I learned three important things on my first full morning in Fairmarket.
The first was that noble keeps woke earlier than they had any right to.
The second was that servants had a terrifying ability to appear the moment you thought you had a spare minute.
And the third was that Damon Vypren had apparently decided to begin my education by murdering me in a training yard and calling it character building.
I discovered the first lesson when someone started pounding on my door while it was still dark outside.
Not knocking. Pounding.
I sat bolt upright in bed, half tangled in blankets, with all the dignity of a startled rat. For one confused moment I had no idea where I was. The room was too warm, the bed too soft, and the walls too solid to be the little chamber I'd had at the inn. Then memory caught up with me in one miserable rush—Fairmarket, House Vypren, pagehood, Damon, horses, noble family, muddy boots.
Wonderful.
The pounding came again.
"Up," came Damon's voice through the door. "If you make me come in there, I'll drag you out by the ankle."
I stared at the door with profound hatred.
"It's still night," I called back.
"It's dawn."
"That's just night with ambition."
"You have until I count to five."
I got out of bed on three.
Getting dressed in the dim grey light was an exercise in suffering. My legs still ached from the ride, my back protested every bend, and my arms felt as though I had spent the previous day wrestling millstones instead of merely trying not to fall off a horse. Someone—presumably one of the servants—had left a basin of water on the washstand and folded my clothes neatly over the chair. The clothes themselves were plain but good: a clean wool tunic in Vypren colors, hose that actually fit, and boots that were not mine but had been polished until they looked respectable.
I stared at them for a moment.
It was a small thing, clean clothes laid out for me, but it drove home a truth I had only half grasped the day before. I was no longer helping at my parents' inn and sleeping in a room that smelled faintly of smoke and ale. I was in a lord's household now. People noticed things here—boots, posture, manners, whether you answered quickly enough, whether you held a door correctly, whether you made your bed like a civilized human being or left it looking like wolves had fought in it.
I washed, dressed, dragged my fingers through my hair until it looked less like a nest, and opened the door.
Damon was leaning against the opposite wall with the air of a man who had been awake for hours and disapproved of anyone who had not.
He looked offensively put together.
His dark hair had already been tied back, his tunic was belted, and he had that irritatingly alert expression that only existed in people who enjoyed the morning or had been dropped on their heads as infants.
"You look awful," he said.
"You sound like my mother."
"She was probably a wise woman."
"She let me sleep."
Damon pushed off the wall. "Not anymore. Come on."
"Where?"
"The yard."
"Why?"
He gave me a long look, the kind one reserves for the very stupid.
"To start your training, Talion."
I stopped walking. "Before breakfast?"
"Yes."
"That's barbaric."
"That's pagehood."
"Those sound like the same thing."
Damon ignored me and kept walking, which meant I had to follow unless I wanted to get lost in a keep before sunrise and be remembered forever as the page who vanished between the hall and the privy.
Fairmarket at dawn was a different place from the bustling, noisy keep I had seen yesterday. The corridors were quieter, the servants moving with the brisk, efficient purpose of people who had already been awake long enough to finish half a day's work. Fires had been lit in the kitchens. I could smell bread baking somewhere below us, and bacon too, which only deepened my bitterness toward Damon and his anti-breakfast policies.
The training yard lay beyond the inner bailey, a broad packed-earth square ringed by racks of blunted weapons, straw dummies, and enough scarred wooden posts to suggest that the men of House Vypren liked hitting things before sunrise. A few men-at-arms were already there, stretching, talking, or checking equipment. One of them glanced at me, took in my size, and grinned the sort of grin grown men reserved for boys about to suffer.
I did not like it.
Damon led me to the far side of the yard, where a barrel of practice swords leaned against the wall beside a rack of shields. He turned, folded his arms, and regarded me with the same expression Lord Lucias had worn in the hall yesterday.
It was deeply unsettling.
"What?" I asked.
"I'm deciding where to begin."
"Preferably somewhere that doesn't involve death."
"You're seven."
"That has never stopped life from trying."
A corner of his mouth twitched, but his voice stayed flat. "Good. You can still talk. That means you aren't tired enough yet."
I stared at him in disbelief. "I thought you liked me."
"I do. That's why I'm going to make sure you don't embarrass me."
That, I suspected, was Damon's version of affection.
He reached into the barrel and tossed me a wooden practice sword. I nearly fumbled it, caught it at the last moment, and tried to pretend that had been intentional.
"Show me your stance."
I blinked. "That's it? No speech? No welcome to training, Talion, where boys become men and men become broken old bastards with bad knees?"
"No."
"You've really missed your calling as an inspirational figure."
"Stance."
Grumbling under my breath, I stepped back and took up the position I had used at the inn when sparring with Damon and the other knights. Left foot forward, knees bent, wooden sword angled across my body. It wasn't elegant, but it was balanced, and it had served me well enough so far.
Damon circled me once in silence.
"That's how you stand when you're trying to win a scuffle," he said at last. "Not how you stand when you're being taught properly."
"Seems a bit harsh to insult all my hard work at once."
