Reading Tamora Pierce, The Protector of the Small 9781847602459

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Reading Tamora Pierce The Protector of the Small

John Lennard genre fiction sightlines humanities-Ebooks

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Genre Fiction Sightlines

Reading Tamora Pierce, The Protector of the Small John Lennard

HEB ☼ Humanities-Ebooks.co.uk

Copyright Text © John Lennard 2013 Quotations from private correspondence with Tamora Pierce © Tamora Pierce 2013, quoted with permission. The Author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988. First published by Humanities-Ebooks, LLP, Tirril Hall, Tirril, Penrith CA10 2JE No copyright is claimed in any image except that of the late Dr Michael Lennard used in the dedication. Those used in the text are in the public domain, or available under Creative Commons Licences, and may be remixed or reused under the same conditions. Quotations from PROTECTOR OF THE SMALL: FIRST TEST by Tamora Pierce, copyright © 1999 by Tamora Pierce, PROTECTOR OF THE SMALL: PAGE by Tamora Pierce, copyright © 2000 by Tamora Pierce, PROTECTOR OF THE SMALL: SQUIRE by Tamora Pierce, copyright © 2001 by Tamora Pierce, and PROTECTOR OF THE SMALL: LADY KNIGHT by Tamora Pierce, copyright © 1999 by Tamora Pierce, are used by permission of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Random House, Inc. for permission. Cover image: Composite fifteenth-century German armour at the Royal Armouries, Leeds, UK. Picture credit: Gidzy

ISBN 978-1-84760-245-9 Pdf Ebook ISBN 978-1-84760-246-6 Paperback ISBN 978-1-84760-247-3 Kindle Ebook

This e-book is dedicated to the memory of my father,

Michael Briart Lennard 1922–1986 who let me read his books when I ran out of my own on holiday and taught me more about them and the world than I can ever say, but died before I could know him as an adult. I believe that, despite a technology he would have hated, he would like what it tries to do for reading and for thinking about what you read.

Contents Acknowledgments

7

1. Notes

8

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6

Tamora Pierce The World of Tortall ‘Protector of the Small’ Boarding Schools and Boot Camps Chivalry and knighthood Kel’s animals

8 10 25 31 35 38

2. Annotations

40

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4

40 63 84 121

First Test Page Squire Lady Knight

3. Essay  The Making of Mindelan Tamora Pierce’s Marvellous Schools of Knighthood and Reading

155 155

4. A Note on ‘Protector of the Small’ Fanfiction

172

A Necessary Legal Note

182

5. Bibliography

183

4.1 Works by Tamora Pierce 4.2 Works about Tamora Pierce and Children’s Writing 4.3 Websites A Note on the Author

183 186 187 188

Acknowledgments The author would like to thank warmly Tamora Pierce for her generous help and comments, and, with her agent, Craig Tenney of Harold Ober Associates, for assistance in securing permissions; and to thank the authors mentioned in the note on fanfic—FFN-users Taxie, Silverlake, Dark Rose of Heaven, Fateless Wanderer, Ally-Marty, Sulia Serafine, Quatre-Sama, Starzgirl, Lionesseyes13, Lela of Bast, Sirladyknight, and ConfusedKnight—for commenting on their work and granting permission for it to be cited.

1. Notes 1.1 Tamora Pierce Tamora Pierce was born in December 1954 in South Connellsville, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, a coal-mining area. Neither of her parents’ families were well-off but her mother was studying towards a degree and intended to teach, while her father worked for the telephone company, so there were both a steady income and plenty of books around. Tamora was the eldest child; sisters Kimberley (b.1960) and Melanie (b.1961) followed, and there was a large extended family who cared for and shared with one another. But there were also tensions with and snobberies from her mother’s family, who were class-conscious and found her father’s family vulgar rather than warm. In 1963 her father got a job in California and took his immediate family west. For six years, with the 1960s in full swing, Pierce grew up around San Francisco, where the district known as HaightAshbury was at the centre of US hippy culture. Though young and by her own account ‘geeky’, much liberalism rubbed off, especially where traditional restrictions on women were concerned. Homelife was difficult, though, and it may partly have been as a defence against the strain of living with her parents’ failing marriage that she began inventing stories initially fuelled by TV SF and drama. “I was telling myself stories, but I didn’t begin to write them down until my father caught me telling stories to myself one day as I did dishes. This was in early 1966, I think. He suggested that I write a book instead and even loaned me his typewriter. He also suggested an idea that he knew I would like, because he shared books he liked with me: a time

Protector of the Small  9 travel story.” (TP, email to the author) In 1965 Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings had come out in the US in paperback, and Pierce (led to it by a canny teacher) became a serious fantasy reader and thinker. But in 1969 her parents’ marriage ended and she moved with her mother back to Fayette County, and genuine poverty. Writing was Pierce’s great ambition, but she ran into a severe writer’s block in tenth grade, lasting several years, so when in 1972 she went to Penn State University on full scholarship it was to read psychology with a plan of working with teenagers. She graduated in 1977 with a general degree, difficulty with statistics having forestalled psychology, and moved to central New York, before living in Idaho for a while with her father. The writer’s block had lifted at college, and Pierce had taken some writing courses. Stories flowed again, and by 1976–7 she had completed a long fantasy novel for adult readers, but was unable to get it published. She did sell occasional stories, but for income in Idaho worked as a Housemother, cannibalising bits of her novel for stories to tell the girls she looked after. Moving to Manhattan, she held jobs in a literary agency and later a radio production company, but everything began to change when an agent suggested turning the long fantasy novel for adults into a quartet for teenagers. Alanna: The First Adventure came out in 1983 and its sequels followed, completing the quartet under the general title ‘Song of the Lioness’. The books were well-received and, after marriage to Tim Liebe in 1985, Pierce began astonishingly to develop the world she had created. Two further quartets (‘The Immortals’, 1992–6, ‘The Protector of the Small’, 1999–2002) were followed by a duology (‘The Daughter of the Lioness’, 2003–04), a trilogy (‘The Provost’s Dog, 2006–11), and a collection of stories (Tortall and Other Lands, 2011). Amid all this Pierce also created a second world in her ‘Circle’ books, of which two quartets and two free-standing novels have appeared since 1997. She has also co-written with Tim Liebe a Marvel graphic novel, White Tiger (2007). The grand total to date is 27 novels in 28 years, plus the collected stories, that together have won Pierce a formidable international following and wide praise. Pierce has no children, but a lively extended family of nephews,

10  Reading Tamora Pierce nieces, great-nephews and the like provide an audience (as well as many distractions). She and her husband also keep a fair-sized menagerie of cats and birds, and in 2006 moved out of Manhattan to upstate New York, where there are more trees, space, and cats to rescue. 1.2 The World of Tortall 1.2.1 The Five Tortall Series The world of Tortall was created in three quartets, a duology, and a trilogy. (The duology is almost as long as the quartets, and Pierce has thanked J. K. Rowling for making longer books for young adults acceptable.) There is also a collection of short stories, all but five of which are tales of Tortall. In order of publication, these are: ‘Song of the Lioness’ Alanna: The First Adventure (1983) In the Hand of the Goddess (1984) The Woman Who Rides Like a Man (1986) Lioness Rampant (1988) ‘The Immortals’ Wild Magic (1992) Wolf-Speaker (1994) The Emperor Mage (1995) The Realms of the Gods (1996) ‘The Protector of the Small’ First Test (1999) Page (2000) Squire (2001) Lady Knight (2002) ‘The Daughter of the Lioness’ Trickster’s Choice (2003) Trickster’s Queen (2004)  ‘The Provost’s Dog’ Terrier (2006)

Protector of the Small  11 Bloodhound (2009) Mastiff (2011) Tortall and Other Lands: A Collection of Tales (2011) ‘Song of the Lioness’ deals with the education and early adventures of Alanna of Trebond & Olau, the first woman in Tortall for more than a century to become a knight. Despite the magic in this world, a quasi-Victorian stupidity about women supposedly being incapable has set in, and to undertake training as a page she has to disguise herself as a boy. With the help of her skills, dedication, magical talent, friends, and the blessing of the Goddess, she is knighted, and forestalls the usurpation of the Tortallan throne by the King’s brother Roger—a powerful mage and the main villain of the quartet. In later books Alanna travels as a knight, visiting the desert tribes of the Bazhir and winning their respect with arms and magic. Her greatest adventure takes her to distant lands and gains for Tortall the fabled ‘Dominion Jewel’, that can secure a state’s prosperity or lock fast a tyrant’s grip. Roger desires it and summons an earthquake to help him get it; he is defeated and killed, but only at great cost to the land. Alanna acquires an immense reputation, the nickname ‘the Lioness’, and a position as King’s Champion. Alanna’s growth to maturity means growth into sexuality—not easy for a woman in disguise, nor as a knight. For most of the quartet the love interest is divided between (i) Jonathan of Conté, heir to the Tortallan throne, who trained with Alanna, discovered her secret, and takes her virginity, but must in the end marry for politics, not love; and (ii) George Cooper, of humble birth but considerable power as ‘the Rogue’, King of Tortall’s thieves. Though lacking Jonathan’s social status George has a kind and wise heart, and after marrying Alanna becomes deputy chief of the Tortallan intelligence service. ‘The Immortals’ begins 13 years after Alanna’s triumphs. Tortall and its neighbours are troubled by immortals—unicorns, griffins, etc. but also stormwings and spidrens, vile combinations of human and beast—banished to the Divine Realm four centuries past. They have been loosed by the Emperor Mage Ozorne of Carthak, who covets more power and land and whose defeat is the quartet’s major theme.

12  Reading Tamora Pierce The heroine is Daine, illegitimate daughter of an unknown father, born in the poor north of Tortall’s neighbour, Galla. Gifted with animals, Daine flees her village with her pony Cloud after raiders kill her family, and meets a pony-trader, Onua, who works for the Tortallan military and hires Daine as assistant. Fostered by the Badger God, who visits her dreams, her uncanny way with animals (including sensing immortals) secures her in favour, and she trains in ‘wild magic’ with a great mage, Numair, himself trained in Carthak. Attacks by Ozorne on the Queen and in northern Tortall are defeated; Daine does great things, becomes guardian of an orphan dragon, Skysong, and extends her magic from animal empathy to shape-shifting, becoming ‘the Wildmage’. A visit to Carthak during peace negotiations precipitates a crisis: the gods are angry with Ozorne and use Daine to dethrone him, but he survives, transformed into a stormwing, and forges alliance with all Tortall’s enemies and the anti-Goddess of Chaos, Uusoae, who seeks to end the world. It transpires Daine’s father was Weiryn, God of the Hunt, and her mother has become a Goddess of childbirth, the Green Lady. In the last novel Daine and Numair visit the Divine Realms, meeting her parents and other Gods, Skysong’s dragon family, and much peril. The Gods themselves need Daine to help defeat Uusoae and Ozorne. Eventually Daine kills Ozorne and saves the day, but because she precipitates such change is confined thereafter to mortal lands. Love with Numair and the many friends she made in Tortall make it the richer prospect. The following passage has spoilers for ‘The Protector of the Small’. ‘The Protector of the Small’ begins just after the Immortals War, and follows Tortall’s second female candidate for knighthood. Unlike Alanna, whom she admires, Keladry of Mindelan has neither the steering hand of a goddess nor magic, and no need to disguise herself. But that cannot prevent the prejudice of peers and trainers, so Kel must draw deep on her fierce childhood training in discipline and stoicism in the Yamani Islands (a version of imperial Japan) to get through her hazings and beatings, which amount to openly criminal assaults. The theme of formal justice runs throughout. Successive novels trace Kel’s years as page and squire, but develop

Protector of the Small  13 differently from ‘Song of the Lioness’. Kel is not only a very good trainee, she can command; and to her surprise (having hoped for Alanna) is taken as squire by Raoul of Goldenlake, commander of the King’s Own. Fighting mortals and immortals across Tortall, Kel receives a fine training in logistics, learns to joust, and discovers in escalating war with northern neighbour Scanra what battle truly is. The Scanrans, newly coherent and disciplined under a warlordking, Maggur, have ‘killing devices’, razor-fingered robots made from giants’ bones and powered by the trapped souls of murdered children. Temporarily commanding a seasoned squad, Kel’s thinking and fighting skills help them kill one; but the terror runs deep. When Kel graduates the Chamber of the Ordeal assigns her a special task, to kill the magician making the devices, Blayce. Military need puts Kel in command of a refugee camp, guarding 300 adults and 200 children, with no chance to follow her quest. But after Scanran raiders abduct the refugees, enslaving adults and taking the children to Blayce, Kel and a motley band of friends strike out behind enemy lines, and burn the evil out, killing Blayce and rescuing most of the refugees, as well as various others. A better refuge is built, and Kel resumes command as the war drags on without the devices. ‘The Daughter of the Lioness’ jumps about two years. Alianne is the daughter of Alanna and George Cooper, and fancies her father’s trade as spymaster rather than her mother’s as a knight. They will hear none of it, but Ali’s chance comes, brutally, when she is caught and sold into slavery in the Copper Isles (a version of colonial Indonesia). Long ruled by light-skinned Luarin who oppress the native Raka, the Isles were cast down because their God, Kyprioth the Trickster, was cast down by his more warlike brother Mithros and the Great Goddess. In Ali he sees a perfect tool, and inserts her, via a noble household, as spymaster of a rebel conspiracy that grows into an insurgency. Over the two books wrongs earthly and divine are comprehensively righted—and real blood, sweat, and tears are shed. Racism and colonial insurgency are new themes, but the costs of war and young women’s abilities to wage it continue from ‘The Protector of the Small’. There is no ‘portrait’ of Indonesia, but a raw reality to some action. A lively romance plot sees Ali fall for, sleep

14  Reading Tamora Pierce with, and marry Nawat Crow, so called because he used to be one; all crows, it seems, could change shape, but most think Nawat’s choice very odd. At the end a pregnant Ali is established as spymaster of a liberated Copper Isles, politely chasing out her father’s agents. ‘The Provost’s Dog’ is set two centuries earlier, and written in the first-person as the diary of Beka Cooper (an ancestor of George’s) as she sets out on a career as a Provost’s Guardswoman, a feudal policeforce. The books import elements of the crime story, with forensic science modulated by magic, that Pierce very interestingly developed in the second of her ‘Circle’ quartets, ‘The Circle Opens’ (2000–03). Terrier sees Beka starting as a probationer in the slums of Corus, tackling what is in effect a slave-labour operation. Bloodhound sends her to Port Caynn and involves a counterfeiting operation. Mastiff turns on a threat to the royal family, and sees Beka effect a daring rescue and fall in love. She has a familiar cat, purple-eyed Pounce, clearly the same divine creature that as Faithful accompanied Alanna in ‘Song of the Lioness’; she also has a limited magical gift that enables her to speak with ghosts (carried by pigeons) and dust-devils. The frustrations of these gifts are stressed as much as their utility, and the series is far more concerned with human than divine relations. The crime-writing theme of policemen necessarily communicating with and in some ways resembling criminals is prominent, replaying and developing Alanna’s relationship with George Cooper in Beka’s relationship with Rosto the Piper, who in Terrier becomes the ‘Rogue’ of Corus. 1.2.2 The Setting and Cultures The world of Tortall is very unusual in fantasy because it openly corresponds in a rough but clear way with real geography. The maps in the books have never been bigger than a page, and vary in scale, but detail rarely matters. At the same time, geography is warped into convenience, as magic can in this fictional world bend reality. Tortall is Europe, combining English, French, Spanish, and German elements into a generic mediaeval kingdom; its feudal chivalry has a post-Roman context but predominantly British surface.

Protector of the Small  15 To the north, mountainous and cold, is Scanra, whose blond armies are like Vikings and Germanic tribes who fought against Rome. Neighbouring Tusaine, Galla, Tyra, Maren, and Sarain, all to the east, are little explored, but beyond them are lands Alanna visits that are like India and the Far East, with the Himalayas (‘Roof of the World’) and a version of the Chinese or Korean Civil Wars. Queen Thayet and Onua are ‘K’miri’, and seem Vietnamese or Cambodian. Southeastern Tortall, however, includes the lands of the tribal Bazhir, who are like Bedouin nomads in desert that is African or Middle Eastern. Northern Africa is occupied by Carthak, which despite its name is not like ancient Carthage (modern Libya), Rome’s greatest enemy. It is more a version of Alexander the Great’s empire flavoured with the notorious pirate-kingdoms of the North African ‘Barbary Coast’ (modern Algeria and Morocco) that until the early nineteenth century regularly raided European ships and coasts for slaves. Reported lands south of Carthak include ‘the grass plains of Ekellatum’, which sound like the Kenyan Masai Mara or South African veldt. Out in the ‘Emerald Sea’ (Atlantic Ocean), west of Tortall, are two archipelagos less than a week’s sail from land. Further north are the Yamani Islands, emerging in ‘The Protector of the Small’ as a version of imperial Japan, complete with language, dress, customs, sword and steel technologies, politics, nobility, and raider-problems of their own. Further south are the Copper Isles, the source of a nasty princess very troublesome to Alanna but emerging in ‘The Daughter of the Lioness’ as a version of colonial Indonesia, complete with tropical climate, oppressing rulers, oppressed darker-skinned natives, language, customs, dress, technologies, double nobility, and developing nationalist insurgency. The problem as a smart reader, seeing these real-world references appeal to history while re-arranging geography and climate at will, is what to make of it all. It matters because Tortall is evidently more deserving and kinder than most of its neighbours. Scanrans are destructive and unscrupulous, and Carthakis (if commandeered by Ozorne in ‘The Immortals’ and subsequently recovering under the nicer Kaddar) are inveterate raiders and slavers the Gods recently punished. Other countries are generally mistrusted, and the East,

16  Reading Tamora Pierce racked by endemic wars, is a source of refugees. Isn’t this disturbing? even racist? But Pierce’s reason for mixing things up so much, historically and geographically, may be precisely to mobilise these issues, not to endorse them in some reactionary fashion. Tortall’s European feudal and chivalric culture, for example, imposes a rigid social system and cultural prohibitions given solid reality, but the whole idea has been their systematic defeat and modification by women. Alanna challenges patriarchy in knighthood and monarchy. Daine challenges exploitation and abuse of animals and is a reluctant warrior enraged by slavery, war, and the politics that drive them. Keladry is a sterling, sometimes satirical protector of children and refugees with an increasingly acute class-consciousness, while Alianne helps a people liberate themselves from abusive and impious foreign rule. Evidently committed to gender and social equality in law and custom, but recognising sexual and moral differences that make people unequal, Pierce’s feminism is far more interested in realism and imagination than in political correctness. The distinct quartets and duology keep the various dimensions self-contained, and despite the acknowledged influence of Tolkien’s massively coherent The Lord of the Rings Pierce does not make a fetish of detailed cohesion. In later volumes of ‘The Protector of the Small’ aspects of Yamani life and a clash of Euro-Asian values feature in Tortall via Prince Roald’s marriage and Keladry’s Yamani childhood, but events with Alianne in the Copper Islands are discrete, and what impact they may have postponed by the move back in time in ‘The Provost’s Dog’. But the stories and nations offer a wide range of liberations for women and all children to consider—and if the oppressions from which folk need liberating are sometimes brutally real, in the real world oppression is brutal and Pierce, for all her delight in fantasy, is deeply committed to changing it. 1.2.3 Magic and Mythical Beasts With Harry Potter about magic seems commonplace, but is less so than you might think. There have always been stories with curses, enchantments and so on, but the organised magical education sys-

Protector of the Small  17 tems in Rowling, Pierce, and others are more recent. In The Lord of the Rings (1954–5) Gandalf and Saruman are incarnate angels rather than men; their ‘magic’, like that of Tolkien’s doomed Elves, is passing, and will not come again. Rowling and Pierce are different: in their worlds, though not everyone has magical ability or talent, many humans do and are still no more or less than human. Once you add such natural magical ability to a fictional world with social and historical depth, one has to ask about training mages. The pioneer was Ursula Le Guin in the ‘Earthsea’ trilogy (1968–72), where Ged is first apprenticed to the best local mage, then sent to the School of Wizardry on Roke. What he learns is what Numair Salmalín knows, that to use magic affects the balance of the world, and the greater part of a mage’s skill is self-control. Pierce’s magical university in Carthak owes something to Roke, but mixes magic and science differently—an interesting trick she also pulls off superbly in ‘The Circle Opens’ (2000–03) and ‘The Provost’s Dog’. Pierce is careful not to allow magic to become a prop of the wrong kind. In ‘The Immortals’ it is necessarily central because of Daine’s identity and ‘wild magic’, but Kel in ‘The Protector of the Small’ hasn’t a magical bone in her body, and the kinds of magic that Alianne and Beka Cooper have help their particular work but are a source of problems as well as solutions. Most of the celebrated children’s books to feature magic are moral about it in this way, and ‘bad’ children who do not learn wisdom tend swiftly to nasty ends (as happens in The Woman Who Rides Like a Man). In Daine’s case a similar control is applied by her ignorance and distrust of her powers, and by the time she develops them her care and control have been repeatedly tested. Additionally, her duties are dictated by necessities of war, and poor Daine has little chance for irresponsibility. The distinction of ‘wild magic’ from ‘the Gift’ is also important. Varieties of wild magic used by the Bazhir and an Eastern people called the Doi feature in ‘Song of the Lioness’ as tamed tools, not the animal-centred wildness Daine learns to control. As no-one can emulate her and she lacks the Gift, another important limit to the nature of her magic is set in place, and much thereby forestalled. Pierce’s magical immortals are highly original. Some, of course,

18  Reading Tamora Pierce are not her inventions—basilisks, centaurs, dragons, griffins, and ogres are widespread mythic beasts, while the ‘Three Sorrows’ (in The Realms of the Gods) are adapted from Revelation. But she does unusual things to what she borrows and some are her creations: coldfangs, hurroks, and tauroses are memorably nasty (and tauroses pitiable), but the two part-human, part-animal grotesques who truly linger in the mind are spidrens and stormwings. There is among Pierce’s original animals a pattern of nice and nasty variants, so hurroks (slurring ‘horse-hawk’) are carnivorous kudarung (winged horses), and centaurs come in vegetarian and flesh-eating varieties. This probably goes back to The Lord of the Rings, where Tolkien mixes ‘real’ myths (elves, dwarves, trolls) with his own inventions (orcs, hobbits), and makes bad ones distorted versions of the good; as he explains, evil perverts good because it cannot create for itself. But spidrens and stormwings are distinct in their human parts, and lack with Daine the special relationship she has with wholly animal immortals as an interspecies translator. Nothing good is ever said of spidrens, and throughout ‘The Immortals’ and ‘The Protector of the Small’ the only valid response is killing them before they kill you. They too (like the giant spiders in the woods at Hogwarts) can be traced to Tolkien, whose ancient and evil spider-like Shelob catches Frodo in the Pass of Cirith Ungol, and who has other horrible spiders in The Hobbit and throughout his legendarium (the whole set of myths he created). But for stormwings there is no simple antecedent, even Greek harpies, and while their behaviour is vile it has clear moral purpose, making the need to come to terms with all that stormwings represent a major theme in ‘The Immortals’ and later volumes of ‘The Protector of the Small’. A stormwing hero emerges, as well as witty stormwing monarchs, and in many ways the stormwing narrative is a gathering tragedy. What matters most is attitudes to the young. Spidrens prefer them, children or kittens, for the taste, and when spidren nests are burned the young must be killed—events Kel faces in First Test. Implicitly, spidrens bear multiple young with ease, and part of their terror is the ability to infest. Stormwings, on the other hand, lay steel eggs and while details are never given the process is hard; few are laid, fewer

Protector of the Small  19 hatch, and stormwing numbers, despite immortality, have declined. Ozorne does them more damage as a species than he inflicts on any other, but Daine saves their remnant and they seem to have recovered in ‘The Protector of the Small’ and ‘The Daughter of the Lioness’. Their care for children, voiced through Rikash in ‘The Immortals’, is confirmed in Trickster’s Queen by a rescue of children from spreading riot. Fiercely original and potent, stormwings are Pierce’s most significant Immortal creations, and are considered in the Essay. As there are so many kinds of Immortal, a list of those appearing in the quartet with summary information appears below. basilisks  Tall lizards with grey beaded hide and pouches, who walk upright carrying their tails. Great travellers and linguists, curious rather than aggressive, but able to turn things to stone (which they eat) with a roaring spell that sounds like an avalanche. Lizards that petrify come from Greek myth (the basilisk in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets has these features), but the rest is very much Pierce’s invention. centaurs  As in greek myth, the body of a horse with a human torso and head. Given to archery, centaurs fight in the Immortals War, and in Squire. Pierce makes them live in herds the herdmasters can cull, and worship ‘the Mares with Bloody Teeth’. dragons  Mostly Germanic and Scandinavian, or Chinese, in origin, dragons are one of the great mythic beasts. Pierce’s are typical in size and shape—long, winged lizards, with scaly, jewel-coloured, powerful bodies, limbs, and tails who grow to 100+ ft —and not that unusual in their great age (over 10,000 years in one case) or rather aggressive natures. But Diamondflame and especially Skysong are highly original in conversation, and Skysong in behaviour and particular magical abilities. giants  Often aggressive, and allied with Scanrans (though one once fell in love with Raoul). In ‘The Protector of the Small’ their bones are used to make ‘killing devices’; Raoul of Goldenlake is known as ‘the Giantkiller’, having dealt with several. griffins  As in Greek myth, a combination of lion and eagle, clawed, beaked, feathered and flying, but sinuously powerful on the ground. The association with honesty—no-one can lie around a

