"And I believe him."

My brother's head sank into his hands, and his shoulders heaved.

"But what's the real reason, Alfric?"

He looked up, expressionless and dry-eyed, a bit surprised that after a long absence I still knew his tricks.

"Why are you willing to be my squire and borrow trouble," I asked, "when you can inherit the old man's castle and spend the rest of your years squandering his patrimony?"

For the first time in years, my brother looked at me directly, with a gaze free of guile and meanness and malice and brutality. I almost failed to recognize him.

"Girls, Galen. I will become a squire to meet girls."

With a sinking feeling, I knew where the conversation was heading. Far better than his customary threats or blackmails, my brother had stumbled upon a ready way to squirehood-to appeal, simply and forthrightly, to my sense of the ridiculous.

"You see, the last of the serving girls left Coastlund a month before we came here. The peasants hid her… told me they'd rather die than tell me her whereabouts. The moathouse gets kind of lonely without women around. And I get to thinking… thinking, what would be more respectable than Knighthood, and all of them ladies like Enid and Dannelle and Marigold-"

With the last name, he shot me a sly look, then continued.

"With all of them flocking about you? So I think to myself, what is squirehood, anyway, but a time that you have to wait before the girls are a sure thing? And who would be easier on his own squire than my own brother?"

I looked out my window, over the wall into the bed of the huge moat Bayard had ordered dug around the castle to allay the pressure of the huge artesian well from which the castle drew its water. It was not yet completed, but the rain had half-filled it, and for a moment, I thought of jumping, of hitting the ground running and continuing to run to a country far away from ambitious fathers and philandering brothers and Marigolds of all sizes and stripes and appetites.

I suppose that land lies somewhere. Somewhere near the best of all worlds, no doubt.

The breeze picked up, warm from the west. There was the faintest hint of smoke upon it, like you might catch in the depth of winter from the chimneys in a town miles away, the whiff of dark evergreen and warmth taken up by the wind and passed your way by chance. But this was midsummer- terrible midsummer, with its morning heat and the dry days that promised to stay forever-and the smell of smoke at this time of year was the odor of unchecked fires.

To the west, the Vingaards rose out of a bed of dark smoke, as though they floated on the backs of thunderheads.

"Very well," I said, my words surprising me more than they did my brother. "Your squirehood begins this moment."

Chapter V

So that was how I was visited with the squire some said I so richly deserved.

I will grant you that my decision to employ my brother did not arise from the purest of hearts. For it is hard going in the Order when one's relatives are scoundrels or fools-I had only to look at Father, to see how he had suffered for his sons' general wretchedness, to know that the knighthood was unforgiving and fierce. With history stacked against me to begin with, I could scarcely suffer a running tally of Alfric's misdemeanors.

Then again, neither could Father. I must admit that I felt for the old man, whose middle son was a mystic in the mountains, whose youngest son attained to the Knighthood only by Sir Bayard's finagling, and whose scion and heir was promising to be the sorriest of the lot. My taking on Alfric was in part for the good of Sir Andrew.

It would be even better, of course, on the off chance that my brother had a dash of the squire in him. So what if he aspired to knighthood for the simple and unproven reason that women are drawn to a man in armor? No doubt some heroes have begun under worse circumstances, with even more self-serving motives.

Cynical as I could be, especially with Alfric as the subject, I still held out hope that the boy could turn around, could make something of himself under the watchful eye of the Order.

That was until my brother went to work.

It was like a natural disaster. By noon, Alfric had torn one stirrup from my saddle and brought to pass the dismantling of three stalls in the stables when he curried my chosen horse too roughly.

It was only later that he lost my armor.

"Brother," I had begun in exasperation, as two grooms cleared the stalls of fractured boards. A third groom sat stuporously in the sunlight, stunned by his horse-propelled inspection of the barn's double doors. "Brother, I send you to prepare my horse, and you wreak havoc with the livery."

Alfric shuffled and tried to look repentant.

"And save that chopfallen look for someone who hasn't hated it since childhood. Father may forgive your monstrosities because you're first in line for the moathouse, but as my squire you'll answer to me, and I'll have no counterfeit anguish in the bargain."

"It was the damn horse you chose, Weasel-nothing I done. Why, if I didn't know better, I'd suppose you set this up in the hopes that the beast would kill me and solve your problem of taking me on as a squire."

'That is something you do not know better, Brother dear," I bluffed, hoping that somewhere in the deep recesses of my brother's thinking, something like healthy respect might emerge. "But the animal solved me no problems, despite his bucking and backlash. I suspect we are stuck with making you useful."

Being useful was how Alfric lost my armor.

I set him to the task of polishing the breastplate, although the page, Raphael, had done the same thing far better only the night before. Alfric's best efforts would do little to mar the workmanship, I figured, so I decided to risk letting him oil the leather straps of the greaves, so that they wouldn't dry and crack on the gods-knew-how-long journey ahead.

It was scarcely an hour later that I came upon my brother in the castle tannery, poised anxiously over a vat of oil kept to soften dry leather, silence squealing machinery, and hurl boiling over besieging enemies. Alfric stood by my helmet and breastplate, shield and sword, staring down into the darkness of the vat as though he had lost something.

"What was it I said about making yourself useful, Brother?" I began.

But Alfric kept on staring.

I called him once, twice. But he gazed at the glittering surface of the oil as though he were reading it for signs or omens. Finally he looked up, gasping and gaping like a large and ungainly trout pulled out of the Vingaard River at low water.

"Brother, I am afraid your greaves are sunk," he began meekly.

"Sunk? As in submerged? Underwater?"

He shook his head slowly, stupidly.

"Under oil."

I followed his eyes to the barrel.

"I figured it would save trouble if, instead of oiling all them leather parts, I just dipped the greaves into the barrel," Alfric explained, looking up at me dolefully.

"Dipped?"

"And I kind of lost hold on them."

His eyes returned to the vat. I reached for my sword.

"Alfric, you are going in after them."

"What?"

"The greaves. You let them slip to the bottom of that mire, and by the gods, you are diving into there and coming out with greaves or you are not coming out at all."

I raised my sword for emphasis.

For a moment, my brother turned toward me with the same old bullying airs that had served him well throughout my bludgeoned and blackmailed childhood. He rose to his full height and looked at me scornfully, eye to eye.

"Bluff and bluster as much as you like, Alfric," I whispered calmly, turning the sword until its nasty-looking point tilted up beneath my brother's stubbled chin. "I hold the weaponry."