“Good. In the meantime, you’re the most junior of my squires instead of the oldest page in the household. And you’re not going to be old enough to fight as a man-at-arms for another five years or so, is that clear?”

A nod, and she went on: “Sir Rodard will find you enough work to do, esquire of House Ath. Hop!”

“Thanks, my lady,” Rigobert said as the boy raced off. “I should have thought of something like that. I still find myself thinking like an uncle rather than a father sometimes, and as for being a husband . . . And there are other times I have to remind myself I really am a feudal lord, not just playing at it.”

Tiphaine gave a faint snort; she was a crucial near-decade younger and that sort of feeling hit her less often, but . . .

“Tell me. My highest ambition in Middle School was going to the Olympics as a gymnast. Until the world ended, when not starving to death, and not getting raped, butchered and eaten by cannibals or not catching the Black Death soon came to the fore.”

“I knew you were a complete jockette, but I’ll bet you wore black and red flannel shirts, too,” Rigobert said with a grin. “Flannel shirts and a white A-shirt underneath, and skate shoes?”

“Oh, incessantly; with a trucker’s hat, no less. I think the thirteen-year-old boys hated me because I looked more like a thirteen-year-old boy than they did.”

“Not a mullet. Please, God, tell me you didn’t have a mullet.”

“Mother wouldn’t let me, but that would have come in a couple of years. And when I turned twelve I realized I was desperately in love with Melissa Etheridge and put a great big poster of her on the inside of my locker door and played her music twenty-four/seven on my Walkman.”

Rigobert laughed, and Tiphaine smiled thinly. She’d never lost herself in laughter easily, not when she was sober at least, and for her being thoroughly disinhibited was usually a bad idea. She envied him that easy laugh a little. It was odd to realize she couldn’t have had this conversation with Delia either; not because they didn’t share everything, but because the younger woman simply didn’t have the referents to understand it without a lot of backing and filling. She’d grown up a miller’s daughter on Montinore Manor and hadn’t even learned to read until her late teens. Tiphaine shook her head as memories opened like the door to a dusty cupboard.