20  Reading Tamora Pierce griffin, griffin-fletched arrows fly true, and a griffin-feather headband enables the wearer to see through magical illusions—are traditional, but Pierce adds a taste for dolphins, and when Kel has to look after a baby griffin other new behaviours. hurroks  A slurred pronunciation of ‘horse-hawk’—flying, fanged and clawed carnivorous horses who reek of stale hay and rotting meat. Hurroks are used as mounts by mages in Ozorne’s service, but enforced servitude enrages them. ogres  Initially thought of (by Daine) as the usual brutal sub-giant, some ogres are mercenary killers up to 12 ft tall—but others prefer farming or mining, if allowed to live peacefully, as at Dunlath. Pierce makes them blue-skinned and gives them her characteristic immortals’ silver blood. spidrens  One of Pierce’s major creations, spiders with human heads and steel fangs, violent, predatory, and always malign. Ready allies of Ozorne, and thoroughly unpleasant on their own account, they are best hunted at night, when their webs glow. stormwings  Pierce’s major creation, flying creatures with human heads and torsos, razor-feathered steel wings, legs, and claws. Created (by their own account) when a human who had seen what wars do wished for a beast to persuade all of its horror, stormwings consume human fear and hatreds, and flock at battlefields to play with corpses and desecrate them with excrement. Their smell repels but they are what they were made to be, as Daine and all subsequent protagonists come to realise. Stormwings have a hard time reproducing, and so a tenderness for the young of all species. They have a code, and its fracture by Ozorne induces a civil war, with many fatalities; loyalists to the code are allies against Ozorne. See the Essay. 1.2.4 Interfering Gods The United States of America remains strongly Christian in a way no longer true of most European nations, and Pierce stands out as a US Children’s Writer because her fictional worlds are so plainly and importantly not Christian. She is certainly not alone, but the best fan-

Protector of the Small  21 tasy narratives to deal with religious issues (such as Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Curse of Chalion and sequels), though popular with older teenagers, are not written for or marketed to younger readers. And Pierce is in many ways unusual in her deities. The basic model for a world with a real ‘heaven’ inhabited by multiple god/desse/s who interfere in human affairs is Homer’s Iliad, which tells the story of the Trojan Horse and the ten years’ siege of Troy by the Greeks. Most things in it happen because god/desse/s get up to no good, favouring one human over another and stirring the pot. Even in versions of the story that blame Helen of Troy’s beauty, one should remember she was so beautiful because she was a daughter of Zeus, who raped her mother in the form of a swan—so Helen’s beauty and life, rooted in and propagating violence, were a god’s work. Pierce’s gods are more restrained than Homer’s but similar in temperament. Her pantheon, however, comes from all over the world and out of her head, representing many kinds of god/desse/s and ways of thinking about who and what they might be. Greek and Roman gods are in charge but Scandinavian, Asian, and animist (naturalspirit) gods are all present. There are also First Male and Female animals of each species—and in some cases, such as Wolf Gods, a First Pack too—as well as First Plants and at least two First Bridges of various kinds (but these are in the Divine Realms and how they influence mortals has never been explored). A broad mythic cosmography underlies all—creation by a paired fe/male principle, Father Universe and Mother Flame; division of the Realms into mortal, Divine, and Peaceful (where the dead go), and the distinct Dragonlands. The first child of Universe and Flame was Uusoae, who controls half of everything and will eventually overthrow all (as in scientific theories of the ‘Big Crunch’, ending the universe). Mortals but not animals, are half-chaos; immortals and gods are free of chaos, and the divine-mortal mix in Daine can be a serious problem. Gainel, Master of Dream, alone among deities stands with one foot in Chaos and for that reason assists Daine and Numair in fighting Ozorne once he has allied himself with Uusoae. At a general level Pierce’s theological structure serves causes she

22  Reading Tamora Pierce believes in, broadly, feminism and animal rights. The temples of the Great Goddess in Tortall (and equivalents in the ‘Circle’ world) are refuges and courts for battered women, and maintain private armies who seize and punish those who hurt women. Children may or may not be similarly protected, but the issue is often raised. First Animals protest and where they can help to prevent cruelty to their kinds: they accept predation by hunting and slaughter for food but not sadism—a quality very rare among animals other than human beings. They stand for ecological sensitivity, so humans and animals—as they tellingly call themselves, ‘the People’—may thrive in harmony amid natural wealth. And creatures regarded as pests such as crows and pigeons are shown as interesting in themselves and servants of a particular god. It’s no surprise to identify Pierce as a good 1960s–70s feminist, nor to learn from her website that she is a great bird-lover. The fact remains that everyone in Tortall is wholly religious— deities show themselves in dreams, visions, and reality often enough that no-one has any doubt that they exist—but no-one is Christian (or anything else). To be god-touched like Alanna is a burden, and few so touched are happy; Daine endures but hates it in Carthak. God/desse/s can be fooled if one is a fast enough thinker with a good enough tongue; they also make mistakes (the dinosaurs died in one) and like Greek deities are prone to hissy fits and meanness that they justify as character-building for puny mortals. It’s thus no surprise either that among the Tortallan population there is a tough-minded attitude to religion, giving it a central place and nervous respect mixed with commonsense aversion. Humans respect god/desse/s if they know what’s good for them, but would rather they kept away, thanks all the same. Nor do many of Tortall’s religious find any difficulty being pious while approving slavery, capital punishment, acute social snobbery, and gross exploitation of people and environment. It’s often funny and the humour of ‘The Immortals’ is divinely capped when Diamondflame (distrusting Mithros the Sun Lord to return Daine to mortal lands Himself) says “—Come, Gods annoy me.—” and the Graveyard Hag snaps back “As dragons annoy us”, before winking at Daine (The Realms of the Gods, 269–70). Adults who believe that reading Harry Potter books endangers the

Protector of the Small  23 soul, or that a singular God will punish those who do, believe the same of Pierce. Nothing much can be done about these beliefs, by definition irrational (as all faith proudly is), and not often open to argument. But there is a clear case that all Pierce’s novels are strongly moral. Her morality is not any particular religious morality, but is vivid and righteous, and the values of female strength and independence, ethical treatment of animals, and ecological sustainability are for very many people, religious and otherwise, of the utmost tangible and spiritual importance. No-one guided by reason could sensibly argue that she is anything but a very good author for children (and plenty of adults I can think of) to read and take firmly to heart. As there is such a disparate assemblage of deities, a list of those relevant to the quartet follows with brief notes. the Black God  God of Death, ruler of the Peaceful Realm; reputed the kindest god as he refuses none. The Graveyard Hag is his daughter and has sway in Carthak, but everywhere he is absolute at the end of life. Gainel, Master of Dream  A tall man with infinitely deep eyes, who stands with one foot in Chaos and may visit the mortal realm only in dreams. Kind to Daine, helpful to mortals, gentle for a god, and fond of the Green Lady’s cooking, Gainel is a Pierce original, though various cultures have deities of dream. Great Mother Goddess  Most older religions have some form of female divinity with the triple aspect of maiden, mother, and hag (or crone), to whom all that is specifically female in life is sacred. The aspects may appear separately, as the Graveyard Hag and the Green Lady do. Pierce’s version of the Great Mother Goddess is usually in her martial prime, and fairly close to stern, chaste huntress deities like Diana and Juno. The sexual aspect of Aphrodite/ Venus or equivalent desirous and desirable women is excluded, a commercial consideration in writing for younger readers—though sex and menstruation are dealt with openly. Green Lady  Daine’s mother Sarra, transformed after being killed by raiders into a local Goddess of childbirth and matters of the heart. A minor healer and midwife, Sarra’s divinity was seen as a solution to stretching thin of the Great Mother Goddess by popu-

24  Reading Tamora Pierce lation growth. Her area of influence is limited to the area where she lived and was killed, but within it she has powers over aspects of maiden and mother; hag-ness is absent, perhaps because Sarra died in her prime. Horse Lords  K’miri gods of storm and fire, invoked as inoffensive oaths by Thayet, Buri, and Onua but glimpsed by Daine in the Divine Realms and dreams. They are Chavi West-wind, Bian North-wind, Vau East-wind, and Shai South-wind. Mithros the Sun Lord  The chief god, a powerful black man usually dressed in a short tunic and armour; god of warfare, weapons, and pride. Consort of the Great Mother Goddess in her militarised and chaste aspect, he is imperious but not unkind as such, and in ‘The Daughter of the Lioness’ is cast down in the Copper Isles by Kyprioth, who arranges to have his shield stolen. Although much historical material is dropped, he is inspired by Mithras, a Roman soldier-god of eastern origin whose temples can be excavated wherever legionaries were stationed. Sakuyo  The Yamani trickster god. Uusoae, Queen of Chaos  Pierce’s invention for a principle represented in some pantheons, fundamental disorder. She is that against which gods and some men strive; others follow her. She appears as everything at once, mutating combinations of all life, and her appetite is insatiable. An allegory of entropy, the tendency of the universe to disorder. Weiryn of the Hunt  Daine’s father, vigorous, antlered, with green lights in his skin who hunts with a bow. He is kind but not much of a father, predatory but connected to all animals of his forest and mountain range. He petitions for Sarra’s elevation to divinity, and is consequently bound (with her) to the Divine Realms for a century—Daine’s needs notwithstanding. He resembles Herne, antlered leader of the Wild Hunt with owl’s eyes, who appears in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor and Susan Cooper’s ‘Over Sea, Under Stone’ quintet (1965–77).

Protector of the Small  25 1.3 ‘Protector of the Small’ 1.3.1 Characters appearing in other Tortall novels Although all Pierce’s quartets stand alone they are accumulative, and knowing who or what everyone is and does throughout makes reading richer. What follows is a list of characters who figure in other novels, with some summary. Beware spoilers! Alanna the Lioness  Alanna of Olau and Trebond, heroine of ‘Song of the Lioness’ and present in all series except ‘The Provost’s Dog’. The first woman to achieve knighthood in Tortall for over a century, a god-touched mage and healer, and a difficult, high-tempered woman, but a fearsome King’s Champion and loyal friend. She undertook page training disguised as a boy, meeting Jonathan, Raoul, and Gareth the Younger, and was Jonathan’s squire. Myles of Olau is her adoptive father. She is married to George Cooper, formerly ‘the Rogue’, now deputy chief of the Tortallan secret service, and they have three children, Thom (named for Alanna’s dead twin brother) and younger twins Alan and Alianne (heroine of ‘The Daughter of the Lioness’). Alanna notably welcomes Daine in ‘The Immortals’. Bonedancer  A version of Archaeopteryx, a fossil-link between dinosaurs and birds, Bonedancer was magically resurrected by Daine while she wielded the power of the Graveyard Hag in Carthak (The Emperor Mage). He lives with Lindhall Reed. Buriram Tourakom (Buri)  A K’miri friend of Thayet who fled to Tortall with her (Lioness Rampant), and became co-commander, then full commander, of the Queen’s Riders. A kindly but tough woman, who is also a good friend to Daine in ‘The Immortals’. Chamber of the Ordeal  Literally a room in the Tortallan palace knight-candidates must enter to become knights but also an elemental (a self-aware wild-magic pattern) that administers tests of knighthood and as such figures in ‘Song of the Lioness’. Evin Larse  A Queen’s Rider from a theatrical family whom Daine meets as a trainee in Wild Magic. Initially unsure of himself and

26  Reading Tamora Pierce seemingly unsuited to warfare, he is another example of someone finding their own path distinct from their family’s hopes. He succeeds Buri in command of the Queen’s Riders. Gareth the Elder of Naxen  A duke and senior official from the days of King Roald the Peacemaker, and Jonathan’s maternal uncle. He plays a larger but distant role in ‘Song of the Lioness’. Gareth the Younger of Naxen  Jonathan’s cousin, a classmate of his and Raoul’s as page and squire, who becomes to Jonathan as his father was to King Roald. He heads a Tortallan delegation to Carthage in ‘The Immortals’ and features in all three quartets. George Cooper  Alanna’s plain-featured husband, of poor birth, once ‘the Rogue’, now deputy chief of the Tortallan secret service (street-name, ‘the Whisper Man’) and Baron of Pirate’s Swoop. He features in all series except ‘The Provost’s Dog’ (which concerns one of his ancestors), but is most important in ‘Song of the Lioness’ and ‘The Daughter of the Lioness’. His paternal advice to Alianne in the latter is often very funny. Imrah of Legann  An important Tortallan aristocrat, commanding the biggest port, who appears in The Realms of the Gods. He is Roald’s knight-master, and though gruff is kindly and wise. Josiane of the Copper Isles  A Rittavon Princess who figures in ‘Song of the Lioness’ as an enemy of Alanna. Her death is a cause of political hostility between the Copper Isles and Tortall, and the violence of Rittavon rulers is important in ‘The Daughter of the Lioness’, where the House is overthrown. Jonathan IV of Conté  King of Tortall and a mage. A page with Raoul and Gareth the Younger, he was the first noble to discover Alanna’s secret, her knight-master and first lover. He married Thayet partly for political reasons but loves her. Basically a good king and wise reformer, as ‘Voice of the Tribes’ of the Bazhir he brings them into the establishment and does much to dispel racism—but as a ruler he is of necessity a compromiser. In general he is sympathetically presented in ‘Song of the Lioness’ and ‘The Immortals’, but gets more critical examination in ‘The Protector of the Small’. Kalasin of Conté (Kally)  Jonathan’s and Thayet’s elder daughter,

Protector of the Small  27 a healing mage who has a small but important role in Wild Magic. She wanted to be a knight but Jonathan dissuaded her for political reasons. She married Emperor Kaddar of Carthak. Kaddar  Ozorne’s nephew, heir, and successor as Carthaki emperor, who marries Princess Kalasin. Lindhall Reed  A Tortallan mage concerned with animals, introduced in The Emperor Mage, who worked at the University in Carthak and knew Numair. He returned to Tortall after Ozorne’s downfall. The resurrected fossil Bonedancer is his companion. Maura of Dunlath  A central figure in Wolf-Speaker, a noble orphan who inherits Dunlath with a guardian after her half-sister’s treason, and follows Daine in interspecies co-operation: immortal ogres, ‘the People’ (animals), and mortal humans are all represented in her fief’s government and live in harmony as a rebuke to intolerance and exploitation. Myles of Olau  Alanna’s adoptive father, chief of the Tortallan intelligence service. Kind, wise, ruthless, efficient, he figures by name in all series except ‘The Provost’s Dog’, but after ‘Song of the Lioness’ rarely appears in person save as an instructor of pages. Numair Salmalín  Born Arram Draper, one of only seven living ‘Black Robe’ graduates from Carthak’s university, Numair fell foul of Emperor Ozorne and fled to Tortall. The kingdom’s most powerful mage and central to its defence, he became Daine’s teacher and eventually lover. In ‘The Daughter of the Lioness’ he and Daine have two children, Sarralyn and Rikash (the latter named for a stormwing killed in the Immortals War). Ozorne  Sometime Emperor Mage of Carthak, a bad man before becoming a bad stormwing, and the principal villain of ‘The Immortals’. Daine killed him, ending the Immortals War. His successor as emperor was his nephew Kaddar. Raoul of Goldenlake  (Giantkiller)  A contemporary of Jonathan and Gareth the Younger as a page, and a close friend of Alanna. A consistently sympathetic figure. Roald of Conté  Eldest son of Jonathan and Thayet, heir to the Tortallan throne. He appears in Wild Magic, but has a lesser role than Kalasin.

28  Reading Tamora Pierce Stefan Groomsman  The senior palace ostler who has wild magic with horses, mentioned in Wild Magic. Thayet of Tortall, the Peerless  Jonathan’s queen, a half-K’miri refugee whom Alanna rescued (Lioness Rampant). A trained warrior of another kind than knights, she is impatient with Tortallan sexism and stuffiness, and sympathetically presented in ‘The Immortals’, especially Wild Magic—but is also a ruler, and so a politician by necessity. She founds a programme of education for the Tortallan poor. Tkaa  A basilisk, the first to re-enter Mortal Lands in centuries, who saves Daine from a coldfang in Wolf-Speaker and later settles in Tortall as a teacher and operative in the Tortallan diplomatic service. He appears briefly in Trickster’s Queen. Veralidaine Sarrasri (Daine)  Heroine of ‘The Immortals’; illegitimate daughter of Sarra and Weiryn of the Hunt, she has wild magic with all animals and immortals (save those who can speak for themselves), and can take the shape of any animal. Orphaned by raiders, her social background and complex psychology make her unpredictable, which in conjunction with her powers make Tortallans very nervous—and not all know that she more than any single person was responsible for Tortall’s survival during the Immortals War, which she ended by killing Ozorne. 1.3.2 Timeline for ‘Protector of the Small’ Although the timeline that runs through all Tortall novels is broadly consistent, dates are only provided in ‘The Protector of the Small’ and there is one problem—a year that goes missing in Squire (and is compensated for in ‘The Daughter of the Lioness’). A complete timeline, compiled by Lisa Konst, with notes on problems and sources used (including interviews and unpublished material), is available at http://www.tamora-pierce.com/faq_timeline.html. This timeline is drawn from it. All dates are Human Era. Beware spoilers! 415 Raoul born.

Protector of the Small  29 416 Prince Jonathan born. 419 Alanna born. 436 Daine born. 437 Midwinter Alanna passes the ordeal of knighthood. Nealan born. 439 Death of King Roald the Peacemaker; Jonathan IV becomes King of Tortall and marries Thayet. Alanna obtains the Dominion Jewel and becomes King’s Champion. 440 Prince Roald, Joren, Cleon, Vinson, Balduin, Zahir ibn Alhaz and Garvey born. 441 Faleron and Yukimi born. 442 Jonathan and Thayet proclaim that girls can train for knighthood. Thayet establishes the Queen’s Riders. Wyldon of Cavall becomes training master. Merric, Seaver, and Quinden born. June Keladry born. 443 Owen and Prosper born. 444 Warric and Iden born. 446 Aged 4, Kel is hung from a balcony by her brother Conan, inducing her batophobia; later she goes with her family to the Yamani Islands. 447 Aged 5, Kel sees her mother save the sacred Yamani swords. 452 The Immortals War.

30  Reading Tamora Pierce Aged 10, Kel applies for page training. (First Test begins.) 453 June The spidren hunt. Kel turns 11. Fall Lalasa enters Kel’s service. (Page begins.) 454 June The battle with hillmen—Kel turns 12 and kills her first man. 455 June Kel’s trip to Dunlath. She turns 13. Maggur Rathhausak becomes Scanran warleader. 456 April Lalasa is kidnapped. Kel becomes a squire. May The Grand Progress begins. June Kel enters Raoul’s service and turns 14. (Squire begins.) Fall Kel kills the centaur Windteeth and acquires the griffin. Shinkokami and the Yamani delegation arrives. Winter Joren’s trial for kidnapping Lalasa. 457 (or 458) June Kel turns 16 (this is where the year goes missing), defeats Ansil and Voelden. The griffin is returned to its parents. Midwinter Vinson and Joren fail their ordeals of knighthood; Joren dies. Wyldon resigns as training master. 458 (or 459) Spring Crown and Freckle die in Persopolis. Kel jousts with Wyldon without being unseated. June Kel turns 17. Fall The Grand Progress ends. Midwinter Yancen, Faleron, and Balduin pass their ordeals of knighthood. 459 (or 460) April Kel serves on the Scanran border. June Kel turns 18. August Kel commands Dom’s squad, defeats the killing device. Midwinter Nealan, Esmond, Seaver, Quinden, Merric, and Kel pass their ordeals of knighthood.

Protector of the Small  31 460 (or 461) Maggur Rathhausak becomes king of Scanra. (Lady Knight begins.) April Kel takes command of Haven. May–June Haven desecrated. Kel leads the expedition into Scanra, killing Stenmun and Blayce, rescuing her people, and effectively winning the war for Tortall by destroying the killing devices. She becomes known as the ‘The Protector of the Small’. 1.4 Boarding Schools and Boot Camps 1.4.1  Popularity and Punishment The renewed popularity of boarding schools, especially in the UK and US, is curious. It owes a great deal to J. K. Rowling—as does Pierce, who openly thanked Rowling for making longer children’s books acceptable to publishers, and whose sales of ‘The Protector of the Small’ must have benefited from the popularity of Hogwarts. She did not, of course, take the idea from Rowling—‘Song of the Lioness’ begins, like ‘The Protector of the Small’, with what are in one sense two boarding-school novels, and predates Harry Potter by a decade. And boarding-school stories in any case date to Victorian magazines for children, and found their classic form in the Billy Bunter stories by ‘Frank Richards’ (Charles Hamilton, 1876–1961), in The Magnet from 1908 to 1940, and the Mallory Towers novels (1946–51) by Enid Blyton (1897–1968). Blyton established the shape of the boarding-school series, the one-volume-per-school-year format Rowling brilliantly exploited, and re-popularised major Victorian tropes and topoi—the kinds of developments and familiar places or scenes that are the furniture of the sub-genre. Many of them occur in the first two volumes of ‘Song of the Lioness’ and ‘The Protector of the Small’, but in In the Hand of the Goddess and Page more than one year passes, and Pierce’s quartets break the boarding-school format in later volumes with Alanna’s and Kel’s services as squires and graduations as lady knights. One odd thing that Pierce and Rowling notably share is the appalling, supposedly pedagogical cruelty of their institutions. Magic

32  Reading Tamora Pierce and Voldemort aside, the things Harry Potter and his coevals endure at the hands of teachers, translated into the real world, would be an immediate cause not simply of gross scandal but of official enquiries and in all probability trials and jail sentences. Snape is the most persistent offender, but many masters are plainly sadistic and there is little evidence they are ever called to account for their despicable and very damaging behaviours. Similarly, the collective callousness of Pierce’s knight-school training staff under Wyldon is striking— official punishments are draconian, applied with rigid indifference to the responsibility for an event, and the activities of some pages are with tacit encouragement allowed to pass far beyond adult control, and plainly beyond the threshold of criminality. To be fair to Pierce there are good teachers too, and while kindly Dumbledore’s failure to restrain his staff is culpable in a headmaster, her kindly Shang Warriors lack executive authority and can only speak up to Wyldon on behalf of fairness and flexibility, which they do. It is also true that the evil eventually pay and unspecified reform is promised—but the quartet leaves those issues behind and whether reform has been effective is moot. Pierce however, far more than Rowling, has a frame that explains what is happening, for there is a clear sense in which her institution is more a military school feeding a boot camp than a boarding school as such. “The physical classes are taught by people who have seen kids of this same age who recently tried to fight with little or no training and died for it. Suddenly their world in filled with all kinds of new, strange dangers, and they can prepare these kids, at least, to fight them. Their methods are archaic, but they are what they have. I’m not saying they are right; I am saying that change has to start in the old. Kel gets it easy compared to the first girls to enter military academies and boot camp.” (TP, email to the author.) This is persuasive, yet even so, in rereading Pierce and Rowling it is the abusive cruelties they calmly deploy that I most struggle with, the implicit endorsement of those cruelties by almost all in authority that I find most disturbing—and my disquiet is not overcome by the upbeat endings. Rowling signed off with a vision of a future Hogwarts, but no assurance of change; Pierce localises the issue in

Protector of the Small  33 Kel’s relations with Wyldon but says less about training under the new master. The out-of-control violence by pupils like Joren is realistic for almost any kind of school—I saw and felt it myself at my grammar school in the 1970s—but it is also a sign of gross failure in pedagogy and administration. The sadism of teachers has also, alas, been all too real, as abuse stories from the 1950s–70s that have poured out in the last three decades horribly show. But it is not something that if seen is now usually tolerated, unless oversight has broken down badly, and stands in sharp contrast to another stream of news-stories, about teachers who have been suspended or charged with assault on pupils, and pupils who have been suspended but not charged for criminal attacks on teachers. The force of the issue grows in reading Rowling’s and Pierce’s narratives because of maintained gaps between the private opposition of Harry and Kel (and friends) to the kind of behaviour the sadistic teachers represent, their abilities to oppose it with local success, and its apparent acceptance by adults and societies to which they give their loyalties. In some measure it is, of course, the ‘way of the world’, the verisimilar experience of growing up into compromised ideals and chastened dreams, but it is also a pedagogical tactic to induce outrage in readers—which it certainly should. The most pressing real-world question, perhaps, is why, at the turn of the twenty-first century, with schooling in wide crisis, Hogwarts as the most influential school portrait in years should show the figure of the evil teacher so forcefully? Snape undergoes heroic transcendence but his wilful cruelty (like that of the vile Dolores Umbridge) leaves a lingering bad taste. Wyldon also undergoes a redemptive purgation in two parts—his resignation in Squire after Vinson’s and Joren’s failures, and admitting his mistaken order to Kel in Lady Knight— but while readers may, even should, warm to him as he softens, Kel’s forgiveness is generous and Wyldon is never obliged to account for a vast weight of narrated unfairness, active psychic harm, and passive endorsements of viciously attempted harm from others. If that is still a reality children effortlessly recognise—and the popularity of Rowling and Pierce strongly suggests it is—all teachers, parents, and

34  Reading Tamora Pierce children should be filled with grave alarm. 1.4.2  Year Cohorts The size of each cohort is not clear, as an unknown number of pages, not falling into Kel’s ambit, are unnamed and there is mixing of cohorts. The relative ages of Kel’s friends and enemies are important in indicating the bullying, unchivalrous behaviour of some seniors. A breakdown of the cohorts is therefore given below. TWO years ahead of Kel Joren of Stone Mountain Vinson of Genlith Garvey of Runnerspring Zahir ibn Alhaz Cleon of Kennan Roald of Conté [Five others, unnamed.] ONE year ahead of Kel Faleron of King’s Reach Balduin of Dysart Yancen of Idenroha Ragnal of Darroch Dermid of Josu’s Dirk [Up to five unknown others.] Kel’s year Keladry of Mindelan Nealan of Queenscove Merric of Hollyrose Quinden of Marti’s Hill Seaver of Tasride Esmond of Nicoline ONE year behind Kel Owen of Jesslaw Prosper of Tameran [Unknown others.]

