Alanna The First Adventure - By Tamora Pierce Page 0,12
a hard mouth, Alanna fell off three times. The beast was impossible for her to control, and when she told the riding master as much, she found herself ordered to report for extra study three nights a week, after the evening meal.
Alanna was staggering with weariness when the distant bell called them inside. She hurried with the others to bathe and change into a clean uniform. By then she was so exhausted she could barely keep her eyes open, but her day wasn’t over. Gary shook her out of a snooze and took her down to the banquet hall. He stationed her beside the kitchen door. From this post she handed plates from the kitchen servants to the pages and accepted dirty plates to hand back into the kitchen.
She dozed off during her meal. Gary steered her to a small library afterward, reminding her of the studying she had to do for the next day. He helped her with the poem, then left her on her own to deal with the mathematics. Alanna fought her way through three of the problems before going to sleep on the desk. A servant found her and roused her just in time for lights-out. She fell into bed and was instantly asleep.
Waking the next morning, Alanna moaned. Every muscle in her body was stiff and sore. She was speckled with large and small bruises. Stiffly she got ready for the new day, wondering if she would live through it.
It was like the day before, only worse. The mathematics master assigned her an additional four problems for that day, plus three more—punishment for the problem she had left undone during her nap the night before. The reading master informed her that since her oral report on the long poem was inadequate, she could put a longer report in writing—for the next day. The master in deportment gave her yet another chapter to read in etiquette and made her practice bows the whole period. The afternoon was hideous. Because she was stiff and aching, Alanna made more mistakes than she had the day before. She found herself with more extra work.
“Face it,” Gary told her kindly. “You’ll never catch up. You just do as much as you can and take the punishments without saying anything. Sometimes I wonder if that isn’t what they’re really trying to teach us—to take plenty and keep our mouths shut.”
Alanna was in no mood to consider this idea. When she returned to her rooms that night, she was tired, nervous and upset.
“Pack your things,” she ordered Coram as she marched in the door. “We’re going home.”
Coram looked at her. He had been sitting on his bed, cleaning his sword. “We are?”
Alanna paced the room. “I can’t do this,” she told the manservant. “The pace will kill me. No one can live this way all the time. I won’t—”
“I never figured ye for a quitter,” Coram interrupted softly.
“I’m not quitting!” Alanna snapped. “I—I’m protesting! I’m protesting unfair treatment—and—and being worked till I drop. I want to have time to myself. I want to learn to fight with a sword now, not when they decide. I want—”
“Ye want. Ye want. ’Tis something different ye’re learning here. It’s called ‘discipline.’ The world won’t always order itself the way ye want. Ye have to learn discipline.”
“This isn’t discipline! It’s inhuman! I can’t live with it, and I won’t! Coram, I gave you an order! Pack your things!”
Coram carefully scrubbed a tiny bit of dirt off his gleaming sword. At last he put it down, carefully, on the bed. With a groan he knelt down and reached under the bed, dragging out his bags. “As ye say,” he replied. “But I thought I’d raised ye with somethin’ to ye. I didn’t think I was bringin’ up another soft noble lady—”
“I’m not a soft noble lady!” Alanna cried. “But I’m not crazy, either! I’m going from sunrise to sunset and after without a stop, and no end in sight. My free time’s a joke—I’m out of free time before I get to the third class of the morning. And they expect me to keep up, and they punish me if I don’t. And I have to learn how to fall; I’m learning the stance with the bow all over again when I was the best hunter at Trebond, and if I say anything I get more work!”
Coram knelt on the floor, looking at her. “Ye knew it’d be hard when ye decided to come,” he reminded her.