"Your feet are too close together. Your shoulders are tight. You're leaning forward because you expect to dart in quickly, which works against someone lazy or overconfident, but gets you knocked flat by anyone who knows how to use reach."
I opened my mouth to protest, thought about it, and shut it again.
He wasn't wrong.
Damon stepped in front of me and nudged my boot with his own. "Wider. Good. Now lower your shoulders. Stop trying to fight the sword."
"I'm not fighting the sword."
"You look like you expect it to insult your mother."
"It might."
"Talion."
I sighed and adjusted my grip.
For the next hour, Damon dismantled everything I thought I knew.
Not in a dramatic, one-swing-and-you're-dead sort of way. That would have been quicker and, frankly, kinder. No, he did it methodically, piece by humiliating piece.
He corrected my stance. Then my grip. Then the angle of my wrist. Then how I shifted my weight. Then how I moved my feet. Then how I breathed. Apparently I had been doing that wrong too, which felt deeply unfair considering I had been breathing successfully for seven years.
Every time I thought I had finally done something correctly, Damon found three more things to fix.
"Again."
I swung.
"No. Too wide. Again."
I swung again.
"You're using your shoulder too much."
"I need my shoulder to swing."
"You need control to swing. Again."
I did it again.
"Better. Now don't lift your elbow like that unless you want everyone to know what you're about to do before you do it."
I lowered my sword and glared at him. "Has anyone ever told you that teaching is an art?"
"Yes."
"And?"
"I ignored them."
He set me to striking the same post over and over until my arms burned. High cut. Low cut. Thrust. Recover. Step. Again. And again. And again.
By the twentieth repetition I was sweating.
By the fortieth I was beginning to suspect Damon had personal grievances against me.
By the sixtieth I was actively planning his murder.
"You're drifting," he said as my latest cut thudded into the post at a sloppy angle.
"I'm dying."
"You're tired."
"There's a difference?"
"Yes. One is inconvenient. The other is paperwork."
I bent over, hands on my knees, breathing hard. "I hate you."
"No, you don't."
"Give me time."
A pair of older squires training nearby snorted at that. One of them, a lanky boy with sandy hair and the sort of face that suggested he laughed whenever other people got hurt, called over, "You'll need more than time for that, little fish."
I straightened and turned to look at him.
He was maybe fourteen, long-limbed and loose in the way boys got right before they grew into themselves, with a wooden shield slung over one arm and a bruise darkening one cheekbone. His companion was shorter, stockier, and looked like he had been born with permanent suspicion carved into his brow.
Damon sighed through his nose. "Talion, this is Edmyn Rivers and Harlan Pate. They're squires. They think they're funny."
"I am funny," Edmyn said.
"No," Harlan replied, not looking at him. "You're loud."
Edmyn ignored that and grinned at me. "So you're the inn boy."
"I prefer Talion," I said.
"And I prefer wine to water, but life is cruel."
I liked him instantly, which was probably a mistake.
Damon pointed his practice sword at the post again. "Ignore them. Back to work."
"Can't I spar one of them instead?" I asked hopefully.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because right now they'd flatten you."
Edmyn looked delighted by this assessment. Harlan merely nodded as if Damon had stated the weather.
I scowled and went back to the post.
The worst part was that Damon wasn't cruel for the sake of cruelty. If he had been, I could have hated him properly and gotten on with my day. But he watched closely, adjusted when I was about to lose balance, showed me how to turn a bad angle into a better one, and explained things in the clipped, practical way of someone who genuinely wanted me to improve.
"When you're smaller," he said, taking my wrist and moving it into place, "you don't win by meeting strength head-on. You win by being faster, by moving cleaner, by making your opponent work harder than you do. Every wasted step matters. Every bad habit matters."
I swallowed my complaint and listened.
That, more than anything, seemed to please him.
Once he was satisfied that I could at least stand like a future swordsman rather than a child brandishing firewood, Damon moved on to footwork. This, I learned, was somehow worse.
At least with sword drills I got to hit something. Footwork was just Damon making me move back and forth across the yard in patterns while he barked corrections like a disappointed drill sergeant.
"Too slow."
"My legs are short."
"Then move them faster."
"That seems unreasonable."
"Left."
I went left.
"Your other left."
I changed direction so abruptly I nearly tripped over my own feet and only just managed to keep from eating dirt in front of the entire training yard.
Edmyn laughed so hard he had to lean on Harlan.
I hated all of them.
By the time Damon finally called a halt, the sun had climbed above the walls and the yard had fully come alive around us. Men-at-arms were drilling in pairs, shields slamming together with brutal force. One knight was berating a boy for dropping his spear. Somewhere behind me someone was cursing a horse. The whole place smelled of dust, sweat, leather, and old wood.
I collapsed onto a bench near the wall and stared at my hands.
They were red and trembling slightly.
Damon sat beside me, not even breathing hard, which felt rude.
"Drink," he said, handing me a waterskin.
I took it and gulped greedily, then nearly choked when he added, "You did better than I expected."
I lowered the skin slowly. "That almost sounded like praise."
"It wasn't."
"There it is. I was worried for a moment."
Damon snorted.