Protector of the Small  35 TWO years behind Kel Iden of Vikison Lake Warric of Mandash [Unknown others.] 1.5 Chivalry and knighthood The lone, questing knight in full plate armour, with lance or sword and shield, mace or morningstar, and battle-trained destrier has as little historical reality as the dragons they typically slay. The image emerged in the great welter of Arthurian material written in France and Britain in the wake of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (composed in the 1130s and hugely influential for more than two centuries). It was sustained in Renaissance writing by Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (1485) and Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596), but already subject to mockery as absurd daydream, as in Beaumont’s and Fletcher’s wickedly funny play The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1613). It was refurbished in the early nineteenth century by Romantic mediaevalism, as in Keats’s poem ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’, novels by Sir Walter Scott, and the post-Romantic Arthuriana they fuelled, culminating in Tennyson’s great cycle Idylls of the King (1856–85) and paintings by members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and others. But all of these after Geoffrey have more to do with the satisfactions of an imagined, highly romanticised cult of chivalry than with historical veracity. Plate armour, the various weapons, and the military importance of the large warhorse were all real, but the uses to which they were put were in reality far more military than romantic. In that sense the development in ‘The Protector of the Small’ from Alanna the Lioness’s form of lone questing to Kel’s military service with the King’s Own in the Scanran War is (as well as Pierce’s feminist revisioning of her own work) a long step closer to historical accuracy. Despite the presence of immortals and such fabulous behaviour as Lord Raoul’s giant-killing, the variable qualities and skills of aristocratic knights in Lady Knight, and the need to integrate them with professional soldiers as well as armed peasants in order to prosecute a war, are

36  Reading Tamora Pierce far closer to the historical and military realities of knighthood than almost anything in the Arthurian tradition.

Figure 1. Eugène Delacroix. Knights Fighting in the Countryside, c. 1825. Musée de Louvre. Picture Credit: Rama

The ideals of chivalry are doubly exposed in ‘The Protector of the Small’, to the tactical and strategic changes in warfare that reveal their limitations, and to the scathing view of sexual predation by men offered in Hugo Longleigh, Vinson of Genlith, and Lalasa’s family, among others. These issues are also historical. Renaissance writers on knighthood lamented the coming of gunpowder, because it destroyed the basis of trial by combat and allowed lesser fighters to kill greater ones at a distance. Tortall’s knights don’t have to face that (though ‘black powder’ turns up in the ‘Circle’ books), but they do face new opponents with new weapons and tactics, and urgently need to rethink their combat manuals and reunderstand their martial roles. By the end of the quartet the battlefields dominated by Blayce’s ‘killing devices’ and subsequently befouled by stormwings are not

Protector of the Small  37 remotely like places of chivalry, and are as needlessly contested and recontested by professional soldiers and refugees, at great harm to the public weal, as the bloody lands of the Thirty Years’ War in Brecht’s great anti-war play Mother Courage and her Children (1939). It may seem odder to say that sexual critiques of chivalry are also historical, but for all the veneration of women in the cult of courtly love, the romances of knighthood have from the first registered adultery and rape as recurring wrongs. The Order of the Garter, with its symbol of a woman’s garter and its motto Honi soit qui mal y pense (‘Shame on him who thinks ill of it’), was founded by King Edward III, probably in the late 1340s, as a part of his political answer to rumours (probably true) that he had raped the Countess of Salisbury during her husband’s absence at war. Spenser in The Faerie Queene features both female knights and others who save damsels from corrupted knights who would rape them, and even the relatively straight-laced Victorian versions of the Arthurian tales did not wholly purge the taints of adultery and incest from the earlier, more explicit versions they adapted. There are also long-standing connections with knightly chastity and/or virginity through the religious frameworks and orders of knighthood, most obviously symbolised in Joan of Arc, which Pierce adapts to Kel’s conviction of her own sexual unattractiveness as a physically solid and martially trained woman, and debunks through Kel’s mother’s startlingly practical and liberal advice about sexual mores. But the larger picture of Tortallan men, and particularly nobles, is of a predatory, misogynistic conservatism that does far less to protect Tortallan women than the temple orders of the Great Mother Goddess. Against all this Pierce offers Kel’s own chivalrous determination to protect not women as such, but ‘the small’—anyone, human or animal, set upon by bullies or worse predators. A primary narrative trope throughout the quartet, this determination grows from personal competence into military command and a vision that includes both defence of civility within the realm and a mission that proves a vital strategic strike against the continuing conduct of the war, aborting its worst nightmares. But the price includes Kel’s sexual maturity, which while not ignored is largely suppressed after her break with Cleon,

38  Reading Tamora Pierce and (unlike Alanna) she ends her quartet still a virgin, uncertain of her sexual place and far more confident in command than in her heart. As tomboy, page, squire, and lady knight she is the wholly chivalrous woman of ideal imagination turned muscular knight for herself, and marvellously so—but it leaves no sexual place for the woman’s knightly admirers, and fraternal and animal companionship as her major consolation. 1.6 Kel’s animals As the chess-piece suggests, knights are associated with horses: French chevalier, a knight, and cheval, a horse, are cognate with chivalry, and the German equivalent, Ritter, with rider. Pierce had to feature horses centrally in tales of knights but in ‘The Protector of the Small’ went further, and gave Kel some of the astonishing animal companionship attending Daine. The destrier Peachblossom is central, a constant reminder of animal capacities and independence, but he is joined by sparrows, Jump, Hoshi, the ingrate griffin, and in Lady Knight a menagerie of cats and dogs. With the Chamber, the ‘clever animals’ remain the least revisionary aspect of Kel’s ordinariness, and form a startling set of companions, but Pierce is careful to be practical and unsentimentally has some die. Commitment to animal rights is a constant in Pierce’s fiction, expressing her long practices of owning pets, feeding wild creatures, and fighting for their welfare. Daine echoes Dr Dolittle, who can ‘talk to the animals’ in books by Hugh Lofting (1886–1947) and the film adapting them that came out when Pierce was 13; her work is among the swathe of fantasy that shows the tremendous attraction of Lofting’s vision, but she is more subversive, expressing an ecological vision in which human restraint is urged as a necessity for all to thrive, and the impact of humans on animals mercilessly narrated. Because animals in ‘The Protector of the Small’ are, absent Daine, denied explicit voices, Pierce is able to limit their contributions to the narrative—but by the end of Lady Knight the problem is becoming quite pressing, and the counter-trope of public unease at intelligent, self-willed behaviour by animals grows in strength. In ‘The Daughter

Protector of the Small  39 of the Lioness’, the only Tortallan novels to go chronologically beyond Lady Knight, Pierce sidestepped the problem by relocating to the Copper Isles, inserting a god, and inventing the ability of crows to change into humans. In ‘The Provost’s Dog’, set two centuries earlier in Tortallan history, Beka Cooper’s ability is to hear the ghosts pigeons carry, not birds themselves, and her talkative cat Pounce is the same wandering god who accompanied Alanna in her youth. But if Pierce ever does return to a ‘modern’ Tortall after Lady Knight, animals’ civility and legal standing will need to be addressed.

2. Annotations Annotations are based on the first UK editions, trade paperbacks from Scholastic Press (2000–02). Comments by Tamora Pierce appear within inverted commas after some annotations, with the marker “TP adds:”. 2.1 First Test title  First Test is plain in meaning but odd man out. Each of the later titles names the status Kel has in its narrative—Page, Squire, Lady Knight—but this one highlights the additional test imposed on her before she is allowed to become a proper page. dedication  Jacqueline Korn and Bruce Hunter are British literary agents. map  Only the western half of Pierce’s world is shown, but nothing takes Kel off this map. By comparison, the map in Lioness Rampant necessarily showed the eastern half as well. Chapter 1  Decisions Alanna … glee. (1)  The initial set-up of Alanna’s joy in Kel’s ambition is carefully calculated, preparing for the Lioness’s exclusion from Kel’s training and establishing the grounds on which ‘The Protector of the Small’ rewrites ‘Song of the Lioness’. his battle to save the younger princes and princess (1)  This occurs at the end of The Realms of the Gods, but is never narrated. suffering pain made a warrior stronger (2)  This code is close to classical Greek Stoicism, but is found in many military societies, and was widespread among Amerindian braves and Japanese samurai. Though not wrong in itself it tends to make suffering a virtue, to confuse necessary endurance with avoidable harm, and to become allied to codes of suffering in silence—a major problem in Wyldon’s training regime.

Protector of the Small  41 They had done well … by Wyldon (2)  Perhaps so, but the narrative of the quartet severely exposes weaknesses in that training. the Yamani Islands (2)  The islands are a version of imperial Japan, perhaps in the Heian period (794–1185). a lawyer’s reply (3)  Wyldon is unfair: it is he who seeks to wriggle out of a proclaimed commitment and elevates personal bigotry into a matter of (supposed) principle. our noble parents loved their daughters too much to … (3)  A specious argument that combines snobbery, sexism, and sentiment. Your bias is known, Lady Alanna. (3)  Wyldon does not and will not understand his own position as biased, so Alanna’s commitment against sexism must be ‘bias’ while sexism (intrinsically a bias) passes as fairness and balance. Girls are fragile, more emotional … (4)  A typical list of sexist arguments. In the US and UK, as elsewhere, the military has passed beyond this blanket denial and welcomes female recruits—but women continued to be excluded from front-line combat for pretty much these kinds of (spurious) reasons until very recently. But I will be fair … probation … (4)  Another gross self-deception: Wyldon is being wholly unfair, and that unfairness, with Kel’s justified resentment of it, becomes a major theme. the Crown needed him (5)  An argument that will be heard more than once that has practical weight but is also an excuse for doing expedient wrong. There are rumours … (5)  A more difficult argument: public opinion does matter, but Wyldon (and Jonathan) argue for deferring to prejudice, and the argument is progressively exposed as the mistake it is—but does not thereby lose its grains of real weight. Even a moment’s conversation … (6)  This is an exaggeration, and the scene shows Wyldon and Jonathan in sexist collusion against Alanna. She stalked out … (6)  Alanna is thus marginalised for the duration of the quartet, giving Kel a clear field—which is more Pierce’s need (in revisioning ‘Song of the Lioness’) than Tortall’s. The breach between Alanna and Jonathan develops the emotional problems they had as lovers in ‘Song of the Lioness’.

42  Reading Tamora Pierce they still acted as Yamanis (7)  Kel’s Yamani control and concealment of emotion is one of her strongest characteristics, and plays into one of the great dynamics of the quartet—the failure of other Tortallans to recognise emotion that is not grossly expressed. In a curious way Kel’s stillness finds parallels in Wyldon’s warrior-stoicism and in Joren of Stone Mountain’s overt beauty, disguising for many his cruelty and inflexible prejudice. already five feet tall and still growing (7)  Kel is in a high percentile for physical size, an important advantage in her training that reflects a historical reality. Broadly, the hundred-year Tortallan lapse in graduating lady knights corresponds with Victorian and early twentieth-century sexism, and one factor in rising feminism since 1900 is the notably greater size (height, reach, weight) of all babies. The major cause is probably adequate nutrition generally, and sugars in particular, during the first two years of life: female infants have benefited disproportionately, bringing average M/F size closer. Be as stone. (8)  This Yamani philosophy is uncomfortably close to Wyldon’s stoicism and silences, but means ‘don’t suffer’ (let causes of suffering bounce off) and ‘meditate’, not ‘suffer in silence’. Until that time … (9)  That Kel’s fear of heights (batophobia) is traumatic makes it more intense, but gives hope it can be unlearned. one of them monsters … (9)  Although organised hostilities ended with the Immortals War, and the making of treaties with remaining immortals began, this is only a few months later and many marauders remain. The need to fight evil immortals provides the climax of First Test and is revisited in Squire and Lady Knight. the Yamanis … soldier’s commands (10)  A second way (with her emotional control) in which Kel is already better trained than her fellow male pages will prove. a mild sweat (10)  The first of many: Kel is not afraid of exertion, and her honest sweat pushes aside the genteel old Victorian sexism that ‘Ladies glow, gentlemen perspire, horses sweat’. knighthood training has to be fair (10)  Or so one would think— but the notion turns out to be more complicated than Kel allows, as well as idealistic. convent school, the normal destination (11)  Alanna faced being

Protector of the Small  43 sent to such a school, prompting her disguise as a page, but otherwise readers learn little of these schools. In real history, Catholic nobles often sent daughters to convent schools, run by nuns, and to convents as nuns, to save on dowries—but in Tortall such schools must presumably be of the Great Mother Goddess, and are not entirely straightforward to imagine. Their stress on ‘ladylike arts’ clearly includes social ‘finishing’, but should not be simply derided. the lines of a cow (11)  Kel’s sister-in-law presumably meant to be rude about her physical size. Getting Ilane of Mindelan to agree … (11)  An interesting complication of Kel’s anti-sexism: the need to persuade her mother that a military avocation is not a fruit of supposed unmarriageability indicates how deeply engrained Tortallan sexism is, but is also a testimony to Ilane’s love and concern for her daughter. The Cow (12)  The first of several unflattering nick-names bestowed on Kel by her unkind peers. The Yamanis had taught her well. (12)  Kel’s first fight clearly shows her existing discipline and identity as the ‘Protector of the Small’ (though the name comes much later). Though enraged she arms herself and uses the branch as a quarterstaff, striking effectively with trained skill to level odds. The willingness of three boys to fight one girl testifies (like their attempted drowning of kittens) to a certain brutality. Spidren (13)  Spidrens are always bad, and lack any redeeming feature. Both Daine and Kel come to terms with stormwings but loathe spidrens. A further encounter forms the climax of First Test. Kel brought the horn up to her mouth. (14)  Though engaged with a deadly enemy Kel remembers to do the right thing in summoning back-up—not always easy, and showing her trained discipline. bit the small creature in half (14)  The spidren’s typically merciless treatment of a helpless kitten triggers a visceral reaction in Kel— she cannot not respond, any more than she could ignore the boys, but her attack on the spidren, if brave, is seriously unwise. She looked down … and froze. (15)  However unfairly, Kel’s induced batophobia is a danger to her—and would be danger to others, if she fought alongside them, or led them in combat.

44  Reading Tamora Pierce Leave the fighting to real warriors. (16)  But Anders does not say, or mean, ‘to men’—only those properly trained and equipped, a point Kel understands. a small group of animals (17)  Although this particular group is not explained, Kel clearly already collects animals and inspires their loyalty. I’ll still know more than I do now (17)  A commendable pragmatism, especially for a child of ten. a piece of raw meat (17)  Ilane’s practical response to her daughter’s black eye is also characteristic of Kel, who does not fear bruises. Boys are typically imbued with such an attitude through sports and rough games but it is discouraged in girls by stigmatisation of ‘tomboyishness’ and promotion of ‘ladylike’ inaction. he had already been a knight (18)  Anders’s age is never specified, but if he graduated as a knight before Kel went to Yaman aged 5, he must be at least 13 years older; and as he has a son of 5 or 6, quite probably more. See also Conal (27). hazing (18)  Legitimated bullying of new pupils/recruits by their seniors—a serious problem in military and other schools. Anders’s argument, that ‘You have to do it’ because to refuse is to be proud and scorn ‘tradition’, has force but lacks moral weight. What you must never do is tattle on another page (19)  Such codes of silence are common—but if often praised as ‘manly’ or ‘stand-up’ are acknowledged as a major problem in, most obviously, law enforcement (cf. the omerta of the Sicilian Mafia), and are clearly designed to protect the guilty. They know it’s unfair. (19)  Another major crux: on one hand the regime is clearly toughening and suppresses whining, but how can chivalrous knights emerge from wholly unchivalrous training? TP adds: “The unfairness is simply reality training: the world beyond the code of chivalry is unfair, and what matters is acting chivalrously despite that.” all these things you learned in the islands … (19)  Anders is of course right, but it is another great wrong to Kel that her hard-won Yamani skills will be distrusted, and even (through Wyldon’s racist and xenophobic bigotry) suppressed—the very advantages she brings

Protector of the Small  45 to knight-training stripped from her by the people who insist on her unfitness for the work. Do what they teach you, no more. (20)  A much less sound piece of advice, that explains why Anders is an ordinary knight while Kel will prove very special. Unlike normal dreams … Kel woke (20–3)  Kel’s dream, de facto a flashback, serves to end chapter 1 on a high, but also explains the source of her determination to be martially capable (as her mother is). the fire-goddess, Yama (20)  In Buddhism Yama (whose Japanese name is Enma Dai-Ō) is the male lord of death; this Yama is Pierce’s invention. The short sword …. The long sword … (20)  The distinction resembles that of the Samurai shōtō and katana, and the reverent Yamani attitude to these swords as relics resembles Samurai valorisation of their swords together (daishō) as their social power and personal honour—but the law/duty pairing, though not original, is Pierce’s own mythic amalgam. a staff capped with a broad, curved blade (21)  A glaive—as Kel soon remembers; her own use of it becomes a running motif. The Japanese name is naginata, and the weapon has been used there since the eighth century, and in Europe since the fourteenth. using her skill and her longer weapon (22)  The naginata, by keeping Scanrans at a distance, offsets disadvantages in height, reach, and upper body strength. How Ilane received training is unclear—in Tortall or in Figure 2. A naginata. Yaman—but she behaves as a Samurai woman would have been expected to in her husband’s absence, defending home and shrine. They bowed low to the woman and the girl (23)  Kel’s experience of the guard’s immediate respect for Ilane’s actions stands in sharp contrast to Tortallan reactions to female martial prowess.

46  Reading Tamora Pierce just like Mama … the Lioness. (23)  Admirable and understandable ambitions—but Alanna and Ilane are not themselves at all alike … Nobody will kill two kittens … (23)  In other words, Kel will be the ‘Protector of the Small’. Chapter 2  Not So Welcome too much stone … He needs water (24)  See Be as stone. (8). on sufferance (25)  A stronger, truer term than ‘probation’: Wyldon knows he is prejudiced, but cannot yet hear himself. flirtations (25)  A further example of Wyldon’s sexist prejudice, but the code insisting that any unmarried woman or girl never be with a man in private (i.e. in any room with a closed door) was common to Victorian Britain and Samurai Japan. Conal (27)  If Conal graduated four years earlier, he must be 12 years older than Kel, and Inness and Anders older still. She surveyed the damage. (28)  From the first the hazing to which Kel is subjected has nothing to do with initiation and everything to do with outright rejection; it is also patently vicious and criminal. Yamani porcelain lucky cats (28)  These correspond to Japanese maneki neko, ‘beckoning cats’, widely used as lucky charms. See also The legend is … (85). You were warned … (29)  Salma’s kind response sets a pattern of suffering wrongs in silence. Why should perpetrators of Figure 3 A Japanese maneki neko damage and outrage go unpunished? (‘beckoning cat’). Now she felt differently. (29)  Kel instinctively rises to a challenge. Girls can’t fight! (30)  Salma points to the absurdity of such a statement in the world of Tortall, and Kel’s response about her aunt lighting and catapulting barrels of lard—a sort of enormous Molotov cocktail—picks up both the absurdity and the grim reality of defending your home with every means available against people who will,

Protector of the Small  47 if they can, kill or enslave all and destroy everything. a boy with white-blond hair (31)  Joren of Stone Mountain. Roald … Seaver (32)  There is a political aspect to Roald’s selection of the Bazhir-looking Seaver, enforcing the Crown’s relatively new anti-racism, especially with regard to the Bazhir—a consequence of events in ‘Song of the Lioness’. It also gets him out of sponsoring Kel—which for Jonathan may be a side-benefit. Girls have no business … (33)  That Zahir’s arrogant rudeness is only mildly rebuked by Wyldon indicates both the extent of the prejudice Kel faces and how profoundly Wyldon fails to understand the encouragement he gives to prejudice in those he trains. like a lump (33)  Thus Kel’s second unkind nickname is born, mocking her size and Yamani discipline. The blond youth … at him. (33)  Wyldon obviously knows enough to be wary of Joren, but the other boys know more, and in retrospect that Wyldon would even contemplate Joren as Kel’s sponsor shows grave weakness as a trainer. Demoiselle (36)  From French, ‘Mademoiselle’, meaning ‘Miss’—an anachronistic floweriness suggesting Nealan’s teenage romanticism. Queenscove is a ducal house. … So who am I to you? (36–7)  Kel is a good Tortallan, and however she may hate unfairness accepts rank, kin-bonding, and social self-interest without question. I know women can be warriors. (37)  Nealan’s simple, empirical acceptance is a rebuke to all palace adults, including Wyldon, who had equal opportunity to see Alanna, Thayet, Buri and other women fight but cannot admit the same, self-evident conclusion. Saffron rice … (38)  This sounds like a Kyprish rather than Tortallan dish—food reflecting royally sponsored multiculturalism. Mithros … Great Mother Goddess … (39)  Wyldon’s mention of the Goddess is significant—Kel is among the “bounty” he celebrates—but so is his appeal to Mithros to turn back the clock. The Stump (40)  It is more than ironic that Neal’s nickname for Wyldon rhymes with Kel’s given nickname, ‘the Lump’—they do share a refusal to display emotion, and eventually more than that. not meeting Kel’s eyes (40)  Neal is aware Alanna is forbidden

48  Reading Tamora Pierce even to welcome Kel, but chooses to conceal that from her for as long as he can. Whether this is truly kind or wise is moot. Tkaa (43)  The kindly basilisk appeared in ‘The Immortals’, and the gap between his established status there as a friend of Daine’s and unnerving appearance here is a good example of the way Pierce manipulates viewpoints between quartets. she whispered in Yamani (44)  The first indication that Kel speaks Yamani; her use of it to herself (as distinct from her later political use of it with Shinko and Yuki) represents a psychic resource. It is ironic (though logical) that her use of it here should trigger homesickness. Emotion is weakness. (44)  Another philosophical Yamani truth that must be handled carefully. It isn’t that to feel emotion is intrinsically weak, though some misunderstand it that way, but that acting for emotional reasons without proper thought invites failure and revealing hurt to an enemy attracts their attention to vulnerability. She imagined a lake … (44)  In one sense a useful discipline in meditation, a source of calmness and control, in another a means of denying emotional imperatives that can store up problems like a pressure-cooker. See also the previous annotation. Chapter 3  The Practice Courts house sparrows (45)  English sparrows, Passer domesticus, the most widely distributed bird in the world. They live for 6–8 years. Throughout her work Pierce very positively presents animals and birds usually regarded as vermin—squirrels and mice in ‘The Immortals’, pigeons in ‘The Provost’s Dog’, and sparrows here. Though unintended, there is a Christian resonance from Matthew 12:29, where sparrows are an image of common life whose fall is nevertheless seen by God; feeding them, Kel again acts as ‘Protector of the Small’. TP adds: “I used house sparrows because I became friends with a number of house sparrows throughout New York City when I lived there, particularly the flock that inhabited the bushes next to the place where I sat to feed animals in a local park for ten years or so. I got to know several personally: they would take bits of peanuts from my hands during the winter, when the pigeons were less pushy. Nari,

Protector of the Small  49 Freckle, and Crown were all members of that flock.” Gower (45)  Although Pierce intended no connection, John Gower (c.1330–1408) was a major Christian poet and friend of Chaucer—by comparison with whom he is known as ‘moral Gower’. This Gower’s gloomy moralising works as a gentle mockery, but there is a harsher connection via his sexually abused niece Lalasa, and the final subject of Gower’s famous Confessio Amantis (Lover’s Confession), incest. (Gower appears as narrator in Shakespeare’s Pericles, which also features incest.) Shang warriors, masters of unarmed combat (47)  Though never explained in detail the Shang order features throughout Pierce’s Tortallan novels and in the story ‘Student of Ostriches’. All that is clear is that children begin intense study very early, and all existing oriental combat disciplines are drawn on. Liam Ironarm, the Shang Dragon, plays a major role in Lioness Rampant, and all Shang warriors, though dangerous and often prickly, seem benevolent. They also provide walking demonstrations that women can be warriors, and the presence of Hakuin Seastone continues the Yamani theme. six years of Yamani training took over (49)  The scene is alive with irony: Kel’s automatic response is exactly what military training strives to achieve, but the other pages see it as wrongly showing-off and further disabling Kel’s fitness to train. The lightness of the staff … (53)  Kel’s training with the glaive prepares her for the business with weighted weapons to come. Rather than speak to them … (53)  Wyldon and Ezeko may ‘ignore’ Kel and Merrick because Kel is already trained and doing nothing wrong—but in that case approval would not be amiss, and the subsequent lack of intervention when Merrick rushes his strikes (54) points squarely to Wyldon’s prejudice in vicious action. Balcus Starsworn (55)  A god never mentioned before, or again. This isn’t a game, probationer! (56)  If Wyldon saw what happened his rebuke to Kel is again viciously prejudicial, and plainly legitimates Joren’s attack—which would probably have broken bone. staff work as it is practised here … (58)  Wyldon inadvertently reveals a real military weakness—preferring familiar form to what works. His notion of a Yamani with a naginata as a ‘savage with a

