actually try to cut your head off.”

  “Nah,” Noan replies with a small laugh, “I think she’s a real sweetheart underneath that sharp exterior. She just needs a little coaxing.”

  “I think she’s sharp all the way down. Consider this a warning now that you don’t irritate her into killing you in your sleep.” Til’s pretty sure the girl in question is still awake, if nothing else, the slight shake of the knife in the light certainly looked a lot like muffled laughter. Or maybe she was planning to kill Noan, in which case he just hoped she waited til after Til fell asleep so he could feign surprise.

  “Oh,” Noan scoffs, “she wouldn’t.”

  “Oh,” Til insists, “She absolutely would.”

  The shaking was getting worse, and it was bringing a smile to Til’s face, even if she didn’t feel she could interact with them freely during the day; at least under the cover of darkness, she could laugh at this.

  “Just cause you’re all dark and doom and gloom doesn’t mean she is. She had real potential.”

  Side-stepping the doom and gloom comment, Til didn’t think he was very gloomy, just pragmatic. “Potential to kill you? Definitely.”

  “She’s a little girl-” Noan starts, but Til cuts him off, feeling the need to make sure that Noan is very aware that while this conversation is for play, and that it certainly has an audience, that Noan knows that she’s not some simpering lord’s quiet, dutiful daughter who will turn into a quiet dutiful wife one day.

  “She’s a little girl who’s lived on the streets, we don’t know how long for, but she’s got her wits around her. She stole a dagger from me the first chance she had, not to mention that she was certainly planning to steal my horse when we initially introduced ourselves.”

  “You might be right about those things…” Noan pauses, perhaps pondering for a moment on how he could change his behavior. More than likely not. “But I think she’ll warm up to us.”

  “Maybe.” Til allows, “I think it will all depend on what we’re willing to teach her.”

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  “You think she’s an intellectual?” Noan’s head swivels, surprise and maybe pride warring on his face for a moment before he’s schooled it once more, careful curiosity being the only emotion left visible.

  Til pauses, “I think. That she wants to be able to protect herself, and we’re the best bet she’s going to have for teachers, at least in that regard.”

  “Eh, you’re probably right.” Noan drops back to the ground.

  They sit in silence for a long time. Long enough that over the crackles of the fire, Til can hear Ray’s soft snores, and the babe in his arms is a warm, heavy weight.

  Then he asks a question that’s been on his mind a long time, longer than their mission, almost longer than his career as Honored. Though he didn’t feel terribly honorable at the moment.

  “Why did you come on this mission?” Til keeps his head carefully tilted so that he can just see the wizard over the now lowly burning fire. “I would have thought that the king would send someone more experienced, maybe one of the ones who came under the king’s private tutelage.”

  A dead huff comes from Noan, the echo of a sound of amusement.

  “I’m sure many of the wizards who’ve been ‘under the king’s private tutelage’ would love the chance to be here, but they’re-” Noan’s jaw snaps shut, the clack of teeth audible. For a moment, it looks like he’s fighting himself over what to say, his jaw working, apparently mulling over his words as he makes some faces, wrinkling his nose a few times before he finally blurts out, “Busy.”

  “Busy? What does that mean?” Noan was far from the only wizard in the castle; usually, the king arranged for them to work in cities around the kingdom, to spread his messages to the people across the land at a moment’s notice, or to take care of them should the threat of war once more darken their kingdom. However, there were a few others who remained after their education was sufficiently complete. Why weren’t they acting, or assisting them in this venture?

  “Look. It’s not for me to talk about. And anyway, it doesn’t affect you.”

  “I’d argue it does.” Til waves a hand around, gesturing to the children, the forest around them, and the whole quest that they were on this very moment.

  “Okay, so it does. But I probably spend more time with the king than any of the other wizards. And he trusts the two of us more than he trusts anyone else alive.”

  “I believe I could name a dozen men of the Kingsguard who would probably be better suited for this quest than either of us.”

  “And that’s why we’re here,” Noan says, bolting upright and turning to face Til completely, intentionally. Doing what he could to make eye contact with the helmeted knight.

  Had Noan eaten a wild mushroom when Til wasn’t looking? “What are you talking about?”

  “We’re here because we’re not the best choices.” Noan insists, moving closer to Til, to the fire between them.

  “That’s insane.” Til hadn’t added anything he wasn’t sure about to the soup; maybe Ray had?

  “It is! And that’s why it’s so brilliant! We’re not the best choices, sure, you’re already well headed for Kingsguard, but the enemy isn’t going to know that. They won’t know much of anything at all about either of us. They might know that I was trained by the king, but unlike most of the grandiose wizards of the kingdom, I started on my uncle’s farm. All of my knowledge, everything I learned, I learned at my uncle’s knee or from the capital library when I was a page.”

  Til’s mind flickered from idea to idea, thought to thought, because they weren’t the best, they were? Noan had been a page? Could have been a knight? Noan actually was trained by the king?

