"Ah! There you are, Vaijon!"

Vaijon paused halfway through his formal bow of greeting as Sir Charrow's tone registered. It confirmed his suspicion that the knight-captain had deliberately sent him out to be humiliated, and fresh anger flared within him. But he snuffed it sternly and rose, and the touch of color in his cheeks could easily have been put down to the cold wind outside the chapter house. He doubted Sir Charrow would be fooled into thinking any such thing, but the two of them could pretend.

"Yes, Knight-Captain," he made himself say formally. "Permit me to introduce Sir Bahzell, son of Bahnak—" his voice stumbled over the unfamiliar names, though not as much as on the next three words "—Champion of Tomanāk ."

"I see." Sir Charrow rose from behind his desk and examined the two hradani. They stood just inside the door to his study, the taller of the two with his head bent to clear the ceiling of what was normally a comfortably large chamber, and the lips half-concealed by Charrow's snowy beard quirked in a smile. "Ah, Vaijon," he said delicately, "just exactly which of them is Sir Bahzell?"

Vaijon inhaled a jagged breath, yet once again the knight-captain had asked no more than a courteous question he should have answered without asking. Despite his undertow of fury at being rebuked, he knew he had drawn it upon himself... and the fact that he was actually failing even in the courtesy his parents had taught him long before he joined the Order, far less that expected of a knight-probationer, only proved he had, however hard it bit. Whatever Vaijon might think of the idea of a hradani champion, a gentleman owed it to himself to treat even the most basely born with courtesy.

"Forgive me," he said with a very creditable effort at a calm tone. "This," he gestured at the huge Horse Stealer, "is Sir Bahzell, Sir Charrow. And this—" He started to gesture at the second hradani, and his face went crimson as he realized he hadn't even asked the other's name. But Master Kresko had called him by name, hadn't he? Vaijon thought frantically for a seemingly interminable moment, hand frozen in midair, then—finally—completed the gesture.

"This is his companion, Lord... Brandark," he said, and made himself face the smaller hradani. "Your pardon, Milord, but I failed to ask your full name so that I might make you properly known. The fault was mine. Would you, of your courtesy, make yourself known to Sir Charrow?"

Brandark's eyebrows rose as Vaijon's exquisite, aristocratic accent rolled out the words. He hadn't really believed there were people who actually spoke the way bad bards wrote dialogue, and the devil in him longed to twit the youngster. But he also heard the gritted teeth in the young man's voice, and compassion won out. He didn't know if someone could die of mortification, but "Sir Vaijon" seemed to be headed in that direction, and Brandark didn't want his death on his conscience.

"Certainly, Sir Vaijon," he said instead, projecting all of his considerable suavity, and bowed to Sir Charrow. "My name is Brandark, Sir Charrow, Son of Brandark, of the Raven Talon Clan of the Bloody Sword hradani, until recently of Navahk."

"Oh, yes." Sir Charrow nodded. "The poet."

Brandark blinked, then smiled crookedly. "Say, rather, the would-be poet, Milord," he suggested. "I'll claim the title of 'scholar,' but more than that—" He shrugged, and Charrow nodded once more, in understanding.

"As you say, Lord Brandark, but know that you are welcome in this house as the companion and sword brother of Sir Bahzell. Accept hearth right and come under the protection of our shield."

Brandark bowed once again, much more deeply, at the ancient words of welcome he had never actually encountered outside a book, but Bahzell shook his head beside him.

"It's grateful I am for your welcome, Sir Charrow. Aye, and for your welcome of this worthless Bloody Sword, as well. But as I was after telling the young fellow here," he nodded sideways at Vaijon, "it's just plain Bahzell."

"I beg your pardon?"

"There's no 'sir' on the front," Bahzell explained with a hint of exasperation.

"But I—" Charrow broke off, looking for just an instant as confused (although far more poised about it) as Vaijon. Then he cleared his throat. "Excuse me," he said, "but the God did say you were properly Prince Bahzell, didn't he?" he asked carefully.

"Aye, I've no doubt himself would be doing just that," Bahzell replied, and this time resignation had replaced exasperation. "He's the sense of humor for it, now hasn't he just?"

"But... Are you saying you're not a prince?"

"Oh, well, as to that, I suppose I am," Bahzell said a bit uncomfortably. "That's to say, my father's after being Prince of Hurgrum, and I'm after being his son, so—" He shrugged. "Still and all, my folk are minded to see clan lordship as more important than 'princes,' and there's three brothers betwixt me and any crown, so there's small enough point in putting on airs."