50  Reading Tamora Pierce pigsticker’ is pure bigotry, and his rebuke to Kel for defending herself another shameful encouragement of Joren’s criminal assaults. But a pole arm makes it possible … (59)  Kel’s surprise rebukes Wyldon’s rigidity and military idiocy, and raises a major question about the practical meaning of chivalry, which promotes single combat and trial by combat. a small destrier (61)  A destrier (a type rather than a breed) is a warhorse, trained for battle and jousting. Though probably about the size of a normal modern riding horse (15–16 hands), destriers were known in the Middle Ages as ‘great horses’, among the largest of their time. a man said (61)  Stefan Groomsman, who has horse magic. Peachblossom there’s ruined for knight’s work (61)  The amusing, deadly Peachblossom, initially much too large for Kel, is the greatest endangered stray she collects. Hardly ‘small’, he is still vulnerable and has been abused, calling forth her protection. If he thought … (63)  It seems horribly probable that Wyldon hopes Kel will suffer disabling injury. Thus far her skills have protected her, but with Peachblossom Stefan Groomsman’s magic (about which, to be fair, Wyldon may know) is necessary to her safety. the number of broken bones … has quadrupled (64)  An important datum in judging Wyldon, whose training regime is hard on all pages, however harder on Kel. The value of such frequent injury, perhaps leaving permanent weakness, is another matter. even a single exception (65)  Thus Wyldon’s creed—yet he is in fact constantly making Kel an exception with his own malign unfairness. You would do better to run that (65)  Kel’s running up this particular slope becomes a minor motif of her determination. Chapter 4  Classrooms shaven-headed Mithran priests (67)  The priests are never explored or further described, but the strong (mediaeval) association of book-learning and teaching with the clergy corresponds with the patchy literacy of the Tortallan populace. Adoptive father, actually (67)  Alanna’s adoption by Sir Myles is

Protector of the Small  51 an important part of ‘Song of the Lioness’, and he proves (though a minor role) a friend to Kel as he was to Alanna. (He presumably knows of his daughter’s rage at being excluded from Kel’s training, and her secret gifts, but keeps mum.) a Copper Island princess thirteen years ago (69)  Josiane, killed by Alanna in Lioness Rampant. Joren typically blames a woman, Alanna, but readers of ‘The Immortals’ will be sharply aware of his ignorance, for the prime mover of the Immortals War was the deposed Carthaki emperor-mage, Ozorne, and it ended with his death at Daine’s hands. But they do have reasons (69)  The military maxim is ‘know your enemy’ for good reasons that include understanding their motives. poor Scanrans with failed crops … (69)  Pierce’s economic analysis of war begins early and extends throughout the quartet. Sir Myles going into trade (69)  Traditional aristocracies typically derive income from land while promoting birth and blood over talent and wealth, and so regard mercantile activity as beneath them. Historically Sir Myles resembles one of the (many) British sixteenthand seventeenth-century lords who realised trade and industry were the coming thing and got in on the ground floor of capitalism. The link between mercantile and spy networks is historically sound. his second in command (70)  George Cooper, his son-in-law. a kind of living skeleton (70)  Bonedancer’s resurrection by Daine is narrated in Emperor Mage. A mage was briefly granted … (71)  Daine, who had the power of the Graveyard Hag. Reed does not identify her because people who know she has been so powerfully god-touched become very wary. Upton Oakbridge (72)  ’Upton’ may conceal a joke: ‘the ton’ was a Regency term for the fashionable social set in Britain who set great store by Oakbridge’s kind of etiquette. probationary page (73)  Oakbridge may only be being ultra-correct, but is guilty of stigmatising unkindness and the worst kind of schoolmasterish wit. his father’s … her father’s (73)  The minor grammatical and sexist point strikes a blow—as Oakbridge lives by pedantry, so he must suffer it—and marks a turning-point in Kel’s defence by others.

52  Reading Tamora Pierce Princess Chisakami (74)  Roald’s first Yamani fiancée, killed in an earthquake and replaced by Shinkokami. What good would mathematics do a knight? (75)  A common misconception given particular force: a surprising amount of military (and all naval) proficiency requires competent mathematics. her thoughts all in a jumble (77)  Kel’s mixed feelings about King Jonathan parallel Alanna’s in chapter 1, and extend both the separation of Alanna and Jonathan in Lioness Rampant and Daine’s exterior view of Jonathan in ‘The Immortals’. Kel’s is in the end the severest critique to which Jonathan is subjected, a central feature of Pierce’s feminist revisioning of ‘Song of the Lioness’. Chivalry worked two ways … (77)  Kel is not wrong about the importance of reciprocal obligation, but is describing feudalism rather than chivalry. As her own chivalrous—as distinct from military—experience will show, chivalry has serious though not insurmountable problems in going beyond the solitary. If memory serves me … (77)  Even today royal princes commonly train in military schools and serve as warriors, as in Britain. there are faces gone from this room … (78)  Arguably, the failure to follow up this observation—and the death of significant numbers of pages would echo loudly, as deaths do at Hogwarts—is one of the quartet’s few weaknesses. the arts of war, and … the laws of the realm (78)  An important conjunction—but also a political and chivalric ideal. War exceeds art, messily, and many suppose laws not to apply to them. His presence … (79)  Pierce has always believed narratively in people with ‘presence’, magical and royal; in Jonathan’s case both. She plainly believes all deserve equal treatment in law and custom, but does not pretend all are equally capable or gifted, and endorses the hero as a model. Kel represents a long step towards ordinariness, but has a growing presence of her own. how he could stir such fierce loyalty … (79)  It is not just presence: Kel forgets her father’s generation saw Jonathan save Tortall, magically and politically, and win over the Bazhir. Whether a nice man, and whether compromising too far with conservative sexism, he is a strong ruler in a time that needs one.

Protector of the Small  53 You aren’t a bit romantic, are you? (79)  Neal’s greater age and vocabulary introduce more complex analysis. Kel’s pragmatism about training and eating vegetables is characteristic—yet she is training to protect the small and vulnerable, as romantic as it gets. a small package (80)  The motif of anonymous gifts and hidden well-wisher sustains the plausibility of Kel’s determination and success, and provides her with emotional relief. The dullness of her knife opening the package points to careful observation (relayed by Neal?) of which she is unaware, and that is never explicitly narrated. Chapter 5  Kel Backs Away Dear Papa and Mama (82)  The device of Kel’s letter serves useful summary narration but shows how little she reports even to parents she loves and trusts. The training ethos that disallows complaint has deprived her of all recourse against repeated criminal assault. My favourite class is mathematics. (82)  Unless Kel is being tongue-in-cheek ironic, her attitude has changed since p. 75. Gowns at supper … (83)  Kel is already showing tactical skill. and if the prince … (84)  Kel’s assistance to Roald in his encounter with Yamani culture is politically important and this anticipates a critical moment in Squire. Given Jonathan’s complexity it may be that hope of the connection was a significant factor in obliging Wyldon to accept Kel as a probationer. For her lateness … (85)  Wyldon’s grotesque unfairness results from his failure either to understand or to care about the victimisation he encourages. The legend is … (85)  This is one of the Japanese origin-stories of the maneki neko, though it is told of more than one emperor. See Yamani porcelain lucky cats (28). pain … stone … warrior-stoic arguments (86)  Neal again supplies a larger philosophical label for a belief Kel needs to examine. Neither cultivating toughness nor good training require enduring crippling, curable pain, and military cultures are prone to making

54  Reading Tamora Pierce pain a virtue. Properly, it is a warning-system, alerting one to damage that needless further damage be prevented. My brothers thought … (88)  Two of Neal’s knight brothers died in royal service. But it isn’t the only service you can give (88)  Kel’s argument here may seem to suggest that she doesn’t think of herself as having had other choices, but that is not so. As to that ill-tempered nag … (88)  Neal is a healer in more ways than one, fixing a connection others should have made, and putting Kel in touch with another of Tortall’s powerful women. It wasn’t until Daine smiled … (90)  Daine holds Kel’s gaze magically, as Numair and Blayce will in Lady Knight. And while it isn’t mentioned, Daine is semi-divine, and has scolded gods. Peachblossom put two hooves back … (92)  Given the attraction Daine has for all animals Peachblossom’s choice is an act of devotion, repaying Kel’s loyalty in desiring him even when his safety is assured, and in thinking of his wellbeing before hers. He would also have no job as a warhorse with Daine. in the way (92)  Because of Neal’s crush on Daine, presumably. voices drew her attention (93)  Kel’s encounter with hazing is marked from the outset by unacceptability: Merrick is small for his age, and the bullying has already involved breakage and violence. Keladry of Mindelan ran (94)  The use of the full name stings. Kel is not motivated by cowardice—fear of physical hurt is never in her thoughts—but by fear of giving Wyldon an excuse to dismiss her, evidence of how corrupting to genuine endeavour probationary status is. Novelistically, it is important that Kel fail at something, endure, and come back—a role subsequently taken by her batophobia. that part of her that believed every word of the code (96)  The dark night of shame sharpens Kel’s thinking, developing a more complex, nuanced understanding. tired of hiding the way she felt (97)  Another immediate consequence of Kel’s shame; and not before time. What an odd thing to say! (99)  Because it is cracks the monolith of common male prejudice? or because Kel is so determined she .

Protector of the Small  55 doesn’t understand how intensely others expect her to fail ? Chapter 6  The Lance

Figure 4. A seventeenth-century cavalry saddle. Picture credit: Darius T. Wielek, Muzeum Wojska Polskiego.

another saddle (100)  Jousting saddles were as described, the high front and back (cantle and pommel) providing (bruising) security against being unseated. rowel (101)  Pointed spurs (from Anglo-Saxon spurnan, to kick), which come in several designs, can badly hurt a horse. The need for painful spurring may have reflected the weight of armour and the strain put on destriers, but equally reflects Figure 5. Western style cowboy spurs with rowels, chap guards, and buttons a lack of concern about or pleasure in for the spur straps. inflicting pain. Joren stood there, too. (102)  Later events show that Wyldon was not aware of Joren’s reasons for helping pass out the lances, but he allows Joren’s overt discourtesy in failing to pass Kel hers—a further example of how blind he is to what he inspires and permits. See a perfectly cut plug … lead (119).

56  Reading Tamora Pierce The lance! (104)  Wyldon’s litany of the lance is not without merit— Raoul needs his lance against a giant in Squire—and Kel comes to love the weapon, but her reservations are right, and Wyldon is in this (as in all) conservative and limited, biased by his own skill—a dangerous error in a commander. She had a choice … (107)  But not much of one: Wyldon again pastes supposed fairness over plain unfairness. burnouses (107)  A North African hooded cloak, usually in wool, often white, which was part of the uniform of French colonial soldiers (spahis) from Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. It seems likely the King’s Own have adopted it only recently, from Bazhir recruits. This is the girl? (108)  That Raoul had not recognised Kel shows he was not making a sexist put-down but concerned for an overmounted page. Tauroses (108)  Daine kills a tauros in The Realms of the Gods. Is everything well? (113)  Sir Myles shows his goodwill, and like Neal offers Keladry an enlarged view of herself. Chapter 7  Kel Takes a Stand barrels full of sand (118)  Chain-mail and other armour is dryscoured rather than washed to forestall rusting. a perfectly cut plug … lead (119)  The weighting of Kel’s lance represents a major escalation in Joren’s attacks, in complexity, cost—a carpenter must have been involved, as Kel realises (120), and lead isn’t cheap—and cunning. See Joren stood there, too. (102). Should she tell them? (121)  Kel’s unwillingness to speak to anyone of her pain and uncertainties is the downside of her endurance and stoicism, and shows Wyldon’s policies run amok. sliding along its polished length (125)  As in the classic bar-room brawl in westerns. he winked at her (126)  The servants recognise the wrongness of three older boys fighting one girl, even if Wyldon will not. You fought with Joren, Zahir and Vinson (127)  By modern lights, one oddity of the school’s strange honour-code is that what is self-evident and known to all cannot be acted on, truth and common

Protector of the Small  57 sense subordinated to an entrenched custom of facile lying. In many places a teacher who now acted like Wyldon could expect to be fired, or worse, and would certainly leave his school liable to legal action by Kel or her parents. the improper uses of combat training (128)  The narrative does not specify how Joren, Zahir, and Vinson were punished, but Wyldon seems to resent Kel’s use of her training fighting one against three— as he resented her Yamani staff-work when attacked by Joren. So much for chivalrous ideals, eh? (129)  Neal at least sees the core issue—not boy vs girl, but three larger vs one smaller. You always think the worst of him. (130)  Kel’s defence of Wyldon is odd, but her martial commitment (far stronger than Neal’s) means she cannot ignore Wyldon’s martial qualities; it is as an educator in loco parentis that he fails so badly, not as a warrior. Chapter 8  Winter Great thundering griffins (137)  Neal’s exclamation is reminiscent of Captain Haddock in English translations of Hergé’s Tintin books, who often says ‘ten thousand thundering typhoons’ and the like. I love it when that happens (138)  Kel touches on a major theme of many books whose protagonists have an aptitude for violence, the simplicity an outbreak of hostilities brings. That can be good, as here, cutting through temporising nonsense, but represents what novelist Paul Scott (1920–78) called a ‘moral holiday’, a suspension of reason and responsibility that may cost dearly. Winter was our easy season (139)  Wyldon’s traditional view represents a strongly northern Tortallan experience. Snow blocks the Scanran frontier, and storms prevent Carthakis using war barges or risking an invasion fleet—but for over a decade the Bazhir lands have been part of Tortall, and there is no reason in the south for ‘winter’ to be slow. Immortals have changed things, but Wyldon is wrong to blame them alone. The servants told him (141)  Of course they did—but in class-ridden Tortall a servant’s word cannot be taken over a noble’s, even when a minor, an issue that will return in more serious guise.

58  Reading Tamora Pierce After that, she left her room … (142)  Another example of how grossly out of control the training-school is; Kel cannot even exit her own door safely. Midwinter Festival (142)  The old festival of midwinter renewal (on which Christmas was imposed) becomes a marker throughout the quartet of the passage of each school-year, and is the time of Ordeals. great logs for the hearths (142)  Old English and Germanic celebrations of Midwinter included a ‘Yule Log’. with special celebrations around lighting it with kindling from last year’s log etc.. were just a dim memory (143)  This is Kel’s first Midwinter in Tortall since she was four. The prince … (143)  Kel’s specifically Yamani care of Roald continues; see and if the prince … (84). There’s serious healing spelled into this (145)  Alanna, a strong mage, could make the Balm herself. The gift is another sign of how carefully she watches Kel, perhaps through Neal and Baird. when someone knocked … (147)  Seaver’s action in seeking safety in numbers is common sense, but in the atmosphere of the trainingschool as brave in its own way as Kel’s fighting. take your place behind the veil, where you belong! (149)  The first time anyone has turned ‘girls can’t fight’ or ‘shouldn’t fight’ into a statement of sexist philosophy. As a Bazhir, Zahir expresses a militant Islamic version—women should be veiled, an issue when Alanna visited the Bazhir in The Woman Who Rides Like a Man—not essentially different from the Nazi slogan kinder, kuche, kirche (‘children, kitchen, church’) as a woman’s ‘proper’ responsibilities. Lord Wyldon … sentenced all of them (150)  For the first time Kel is not discriminatingly blamed. Chapter 9  Tests Then what is it? (153)  Neal’s determination to help does him credit, but his inability to work out what Kel is doing implies serious deficits in understanding. Not suffering it himself, he cannot see what the hazing is doing to his fellows. “No,” she said flatly. (155)  This speech shows Kel to have a far

Protector of the Small  59 clearer moral sense than anyone else, pupil or staff—simply as a fresh pair of eyes? as a woman? or from Yamani experience? The speech represents her first assertion not of herself but of leadership, moral and physical, and the beginning of a major theme, command. pushing Quinden (156)  It is an irony that Quinden continues as one of Joren’s cronies and Kel’s enemy. He’s too old for her (158)  When Daine becomes Numair’s lover she is only 16–17, while he is 30+ and her teacher, but because the growth of their love is narrated throughout ‘The Immortals’ readers accept it without quite focusing on the (putative) impropriety. into a tree (158)  Numair’s use of a word of power to save Daine is narrated in the climax of Wolf-Speaker. the fights ended (159)  Concerted action has worked, rapidly, as individual action, however brave, could not. your precious Yamanis (161)  More needless racism from Wyldon. a docken (161)  A Scots-Irish and Northern English word for something worthless, from Anglo-Saxon doccan, a broad-leaved plant (usually Rumex obtusifolius L.) that grows as a weed. A clean-shaven face … (164)  Wyldon’s immediate recognition of phobic paralysis is the first real credit he earns as a teacher; that he does not use her batophobia to claim Kel’s unfitness is an interesting pointer to his changing thought. Something happened to her then … (166)  This is not a mystical experience, though the first time may seem so, but a psychic and physical stage of growth and training that happens all at once, as a gestalt—physical and mental preparation fusing into capacity. The examinations … anyone could watch … (168–9)  Though given a particular context by Alanna’s cross-dressed training, this is the basic rationale of ‘public exams’—results are published so the public at large may be assured standards are maintained. He seemed about to tell her something … (171)  Whether Neal’s continued concealment of Alanna’s forcible quarantine is wise and/ or kind remains a puzzle. the art of calculating the amount of supplies … (172)  Logistics—a key element of officer training, for armies always need feeding and re-supplying with ammunition and a thousand necessities. Kel’s edu-

60  Reading Tamora Pierce cation in this becomes a major theme, accompanying command. Chapter 10  The Royal Forest How did you mean it? (177)  Almost the first direct question Wyldon asks Kel—a further indication of his interior dynamic. You don’t know? (177)  Wyldon’s ignorance of Ilane’s action and its consequences is surprising, an indication of how little he understands about Kel and, given his intent to mould all the pages in heart, mind, and spirit, an indictment of his pedagogy. Sparrows clung to her bedroll … (178)  The sparrows devotion to helping Kel as she helped them extends the collective response to hazing and the theme of leadership. a winter’s accumulation of trash (179)  ‘Trash’ has its New World sense of fallen leaves and twigs etc.—‘garden trash’—rather than its usual British sense of household and kitchen waste. Curse those boys! (181)  For the first time an element of sexual (as distinct from gender) consciousness attends Joren’s obsession. Suddenly the bushes erupted … (181)  The sparrows’ spontaneous defence of Kel repays her active kindnesses to them. He said that? … He doesn’t need to. (182)  The simple question and answer make overt what has been clear from Kel’s arrival at the training-school, and what Wyldon does not understand about the effects of his regime on his pupils. I issued an order (183)  Wyldon again acts commendably: Kel has to face her batophobia, and Wyldon has put her with friends while she tries. Kel also finds that she can trust his concern for her: “He always watched …” (186). He made sure the Lioness … (187)  The problem with Neal’s concealment of the data about the Lioness comes to fruition as he blurts out the secret without meaning to. she doesn’t hate me? (188)  The fact that Kel has been allowed to suppose Alanna might hate her should be more difficult for Neal—a serious injustice he could have remedied, that should have been forestalled by informing Kel of the King’s (and Wyldon’s) decree. But why … if he meant to be fair … (188)  Kel again unerringly exposes a central flaw in Wyldon’s ‘thinking’ about her. As with the

Protector of the Small  61 speech about chivalry, her analysis is superior. Lord Raoul … spidren problem (189)  The spidrens return as a threat to end First Test, as the kitten-killing spidren opened it, but the presence of Raoul points to developments in Squire. Chapter 11  Spidren Hunt Captain Flyndan (191)  Flyndan Whiteford reappears in Squire. I am Qasim (191)  This Bazhir returns in Squire. His friendliness towards Kel echoes the kindness offered Daine in Wild Magic, ch. 3, by a “brown” soldier called Hakim. To her surprise … (192)  Kel will be surprised again by the ethos and personalities of the King’s Own. abandoned webs … (193)  An aspect of hunting spidrens that resembles checking the freshness of droppings (a practice Daine and the wolves use at the end of Wolf-Speaker). This part of the forest was old … (194)  The musty setting recalls the Old Forest and Fangorn in The Lord of the Rings, while the business of spider-hunting in a forest echoes Bilbo in The Hobbit. slap web on it … (194)  Spider-webs can be used to staunch a wound, and were before stitching and gluing. Being sterile they cause no infection, and may help prevent it as well as closing the wound. the entire flock sped off (195)  The sparrows make a further quantum leap in intelligence that must be attributed to passive absorption of Daine’s magic and a desire to assist Kel. Raoul … said mournfully (197)  Raoul’s humour and pragmatic seizure of any advantage he can are shown for the first time. Wyldon, interestingly, is sidelined and silent. blazebalm (197)  Tortall’s quasi-magical equivalent of napalm or white phosphorus, used as a terroristic weapon by nationalists in ‘The Daughter of the Lioness’. Pierce’s awareness of incendiary weapons reflects her teenage experience of the Vietnam War. a pocket valley (199)  This is not an established geological term, and from his description it is unclear whether Raoul means simply a small valley or (as some elements suggest) a ‘hanging valley’ (which would imply that Tortall had a glacial period).

62  Reading Tamora Pierce Oops (204)  For once Kel’s discipline fails her, but Neal (his age showing) reminds her, and she passes the reminder right along. the spidren that ate kittens (204)  Reminding readers that we come full circle: these spidrens are properly attacked. He charged the enemy. (205)  Seaver’s discipline fails twice—in failing to look and in charging; Kel’s greater discipline and sense saves his health, if not life. Three steps forward! (205)  Kel instinctively takes command, as she will again, more critically, in Page. a clutch of more than thirty young … (207)  No-one human has ever been able to cohabit with spidrens, and the necessity of killing these young is underscored by their feeding on the body of the woman, but this scene is the only instance in the quartet of Kel participating in wilful cruelty to the young of any species, and her vomiting equates the experience with her visceral batophobic terror. the kind of work knights must do … (208)  Jonathan formally states the dominant theme of the quartet, the evolution of a modern knighthood, of which gender equality is only one aspect. I speak to you as … to one of my own daughters (210)  Wyldon’s unbending, however slight, is welcome, but his sexism is profoundly ingrained—he doesn’t say ‘one of my own children’. Given how poor his care of Kel has been, his assumption of a parental interest is as ironic as it is impertinent. What if you should fall in love? (211)  Another of Wyldon’s (and the world’s) canards—why should professional female soldiers be more distractible than male ones? Implicitly, the supposition is that women are incapable of professionalism. I can stay! (211)  For all her joy, it is wrong that Kel should be put to rejoicing at a permission no other page need earn in the same way.

