"Then it seems, Paksenarrion, that you ought to be willing to try to carry them out." His mouth quirked in a smile. "If the rest of us are doing so badly."

"I didn't say that!"

"I thought you just did. However—" He leaned forward, elbows on the desk. "If you don't think we are too corrupt, perhaps you will give us the benefit of your judgment—"

"Sir!" Paks felt her eyes sting; her head was whirling already.

"I'm sorry." He actually sounded sorry. "I went too far, perhaps—I forgot your leg. We'll talk again later—we must get you upstairs and let the surgeon see that."

"See what?" A voice in the doorway interrupted. Paks tried to turn her head, but felt too dizzy. Her ears roared.

"She's got a small wound, Arianya," said the Training Master.

"Not that small," said the voice. "It's bled all over your floor, Chanis. Better take a look."

Paks tried to focus on the Training Master as he came back around the desk to kneel beside her chair. Her eyes blurred. She heard the two Marshals talking, and then another excited voice, and then felt a wave of nausea that nearly emptied her stomach. She clamped her jaw against that, and roused enough to know that they were carrying her along the passage. Finally the motion stopped, and her stomach quieted. When she got her eyes working again, she was lying flat on a bed, staring at the ceiling. Her mouth was dry, and tasted bad. She rolled her head to one side. That was a mistake. Her stomach heaved, and she hardly noticed the pail someone pushed under her mouth until she was through.

From a distance, someone said, "If she had the sense to match her guts, she'd be fine—"

"I don't call fainting from a simple cut like that guts, Chanis."

"She didn't, and you know it. We all pushed as hard as—"

"Well, however you say it. I still think—"

Closer, someone called her name. "Paksenarrion? Come on now, quit scaring us." She felt a cup at her lips, and drank a swallow of cold water. Her stomach churned, but accepted it. She opened her eyes again to see the Marshal-General's flint-gray eyes watching her. Before anyone else could speak, Paks managed to force out her own message.

"I want to join—the Fellowship—even if you send me away."

Silence followed this. The Marshal-General stared at her. Finally she spoke.

"Why now?"

"Because I was wrong about him—Gird. And so—and so I want to join, and do better."

"Even if I send you away? Even if you never go beyond yeoman?"

"Yes." Paks felt as stubborn now on this ground as she had before on others.

"I hope you feel the same when you've remade a couple of skins of blood." The Marshal-General sat back, and grinned. "Gird's ten fingers! Did you have to lose half the blood in your body to learn sense?"