Tiphaine nodded. Not fear for himself. Lioncel would have been considered insanely courageous, or pathologically fearless in the old days. Today, the rest of the pages at court know better than to tease or harass him. It’s not just that I’m known to kill anybody threatening my family. Lioncel is shaping up to be a really solid, mean fighter, himself and there’s no backing down in him.

“Lioncel de Stafford.”

He looked up at her, blue eyes meeting gray.

“This is what we’re for, boy. We put ourselves in the front line between danger and those we love, those who look to us for protection. There will always be some danger or threat, because that’s the way human beings work. This is why we have the lands and the castles and power and deference from the commons. It’s the price we pay, not just the danger but the responsibility and worry and the knowledge that everything turns on our making the right decisions, and it’s what being an Associate and a noble means.”

Also it means we were a very successful gang of strong-arm artists back when, right after the Change, but it’s not just a protection racket anymore. Things change. Kings start as lucky pirates, and wolves graduate into guard-dogs. The myths they used to tie everything together were stronger than Norman or even Sandra suspected and the stories speeded up the process quite a bit.

The boy looked down at his plate and visibly put the worry aside.

“Will you be going to the War Office this morning, my lady Grand Constable?”

“Yes, boy. Order the pedicab when you’re done with breakfast, please. You’ll come with me. Tell Diomede that he’ll come down with my lunch, your lunch, and his lunch from the kitchens here.”

Because I swear I’ve lost seven or eight pounds in the last two weeks and I was lean to start with; anything I lose is muscle and I need it all. Grandmother told me once when I was about six that her father used to eat sandwiches with lard for filling and I just thought it was gross. But he was a lumberjack. He needed them.

“We’ll share it and he will stay. You go home then, and study. I heard something about geometry difficulties.”

“Yes, my lady. Why do I have to study geometry? It’s boring; all those lines and arcs and sines and cosines and problems.”

Tiphaine gave him a hard look. “That’s an important skill. Numbers are how you analyze the world; they’re how you to do siegecraft for war, construction and surveying for peace; fight legal battles; aim a catapult . . . If you can’t do it, or at least understand it, you’re helpless in the hands of those who can, like lacking a hand or a foot or an eye. Hasn’t your tutor explained the applications to you, boy?”