Protector of the Small  63 2.2 Page dedication  Julia Niederhut Müche was a German fan and friend of Pierce, who died of cancer in her mid-twenties. section-timeline  From this point the novels are sectioned by indications of elapsed time because they no longer have the ‘one-schoolyear-per-book’ form that shapes First Test (and the Harry Potter series). Page covers three years, Squire four. Chapter 1  Page Keladry a storm of argument (4)  Such a storm over Kel’s training is implicit throughout First Test but because she doesn’t think of herself as a cause of disturbance or doing anything to warrant anger it is narratively suppressed, impinging only through Neal. As she matures a wider view begins to emerge. the first known girl page (5)  Alanna was cross-dressed as a page. On that hot day … (8)  Wearing long sleeves on a hot day suggests a reason. Lalasa (8)  As well as very welcome help with an extremely busy life, Lalasa provides female companionship with emotional relief, a female standard against which Kel’s achievements stand out, and someone Kel is personally bound to help. Lalasa’s been … frightened. (9)  Gower’s hesitation suggests euphemism; Lalasa has certainly been beaten, and it seems likely she has been raped, perhaps repeatedly. a bride-price (9)  A bride-price, paid to a bride’s father by the groom or his family, is the opposite of a dowry. The bride-price system has biblical authority (Deut. 22:28–9, Ex. 22:16–17), and a variant form (Mahr) in Islamic marriage-law; it was part of Jewish and some Indian custom, and is still practised in parts of Asia. Given Tortall’s correspondence with Europe one might expect a dowrysystem, and it is interesting Pierce chose otherwise—but the matter has never been explored in Tortallan terms. It’s the way of the world (10)  A ‘truth’ Kel does not accept and learns to fight, but a measure of how corrupt Tortall remains, and a significant extension of the feminist theme. Kel is not the only woman

64  Reading Tamora Pierce to face prejudice, and her example is an inspiration. Your family is in great favour … (10)  This is implicit in First Test, and becomes explicit as the narrative horizon broadens with Kel’s mature understanding that she has some political leverage. Your word on it? (11)  It is a sign of how Kel is seen that Gower takes her word as oath. Few 11-year-olds command such trust. You too will report … (12)  An indication that Wyldon’s position has shifted: Kel is no longer singled out for punishment. a widow’s peak (13)  A descending, v-shaped point in the middle of the hairline—an inherited, dominant feature. (It used to be thought a sign that a woman would outlive her husband, and is also used of the broader v-shaped hairline sometimes produced by receding hair.) in his second year (13)  The irregular start to Neal’s page-service, a half-year before Kel and her other yearmates, does not count. TP adds: “Neal doesn’t get credit for that previous time because he was catching up with the training he would have been doing if he had planned to be a page all along rather than a mage/healer. He had to brush up on basic horsemanship, archery, hunting, etc..” The Girl (13)  Not ‘the Lump’—another interesting sign, as Kel acquires a more neutral nickname. Chapter 2  Adjustments a muzzle shaped like a wedge (18)  Plainly a mongrel, the dog sounds to have a fair share of pitbull or equivalent in its ancestry. TP adds: “If I could have had English bull terriers, that is what Jump would be.” that old man (20)  Numair is only in his 30s, but Daine is only 17. Rulers are seldom nice people (21)  With Jonathan as love-interest and best friend, Pierce could hardly concede in ‘Song of the Lioness’ that he wasn’t nice—but there is no bar to Kel’s critique of him, underlined by Alanna’s disgust with his sexist temporising. a servant is a privilege … (21)  Though strict, this speech is not (granting the fact of servants and the laws of Tortall) unreasonable. Sexism shows in Wyldon’s stress on lewd behaviour, but a willing bed-hopper could cause real trouble in the school; he would do better

Protector of the Small  65 to speak to Joren, Vinson, and co. about the rights of servants, duties of masters, and lewd or quarrelsome conduct. Thoroughly miserable and determined to hide it … (22)  This scene and subsequent events with Jump play out at greater amplitude the scene between Kel, Daine, and Peachblossom in First Test, ch. 5. Animals choose Kel, as well as loving Daine. A young dragon … (23)  Daine acquired the orphaned Skysong at the end of Wild Magic, and her guardianship of the kit was confirmed by the dragon community in The Realms of the Gods. Name him as you like … (24)  Kel errs—the name is not Daine’s to withhold or bestow, but Jump’s to tell. Daine … thought well of her! (24)  Kel is again confronted with her good reputation, with which she will increasingly have to deal. Owen of Jesslaw (26)  Given Owen’s character, ‘Jesslaw’ may be a mild joke. ‘Jesses’ are thin leather straps used in falconry to tether a hunting bird, and there is a back-formed verb, ‘to jess’ a bird, so ‘Jesslaw’ might mean ‘leashed by law’. your brawling ways (28)  Wyldon still fails to understand his role in encouraging Joren’s brawling ways, and continues to ignore the basic unfairness of Kel fighting multiple opponents. But they started it … (29)  Kel has (necessarily) bought in to the code of silence—and to be fair to Wyldon it is not obvious what he would now do if Owen (say) were to lay out for him the hot truth of the anti-hazing fights. as a team (30)  Neal is right—and Kel could have gone for help rather than pitching straight in. if you heal something he can see (30)  This pushes further an issue running through First Test, Wyldon’s exaggerated belief in the virtue of pain. That pages should pay in some physical measure for injuries wilfully incurred is fair—pain teaches—but a blanket ban on healing is a long step too far. the package … (33)  It matters that not all the anonymous gifts are expensive (though relieving the burden on Kel’s parents, about which she worries, is helpful). They show thoughtful care, not only wealth. I wish I knew who you were (34)  Kel’s inability to guess the identity of her benefactor is not unreasonable, but becomes a measure of

66  Reading Tamora Pierce her humility and lack of insight—the riddle isn’t insoluble. Chapter 3  Brawl the broom sweeps clean (37)  A very Yamani (Japanese) name for a fighting move—though ‘sweep’ has technical meanings in fencing and several martial arts. nobles don’t mess with each other’s servants (39)  This simple statement announces a major plot-line, and sheds an unpleasantly revealing light on Tortallan society. Implicitly, a servant not attached to a noble is fair game—the worst aspect of corrupted feudalism. That’s silly (39)  Readers know Daine to be nice; but how would you feel about someone you knew could speak to and turn into any animal or bird at will? And speak to any Immortal? Kel later discovers how far some go to avoid Numair, for the same reasons. so, so mouse-ish. Please, Goddess. (40)  It is telling that Kel finds meekness far harder to deal with than aggression. Joren thrust his elbow back … (41)  The fundamental failure of courtesy in Joren’s failure of chivalry grows ever more blatant. I am a summer lake … (42)  The expansion of Kel’s mantra, from ‘I am stone’ to ‘I am a lake’ to this, more detailed, manipulated image provides insight into how she effects her emotional self-control; the technique is a real and useful discipline. Kel’s attention wavered (42)  This suggests Jump could be a weakness for Kel, a distraction—but that is not borne out, and the point is that she is still being surprised by Jump, and permits surprise to distract; the cure is worked out with maturity, and explicitly in Squire as a military necessity. fluttering over the girl? (43)  Wyldon’s sour sexism returns, but he recognises that the bruise is real, pairing Kel with Prosper. because you can have her whenever you want? ff. (46– 51)  Garvey’s sexual jibe is another marker of Kel’s (and the quartet’s) growing maturity and range. The insults are verisimilar—boys especially, in homophobic cultures, have a stage of acute sensitivity to innuendo about orientation—and while Kel’s self-image remains pre-pubescent, she has to begin coming to terms with her gender and

Protector of the Small  67 social relations. Neal has a strategic point, whether Kel likes it or not (which is probably why she so unusually loses her cool); but if he is “surprised [Joren and co.] didn’t try [sexual insult] last year”, Pierce wouldn’t be—sexual themes have marketing implications, and the discussion of sexuality in the narrative is implicitly didactic. Omission of overt sexual issues from First Test save one minatory supposition from Wyldon is consistent with a younger age, but they could not reasonably have been omitted for much longer. These animals … were the right tools for this mess. (47)  Pierce would have seen from the 1960s onwards why mounted police are used for crowd control at demonstrations and marches. shaking her head. (51)  Rightly: for all her shouting she did not win the argument. Chapter 4  Woman Talk Bread and water suppers (52)  The general harshness of the school is again revealed. The pages are past the age when a restricted diet could do permanent damage, but it is no way to feed adolescents on a punishing physical schedule, and over more than a few days would be measurably harmful. Only thought about smacking some life into her … (55)  Kel doesn’t realise Lalasa knows the look of such thinking, and is used to people who put thought into action; she has been taught timidity. Lalasa couldn’t be easy around her (56)  Kel mostly makes good sense, and Lalasa will learn—but Kel is responding to Lalasa’s deference as servant to noble, and (as much as her relatively newly ennobled parents) must in Tortall learn to deal with that. Lalasa cupped her own breasts … (57)  The sexual theme is extended by Kel’s puberty, and the importance of Lalasa as a friend grows with her provision of the maternal advice Kel needs and lacks. Most girls don’t want to be knights. (58)  The issue of adult femininity and knighthood being mutually exclusive returns with puberty, echoing Ilane’s concern (First Test, ch. 1) that Kel regards knightly vocation as a consolation for (supposed) unmarriageability. People who believe servants will steal … (60)  An applied version

68  Reading Tamora Pierce of an old wisdom, that one gets the x one deserves; in the context of the quartet it resonates widely with the many ways in which Kel herself refuses to be what people expect her to be. a spirit bag (60)  It is puzzling that no more is ever said about this, even by Joren and co. in mockery. She glanced around … (61)  Kel begins self-consciously to observe female modesty. that crazy Mindelan girl … a mad page (61)  Another exterior view of Kel revealing a smallness of mind. trapping the maid between his arms (61)  Though often valorised in romance novels as ‘manly’ and ‘forceful’, this is the behaviour of a would-be rapist. It didn’t matter … (61)  Whether aware of it or not, Kel is learning to wield authority—command in a social rather than military key. Lalasa’s eyes were frantic. (62)  She is unused to being believed, used to being blamed and beaten. The bad models of sexuality Kel sees through Lalasa, the worst male servants, and some fellow-pages help to make her own suppression of sexuality more plausible. holds that will help discourage … ff. (63–4)  This scene, a practical response empowering Lalasa, frames Kel feeling the first flicker of her crush on Neal—whom the demonstration enables her to touch. The scene echoes one between Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane in the great crime novel Gaudy Night (1935) by Dorothy L. Sayers. Fear … means you’re paying attention (65)  Not necessarily, alas, and only if you can control your fear. she just … on horseback yet (66)  Later cavalry, whether equipped with a pole-arm (lancers) or not (hussars, dragoons), tyically used curved swords (hangars, sabres), against scattering infantry, not other riders, but mediaeval knights used straight swords. TP adds: “Destriers had a greater height than [ordinary] cavalry mounts, requiring blades with more reach than a saber. You see the difference in the illustrations of battle at the time: European knights fight with straight swords, while the horsemen of Islam fight on smaller, more nimble mounts, with curved blades.” Wyldon … cold manner (66)  In this description Wyldon seems like a type of warrior-administrator found in the Raj in India, equipped

Protector of the Small  69 with what was called the ‘British manner’—an infinite, patrician detachment, observing courtesy while maintaining distance. The link is intriguing because the impression was often misleading, the coldness more trained inability to show feelings than failure of feeling; it nevertheless became a terrible political liability, as Wyldon’s coldness is a pedagogical liability. Chapter 5  Midwinter Service Kel checked her appearance in the mirror (67)  Kel’s femininity continues to develop, though she still thinks of herself as checking her page’s (rather than female) appearance. her sisters had been distant and cool (68)  The behaviour of her sisters is another complication for Kel in working out how training and knighthood square with social womanhood. They’re still not letting her talk to you (69)  The rationale for the continued bar against contact between Kel and Alanna gets thinner all the time, and is cruel in ways men enforcing it utterly fail to see. It’s not decent (73)  The public imputation to Kel of promiscuity, as if a girl training among boys must be their sexual partner, will recur (as it still does, even now, in real life, of women in predominantly masculine professions, including the military). The scene also shows female opposition (as with Kel’s sisters) to feminist trail-blazing—the guild-wife has internalised Tortall’s sexist limitations on female activity. Serving at banquets … (75)  It is surprising, with so many skilled observers and mages in the hall, that no-one but Kel notices Joren and co.’s responsibility for accidents. If she sees us on friendly terms with you … (77)  This betrayal of Kel by her sisters is unsurprising, given what has been said about them, but appalling in its naked advance of social snobbery and propriety over the basic bond of blood and family. to marry an ox (77)  Doanna harks back to Kel’s old nickname, ‘the Cow’, for her relative size and trained muscle. who claims to be noble (78)  This time Doanna foolishly compounds Kel’s lack of conventional femininity with the newness of the

70  Reading Tamora Pierce family’s noble status—but knighthood is hardly incompatible with nobility, and if Kel’s nobility is invalid, so is her sisters’. If we … as them (80)  Kel’s logic is heartfelt but unpersuasive— she assumes the only option is fighting physically. The lesson of this encounter repeats that of the anti-hazing patrols, that a team can do more than any individual—and it is Kel who sees that (81). Ethical Contrasts of the North and South (84)  The north–south Tortallan contrast, especially in Lady Knight, has resonances in both UK and US culture, though somewhat differently in each case (and with a number of reversals). Both sets of resonances are variously drawn upon. TP adds: “I borrow Scots roots for far northern and northeastern Tortall because some of my ancestors are Scots.” It’s not … look at you (85)  Kel’s denial of feelings and anxiety about being unattractive are intertwined. her razor-sharp Yamani throwing stars (85)  As used by ninjas; the Japanese name is shuriken. As with Kel’s ‘spirit bag’, it is puzzling her shuriken are not mentioned more often, and find no place in the combat scenes. I don’t know why (87)  Kel’s modesty and Figure 6. A Japanese shuriken. humility do her credit, but she needs to use common sense and understand her effect on others—hard to swallow as praise and liking may be. section-timeline  The speed and compression of the narrative begin to increase, and shorter chapters become common. Chapter 6  More Changes to act as the Lioness’[s] squire … (92)  This dream and its problem recur strongly at the beginning of Squire. a trickle of wetness … (94)  It seems unfair of Pierce to have Kel begin her first menses on the day of her examinations—but, beyond artful coincidence, stress may act as a catalyst. monthlies (95)  Pierce’s usual term for menstrual periods. It’s the Goddess’s mark on us (95)  While maintaining a religious connection Pierce avoids Christian rhetoric of menstruation as ‘the

Protector of the Small  71 curse’, linked through the Fall to painful childbirth. Chapter 7  Hill Country This fellow’s been hanging about (104)  Wyldon is far more at ease with animals (especially dogs and horses) than with people. Jump raced into the fray (107)  While ‘hanging about’ the training-yard Jump (touched by Daine’s magic) has been learning; he is so effective because he fights intelligently, and sparrows follow his lead. They had to act (107)  For the first time Kel’s capacity to command comes fully to the fore, driven by necessity. From their lessons in visible magic (109)  Lessons that have only been briefly mentioned, but are now needed. All her thought came in a moment (111)  Strange as it may seem, with good commanders this does seem often to be what happens—a gestalt of understanding and planning that makes maximal use of all advantages and resources within tactical parameters. Within that plan Kel is ruthless about her batophobia and exceeds her best previous attempts to conquer it, but is still handicapped by it. Neal … archery (111)  Neal’s magic will be needed if—when— someone is injured; Kel is conserving resources. She felt rather than saw … (112)  This is also an ability induced by hard, regular, and repetitive training; in the ‘Circle’ novels it is deliberately sought in ‘fighting meditation’. a short, curved sword (112)  Cavalry hangars and sabres are designed for use down- and backwards, into the face of a foot-soldier. she drove her spear through his belly (112)  Kel kills her first man, much as she saw her mother kill a Scanran when she was 5 or so. There was red … tiny claws (115)  For those who have read Daphne du Maurier’s story or seen Alfred Hitchcock’s film of it, this is an image straight out of The Birds. Most people … healer (116)  Neal forgets a famous knight-healer— Alanna—and his notion of the callings as mutually exclusive echoes Kel’s beliefs about femininity and knighthood. Sorry, Neal. (116)  Kel is not wrong that Neal should train more, but this is no time to scold him; Kel makes a mistake but recognises

72  Reading Tamora Pierce and rectifies it very quickly—one mark of a good commander. Owen … the eye (117)  Owen also becomes a killer—as soldiers are. now you … woman’s work (117)  A sharp reminder of Wyldon’s sour sexism, which retreats as the narrative speeds—but the pages’ collective response, for the first time effectively slapping sexism down, marks a major turning-point and forces Wyldon to see Kel’s qualities not simply as a proto-knight but as a commander. The pages have been blooded against adults, and assert themselves against an adult in authority as never before. twelfth birthday (119)  Like menses/exams a forced coincidence— but a reminder of how capable Kel is, to have done as she has. “Never a bit,” he said cheerfully (120)  Kel is more bothered by the killing than Owen because she is more imaginative and lacks his personal grudge against bandits, not because of their genders. Issues of post-traumatic stress disorder arise potently in Lady Knight, but in Tortall killing happens, and many young people are used to it. Chapter 8  Messages she also saw the poverty (121)  One cannot condone banditry—the men who attacked the pages would have killed or enslaved them— but Pierce is careful to show causes of crime as well as lawkeeping. Kel’s parents … had written (122)  Kel sees amazingly little of her parents, even for one at boarding school, contributing powerfully to her isolation; one would think an event like the ‘Battle of the Cliff’ would warrant communication by Wyldon with her parents. The importance, when men like Wyldon are in charge, of a network between women is sharply apparent. a charm to ward off pregnancy (123)  Ilane’s practical advice and acceptance of Kel’s right to become sexually active are striking, and recur in Squire when Kel is closer to wanting to do so. Pierce sets herself at odds with most US religious thought (and, as Kel is presently 12, with most Western legal jurisdictions). with a happy sigh (123)  Kel’s emotional state and feelings about the training school have changed markedly over her second year.

Protector of the Small  73 Mithros’ spear (124)  Owen’s oath is ironic, given what follows. melons (125)  Pierce seems to approve fruit–breast comparisons; Beka Cooper in ‘The Provost’s Dog’ refers to her own as ‘peaches’. someone … Wyldon’s list (126)  Kel’s political awareness and tact are extending but it’s probably a while since she was in fact bottom of Wyldon’s list. Lalasa’s smile had a bitter edge. (126)  A reminder of Lalasa’s experiences; she, far more than the pages, knows how predatory the sexualised world can be. scrying (127)  Pierce’s standard word for magical searching/seeing, of past, present, or future; it is also used in the ‘Circle’ books. Balor’s Needle (127)  The name (not the building) recalls Cleopatra’s Needle, any of a trio of tall, red granite, Ancient Egyptian obelisks that stand in London, Paris, and New York. All of the inner tower was hollow (128)  Pierce seems to like such structures; a larger one features in Shatterglass, and this one becomes the focus of Kel’s batophobia, setting up the climax of Page. Little of it good, I’ll bet (129)  Kel would loose that bet, and clearly still does not realise what others see in her. That’s Gary, though (130)  Jonathan and Gareth the Younger were pages together (in ‘Song of the Lioness’), hence the familiarity. Page Keladry … Are you willing? (131)  Jonathan’s speech does him credit, in kindness and maintaining propriety about controlling spells—circumstances are not urgent enough to warrant otherwise, but there have surely been kings who would not have bothered. I’m really finished now (132)  Kel shows herself to be still thinking in absolute terms (ignoring what she has just said about learning to overcome batophobia) and misjudging people (though she has excuses). Her rapid understanding of fear as a command weakness, on the other hand, is impressive. I would like to hear the story (134)  The ‘Battle of the Cliff’ is beginning to have repercussions, as it should; half-a-dozen pages easily could, and without Kel probably would, have been killed. You almost get used to surprises (135)  An old, old army line. Why assign … years ago? (136)  A question much asked in naval studies, after invention of the engine, but not all tactics change with

74  Reading Tamora Pierce technology. Command can always be studied, and army tactics are less affected than naval ones, for while means of transport and killing may change, basic requirements of battle and logistics don’t. Tactics and strategy (138)  Tactics are small-scale decisions, within a given battle about how to fight it, while strategy involves the larger picture that has brought about the battle. Failure to grasp the distinction commonly leads to winning the battle but losing the war. once the battle starts, everything goes wrong (138)  A sharpened version of a famous dictum by Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (1800– 91), a great Prussian strategist: No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. It’s corollary (as Kel is beginning to discover) is that War is a matter of expedients. Port Legann (139)  The battle is narrated in The Realms of the Gods. the next thing she knew … (139)  As when Jump distracted her, Kel’s vulnerability comes from losing concentration. Some nobles would kill a servant (140)  An ugly truth—but presumably such nobles would not spar with a maid. From a teaching point of view, Kel should perhaps have let Lalasa throw her before. section-timeline  Winter counts as the first season of the Tortallan year, so ‘Autumn 454–Winter 455’ indicates a period of 3–5 months. Chapter 9  Adjustments The repeated title indicates a spiral structure, as Kel’s third year of training gets fully under way. Lord Wyldon turned creative (145)  Not before time—but it is important to see Wyldon can think and change, once it is borne in on him that he must. you will be leading peasants (145)  Wyldon is scornful in a very aristocratic manner; as Kel will discover in Lady Knight, many ‘peasants’ know far more than he supposes. broadheads and needleheads … (147)  See fig. 7. You use weighted practice weapons (151)  Wyldon’s ignorance of Joren’s ‘prank’ with

Figure 7 Replica mediaeval arrowheads. Picture credit: Paul Hermans.

Protector of the Small  75 lead-weighting clears him of one kind of meanness, but underscores how little control he had over Kel’s treatment by Joren’s clique. at Nond House (152)  Adalia has been trawling for a Nond scion. you would get half (152)  As Lalasa is in Kel’s full-time employ it is not unreasonable for Kel to receive a portion of any additional wages she earns (though half is a lot). Corporations and some universities have similar attitudes to outside consultancy by employees. Just wait … suchlike (154)  Despite Kel’s objections Lalasa has a point: aristocratic income has to come from somewhere. Raoul (155)  Raoul’s previous appearances have been fleeting; this ‘chance meeting’ signals Kel’s growing importance to him. as he might … age (156)  Respect for Kel in conversation is a characteristic that stands out beside Wyldon’s taciturn sourness. He didn’t teach you youngsters … (156)  Raoul puts it kindly. Wyldon failed to teach the pages how to manage command, but his rigidity in training went far beyond that. Had Kel had her glaive at the ‘Battle of the Cliff’, and been training with it properly, she would have been even more effective—as all the pages could have been. knights used to operate alone (156)  Raoul’s critique parallels Pierce’s revisioning of ‘Song of the Lioness’; for Kel and her yearmates, dreams of chivalry must find a new way in wartime service rather than lone adventuring. Raoul begins an education in command. Didn’t anybody … sieve? (158)  No—and Kel didn’t know, despite residence in the Yamani palace. Her lack of intimate royal experience distances Kel from Alanna and others, and extends her ordinariness. jerked beef (158)  Or ‘jerky’, meat cut into strips, marinated, and dried at low heat, or salted and sun-dried. It keeps without refrigeration and is a common trail-food (Raoul probably carries some at all times). ‘Jerky’ is from Quechua charqui, to burn meat, and ‘to jerk’, ‘jerked’ are back-formations; Caribbean ‘jerking’ is different, a marinade of chillies followed by chargrilling. That’s a nice man (159)  Raoul’s niceness—in part a complete lack of sexism—is important to offset the example of Wyldon, and the spectre of the kind of men Lalasa fears.

76  Reading Tamora Pierce Chapter 10  The Squires Return But she is a girl … (161)  The scene with Cleon extends the theme of developing sexuality, and marks a change in Cleon’s awareness that will make him Kel’s first acknowledged boyfriend. You look—fit, Kel. (162)  Cleon presumably intends a slang sense, ‘sexually attractive’, but Kel understands only the athletic sense. TP adds: “He’s trying to give her a compliment that won’t make her uncomfortable—one that she’ll appreciate.” Joren … ice prince (163)  Kel is of course right to distrust Joren’s gambit—he has learned cunning, not repentance. Iden and Warric … (164)  Themes of command and leadership flower again with Kel’s promotion by juniors to the status of teacher, extending her tuition of Lalasa—who also begins to teach, passing on what Kel has taught (167). five feet seven … twelve (168)  This puts Kel 2–3” above the present average height of adult white, African-, and Mexican-American women in the US, among the highest in the world. brocade (169)  A rich fabric that appears to have embroidered decoration. moonstones (169)  Beautiful semi-precious gems. They are formed of potassium aluminium silicate; colours include pink, green, and blue. to a daffodil (172)  Neal’s choice of mockery echoes his romantic and poetic tendencies, and make fun of Wordsworth’s famous lines about daffodils in ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’. gloomy northern castles (173)  Another reference to a north– south Tortallan divide, harking back to Uline’s reading: see Ethical Contrasts of the North and South (84). the deadly core of a Sirajit sword (173)  Sirajit is a country absorbed by the Carthaki empire; the idea of such sword-lore recalls both Japanese (Yamani) excellence in sword-making and Damascus steel. Cría (173)  The capital of Galla, north-west of Tortall. Once again … (174)  The fact that the narrative has jumped over several rounds of anonymous gifts, catching up retrospectively, is

Protector of the Small  77 another telling indication of accelerating pace. a pair of large saddle-bags (174)  The latest gift points forward to Kel journeying beyond the training school. she would have to face it herself (175)  A clear sign of Kel’s internalisation of Wyldon’s discipline: for all her courage and determination she wasn’t able to overcome batophobia on her own. six of the fourth-year pages … (176)  Kel, only a third-year, has in jousting already gone beyond many in the year ahead. exercises in city fighting (177)  Though only sketched, these are modelled on real training methods for urban warfare. Yancen, Balduin, and Neal (177)  Yancen and Balduin are fourthyears, Neal significantly older, making Kel’s five-against-seven victory even more impressive. a merlon (177)  On a crenellated wall, the openings are embrasures or crenels, and the sections of wall that stick up are merlons. the next time I’m supposed to help … (178)  In retrospect this is bitterly ironic; Kel says all too much to Joren. Did someone tell you … ? (178)  Joren, however unpleasant, is not stupid, and knows very well what the cruel will have said to Kel. All women … the Lioness … (179)  Joren’s sexist error is also class-blindness, projecting as universal values of leisured, aristocratic girls. His account of Alanna’s marriage and grotesque misprision of George Cooper are also, for readers of ‘Song of the Lioness’ and ‘The Immortals’, blazing examples of misunderstanding. section-timeline  The single chapter in this section marks a further acceleration. In an ironic way the spring season corresponds with the sexual sap that now rises more forcefully. Chapter 11  Unpleasant Realities wench (184)  A pejorative term, from Old English wancol, ‘unsteady, fickle, weak’, via Middle English wenchel, ‘a child’, that came through application to maidservants powerless to resist rape to connote a ‘loose’ woman. Both sexism and class are indicted. someone growled (184)  A page whose voice has broken. They all … extra coin (185)  The pejorative ‘wench’ is reinforced