  “You were a page?” He eventually manages, wondering how someone as powerful as Noan could have slipped under the radar enough to be vetted as a page without being diverted to train as a wizard.

  “I was going to be, I just didn’t have a lot of patience.” Noan pauses again, another pause where he works her jaw like there’s something caught between his teeth or maybe deciding if he wants to spit something out, but is gathering it together on his tongue. “But that’s why I’m better as a wizard.”

  Til waits, wondering and filled with a kind of starlit wonder. He’s never heard the other man speak this much before. The wizard was known to be a prankster, but Til had never once heard of anyone claiming to be close to him. He’d certainly never expected to be the one to listen to the soft, forlorn way the Noan talked about his early life with his gaze set upon the still burning fire. He spent his time on a farm in Argest before attempting to bring his family some honor by joining the king’s army.

  “I spent the time I should have been learning the rules of being a knight, one of the Honored, reading about the magic in the world, unaware that I was one of the people capable of it, that I was even already doing it, I just didn’t know. Turns out the only reason I lasted in my training as long as I did was because of it.” Noan laughs, but it’s a sad sound, “Donner said, when he finally met me, that I wasn’t touched, I was manhandled.”

  Til laughs, a surprised burst that he quickly attempts to suppress to keep from waking the children, “I can’t imagine the king using that kind of language.”

  “I mean, I’m paraphrasing, but that’s basically what he said.”

  Til hums, a smile lingering on his face, “You really wanted to be a knight?”

  “Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t my first choice. After my uncle died- I mean, he was the only family I had, the only person really guiding me to any future, really. I didn’t have any goals, except-” Again, the strange snapping of Noan’s teeth. Again, the painful clatter that Til shudders at. Again, silence as Noan figures out what he wanted to say, “Well. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I ended up in the capital, then, under Donner’s wing, learning all that he thought important to teach me.”

  “Many dream of having the chance to be a wizard, let alone to be trained by the best of Sunotoma. And many wish to achieve the high status of Kingsguard.” Til says softly, thinking that Noan had mentioned that it was honor he was after. “You’ve managed to find yourself a place, a role, where you might as well be both.”

  “Donner may have encouraged me to learn, to continue my martial training, though I’m sure you’re much faster than I am. But I think I would have preferred to be a knight. Unaware of all of the king’s plans. Or a simple farmer, unaware at all of the king except at times of a decree of tax.” Noan lifts his gaze once more from the now dying embers. How much time had they spent talking? “Did you always want to be a knight?”

  Til considers the question and considers his answer to it before deciding that, perhaps, a half-truth was better than nothing at all or a lie worse than that. “In… A manner of speaking. I’ve probably been training with a sword longer than you’ve been alive, at least.”

  “Is that so? I thought we were about the same age.” Noan’s gaze is thoughtful, examining Til’s helmet as if there might be some sign of his true age underneath.

  Looking away, Til thought, trying to remember how old he was, and how old he thought the young man in front of him was. “I’m older, by a few years at least. Not more than a decade, though.”

  Noan leaned back, “Huh. More than I thought. Well, if you’re that much older, why the sudden change in life paths?”

  “I-” Til considered how much Noan had already told him, and how much he was willing to share, “I had a bit of a disagreement with my… Family. They had their reasons to be upset at me. I had my reasons to be upset at them. I left, certain that I was in the right, and though I could have looked back, I chose not to.”

  “What would make you look back now?” Noan asks, body more relaxed, but eyes focused on Til. How long could this really go on?

  What could he say?”

  “Being on the Kingsguard. Proving the point that I was trying to make when I was a child. It’s not about proving them wrong or proving that I myself was right. But that- that the things that seemed impossible to them weren’t. That’s why I volunteered. If you hadn’t told me the king thought well of me, I don’t know that I could have had the courage to do this, but this will be enough; it has to be enough that I will become Kingsguard. I’ll be given all that is given to those of the same rank, and then maybe I can bring some of my family here. Maybe some of the people who wanted to come, but couldn’t before, can now.” Til allowed his thoughts to pour for him, letting out all but the most important parts of the story.

  “That’s… awfully kind of you. To want to help your family, even if you did leave on bad terms. Do you-did you have a big family?” Noan asks, but a yawn cuts through his question. Til could see through the heaviness of his eyelids and knew it was only a matter of time. “I only had my aunt and uncle. But I lost both of them before I was even of the majority.”

  “I guess you could say that.” Til said after a moment, “I wasn’t actually related to all of them. But I considered- consider them family anyway.”

  Til waited to see if the other had anything to add, but his eyes were already closed, and his chest moved steadily.

  He hadn’t heard then; it was probably for the best anyway.

  Til would have only been able to avoid details for a short time, and Noan likely would have been able to quickly pull from him that by “family,” what he really means was "Clan of mercenaries and hitmen who had been trying to kill the king for the best part of the last three generations.”

  That would put an unspeakable damper on their quest, and the chance of him being able to join the Kingsguard, to kill the king himself, would be gone.

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