He was wearing the gear he’d picked up in Portland; a brigantine of small steel plates riveted between two layers of leather on his torso, plate vambraces and greaves, a mail camail for neck and shoulders and rows of steel splints on leather for his thighs and upper arms. It was good protection by skilled armorers, and even with the letter of credit he hadn’t quite dared to order a suit of plate that he’d outgrow in a year or less with the prospect of doing it all again several times before he reached his full height. He wasn’t going to be towering, but his hands and feet indicated he’d be adding inches yet.

Right now the armor seemed to be squeezing at him, and he made himself control his breathing. Ogier de Odell was the other Royal Squire now. He was in a suit of plate—he was also a year older—and he’d already relieved Mathilda of the shield and drill sword. Huon lifted the helm and padded cap off her coiled brown hair, transferred them to the armor stand outside the door-flap of the tent and began on the buckles and straps and the slip-knots in the laces of the arming doublet as the High Queen stood or moved to ease their task.

Ogier grinned at him as they worked; he was a good sort, and didn’t presume too much either on his years or his birth; of course, he was very much a younger son of the Count of Odell, not his Viscount-heir. With two sets of trained hands at the task it went quickly. He still felt a little reverence as he handled the suit. It was made from arcane pre-Change alloys that were usually too refractory to work, matchlessly light and strong, the sort of thing only a monarch could afford because it involved a team of highly paid specialists for a year or more using technology right at the limit of the possible.

“You’re in my position right now,” she went on to him as the plates came off.

A page came with a T-tunic to replace the doublet, and Huon handed her the sword belt with the live steel. In the field you wore it even when you were sitting down to eat.

“Your Majesty?” he said, as he knelt and cinched the tooled leather.

“You’re fighting opponents with more weight and bulk. There are ways around that, and it’s a good idea to know them. You’ll be bigger than me soon, but you’re never going to have the High King’s inches, or even Ogier’s.”

“Odard wasn’t a very tall man either, my lady,” Huon observed.

About your height, in fact, he thought; Mathilda Arminger was very tall for a woman, maybe a thumb’s-width over average height for a man. Odard was medium-sized, but he was quick as a weasel.