78  Reading Tamora Pierce by association with Vinson’s age-old rapist’s claim and assumption that to be a common-born female servant is to be a prostitute. no better than she should be (187)  A phrase almost invariably applied to women that was in use by the early eighteenth century: in Motteux’s 1712 translation of Cervantes’s Don Quixote a shepherd thinks his sweetheart “no better than she should be, a little loose in the hilts, and free of her behaviour” (Bk III, ch. 20). The irony is bitter, for Lalasa is sexually experienced only because she has been abused, so one rape is made the justification for another. Please don’t tell. … ff. (186–92)  The chapter-title really begins to bite, for the unpleasant realities are not only Vinson’s capacity to rape but the social network that empowers and protects him. It is understandable that Kel allows herself to be swayed by Lalasa’s fears (echoing women who fail to report rape) but a grave mistake, as Kel knows in her heart, that she will bitterly regret. Assuming Vinson tells Joren what happened, the episode supplies him with a further element of his plan to harm Kel. Even the priestesses … (187)  Corruption is possible but elsewhere guardswomen maintained by temples are not easily intimidated. I’ll risk making an enemy of the pack that whelped you (189)  A new metaphor for Kel, combining politics with vivid derogation. When my bro—A man … Conal … (190–1)  This inset-exchange within the Vinson episode deepens the parallelism of Kel and Lalasa, revealing both as psychically injured by brothers, but contrasts parental responses. You are an education (194)  Though Neal speaks half-jestingly he is profoundly right, uttering the quartet’s central design: as in ‘The Circle Opens’, education received is passed on with notable rapidity. section-timeline  An entire year is now to be covered in one bound, as the first chapter-title ironically underlines. Chapter 12  Vanishing Year Summer … tame (199)  Conveniently, for an accelerating narrative. Dunlath … (199)  The events involving Maura are narrated in WolfSpeaker. The wolves are not just smarter from proximity to Daine,

Protector of the Small  79 but far more mentally enlarged, magically by Daine and divinely by exposure to the First Wolf and Wolfen. Short Snout (200)  This wolf’s fondness for human food (including cheese) and sense of humour are running jokes in Wolf-Speaker. I wish I could … (201)  The cost of Peachblossom’s purchase and upkeep, and that he is only loaned, are more unpleasant realities. her true temper … (202)  Though rarely explicitly, the idea of Peachblossom and Kel’s other animals as aspects of one thing, symbolic parts of her, underpins emergence as a commander. It also helps make her phenomenal emotional control plausible, in that she needn’t display temper because Peachblossom does it for her. elk and wolfhounds (202)  Large hunting dogs: Norwegian elkhounds are very muscular, while Irish wolfhounds are the tallest breed, reported by the Romans as capable of pulling down horses in battle. (Wolfhounds feature in Wolf-Speaker, and the final volume of ‘The Provost’s Dog’, Mastiff, was originally Elkhound.) The news that Wyldon breeds fine dogs is an important step in Figure 8 Norwegian elkhound. humanising him for Kel and readers. Picture credit: Sannse. a palace … destrier (203)  A distinction of increasing emotional importance to Kel and Owen, and a further interrogation by Pierce of what ‘modern chivalry’ might have to be. The idea of desk-knights points to the distinction between knighthood as a form of military training and a necessary social step in preparation for royal or regional governance. Port Caynn (203)  Not shown on maps published with the quartet, Port Caynn is close to Corus, at the mouth of Figure 9 Irish wolfhound pair. the River Olorun. late on such a day (204)  A prophetic utterance, setting up the novel’s climax. To everyone’s astonishment … (205)  Not because they doubt

80  Reading Tamora Pierce Kel’s fitness, but because they expect Wyldon to display his prejudice. Quinden sneered at her (208)  Quinden does not seem to realise that his actions would, in a real attack, be treasonable. training villagers in self-defence (208)  Another sign of the distinction between newer knights and aristocrats like the Mindelans, and Wyldon, who thinks of peasants as martially incapable. a beautifully made longsword (208)  Even given the rising pace it is striking this gift is dealt with so summarily. to give commoners … nobles (209–10)  An issue raised by Vinson’s treatment of Lalasa that becomes steadily more important . Chapter 13  The Test rough clothes … (211)  See last annotation: the close repetition of ‘commoners’ ties these men to the issue, but their actions open another aspect of the debate. the dog was acting strangely (212)  A sign Kel should heed … pygmy marmosets (213)  Daine befriended one in The Emperor Mage. King Jasson’s battles (213)  Jasson was Jonathan’s grandfather, responsible for substantial enlargement of Tortall through conquest. Eat something … You’ll need it (214)  The pre-test nerves and the topos of necessary eating despite nausea recur before battles, and the need to eat is a military wisdom. Ragnal of Darroch (215)  The only mention of this page. Look for them, those who can be spared? (218)  Kel’s combat and command brain begins to function, utilising all available resources. Why kidnap a maid? / To hurt her mistress. (219)  This coldhearted equation connects the legal standing of servants to the grotesque failure of chivalry involved in seeking to harm one person by harming another. She always thought Kel was more important … (219)  But it is a central tenet of noblesse oblige, the obligation of nobility, that one’s servants’ welfare comes before one’s own, an idea that in chivalry transfers to a knight’s duty to care for his horse before himself. Tell the palace guard … (221)  Neal is right the guard should be

Protector of the Small  81 told, but naïf in his estimate of what Lalasa’s kidnappers might do, and wrong to think Kel could absolve herself by telling others. repeat a year … all four (221)  Though impressing punctuality on pages, Wyldon’s rule makes little sense. Tortall needs trained knights: what would be served by forcing such delay in sitting tests? They win twice then (221)  Kel probably misestimates what would happen were Neal to help her, but this is a spasm of her desire to do things alone, despite repeated evidence of the strength in numbers. The queen’s gown … (223)  A striking instance of Kel’s combined command and kindness; Tian’s passionate thanks are justified. the catacombs (224)  Any set of underground passageways and storage rooms, not necessarily (but often) for human burials. her shrill and frightened self (225)  Despite which, she keeps going: courage is not the absence of fear, but not being ruled by fear. Balor’s Needle (226)  Inevitably: the one weakness of Kel’s that the ‘big tests’ could not have exposed is batophobia; the Needle, where she failed before, artistically has to be her real test. Chapter 14  Needle I can tell someone … (227)  It would be ‘right’ to get help, but Kel’s inner logic of fears and determination locks her into solo action. for just anyone (227)  Last time Kel was here the King was present. Kel chafed one wrist … (229)  People who have had hands or feet bound for any length of time experience severe pain from returning circulation when they are untied. They would have killed him (230)  The men’s willingness to kick an animal to death is emblematic of moral degradation, and plays into the theme of animal intelligence, worth, and action. how long until someone comes (232)  Locked into her self-test, Kel isn’t thinking clearly; she could send sparrows, and does (239). The wind was the worst (235)  Pierce has a feel for the danger of wind: the Circle books are full of it, and Daine and Numair are troubled by winds crossing a rope bridge in The Realms of the Gods. infections … dirty iron (238)  Most obviously, tetanus (lockjaw), for which vaccination is now normative.

82  Reading Tamora Pierce Lalasa was talking … Jump began to wash … (238)  Kel draws strength from companions in need, as they draw from her in theirs. Kel nodded absently (240)  In The Emperor Mage a similar kind of absent-mindedness overcomes Daine in taking revenge, when she is told (mistakenly) that Numair is dead; Kel’s distraction here may be not only post-traumatic, but a sign of intense rage. Chapter 15  Consequences she wasn’t too clear … (241)  Kel is only thirteen, and in shock: by US or UK legal standards her treatment by the watch is a disgrace. cornered by … palace dogs (242)  Lalasa’s threat to her kidnappers comes true, without Daine’s intervention; the fantasy of animals being able to take collective action against humans who injure one of their kind is for Pierce a sharply moral vision. It’s the training … (243)  It is—but as Kel distinguishes more-orless acceptable routine hazing from sadistic bullying, Wyldon needs to distinguish necessary realism in training from the additional stress he placed on Kel (forcing her to practice glaive-work in private time, for example). what manner … so infamous a thing (244)  Given the “odd, almost gentle” tone one must suppose Wyldon’s outrage sincere— but how naïf he is is painfully apparent. explanations are excuses (245)  A typical saw of military and some political mind-sets, but Kel’s belief it should apply here is indicative of warped values Wyldon has induced. I would you had been born a boy (245)  Even in a moment of warm praise for Kel Wyldon cannot be other than sexist. Females always do (246)  Vinsen has personal knowledge that neither Lalasa nor Kel crumble, so one must add sheer stupidity to his charge-sheet. Turomot of Wellam (248)  The old Lord Magistrate plays an occasional but important role from this point until the end of Squire, part of the theme of legality. Evidence has been given, confession made. ff. (248–9)  Besides a glimpse into Tortall’s legal system Turomot’s speech reveals inter-

Protector of the Small  83 esting priorities. He deals with Kel’s examination allowance first because it was the object of the crime to prevent her qualification … There was no reason … (249)  … but on that point Turomot is wrong, and reveals his own rigidity and limitations. Can’t they make up their minds? (250)  A wonderfully fair question: Kel is quite right, for the evil of the attack on Lalasa has roots in Wyldon’s sexist imposition of a probationary year. It may be a little while … (251)  This sets up Squire. a bill of sale (252)  The gift of Peachblossom is a fitting emotional climax, and a necessary one: the big gelding will become a dominant daily presence in Kel’s life as a squire.

84  Reading Tamora Pierce 2.3 Squire dedication  Gloria Barbizan is Pierce’s best friend’s mother, the daughter of a Spanish anarchist and the only woman in the New York City fruit importing industry from the 1970s–90s; Thayet is based on her daughter. Dorothy Olding (1910–97) was a well-known literary agent in New York, head of Harold Ober Associates when Pierce worked there. section-timeline  While seasons and years are still given, locations are now added, with the regnal formula (‘in the xth year of the reign of…’), to mark the expansion of Kel’s world from the relative privacy of the school to the work of the realm. Chapter 1  Knight Master five feet nine (3)  Kel has grown a further two inches in a little over a year; see Page five feet seven … (168). the Chapel of the Ordeal ff. (4–7)  Kel’s regular visits to test herself against the door of the Chamber, and the visions it sends, structurally replace her batophobia, burned out by Balor’s Needle. gold candlesticks … sun disc … (4)  The austere chapel is reminiscent of those in Arthurian legends; the Chamber of the Ordeal makes it like the Chapel Perilous. Mithros is inspired by the Roman god Mithras, but it does not resemble excavated Roman Mithraeums. It looks … hammers them (5)  This is the standard account of what the Chamber does, but as Kel will discover there is considerably more to it. Here the line sets up the vision of Kel as squire to a palace knight. See Page a palace … destrier (203). I’ll do my duty (6)  The sequence of Kel’s responses to visions is as important as the visions themselves, always of what she most fears—powerlessness. combat … research … scribe-work (7)  Clear as Kel’s opposition seems, she discovers throughout Squire and Lady Knight it is not so; armies and armed camps run on paperwork as much as food. Even her friend Neal … (7)  Kel is forgetting (among other things) that Neal’s father is a duke, so social interest in him is to be expected. Alanna the Lioness (8)  The last shard of Kel’s dream of imitating

Protector of the Small  85 Alanna; she has already taken a quite different course. no man’s friend (9)  For the first time the attachment of Peachblossom to Kel as a woman acquires an open hint of the legendary, the female knight achieving what a man could not. The trope appears with Britomart in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, but the most famous example is probably a modern one, the killing of the Lord of the Nazgul by Éowyn, in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. how well you two work together (11)  The agreement between Kel and Peachblossom makes them far more efficient than a knight spurring a horse to obedience can hope to be. Chaos (13)  The word has a capital C because the Tortallan pantheon includes Uusoae, Queen of Chaos. Enlightenment … like fireworks (14)  It is a measure of Wyldon’s narrowness that only now does Kel meet anyone who thinks of her Yamani knowledge as an advantage. Onua (15)  Onua Chamtong, a K’miri friend of Queen Thayet, is a principal character in Wild Magic, and has horse-magic. three hundred men in the King’s Own (15)  The King’s Own are a hybrid invention, feudal in sub-aristocratic composition but strongly professionalised as a standing rapid reaction force. (Historically, professional standing armies are well post-feudal.) Hoshi … Yamani for ‘star’ (17)  And a Japanese word for ‘star’. She’s a healer (18)  This is one aspect of the deal that makes good sense; the fears about Alanna ‘influencing’ Kel remain deeply irrational. The pain to which she is subjected (“Dreams died so hard”, 21) is needless, though not without political benefit in the long run. her terror ... handle the Chamber … (22)  This makes explicit the equation whereby the Chamber replaces heights as Kel’s means of self-testing. Raoul the knight, not the Knight Commander (23)  A distinction important in military hierarchies, but potentially a source of trouble for Kel in marking an unusual status within the King’s Own. her own shop … Businesswoman Lalasa (24)  These are recent developments, since the end of Page. as soberly as merchants (25)  The simile subtly stresses the common status of sparrows—no aristocrats they; Jump is similarly

86  Reading Tamora Pierce common, resonating with themes of class-conflict. as newborns (26)  A mild anthropomorphism—the proper term would be ‘hatchlings’. You are still part of Mindelan (26)  Further evidence of Kel’s well-developed sense of noblesse oblige, as well as natural kindness; but also politically shrewd, for new aristocratic houses prosper by the network of reciprocal obligations they establish. Chapter 2  The King’s Own only a key … (28)  A first sign of how different things are in the Own; the kind of pranks de facto permitted by Wyldon would neither pass unnoticed nor be tolerated here, whether or not in proximity to Raoul’s personal quarters but … isn’t decent … ff. (28–30)  … that doesn’t mean no sexism or misplaced concern. Pragmatism and Raoul’s easy temper make all the difference: emotion not being suppressed, it doesn’t break out. As a noble … as a commoner … ff. (29–30)  With physical maturity the ambiguity of Kel’s social and sexual position, as a knight-intraining without precedent, becomes a significant theme. a northern burr (31)  Another aspect of the north-south divide in Tortall that recalls the cultural division between southern and northern England rather than anything in the US. a proper Goldenlake shield (32)  As Raoul’s squire Kel wears his colours rather than those of the King’s Own. halberd (32)  A weapon combining a spear-shaft and point with an axe-head, normally used by foot-soldiers against cavalry. The blue ripples … surface (33)  This reflects Japanese swordmaking techniques, in which steel of several kinds is repeatedly heated, folded, and hammered; the ripples are caused by multiple layering. A related process produces Damascus steel, and blades with such a ripple pattern are said to be ‘damascened’. So you’ve got a long weapon (34)  Raoul’s immediate acceptance of Kel’s glaive continues to differentiate him from Wyldon and deepens a principal theme of Squire and Lady Knight, the difference between ideals of chivalry and the practicality of the Own.

Protector of the Small  87 his aunt’s high treason (47)  Delia of Eldorne conspired with Duke Roger in his plans to seize the throne (in ‘Song of the Lioness’). Chapter 3  Centaurs Just as bad as crossbows … (49)  There is some dispute about how effective mediaeval English longbows were against armour; it seems possible that the highest quality plate could keep out arrows at midrange, but lesser armour was vulnerable at considerable ranges. TP adds: “All of my research indicates that the bodkin-point arrow can pierce even high quality armour unless the distance is very great.” Festering things are born archers (49)  This strong association of centaurs with archery is not in Greek myth but reflects the riding and archery skills of some Asian peoples and Amerindian tribes. pasterns (53)  The pastern is the part of a horse’s leg between hoof and fetlock (the joint below the knee). Without gifts, they attack males. (55)  This characteristic is not in Greek myth and Pierce’s generally negative portrayal of centaurs is in striking contrast to the noble, peaceful centaurs of C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books (based on the atypically wise and noble centaur Chiron, in Greek myth). You don’t think history gets rewritten, sometimes? (56)  In context the comment is ironic given Flyndan’s conservatism about female warriors and that Kel is herself rewriting history. Why Rider Groups, my lord? ff. (57)  A similar explanation of the value of Rider Groups, with some details of organisation, is given to Daine in Wild Magic, ch. 1. she hated hangings (58)  Kel’s attitude to capital punishment may strike European and US readers very differently—the US being the only developed Western nation to retain the death penalty. Historically, cultures at the technological level of Tortall almost always use it, though methods of judicial execution vary widely. Flyndan misunderstood her shudder. (58)  As Wyldon misunderstood Kel’s reaction after the fight with the hillmen. Was she some kind of fickle monster … (60)  Kel’s worry about her teenage crushes on Neal and Dom (and later Cleon) underline

88  Reading Tamora Pierce how severely isolated from female peers she has been. I would … to that man (63)  Osbern’s anger shows how poorly Lerant thought through mischief that would have embarrassed Raoul. He says he had a problem as a young man … (63)  No such problem is reported in ‘Song of the Lioness’, but Raoul’s aversion to the drug (implying a capacity for addiction he can control only though abstinence) throws interesting light on his personality. Pierce has explained in interview that “Raoul’s problem was just that he didn’t know when to stop drinking. He quit after a riding accident resulted in the death of his favorite horse and the injuries of a family of Players.” (Source: http://tpwords.wordpress.com/category/othersources/, s.v. ‘Marinie of Tasride’s disownment, Neal’s mother, and Raoul’s drinking problem’.) Chapter 4  Owlshollow fur merchant (71)  In Cold Fire (‘The Circle Opens’ 3), set in a cold northern city where use of furs is normative, Pierce has an author’s note anticipating objections and confirming her distaste for the fashionable use of fur, but justifying her fictional practice on grounds of historical accuracy and necessity in severe climates. “Show off,” murmured Buri. (73)  Buri’s friendly teasing of Raoul anticipates their later relationship. long and braided, with ivory beads carved like skulls (73)  Volorin’s hairstyle recalls the stormwing Rikash, in ‘The Immortals’. I’m to obey without question … (74)  Raoul’s explanation continues Kel’s education for command, but her attitude shows that despite the change in Wyldon’s training methods her fight with the hillmen provoked, she has yet to understand the profound limitations of the kind of training the knight school gives. I’n’t (76)  Isn’t, is not. a short, heavy cutlass (78)  A cutlass is by definition a short, broadbladed sword, often slightly curved, with a basket hilt. In UK and US usage it was historically primarily a naval weapon, and is associated with piracy—appropriate in this context. (In West Indian usage it is

Protector of the Small  89 synonymous with ‘machete’.) No healer could save anyone from a belly cut. (81)  Historically this remained true until the advent of antibiotics in the 1940s, largely for the reason given—that the released stomach and bowel contents caused infection. Internal organs are also usually damaged, but … a mercy stroke (81) … unless a major artery is cut, such wounds typically lead to a slow and painful death. The increasing detail about Kel’s combat (by comparison with the fight with the hillmen) is a measure of her increasing maturity and that of the target audience. drops that burned (81)  A characteristic of immortals’ blood (Daine is burned by spidren blood in Wild Magic). If a griffin’s parents … (84)  This aspect of griffin mythology appears to be Pierce’s invention, but in classical mythology and mediaeval lore griffins were believed to mate for life, and hence were symbols of devotion and faithfulness. Chapter 5  The Griffin fish scraps (85)  Griffins’ liking for fish appears to be Pierce’s invention. In Wild Magic they are said to be fond of dolphin-meat. her folks is charcoal-burners (89)  Charcoal is wood from which water and other volatiles have been removed by slow burning, a large pile of wood being covered, typically with turf, to limit oxygen. It produces intense heat when burned, and until the twentieth century was in great demand for smithies. Charcoal-burning was a common occupation—in Europe a leading cause of deforestation—and almost always carried out in isolation from villages. Don’t you want to be thanked? (89)  A central paradox of Kel’s personality that affected Alanna in ‘Song of the Lioness’: they wish to serve, rather than to be rewarded for serving, and for their deeds to be glorious without attracting attention. One difference between both women and Jonathan and Thayet as rulers is that the latter are of necessity more alert to public opinion. When people tell me a knight’s job is all glory … (90)  This comment sticks in Kel’s mind—she quotes it in Lady Knight—and is a further aspect of the distinction between a (childish, perhaps selfish)

90  Reading Tamora Pierce chivalric ideal of knighthood and a practical (adult) reality of warrior service, in peace or war. It fell apart in her fingers. (92)  The metal-rusting capacity of griffins also seems to be Pierce’s invention. the griffin … half-digested fish … (93)  The griffin’s behaviour might be taken to stand, somewhat satirically, for the innately selfish behaviour of all young, including human infants. It is part of the emerging pattern of Kel’s maternalism: she largely represses sexuality and explicitly denies interest in marriage, yet constantly adopts youngsters, human and animal, who make parental demands. TP adds: “Plenty of boys care for animals, and Kel is an affectionate person—the need to care for people (see Neal) and sexual response aren’t the same.” Many people acted as if this were a party. (96)  Historically, in the US and UK, public executions were treated as a day out. In some areas and periods executions might be strongly religious occasions, but concerns about lawless behaviour at public executions was one reason for the shift to executions in jails (the last public execution in the UK took place in 1868; in the US, in 1936). This scene is another marker of the increasing complexity and maturity of the quartet. We give them … wronged … (97)  This relates to the US practice of allowing relatives of murder victims and others affected by capital crimes to witness executions of the convicted. When Pierce was writing there was debate concerning this in regard to the Oklahoma bomber, Timothy McVeigh, whose execution (in June 2001) was witnessed by some 300 people, in some cases by CCTV. mews (97)  A mews was originally a birdhouse for birds of prey. (It later came to refer to a row of stables.) dander (98)  Particles of dried skin; cf. dandruff. fish is hard to come by (98)  Before modern transport and food distribution systems seafood was usually available only at the seaside and in larger towns, while the availability of freshwater fish depended on proximity to a source and the season. Not after Port Legann (102)  The battle of Port Legann was the largest of the Immortals War, and is partly detailed in The Realms of the Gods. Many stormwings fought against Tortall.

Protector of the Small  91 Chapter 6  Lessons Book of Silver … Gold (104)  The Book of Gold was created in 211 bhe, the Book of Silver in 41 bhe—respectively 667 and 497 years before the present. Glaisdan’s ‘standard’ is so pure a snobbery as to be manifestly absurd. the border shared by Tortall, Scanra and Galla (104–05)  The military disposition of Second Company is a sign of rising tensions with Scanra that dominate the later part of Squire and Lady Knight. A coif (105)  In ordinary usage a coif is a tight-fitting cap that covers the top, back, and sides of the head; in relation to armour, it is a chain-mail hood that also covers the neck and shoulders. Her parents’ budget … (105)  Kel’s observation raises questions: her three elder brothers are all knights, one at least a knight-master, so how Mindelan finances work is unclear. The problem may be that being youngest, coupled with the contempt of her sisters for her choice of profession, keeps her on a tighter budget than other members of the family. He showed Kel … (106)  A detail to help readers who have not read previous books that makes little sense—it is inconceivable Kel would not have noticed the enamelled raven on her own sword. knights prefer stallions … mares (107)  This accurately reflects history: the majority of European mediaeval warhorses seem to have been stallions, while Moors preferred mares. she lowered her lance (108)  See figure 10. She turned in the air … (110)  Kel can do so because she is wearing padded clothing rather than full armour—the weight of which makes voluntary airborne manoeuvres impossible. After the rapes … winter  (114)  This seems incidental, but is a careful plant. They thought a man had beaten her. (114)  This serves to indicate the kind of injuries Kel normatively sustains in training, but Figure 10 Jousting raises more serious considerations about, for knight in a re-enactment, Livermore, CA. Picture example, Kel’s attempts to persuade Lalasa to credit: David Ball. report Vinson’s assault and her unwillingness

92  Reading Tamora Pierce to do so because of possible retaliation. Kel usually thought … different Raouls … (115)  A subtle indication of the ways in which Kel does not think aristocratically or imperially: in most such systems there are ways for nobles to act wearing one or another hat. The semi-incognito disguises of monarchs may be critical in allowing them to act without suffocating protocol. I am a bad man. (115)  But there is reason for Raoul’s training regimen—a commander in the field cannot neglect logistics because s/he doesn’t feel up to it. The same could be said of Wyldon’s training— but whereas he manages to make it joyless, and was (until Kel’s fight with hillmen) rigidly conservative, Raoul leavens life with humour, and theories of chivalry with practicalities of warfare. there are four kinds of warrior … ff. (116–18)  Besides making sense, and spelling out for Kel her capacity for command that has been apparent to others since the hillmen, Raoul’s lecture is central to Pierce’s revisioning of ‘Song of the Lioness’. See the Essay. even Wyldon … admit it (117)  A more severe indictment than Raoul spells out or Kel realises, in that Wyldon’s pride or bigotry prevent him from admitting what he knows the realm needs. He does de facto admit it in Lady Knight, giving Kel her first full command. Kel wondered … by Raoul (121)  That is what Kel is doing—and Raoul is the best jouster in Tortall, save Wyldon. Kel typically underestimates herself, but in this respect has some excuse. A look at Peachblossom … (122)  Kel’s chivalrous behaviour arises more from respect for her horse than any consideration of what it would mean for her to unseat Sir Jerel at this stage of her career. Chapter 7  Yamani Ladies auguries (127)  An augur was a Roman priest whose task was to predict the future by studying the flight of birds—‘taking the auspices’, whence ‘auspicious’, ‘well-omened’. Maggur Rathhausak (127)  The first mention of a figure who never appears but is increasingly important. The name echoes German rathaus, a town-hall, and perhaps the villain Rath who fought against the Justice League of America in Marvel comics of the 1960s.