"Perhaps not from your perspective, Milord," Charrow said with a hint of dryness. "Still, for those of us whose sires aren't princes of anything, it seems worth noting. But my point was that even if you've never been formally pledged to the Order, there are secular orders of chivalry. Surely, as a prince, you were knighted by your father, so—"

The master of the Belhadan Order broke off in astonishment as Bahzell began to chuckle. Sir Vaijon was inclined to bristle, but the Horse Stealer's expression made it obvious he was fighting hard not to laugh. Unfortunately, he was failing. Brandark at least managed to turn his laughter into a fit of coughing that looked almost natural, but Bahzell couldn't stop himself, and he pressed one hand to his ribs as his huge, chamber-shaking guffaws broke loose.

It took him only a few seconds to strangle his mirth once more, and he wiped tears from his eyes while he shook his head as penitently as the low ceiling allowed.

"I beg your pardon, Sir Charrow, and I'm hopeful you'll forgive me, for my father would be after fetching my skull a fearful rap for laughing so free. But it wasn't you as I was laughing at so much as the notion of him knighting anyone . It's not the sort of thing hradani are like to spend much time in doing, d'you see."

"You mean—?" Vaijon was stunned into the indiscretion. He tried to cut it off, but something else seemed to command his tongue as all eyes swung to him, and he heard his own voice blurt out the question. "You're not even a knight? "

It came out in a half-wail, like a child's protest that something an adult had just said couldn't possibly be true, and a blaze of scarlet swept over his face and burned down his throat. Yet he couldn't tear his eyes from the Horse Stealer, just as he simply could not wrap his mind around the thought of a champion of Tomanāk who had never been knighted. Who wasn't even a knight-probationer like Vaijon himself!

"Unless my tongue's taken to saying other than I tell it to, that's the very thing I was just telling you," Bahzell said after a moment and, for the first time, Vaijon heard an ominous rumble in the deeps of his voice.

"But... but—"

"Peace, Vaijon!" Sir Charrow spoke with a sharpness Vaijon had seldom heard from him, and the flicker of true anger in the older knight's brown eyes did more than anything else to shock Vaijon into silence.

"Forgive me, S—Prince Bahzell," he said, and bent his golden head in contrition.

"Let it be," Bahzell said after half a dozen aching heartbeats, and Charrow inhaled deeply.

"I thank you for your patience with us, Milord," he said gravely. "As I'm sure you must realize, we of the Order have no experience in how properly to address a hradani champion. And I fear that the God was... less than fully forthcoming when He advised me of your arrival, shall we say?"

"Oh, aye! Himself's a rare one for having his little joke," Bahzell agreed with a snort, ill humor banished. "And as for that, I'm thinking there must be a deal he wasn't after telling me either. Not least that there ever was an 'Order of Tomanāk ' in the first place! I've no more notion what you do, or how, than a Purple Lord has of charity."

"He didn't tell you about the Order?" Even Charrow seemed taken aback by that, and Bahzell shrugged. The old knight gazed at him for several seconds, obviously considering what he'd just been told, then shook himself. "Well! I see we have a great deal to discuss, Milord. First, however, I think it would be well for Vaijon to escort you and Lord Brandark to your quarters and see you settled. After that, if you would be kind enough to join me in the library, I'll try to fill in the blanks He neglected to deal with."

An hour later, Vaijon, divested of his mail and dressed in the simple tunic and hose the brethren normally wore within the chapter house (although his were of the finest silk), guided Bahzell and Brandark into the library. After showing them to the quarters set aside for them, he'd used the intervening time to get his thoughts into some sort of order, and his expression was composed as he ushered them through the stone-walled passages. Internally, however, he remained imperfectly reconciled to the entire concept of a hradani champion. Especially—it pained him to admit it, yet it was true—of a backwoods, uneducated hradani champion whose Axeman came out sounding remarkably like that of the unlettered foresters who served on the Almerhas estates in backward Vonderland. He knew it shouldn't matter to him if it didn't matter to Tomanāk , but it did. It truly did, and try as he might, he couldn't quite swallow his resentment that so high an honor should be wasted on such a person... or his disdain for the one on whom it had been squandered.

And then there was Bahzell's companion. Clearly, Brandark was better educated than Bahzell. Indeed, his Axeman could have been that of any well-educated citizen of the Empire of the Axe. It lacked the aristocratic finish with which Vaijon himself spoke, yet it was better than, say, Sir Charrow's. But for all that, Vaijon wasn't at all certain he ought to be leading Brandark along with Bahzell. Sir Charrow had said he had much to explain to Bahzell ; it didn't automatically follow that he intended to explain the Order's business to an outsider.