For a little while we sat in silence, watching the yard wake properly around us. My pulse gradually slowed. The ache in my arms settled into something duller, more manageable. Across from us, Harlan had started drilling with a spear while Edmyn attempted to flirt with a kitchen girl carrying bread to the guards.
It was not going well for him.
"You weren't lying yesterday," Damon said after a moment.
"About what?"
"You've got good instincts."
That caught me off guard enough that I looked at him.
He wasn't smiling. Damon rarely did when he was being serious. He watched the yard instead, elbows braced on his knees, wooden sword resting across his lap.
"You move like someone who learned by necessity," he continued. "Not cleanly, not properly, but with purpose. You notice openings quickly. You adapt. And you don't freeze when someone bigger comes at you." His eyes flicked to me. "That matters."
I looked down at the waterskin in my hands.
Compliments sat strangely on Damon. He wore them like armor he hadn't been fitted for.
"So that means I'm brilliant and naturally gifted?" I asked.
"It means you're worth teaching."
That was Damon all over.
Still, I felt something warm settle in my chest at the words. Worth teaching. Worth the effort. Worth dragging out of bed before dawn and beating half to death in the name of improvement.
It wasn't a grand declaration. Damon wasn't built for grand declarations. But it meant something because he did not say things he didn't mean.
"I'll take it," I said.
"You should."
He stood, dusted off his hands, and looked down at me with that same maddening calm. "Now get up."
I stared at him. "For what possible reason?"
"For the rest of your duties."
"There are more?"
"You're a page, Talion. Did you think sword practice was all you'd do?"
"Yes."
"That was stupid."
"I see that now."
He ignored me and started counting on his fingers. "You'll spend part of the morning in the stables. Ser Harrold wants pages who understand tack and saddle maintenance before they start pretending to be mounted warriors. After that you'll eat, if you're still capable of chewing. Then you're to report to Maester Oren for letters and numbers."
I froze.
"Letters?"
"Yes."
"Numbers?"
"Yes."
"Damon," I said carefully, "I agreed to training, not scholarship."
"Lord Lucias was very clear. You're in his household now. You'll learn to read properly, keep simple accounts, and understand enough sums not to be cheated by every merchant with a smile."
I considered throwing myself into the river.
"Can't I just stab the merchants if they cheat me?"
"No."
"What if they really deserve it?"
"No."
"This place has so many rules."
Damon offered me a hand up. I took it, mostly because I doubted my legs would manage the task alone.
"You'll live," he said.
"That sounds less reassuring every time you say it."
We crossed the yard toward the stables, and I tried very hard not to limp.
It was impossible.
My entire body had begun to stiffen in new and exciting ways. My sword arm felt twice its normal weight. My calves had turned traitor. Even my fingers hurt, which seemed excessive considering all they had done was hold a wooden sword and my rapidly deteriorating dignity.
Edmyn passed us on the way out and clapped me on the shoulder hard enough to make me wince.
"Not bad, inn boy," he said cheerfully. "You looked like you were dying by the end, but not bad."
"That's the kindest thing anyone's said to me all morning."
Harlan paused long enough to give me a single assessing look. "Your footwork's terrible."
I blinked.
"Thank you?"
"It can be fixed," he said, which I realized was his version of encouragement, and then he walked off after Edmyn.
I watched them go.
"Are all squires here insane?" I asked.
"Mostly."
"Good. I'd hate to be the only one."
Damon shook his head, but there was amusement in it this time.
By the time we reached the stables, I had come to a terrible realization.
This was only the beginning.
Not the dramatic, glorious beginning I might once have imagined when I thought about knights and noble service and rising above my station. There had been no stirring speeches, no shining armor, no lord placing a sword in my hand and declaring destiny. There was only sweat, aching limbs, splinters in my palm, a training post Damon expected me to hit a hundred more times before the week was out, and the very real threat of having to learn numbers before noon.
And yet—
As I stood in the stable doorway with straw underfoot and the smell of horses threatening my peace of mind, I found that I didn't hate it.
I hated parts of it, certainly. The dawn. The bruises. Damon's face before breakfast. The existence of arithmetic.
But underneath all of that was something harder to ignore: I had wanted a chance, and now I had one.
Not a magical system. Not prophecy. Not a secret Valyrian inheritance waiting to burst into flame around me. Just this. A keep in Fairmarket. A lord willing to let me serve. A boy named Damon who saw something worth training. A yard full of men better than me and boys ahead of me. A path, narrow and difficult and very likely to leave me sore for the rest of my natural life.
It was enough.
Damon shoved the stable door open wider and jerked his head for me to follow.
"Come on, Talion. If you move any slower, the horses will age before you reach them."
I looked at the dark interior of the stable, then at Damon.
"You know," I said, "for someone supposedly training me into knighthood, you spend a suspicious amount of time trying to get me trampled."
"Builds character."
"If I die, I'm haunting you."
"If you die in the stables, I'll tell everyone it was from fear."
I glared at him and stepped inside anyway.
Behind me, the morning bells of Fairmarket began to ring, and with them the first true day of my new life began in earnest.