Protector of the Small  93 kimonos … obi … slippers (128–9)  Kimono and obi are Japanese words for the traditional wrap-dress and sash, worn with split-toed socks (tabi) and thonged or wooden-soled sandals (zori, geta). Princess Shinkokami (129)  In Japanese shinko means ‘real, true’, while kami has several meanings, including ‘god’, ‘head’, and ‘emperor’. white rice powder … (130)  In modern Japan white-face makeup is associated with geisha, female entertainers, but in the Heian period (794–1185) was a feature of court and wider aristocratic culture. Lady Yukimi noh Daiomoru (130)  The central ‘noh’ (or ‘no’) means ‘of’, the equivalent of German ‘von’ or French ‘de’—a feature of older aristocratic names. The order is Western, ‘[first name] of [clan name]’; in Japanese it would be the other way round. Yukimi means ‘snow viewing’; ‘Daiomoru’ has no meaning as such, but ‘dai’ means, among other things, ‘faithful service to an elder’, and ‘omoru’ ‘to become serious’—both appropriate to Yukimi’s character. Kel suggested in Yamani (130)  If Yamani is like Japanese, Kel must have been maintaining her knowledge of it—as a complex tone language, no easy thing. Prince Eitaro noh Nakuji (131)  ’Eitaro’ does not seem to have any particular meaning, but the surname ‘Nakuji’ is formed from the verb ‘naku’, ‘to sing (of a bird), to purr, to bark’, and ‘ji’, which as a suffix means ‘order’ and on its own can mean ‘emperor’s seal’. Haname noh Ajikuro (131)  Haname combines ‘han’, ‘fiefdom’, and ‘ame’, ‘rain’, while ‘Ajikuro’ combines ‘aji’, ‘flavour, taste’, and ‘kuro’, ‘black, dark’. poems to Yuki’s eyebrow (133)  An allusion (by Pierce, not Kel) to Jaques’s speech beginning ‘All the world’s a stage’ in Shakespeare’s As You Like It (1599), which has “the lover, / Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad / Made to his mistress’ eyebrow” (2.7.148–50). Yamani poetry is very different from ours. (133)  As Japanese poetry is from Western: no simple summary is possible, but classical Japanese poetry is marked by brevity, responses to other poems forming call-and-answer collections, intense symbolism, and a limited range of topics. The short knife … Yamani women (134)  Japanese women of the

94  Reading Tamora Pierce samurai class carried such a dagger, a kaiken (kwaiken, futogorogatana). Its purpose was self-defence, and ritual suicide. Cricket? (134)  Making Shinkokami a childhood acquaintance of Kel’s is not so outrageous a coincidence: as Shinko points out, her exposure to Eastern ways through friendship with Kel and her family was a factor in the emperor’s choice of her for Prince Roald. short tables … chairs … floors (136)  This is an accurate statement of (classical) Japanese practice. Kel began to take her walking … (139)  Raoul chose Kel as squire partly as one versed in Yamani ways, but her utility to Shinko as a friend and bridge to the east is in many ways more important … He was all … the south … (140)  … a matter Raoul does not seem to consider in his determination to avoid festive protocol—one of the few points at which he seems selfish in a way harmful to others. section-timeline  That it is December is superficially a coincidence, but recurrent Junes (Kel’s birthday) and midwinters (squires’ ordeals of knighthood) are regular markers throughout the quartet. Chapter 8 The Price of a Maid how much cold and wet he could stand (145)  The smaller a mammal is, the more vulnerable to cold; young can freeze to death in temperatures adults can readily withstand. the events of last April … ff. (146–7)  These summary paragraphs are intended for those who have not read Page, and may have been inserted at the request of the publishers—but their final sentence (“[Kel] wanted Lalasa … wrong person.”) sets up what is going to happen, with Kel’s response, and emphasises the way she rightly sees Lalasa as primary victim, while to her attackers she was only a pawn. Raoul couldn’t … supper … (147)  It is telling, in terms of class and attitudes, both that Raoul tries to invite them and that they refuse. I bet he was holed up on his estates … (148)  This begs questions, not least how Joren has been able to continue as a squire while remaining at home, and why Sir Paxton allowed him to do so. Whatever was bad … and him. (149)  Kel’s attitude is basic to chivalry, Joren’s as incompatible with chivalry as bullying juniors.

Protector of the Small  95 tell me how I might get a husband (149)  In Page, ch. 10 (177–9). Ebroin of Genlith (150)  There were two historical Ebroins: (i) a tyrannical Frankish politician-warlord (d.681) mentioned by the Venerable Bede, and (ii) a bishop of Poitiers, 839–54, a faithful supporter of the Carolingian king Charles the Bald. Master Advocate Muirgen (150)  Muirgen (Gaelic, ‘born of the sea’) is in Irish legend a woman turned into a mermaid for 300 years. a matter of law, not of noble privilege (151)  Turomot’s distinction is theoretically valid—in aristocratic societies noble challenges, duels, etc. tend to be separate from legal proceedings—but events show it as specious: Joren’s noble blood gives him a privileged position in law, Lalasa’s commoner status puts her at a disadvantage. two red rage spots … (151)  Turomot’s stifled rage at their Majesties’ attendance is interesting: given the wide interest in a notorious case he can hardly be that surprised. TP adds: “Turomot likes to be sole boss in his courtroom: the presence of their Majesties presents the possibility he might be overridden by royal fiat, despite their often-repeated insistence that they want to move the country toward the rule of law and not that of royal privilege.” Ivath Brand and Urfan Noll (151)  Both forenames seem to be Pierce’s invention; ‘noll’ is an old term for the top of the head. the testimony of convicted men … (153)  Muirgen has half-apoint, in that evidence of prisoners is often unreliable, but impugns the custom of ‘turning King’s (State’s) evidence’—as Macorm did at Haresfield. His argument reflects Joren’s aristocratic snobbery. this tawdry affair (153)  ‘Tawdry’ is a contraction of St Awdrey, in whose name an annual lace-fair was held at Ely. Later, lace sold there came to be seen as old-fashioned and poor quality, and a derogatory sense of ‘tawdry’ was reinforced by Puritan disapproval of lace. I forbid the use of law court mages … (154)  It is surprising, even in an aristocratic society, that a noble prisoner’s advocate should be able to make such determinations. Muirgen again impugns normal court proceedings, reflecting Joren’s contempt for the law. the smirch to your honour (154)  Ebroin seems to believe (with many) that an act is only dishonourable if it is known—but the whole point about honour (as distinct from reputation) is that it involves not

96  Reading Tamora Pierce what others know about you, but what you know about yourself. TP adds: “The point is deliberately made (I hope) that Ebroin and those who think like him are clearly in the wrong. There are a great many points at which I trust the reader to make the conclusions I hope s/he will make without my spelling them out.” What honour has a nation … ff. (154–5)  Joren’s credo is not unexpected but extreme and inconsistent. Alanna, Thayet, and Buri— at minimum—have long since ‘pretended to the profession of arms’, and his outrage has as much to do with Kel’s status as ‘new nobility’ as with gender; as Kel realises, his estimates of Wyldon and Turamot are fundamentally mistaken. The arrogance of his final statement (“I give … law.”) is breathtaking, but his whole demeanour is as much an open threat to King and Queen as insult to Turomot and Kel (and of course Lalasa, though to Joren she hardly counts as a person). You have until sunset … (157)  It is not clear whether the time Turomot allows Ebroin is less than the three days requested. I remind you the woman … (158)  Despite incensed rage with Joren, Turomot’s way of referring to Lalasa, in her presence, endorses the law’s contempt for commoners. Not in public, Kel. (160)  Raoul’s advice (explained in the first sentence of the next chapter) is sound, but begs other questions: much of what is seen in the quartet as a whole to be wrong with Tortallan customs depends on concealment from scrutiny. TP adds: “This is actually a matter of dealing with a kind of personality, not an attempt at concealment. Some public people, or persons in a position of power, should only be challenged in private; challenged in public, they will react in a manner highly detrimental to the challenger. (I learned this the hard way from one boss and from someone I worked with.) Jonathan listens to challenges in private, but will not tolerate them publicly, in part because he cannot be seen to be weak.” Chapter 9  Midwinter Luck Jonathan’s a good … go far. (161)  In one sense no ruler can be altogether good—the burden of power necessitates hard decisions— but Raoul’s judgement of Jonathan is strikingly different from the

Protector of the Small  97 views of him offered in ‘Song of the Lioness’ and ‘The Immortals’. TP adds: “Raoul is closer to Jonathan as an established monarch than anyone in the earlier series. And one of the things I deliberately did with this series was to give different views of Jon, because not everyone will see him in the same way. (He is, by my lights, also a much better king than his father or grandfather!)” He doesn’t understand what “fair” means. (161)  Kel has a point, in that Jonathan has been seen to accede to serious unfairness (and breach of his word) in allowing her probation, but there may be genuine limits on the kind of fairness any ruler can practice, especially when fairness conflicts with necessity and/or expedience. We must treat … against us (163)  Historically this is a major problem of feudal systems. Ideally, nobles act as a check and balance to the crown, but military capacity makes it hard to impose reform on them. Magnate rebellions were a feature of mediaeval European history, and their decline a marker of the shift to early modernity. merchants, who give loans … (163)  Another mediaeval feature: in the absence of banks and a centralised financial system, great merchants are almost the only source of loans, and tend to be willing to make them only when there is profit to be made. If this was how kingdoms were ruled … (165)  Kel’s revulsion is understandable, yet one virtue of autocratic systems is that the ruler can decide on change rapidly and unilaterally; conversely one vice of democracy is the way change can be stifled and responsibility shirked in committees and legislatures—a point Pierce makes explicitly in Shatterglass (‘The Circle Opens’ 4), ch. 1. He was right, curse him … (165)  Yes and no: Jonathan’s logic would hold if the change Kel demands were to apply retrospectively to Lalasa’s case; as it is, Jonathan is expediently using agreement to a demand he knows is justified and in Tortall’s interest to extort a concession that ensures Joren’s arrogant criminality goes unpunished. the looks … as she passed (166)  This suggests word of Kel’s comments in the courtroom has already spread. Implicitly, some of those looking may be servants and other commoners surprised by her championship, as a noble, of one of their own. Suddenly tears … (167)  But only when it is safe. It is not easy to

98  Reading Tamora Pierce remember that Kel is only 14, and the events of this day would be enough to unnerve an adult. Daine came and went … (168)  Presumably she also heals Jump. The middle classes are on the rise (169)  Another historically accurate marker of the late-mediaeval state of Tortall. In mediaeval Europe there were (more or less) nobles, clerics, and peasants, and what we call the middle classes or bourgeoisie—educated, propertyowning commoners, including merchant and professional classes— were limited. With the Renaissance, and in Britain the redistribution of church property after Henry VIII’s break with Rome in 1533, the middle classes began to expand, creating conflict with entrenched aristocratic power. The English Civil War (or Revolution) of the 1640s was in practice largely about demission of political power from the hereditary, established aristocracy to upper bands of the new middle class. a bully … (170)  Ralon of Malvern (c.415–39 he), who figures in ‘Song of the Lioness’ much as Joren does in this one. I’m afraid Squire Joren won’t, either (170)  Raoul is prophetic, but his analysis, like this whole scene, underscores how flawed Wyldon’s training regime is. Remembering that Jonathan allowed himself to be persuaded by Wyldon regarding Kel’s probationary year casts Jonathan’s judgement in a very unflattering light. The chamber hasn’t got it. (171)  Nor do gods, as Daine discovers in ‘The Immortals’ and Alianne in ‘The Daughter of the Lioness’. Individual lives and suffering mean very little (if anything) to them. the Crystal Room … (172)  There may be an allusion to such remarkable rooms as the Dish Room in the White House and the Crimson Parlour in the Alexandra Palace near St Petersburg (home of the last Romanov Tsars). the money from Joren’s fine (173)  Clearly, Stone Mountain was able to pay the fine within the allowed time. Your teeth call to mind wolfhounds … (174)  Kel’s scorn of Cleon’s awful romantic metaphors recalls Shakespeare’s sonnet 130, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”, which mocks conventional excess in love poetry. Yamani battles … longbows (179)  Japanese military tactics of the

Protector of the Small  99 Heian period were dominated by archery, and samurai of the time were archers before they were swordsmen; the discussion is consistent with other Heian details informing Yamani culture. Kel stood … poleaxed (180)  From this point Kel’s romantic (putatively sexual) life becomes a significant theme, handled more intensively than Alanna’s equivalent development in ‘Song of the Lioness’—which was inhibited by her disguise. For some readers, or their parents, sexual themes are troubling, but a proper part of any story of adolescence; their omission would de facto concede that as a female warrior Kel lacks, or should lack, ordinary sexuality. Something bound her … ff. (182–4)  The visions the Chamber gives Kel raise troubling questions. Their connection with her deepest fears is clear and consistent, and the symbolism of this dream vividly concretises political and social aspects of Kel’s desire to be a lady knight, but whether enforced experience of horror—causing lasting nightmares—truly helps to strengthen her is moot. TP adds: “The Chamber is not human, and its motivations are not human ones. It is testing her to see if she is fit for a heartbreaking task, or if she will break in its performance.” a spiked mace (183)  Also known as a morningstar. section-timeline This should be ‘Winter–Spring … 457’. Chapter 10  The Great Progress Begins Baron George Cooper (187)  Before marriage to Alanna George was King of Thieves in Tortall, and now serves as Sir Myles’s deputy chief of intelligence—hence his knowledge of pirates. He figures extensively in ‘Song of the Lioness’ and ‘The Daughter of the Lioness’, and has a role in Wild Magic. another set of executions (188)  Piracy remains a capital crime in various jurisdictions. The UK suspended the death penalty for murder in 1964, but retained it for piracy with violence until 1998. They have parties … and make up poetry (198)  This is again an accurate description of traditional Japanese high culture. just before Kel’s sixteenth birthday (198–9)  This marks the year that ‘goes missing’ in the timeline: Kel ought to turn 15, not 16. Pierce

100  Reading Tamora Pierce has admitted in various fora that she made an error in dating, but the missing year does not bother most readers and is compensated for in ‘The Daughter of the Lioness’. gambeson (199)  Ultimately from Old High German wamba, ‘stomach’ (cognate with ‘womb’), a gambeson is a long, padded jacket, typically of wool or linen stuffed with horsehair. shukusen (203)  One of the Japanese terms for warfans, used by samurai men and women for self-defence in places where weapons might not openly be carried, and in battle for signalling. The art of fighting with warfans is tessenjutsu. Yuki walked over to him. (205)  Yuki’s display of temper is the first sign of affection for Neal. I doubt your father … back on. (205)  Surgical reattachment of severed limbs is recent: the first such operation was in 1962, and it did not become common until the 1990s; when Pierce was writing the fact of such an operation might well be reported on national news. If a lady thinks she’s in danger … (206–07)  In Japanese culture shukusen were also used by men. Yaman may be different, or Kel may reflect limited experience or the sexist Tortallan (European) association of fans with women. Alanna the Lioness (206)  The fact that Kel has hitherto not been able to meet Alanna, even socially (and if really necessary with neutral mage-chaperonage), is a painful reminder of the unfair policy Jonathan imposed in pandering to conservative bigotries. Chapter 11  Cleon ‘obedience through poverty’ (207)  Historically the monarchs most associated with this strategy are Elizabeth I of England (reigned 1558–1603), whose progresses were infamous for draining noble treasuries, and whose reign saw the last attempt at rebellion by a great magnate; and Tokugawa Ieyasu of Japan (ruled 1600–16), Louis XIV of France (reigned 1643–1715), and Catherine the Great of Russia (reigned 1762–96), who all staged very expensive entertainments at others’ expense and made nobles pay for court offices. Barnesh … land grants. (208)  There isn’t (so far as I know) any

Protector of the Small  101 exact real-world equivalent of this draconian policy, and Barnesh must be in a strong position to risk it, but James VI & I of Scotland & England (reigned 1603–25) forcibly ennobled wealthy commoners (inventing a new hereditary rank, baronet, to placate older aristocrats) before charging them, heavily, for the privilege. Before you start thinking you’re no good … (209)  A rare, specific instance of one of Kel’s perennial problems—comparison with god-touched Alanna is inevitable but Kel sets extremely high standards for herself and feels disappointed for not doing better. Sinthya … the old lord’s fate … (210)  Sinthya treasonably allied himself with Emperor Ozorne of Carthak; his plots were uncovered by Numair and Alanna, at the beginning of Wild Magic. At least no one can claim … (211)  Local and larger logics conflict. In one sense Oakbridge is correct—but what then is the rationale for Jonathan’s continued ban on normal contact between Kel and Alanna? In another the patriarchal bigotries involved are not subject to reason: if self-evident truth will not stop bigots believing and saying otherwise, why should mage witnesses stop them from asserting whatever fantasy they credit or wish others to credit? most knights think having a squire is a pain (213)  It’s also a considerable expense, and it seems likely there are deeper reasons: to instruct others well means knowing and thinking about oneself—not the usual occupation of many knights encountered in the narrative. Or he’s got a proper girl to admire … (214)  Though unmentioned since early in First Test, it is clear Kel has to some extent internalised her sisters’ and others’ opinions about her attractiveness as a woman. Its power at least remains uncorrupted. (215)  Sir Ansil is right— but not as he imagines. It could be argued that irony is a constant presence in ‘The Protector of the Small’, inhabiting the gap between the reality of Kel and others’ ignorant misperceptions, but such pointed narrative irony is rare before this point and in YA fantasy generally. my flesh? (216)  Given Kel’s doubt about her own attractiveness, this is also an irony—and one she may appreciate. Sir Ansil of Groten (216)  Ansil is an old German/Yiddish name meaning ‘protected by God’, while Groten is an element of place names, probably meaning ‘large’. See Isn’t that … works? (217)

102  Reading Tamora Pierce in his thirties (216)  Sir Ansil would have received knight training under Wyldon’s predecessor. when men do the right thing (216)  Such as, apparently, killing teenage girls—a third, bitter irony in close succession. Pierce’s emphasis on the sheer irrationality of the bigotry directed at Kel is notable, and a continuing set-up of events in ch. 14. Isn’t that … works? (217)  In theory, and in Tortall perhaps in practice, given what is known of the gods’ humour; in reality winning tends to have more to do with strength, fighting skill, and quality of equipment, God being proverbially on the side of the big battalions. Whether Kel believes combat success subject to divine determination is unclear; she restates her belief after the joust, and Cleon makes it clear he doesn’t share them—see You won because you’re good … ff. (238) He’s asking … gold crowns (218)  As the challenged Sir Ansil can name the penalty, but there are questions. Does he intend to kill Kel? would the penalty be payable if she died? and does he believe the sum would be a crippling debt? His clothes smelt of orris (219)  Orris root covers several species of iris, including German Iris, used in herbal medicine and perfumery. The scent is variously described as woody and like that of violets. A mocking voice … mind (220)  It is telling that Kel’s first kiss should be haunted by Joren’s contempt—and in this context his mockery seems even nastier than in Page, ch. 10, echoing Greystreak’s lecherous estimation of Kel’s hips in Squire, ch. 3. I sound stupid, she thought, furious with herself … (220)  An instance of Kel’s harsh self-judgement, and in her self-comparison of eloquence in challenging and muteness in (first) love an interesting example of the way sexual and military maturity are intertwined. a thunderstricken deer (220)  Pierce’s choice of the rarer, older form (not ‘thunderstruck’) reflects the hunting use of ‘stricken’ for animals that are wounded, and summons the common ‘griefstricken’ to suggest a further element of Kel’s confusion. The usual metaphor is of a deer or rabbit ‘caught in the headlights’—such frozen behaviour is the literal meaning of ‘stupid’ (cf. ‘stupor’). They sprang apart like startled rabbits (221)  Besides the comic

Protector of the Small  103 simile, there is an irony involving the proverbial activity of rabbits. I hear this from women of the Queen’s Riders … (222)  Pierce is reflecting research: while most first-world standing armies are now mixed, women continue to be widely excluded from combat, so evidence tends to be anecdotal. Male confusion of sexuality with rank and command is plausible, and can be seen in business, sexual slang that construes sex as a form of male conquest, and the lexical field associated with ‘penetration’. TP adds: “I do go from both current research and anecdotal evidence from the women I know who are or who have been in the military. While women were excluded from combat at the time this book was written, they were still in combat as drivers of transport vehicles and as such were under fire and shooting back at the enemy. They just weren’t considered to be combat veterans or given combat medals. The care they receive at veterans’ hospitals is also shoddy because they aren’t considered to be combat veterans, even though their injuries, physical and mental, could be gotten nowhere else. And, as of this year [2013], women are now officially going to be put into combat here in the U.S.. For me this is an incredibly mixed victory. I’ve fought for it all my life, and yet I know the price women are paying to be in the military, and I wonder if it’s worth it. All I can do for my young Kels and Alannas is to warn them of the risks and let them know I will be thinking of them.” You don’t see … lower classes. (224)  One way in which Tortall is sharply distinct from the real world, perhaps because magery has made anti-pregnancy charms available for a long time. Before the availability of the contraceptive pill in the 1960s, and under the influence of late-Victorian extreme modesty codes, unfair insistence on female virginity was not restricted to any one class, and there is anecdotal evidence that when the pill did become widely available, working-class ‘morality’ and strictness towards daughters remained high after middle-class ‘morality’ adjusted to the new dispensation. the nobility’s handling of sex … (224)  Ilane’s comparison with horse-breeders is apt and funny: historically, before paternity testing was possible, there was for aristocrats consideration of inheritances turning on paternity, but the language of noble and common blood intrinsically posits ‘purity’ and ‘taint’.

104  Reading Tamora Pierce I should foal with ease … (225)  A further echo of Greystreak’s opinions in ch. 3; see A mocking voice … mind (220). Since you’ve decided against a noble marriage … (225)  But has Kel done so, in her mind or de facto through her actions? It is interesting (and depressing) that even Ilane seems to accept that a female knight cannot make a noble marriage. Alanna’s husband was a commoner when she married him, but the supposed impossibility of being warrior and noble wife is more to do with social niceties than anything constituting genuine or well-founded difficulty. Lust may feel wonderful enough to be mistaken for love. (226)  A profound truth that many adults never comprehend, while both piety and romanticism lead otherwise intelligent people to deny it. It ought to be explained carefully to all sexually maturing children but in practice seems almost never to be—hence in part the still-persisting ideas of young men ‘sowing wild oats’ while young women require ‘love’ as a condition of sexual behaviour. section-timeline As the action of chs 11–12 is continuous, there is a conflict between the previous timeline (“Spring … ”) and this one (“Autumn–Midwinter …”) Chapter 12  Tournament The ingredient that made it sting … (232)  A common property of antiseptics, which have to be caustic to kill bacteria and hence burn or sting exposed flesh. There was never … his claws … (232)  Contaminants are a serious issue in animal mauling, especially by predators: bacteria associated with rotting meat and fish are especially likely to be toxic. a big meal now … at noon … (232)  This is not just psychology (adrenaline affects hunger) but practicality: a large meal immediately before strenuous activity is ill-advised. Most professional sportsmen would follow a similar routine on matchdays. Even if she lost … (233)  Again, the extent to which Kel believes in divine theories of trial by combat is unclear: see Isn’t that … works? (217). She also seems unclear about the politics of her public combats: her assumptions about the putative effects of defeat are

Protector of the Small  105 optimistic, and ignore those who would assert it to be a sign of divine opinion. But her real reason for jousting, protecting Lerant, is utterly consistent with everything she does. Her lance shattered; his did not. (234)  An indication that Kel hit Ansil’s shield more accurately than he hit hers: his lance could glance off while hers was forced into compression. It’d mean a summer mending roads … (234)  The worrying implication is that (attempts to) bribe monitors to supply flawed lances are sufficiently common to have a severe fixed penalty. (So much for Tortallan chivalry!) as his friends … congratulation (235)  Congratulation for not being unseated at the first attempt by a female second-year squire? his shield boss (235)  The central, domed portion, to which the grip is usually attached; implicitly, Sir Ansil’s shield must be round or kite-shaped, rather than heraldic. She prayed she hadn’t killed Ansil … (235)  The lance-strike itself should not kill, but to fall from a large horse galloping, wearing many tens of pounds of metal armour, can certainly be fatal. This proves nothing, wench. (236)  Evidently Sir Ansil does not believe trial by combat is divinely guaranteed. Something had gripped Kel’s tongue … (235)  Not before time— but beyond the pleasure of Kel’s awakening and justified confidence and articulacy at need, there is an emergent style in her conjoined words and actions that is another sign of command ability. One of us will spear you … (236)  Sir Ansil again reveals his concept of chivalry to be non-existent, and the irony of obsessive defence of a warrior philosophy he hollows into worthlessness steps up another notch. You won because you’re good … ff. (238)  Cleon’s point is wellmade but inconsistent with his joke—if the gods determine the outcome they wouldn’t bet on it. To what extent Kel might enjoy divine favour (through Alanna and the Goddess, or from Mithros as god of warriors) is moot: she probably wouldn’t need it—but that wouldn’t stop any god who wanted to interfere. Someone has … a lot of someones. ff. (238)  This insight represents another stage in Kel’s political as well as sexual maturation,

106  Reading Tamora Pierce picking up dissonance even in First Test between evident sexual immaturity and innocence and Wyldon’s assumption of social problems centred on sexuality. It is also a useful reminder of how much Pierce omits from her narratives that does not therefore not happen. something ungainly and orange … (242)  Given what Sir Voelden intends—a form of deceit—the griffin’s appearance is a subtle irony; it does not compel Voelden to honesty, as an adult griffin might, but symbolises Kel’s contrasting good faith. There was a dimple ... (243)  Kel’s survival relatively unscathed is a tribute to her armour, an indication that Sir Voelden’s lance was ill-wielded, or a sign of divine intervention: a direct lance-strike at a gallop will pierce most breastplates. and struck his shield … (243)  Presumably a replacement shield, as his first was “ripped free of its straps” (242) in the first pass. He hadn’t moved. (243)  And probably couldn’t: concussion and bruising aside, a person in full armour has to be very strong (and the armour very well-tailored) to rise without assistance. And they say conservatives can’t learn. (244)  A further, delightful instance of Kel’s emerging style: see Something had gripped Kel’s tongue … (235). “Mindelan! Mindelan! Mindelan!” (244)  A first public sign of the politics surrounding Kel’s journey to knighthood. Many in the crowd might have sympathy for Voelden’s bigotry, but his dishonourable attempt to kill, with his defeat and its manner, bring Kel for the first time massed public acclaim. Thayet’s attendance on Kel is both genuine concern and political response to opportunity. They can’t really thank you … (248)  And from what is known of griffins, wouldn’t be very concerned to try—but the moulted feathers prove of considerable value. she had saved them all … (249)  Not quite: Kel gave shed feathers to Raoul at Midwinter (181). For the first … travel light … (249)  Pierce’s metaphor draws attention to the way in which the griffin’s departure reverses the imposition of weights in page-training. The theme of responsibility as a crushing burden becomes central in Lady Knight. There were fewer injuries and no deaths. (250)  Voelden’s attack

Protector of the Small  107 aside, neither serious injuries nor deaths from jousting are reported in the narrative—but implicitly some must occur during the progress. After one loss … three shattered lances … (251)  The scoring system when neither knight is unhorsed is not clear: a shattered lance ought to imply as good a hit as is possible short of unhorsing one’s opponent, but this sentence brings that in doubt. “I owe you an apology, Squire,” (251)  The chivalry of the unnamed knight is a further sign of Kel’s growing reputation and its benefits, and a reminder of the continuing campaign of slander. Fief Blythdin (251)  Though unmentioned elsewhere in the quartet, references to Blythdin in Mastiff suggest a conservative fief, appropriate in this context. you’re going to die a virgin … ff. (252)  Cleon’s jest—jibe?—and Kel’s thoughts in the next paragraph are the bluntest statement of the tensions animating Squire and Lady Knight, making explicit what is elsewhere hinted. The contradictions between Cleon’s verbal desires and physical inaction reflect Kel’s “unique position” (see Since you’ve decided against a noble marriage … (225)) and his inability to conceive of a noblewoman with sexual freedom, while Kel’s fear despite his kisses that her “large, muscular, blocky body” is sexually unappealing internalises the conservative belief that women are unfitted for knighthood. This fear does much to explain Kel’s later attitudes to Dom and the fact that she ends the quartet still a virgin. See They had each other’s tunics off … ff. (300–05). She went flying. (254)  The two draws and one defeat epitomise Kel’s relations with Wyldon—she can defy bigotry and injustice, but necessarily acknowledges skill. This joust sets up the one in ch. 15. a clatter of metal (254)  This seems erroneous—it is a match not a challenge, so Kel would wear “padding … instead of armour” (250). Has Joren given you further trouble? (255)  A revolutionary moment, anticipating chs 13–14: for the first time, Wyldon displays concern and a desire to know about about Joren’s malice. The consequences of his failure to realise what was happening to Kel as a page, and Joren’s true nature, are about to catch up with him. Remember … your shield. (255)  Implicitly, Wyldon does not only mean Kel’s actual shield, held for tilting, but progress to knighthood.

