Vanyel warmed inside, as he picked up his own lute.

It takes so little to make the child so happy - and gods, the talent.

“Well, then,” he said, laying a hand on the boy's shoulder, “Ready for your les - ”

The boy winced away from the light touch on his shoulder. Not in emotional reaction - but in physical pain.

Vanyel snatched his hand away as if it had been a red-hot iron he'd inadvertently set on the bare skin of the boy's back. “Medren! What did I-”

“It's all right,” the boy said, and shrugged-which called up another grimace of pain. “Just-old Jervis reckoned we all ought to see how you could trick somebody into dropping his shield and then come in overhand. Guess who got to be the victim.” His tone was so bitter Vanyel could taste it in the back of his own mouth. “Like always.”

The blur of the blade coming for him, always coming for him; the weight of the shield on his arm getting heavier by the moment. The shock of each blow that he couldn't dodge; shock first and then pain. Breath burning in lungs, side aching with bruises; cramps knotting his calves. Stumbling backward, head reeling, vision clouding.

“Van?”

Cold sweat down his back and the taste of blood in his mouth. Bitter, absolute humiliation. Metallic taste of hate and fear.

“Hey, Vanyel-are you all right?”

Vanyel shook his head to clear it, and locked down his own agitation as best he could, but the memories were crowding in on him so vividly he was almost reliving that moment so many years ago when Jervis finally got him in a corner he couldn't escape.

“I'm all right.” His left arm began to ache, and he massaged the arm and wrist, reflexively. It still aches, after all these years. I still have numb fingers. Oh, gods, not Medren.

“We could skip the lesson,” he began, with carefully suppressed emotion.

“No!” Medren exclaimed, clutching the lute to his chest and jumping to his feet. “No, it's nothing! Really! I'm fine!”

“If you're sure,” Vanyel said, wondering how much of that was bravado on the boy's part.

“I'm sure. I got some horse-liniment, I'd have rubbed it on right after, but I didn't want to stink up your room.'' The boy grinned half-heartedly and sat down again, his eyes anxious.

“I've got something better than that - if you aren't afraid I'll seduce you!”

The boy made an impudent face at him. “You had your chance, Vanyel. What's this stuff you got? I don't mind telling you my shoulder hurts like blazes.”

“Willow and wormwood in ointment, with mint to make it smell reasonable. I always have some.” He put his lute down and leaned over to rummage in the chest at the foot of his bed. “I'm one of those people who bruise just thinking about it. Get your shirt off, would you?”

When he turned around with the little jar in his hand, the boy had stripped to the waist, revealing a nasty bruise the size of his hand spreading all over the left shoulder. It was an ugly thing; purple the next thing to black in the center, blue-gray and red mottled through it.

Crack like lightning striking as the shield split. Sudden darkness, dizziness. Waking to Lissa's anxious face, and a pain in his left arm that sent the blackness to take him again.

“Good gods!”

Medren shrugged with one shoulder. “I bruise that way. Looks worse than it is, I guess. Young Mekeal took one just as hard and you can't hardly see a mark on him.” He looked longingly at the pot of salve. “Vanyel, you going to stand there and stare all day, or use that stuff?”

“I'm sorry, Medren.” He shook off his shock; got several fingersful of the ointment, and began to massage it as gently as possible into the bruised area, working his way from the edges inward. The boy hissed with pain at first, then gradually relaxed.

Vanyel, on the other hand, was profoundly disturbed, and growing tenser by the moment, his own shoulder muscles knotting up like snarled harpstrings. Gods, what can I do? Damned if I'll let Jervis ruin Medren the way he ruined me - but how? If I force a confrontation, he'll only take it out on Medren. If I take him on myself - gods, I do not trust my temper, not with that old bastard. Not with the hair-trigger I've got right now. He'd make one wrong move, or say something at the wrong time - and I'd kill him before I could stop myself. What can I do? What can I do?

“Lady Bright,” the boy sighed. “I feel like I got a shoulder again, instead of a piece of pounded meat.”

“Medren, is there any way you can avoid practices until you're safely out of here?” Vanyel asked.

Medren considered a moment. “Now and again,” he said, slowly. “Not on a regular basis.”

“Are you sure?” Vanyel pursued, urgently. “Isn't there any place you can hide?”

“Not since they opened up the back of the library. Anyplace I go, they'll find me, eventually. Isn't there anything you can do?”

Vanyel shook his head with bitter regret. “I wish there were. I can't think of anything at the moment. I'll work on it; if there's a way out for you, I'll find it. Look, avoid him as much as you can. Try and stay out of his line-of-sight when you can't avoid the practices. If he doesn't actually see you in front of him, sometimes you can manage to keep from becoming his target for the day.”

Medren sighed, and shrugged his shirt back on. “All right. If that's all I can do, that's all I can do.” He twisted his head around and gave Vanyel a slightly pained grin. “At least you believe me. You even sound like you know what I'm going through.”

Vanyel stared at the wall, but what he was seeing was not wood panels, but a thin, undersized boy being used as an object upon which a surly ex - mercenary could vent his spleen. “I do, Medren,” he replied slowly, a cold lump settling just under his heart. “Believe me, I do.”

Vanyel was more than happy to see his Aunt Savil's serene, beaky face again. And was glad he'd decided to ride out and meet her. It was a lot easier to tell her what had been going on without wondering who was going to overhear.

“. . .so that's the state of things,” Vanyel concluded, Yfandes matching her pace to Savil's taller Companion. “The only real problems-other than the fact that Lineas and Baires could go for each other's throats any day - is Medren. Melenna I can avoid. The Great Sheep Debate is going to go on until the sheep are gone from Long Meadow. Father seems to have accepted Meke's breeding program, although he's got his agent out looking for an alternative to that awful stud Meke bought. But Medren -  Savil, I know what you're thinking, you're thinking I'm overreacting to seeing another lad in the same position I was in. You didn't see that monster bruise he showed up with. He's not getting love-pats. That bruise was the size of my spread hand, finger-tip to thumb-tip, easily.”

“Huh,” Savil replied, frowning in thought.

“And to make it worse, Meke told me Jervis wants to - I quote-'go a few rounds with me.' To spar.” Vanyel snorted. “ 'Spar' indeed. It'll be a cold day -”

She nodded. “Probably a damned good idea to avoid him. He'll push you, Van; he'll push you all he can.”

“And I've just spent the last year on the Border.”

“Exactly. If he pushed you too far - well, you know that better than me. Kellan, can you and 'Fandes kindly wait until you're loose for the chatter and gossip? We're trying to have a serious briefing here.”

Vanyel chuckled. :Trading stories about the muscular, young courier - types?:

:Shut up and ride.:

Vanyel caught Savil's eye, and they exchanged a look full of irony. “I can see,” she said aloud, “that this is going to be a very-lively-visit.”

Six

“The argument had been in full flower since Vanyel had arrived at the stable, and from all that he could tell it had evidently begun (well fertilized with invective) long before then. The stable was a good fifty paces from the keep itself, but the voices reached with unmistakable clarity well beyond the stable. The stablehands were doing their best to pretend they weren't listening, but Vanyel could all but see their ears stretching to catch the next interchange.