108  Reading Tamora Pierce It seems likely this tilt is an important moment for him in his progress from opposing to supporting Kel. Chapter 13  The Iron Door It was a tilting accident … ff.  (257–8)  The Chamber’s latest nightmare-vision does nothing to resolve the troubling issues its conduct raises; see Something bound her … ff. (182–4). It tests Kel’s will to continue to fight under impossible circumstances, but any qualified psychiatrist or educator would have a great deal to say about its methods, little of it complimentary. wooden pattens (259)  Overshoes, a thick sole held below the shoe by bands of cloth or leather. Although the use here is by women in winter, to stand clear of slush, pattens were historically used by men too, in all seasons, to avoid fouling indoor shoes with mud and dung. the girl she would have been … shield (259)  A marker of Kel’s internalised conviction that the cost of knighthood is her femininity—as is her conviction that “It’s not me, silly, it’s the gown”. Lord Raoul (261)  The choice of knight-instructors, when specified, is usually revealing. Here there are Raoul’s care for Kel’s sweetheart and Inness’s approach to his sister’s knight-master to consider. It can’t reach … room, surely … (262)  Unremarkable in context, Kel’s thought proves ironic in Lady Knight, where it becomes evident that the entity controlling the Chamber can reach as far as it wants. Counting the failures … (262)  The best indication in canon of how frequent failures are: Anders’s was already knighted when Kel left for Yaman in 446 (First Test, ch. 1), so “less than a handful” of failures (probably four) occurred in a period of at least twenty years. One might take one failure per five years to be an approximate norm. The old worry stirred … (263)  Last mentioned on p. 60, Kel’s fear of what she believes her ‘fickleness’ serves to remind readers how isolated she is from female companionship—a theme set up by Jonathan’s unreasonable ban on contact with Alanna. They were fumbling … (263–4)  This (with the episode in ch. 15) is the furthest Kel and Cleon ever go, and it takes Cleon’s Ordeal to precipitate it. It is striking this moment comes immediately before

Protector of the Small  109 events surrounding Vinson’s Ordeal. two slum wenches, no better than—No! … (266)  Even confessing, Vinson shows the contempt for women that underlies his crimes. Plainly the Chamber has not been able to reform him, only to induce sufficient pain to cow him. See ask where … so rigid … (279). She doesn’t … feeling sick. ff. (267)  Kel’s self-blame is excessive (as Buri says) but not unjustified. The quartet turns repeatedly on people not reporting or acting on what they know—cf. attitudes to hazing and adult silences surrounding it. Vinson’s progress from unchecked sexual assault to multiple rape is exemplary. You got one of us … ff. (268)  Joren’s words show him as psychopathic and irrational. Besides the familiar rapists’ canard of blaming their victims, and Kel’s inherent symbolism of female emancipation, Joren equates Kel with both women Vinson raped and the Chamber—a selfdeluding illogicality suggesting sociopathy. His open threat to murder Kel, echoing Voelden’s behaviour in the joust, is for him unrelated to (supposed) profession of knighthood. Kel tried other refuges. (268)  Her inability to find a place to think, and so going outdoors, echoes ch. 1 of First Test, after her receipt of the letter about a probationary year. recurves (269)  Bows with tips that point away from the archer. Because the limb stores more energy recurves are shorter than long bows, and may be used from horseback. She said he’d say she led him on … ff. (270–2)  Lalasa was right about what would have happened had she accused Vinson—but as Tortall has eyebright and truth-spells, the problem is not ‘he-says-she-says’ but political will. In effect Jonathan (and Thayet) tolerate sexual harassment in the palace while the wealthy can refuse use of mages to elicit truth in court (as Muirgen did)—and everyone is made complicit in silence. Kel’s response in training Lalasa, and Lalasa’s in passing learning on, is more than anyone seems to have done in living memory. Figure 11 A recurve You take this chivalry business too seriously … (272)  In bow. Picture one sense Buri is correct, as about Kel’s idealism—she credit: Sentinel17 expects more of herself and others than most can manage—

110  Reading Tamora Pierce but also mistaken, considering Joren’s and Voelden’s contempt for chivalry to which they are sworn. Chapter 14  Friends a warhammer (273)  Raoul’s gift proves far-sighted when Kel encounters the killing devices. a new saddle and tack (273)  The anonymous gifts shift in nature, from things Kel does not know she needs to things her family would be hard-pressed to afford. Her grandmother … (275)  Despite Kel’s assertion nothing is seen or heard of Ilane’s mother—except Kel’s remark here implying disapproval of military service and a demand to marry. The “iron fist” seems exaggerated, as Kel herself has clearly not been stopped. Why not Buri? (275)  Ironies are thick, for Kel achieves what ‘properly feminine’ matchmakers cannot in linking Raoul with his future bride; she might also be thought to bring together Neal and Yuki, able to matchmake for others but not for herself. Trollop, you killed my boy! ff. (276–9)  Stone Mountain’s irrational bigotry echoes Joren’s: see You got one us … (268). My lord Wyldon said … ff. (278)  Wyldon’s specific admiration for Joren is important in explaining his utter failure to understand what was happening between Kel and Joren’s clique. What more proof … divine favour? (279)  Burchard’s brother’s ‘argument’ is a rare indication of how the Conservatives think; illogicality is prominent. It is notable (i) that the issues bundled together (universal basic education, women’s rights, miscegenation) all point to resentment of Thayet and policies associated with her; (ii) that traditions invoked (no female knights, pure-blooded Tortall) are imaginary or recent; and (iii) that evidence to the contrary (the Goddess’s favour of Alanna, the arrival of Daine, divinely mediated destruction of Ozorne) is simply ignored. For real world examples of such confused misogyny consider the media treatment of Eleanor Roosevelt, Hillary Clinton, and Michelle Obama. ask where … so rigid … (279)  Beyond the clear sense in which Joren is a victim of his parents’ and peers’ bigotry—think of the anti-

Protector of the Small  111 racism poster showing black, brown, and white infants whose foreheads are stamped ‘It doesn’t happen here’—the interesting implication, comparing Vinson’s and Joren’s fates, is that while Vinson could be cowed by pain into confession, Joren could not. He is probably even more rigid and psychopathic than Vinson, but must be allowed a kind of courage about his conditioned convictions, if no other virtue. (See the Note on Fanfiction.) He’s done a cursed fine job! (281)  Irony again thickens … You see? ff. (283)  … and peaks in this exchange between Kel and Wyldon. Neither cuts to the heart of the matter—that while Wyldon’s training in arms is good, if limited by tradition, he fails utterly either to teach chivalry or to check its manifest, criminal abuse by Joren and others; it’s less what he does than what he doesn’t do—but Wyldon sees more than Kel, who perceives only Wyldon’s own chivalry. Kel’s idealisation extends to Wyldon (a development her friends never understand) and “the strangest expression in his dark eyes” is, with his mention of northern command, a critical turning-point. Owen of Jesslaw (284)  Following Kel’s matchmaking for Raoul and Buri, she does as much for Wyldon and Owen in a clear sign of her developing maternal (adult) care for friends and mentors. Padraig haMinch (284)  That council and Wyldon come swiftly to the same name, for reasons primarily of politics, does not show Tortall in a good light. All else aside, no provision appears to be made either for any enquiry into Wyldon’s failure, or for precautions to ensure his mistakes are not repeated; that the pressures involved are readily imaginable does not change the fact that competence is secondary to social standing and political inclination. I didn’t mean to, uh, treat you like a girl or anything. (285)  A milder but not less significant irony, to cap the sequence. Persopolis (288)  The city features in In the Hands of the Goddess. The possibility … faded. (289)  Again, while the immediate problem is understandable, someone ought to be having ‘Wyldon explosions’. Alanna may be her own worst advocate, but silencing her, whether in Jonathan’s or this relatively benign form, is a part of why so much that is wrong in Tortall goes undiscussed. the sparrow was cold. ff. (289)  The death of Crown (and Freckle)

112  Reading Tamora Pierce is realistic, as Daine says, and with Joren’s death marks a turn towards the darkness of Lady Knight. The placing of Kel’s exasperated reaction to Hildrec of Meron between sparrows’ deaths is curious, but associates experience of bereavement with a less adolescent, less cheerful, attitude towards training for warfare. section timeline  The narrative accelerates sharply, compressing a year into two chapters. Chapter 15  Tilt-Silly The title-phrase is Pierce’s coinage. ‘Silly’ in the sense ‘dazed by a blow’ dates only to the late nineteenth century, and in the form ‘knocked silly’ was popularised by Rider Haggard in his bestselling King Solomon’s Mines (1889). dishes of rice … ff. (295)  The cuisine is appropriately North African, matching Bazhir influence on southern Tortallan culture (and Kyprish ones), but the stuffed vine-leaves are Greek. Daine, a northern Gallan, had not eaten rice before meeting Onua at the start of Wild Magic. you’ll do well as a fletcher (296)  Kel’s skill in fletching is logical, and arrows enhanced by griffin fletching are important in the Scanran war, but her development of the skill is not reported. Fletching figures in ‘The Daughter of the Lioness’, via Nawat Crow. They had each other’s tunics off … ff. (300–05)  This moment, with Kel’s pregnancy charm and “declaration that she could decide some things for herself” (301), suggests sex will follow—but is actually the height of her romance with Cleon. The revelation of his arranged marriage (304) and mutual avoidance of the word ‘love’ are an explanation of sorts, but Kel’s need “to know, did he want her?” (304) is never met, and given the way her romantic life dwindles, giving way to experiences of warfare and command, it seems likely Cleon’s physical timidity with her deals a grimmer psychic wound than the text makes explicit. See also you’re going to die a virgin … ff. (252) and one tree-stump leg at a time (310). The trumpet blew; Peachblossom took off. ff. (305–06)  This joust with Wyldon closely parallels the one in ch. 13 (254), but Kel

Protector of the Small  113 stays in the saddle on the third pass. Once that voice had driven through solid terror to make her pay heed. (307)  In First Test, ch. 9, when Kel revealed her batophobia. Voices woke her. ff. (308–11)  As with her defeat of Voelden in ch. 12, Kel’s relative victory in not allowing Wyldon to unhorse her has immediate political consequences. Kel does not seem to understand her importance as a role-model, but, ironically, gives these girls the kind of advice Alanna was prevented from giving her. one tree-stump leg at a time (310)  Kel’s most negative comment about her body; proximity to uncertainty about Cleon’s desire is striking. General notions about tension between knighthood and womanhood are given a specific example, in that the muscular legs caused by weight-training required to wear full armour deny Kel ‘delicate’ feminine calves and ankles that in societies like Tortall’s are a principal means of erotic display for noblewomen. Chapter 16 The North He was thinking of the children they could have. (313)  Kel may not interpret Cleon’s look correctly—but if she does, it is telling that she thinks of him as desiring a life with her rather than her for herself. Fiefs Seabeth and Seajen (313)  The home of Kel’s mother, Ilane. Scanran wolf-ships (313)  Though never described, these would seem to be (in keeping with the Scandinavian feel of Scanra) Viking longships—clinker-built, carrying 20–50 warriors (who also rowed) and typically used for hit-and-run raids on coastal settlements. The queen said … grew up. (314)  Thayet’s impatience with her husband’s and Raoul’s squabbling is understandable, but this remark implicates her in what will prove a disastrous decision, and is one of the few places she is seen in an unflattering light. the famine of 438 (316)  Perhaps in consequence of the missing year in Kel’s squiredom, this date is not consistent. In the timeline on Pierce’s official website the Dominion Jewel is first used in 439, and the famine that followed must have been in 439–40. Fief Dunlath (317)  The setting of Wolf-Speaker. You again. (318)  The Chamber of the Ordeal’s decision to begin

114  Reading Tamora Pierce communicating directly with Kel, however briefly, marks an important development in its role, and its words suggest that few squires test themselves against its lesser visions, as Kel does. But … Cleon … was gone. (318–20)  … its methods remain extremely dubious. This vision of Cleon’s death might be argued to test Kel’s ability to endure grief, but how forcing her witness while holding her helpless to fight is supposed to aid knight training is hard to fathom. All she seems to gain from it is defiance—of which she is not short. TP adds: “The Chamber doesn’t test knights alone—that’s the task humans have set it to. It tests people for other tasks, and only the Chamber and those it tests know about that.” She was given sheafs of lists. (321)  (i) Raoul’s work with Kel on logistics is an important part of her training for command, but her lack of self-appreciation seems to inhibit her understanding of that. (ii) In British English ‘sheaves’ would also be correct. We have news … not good. ff. (323–6)  This conference sets up the remainder of the plot, especially “wild reports of strange machines” (326), and is the most detailed account of Maggur’s rise to power. The implications of Jonathan’s unwise appointment of Glaisdan to field command against Raoul’s advice are not further explored. You’ll go north … five Rider groups. (325)  Although not a problem for most readers, logistics of the war (and Tortall generally) are not easy to understand. Third Company of the Own musters about one hundred men, and the five Rider groups would not add more than about 40 warriors: something like half that combined number were deployed against the Owlshollow bandits, and for a war on the scale reported and implied would be a drop in the ocean. One part of the problem is that the size of the regular army is unknown, but despite the immediate realism of the narrative there is a general problem with the plausibility of the war as reported. “going to see the kraken.” (326)  The phrase is Pierce’s invention, but the apparent relation to the climax of Wild Magic, set in 449, in which Daine summons a kraken to destroy a Carthaki fleet at Pirate’s Swoop, is accidental. The creature was there said to be previously all but unknown/forgotten, having lain low after escaping the banishment of immortals during the first four centuries of the Human

Protector of the Small  115 Era, so it would be peculiar if the phrase had become a standard soldiers’ term in only a decade. TP adds: “This isn’t a derivation from the sighting of that kraken. I should have picked something else, I suppose, but I was using the phrase used in our world’s historical past, of men and boys ‘going to see the elephant’ or ‘going to see the mountain’ when they were off on some great, dangerous adventure, usually going to war. The implication was that they were off to see some alien, fabulous thing that would test their strength and ability in many ways and prove their manhood. Such phrases date back to Greco-Roman times and maybe even earlier. Whenever I read them I feel sad, because the person who returns (if he does) is never the blithe person who spoke it.” between the fiefdoms of Trebond and Carmine Tower (327)  This datum is contradicted by the map in Lady Knight, which shows Giantkiller (as it becomes) between Tirrsmont and Anak’s Eyrie. to build a permanent camp. ff. (327–8)  The account of the construction is compressed, but implies a standard pattern of building, recalling the Roman army rather than anything mediaeval. war was boring (329)  Kel echoes the popular saying that ‘war is 99% boredom and 1% sheer terror’, the origin of which is uncertain. a Scanran band (330)  With the following paragraph and reference to a “war-party” of 15 (330), this first reference to enemy soldiers and tactics makes clear the war is asymmetrical. As during the hunt for the Owlshollow bandits, squads of the Own with their large horses and fixed bases are relatively sessile, while Scanrans typically field smaller, mobile groups who practice raiding and build boobytraps, bleeding Tortall and distracting its forces to allow occasional harder punches with more organised troops. Pierce’s experience of the Vietnam War may be an underlying influence. section timeline  The label ‘Summer’ is odd. It is already mid-June, and the section comprises one chapter set on a single day in August. Chapter 17  The Kraken reports that giants fought for Scanra (337)  Though the reports are true, giants figure only by report, and neither how Maggur secured

116  Reading Tamora Pierce their services nor use of their bones in killing devices are explained. They’re at Northwatch (337)  The geography of this engagement is not compatible with the map in Lady Knight, which shows Northwatch as 60–70 miles from Riversedge and Giantkiller. A wagon … party? (338)  Presumably it carries the killing device. They had ridden a mile (339)  If Forgotten Well is in fact “five miles away” (338), this must be an error for ‘four miles’. poleyn (341)  Mediaeval armour was not hinged, so the leg was usually covered in four pieces—cuisses, poleyns, greaves, and sabatons, for thighs, knees, shins, and feet, respectively. Get going … Don’t flutter … (341)  Raoul’s brusqueness to a woman just widowed seems harsh, but besides the urgency of war sympathy would probably make the woman break down, while firm orders help her to brace herself. Nari … thunder (343)  In Japanese ‘karinari’ means ‘thunder’. kill the soldiers … or kill the officers (344)  Seeking to kill officers (or, if noble, capture them for ransom) was a usual mediaeval tactic. There are also far more soldiers than officers … a blond man … war demons (344–5)  This invokes Norse berserkir (whence ‘berserk’), warriors who fought in a trance, perhaps on drugs. The Old Norse root is ber, ‘battle’, + serkr, a bearskin coat. a shield wall. (346)  This was famously an effective Roman tactic. I’ve got an idea (346)  Dom’s thought proves extremely important. It may seem surprising that this use of griffin feathers is not known but it is made explicit in Wild Magic that old lore concerning griffins and truthfulness was lost in their absence from the mortal realm. Take command (349)  One of the most satisfying aspects of this battle-scene is the representation of Kel’s gift as a commander—the first substantial demonstration since the fight with hillmen in Page. Her target-selection is superior, her shooting accurate, her mind cool in suppressing shock and emotions, and her orders clear and decisive. TP adds: “I stole the maneuver that Kel uses to break the squad out of the trap they’re in from one of the battles in the American Civil War.” He’d call for a vote next (351)  Though primarily simply a joke, this is a little odd as Tortall shows little if any sign of democracy and neither mediaeval nor modern army discipline allow voting about

Protector of the Small  117 tactics in battle. There have historically been a few armies where men elected officers and some where shared egalitarian ideologies occasioned an element of voting in disciplinary matters. Kel gaped. … feet tall. (352–3)  The killing devices draw on an extraordinary range of imagery. Their effect in battle and mechanical construction make them like tanks, first seen in 1916 in France during World War One, but assemblage from giants’ bones recalls Frankenstein. The triple-jointed limbs are those of any quadruped— or the Empire’s walking troop-transporters in the Star Wars films— while knife-hands recall Edward Scissorhands. The clubbed tail was a feature of some dinosaurs, notably ankylosaurs and glyptodonts (ancestors of the armadillo), and some had spikes as well; the “ball of spikes” also sounds like a morningstar. And while the whole idea and description are narratively gripping, the idea that the devices could be manufactured in the way shown in Lady Knight is difficult to envisage: there is no indication in any Tortallan book that metalwork can be done by magic, and making wire, knives, and pulleys to the necessary strength on the scale required would need far more advanced technology and greater industrialisation than Scanra can possibly have. Historically, wire of sufficient strength for any such uses is post-mediaeval. The monster slashed … Kel dodged … (354)  What Kel does is possible only because she is using her glaive—a pole-arm giving her a longer reach than the device; Symric had only a sword. Implicitly, despite the giant proportions and triple joints, the device’s effective reach cannot exceed 5–6 feet. The monster was horribly strong. (354)  The device’s source of power is challenging. The only viable explanation is magic, but how such magical effort is sustained by their mage-maker at long distance and for extended periods is unclear in the text. The problem is slightly eased by their (presumed) transport in wagons until let loose on the battlefield. TP adds: “My reasoning was that joints and pulleys have their own hard strength, and that energy supplied by ordinary magic, death magic (powered by the strength of the pull of the Peaceful Realms on the trapped souls), and the strength even of the youngest soul, which is far greater than bodily strength is measured,

118  Reading Tamora Pierce makes these devices very powerful.” “Mama?” ... ff. (356–7)  The introduction of a child to the makeup of the device is a stunning addition to horror, but another logical problem. The ability to speak without biological apparatus or stated technological substitute may be chalked up to magic but a child as animating spirit, however emotionally effective, makes it hard to understand how the devices know how to fight. (There is an interestingly comparable scene in Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Sharing Knife: Horizon, where the mudbat killed by Dag speaks in a child’s voice.) TP adds: “I assumed here that keeping the dead soul in the Mortal Realms makes it technically insane, and its insanity manifests itself as violence. Also, the spell signs written inside the metal pieces cause it pain, if you can assume that making the flow of energy discordant is a kind of pain. That causes the killing devices to attack anyone but their handlers—they hold keys that allow them to nullify the workings of the devices. It is work like this and its consequences that make death magic completely taboo.” White steam … shape apart. (357)  The dissipation of the child’s spirit recalls (on a far lesser scale) the fall of Sauron in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: “there rose a huge shape of shadow, impenetrable, lightning-crowned, filling all the sky. Enormous it reared above the world, and stretched out towards them a vast threatening hand, terrible but impotent: for even as it leaned over them, a great wind took it, and it was all blown away, and passed; and then a hush fell.” (VI.4, ‘The Field of Cormallen). Wrap it up like a spidren’s supper. (357)  The simile is a good example of how Kel seamlessly adjusts her language to the needs of her command. She does not usually speak in this way. Torsen Hammersmith (358)  A name not mentioned elsewhere, and perhaps a joke: ‘torsen’ sounds suitably Scanran, but is a differential in car engines, contracting ‘torque sensing’. TP adds: “He isn’t a god, more a legendary human like Wayland Smith or Sinbad.” How many of these things … (360)  The answer is critical to Lady Knight, but not as imagined. The devices are in numbers an appalling addition to a battlefield, and their defeat critical to Tortallan success—but the underlying issue is the number of child victims. TP

Protector of the Small  119 adds: “Their use can only be in terms of terror weapons. The limitation on them is not in how many children Blayce can obtain, but in the technical aspect of their making. The making of the cables, winches, wheels, and other large and small pieces of each device, as well as the strength and mages to write the spell signs inside each piece (Blayce does assemblage and the final spells; he doesn’t have the strength to do the spell-work of the body, limbs, and skull), all require a sizeable labor force and a large number of skilled workers performing delicate and precise work. Carthak is the only nation that is even remotely capable of this kind of output and it would be a strain on them. Scanra has perhaps 17 devices by the time Kel gets to Blayce in [Lady Knight].” Chapter 18  Ordeal Turomot of Wellam (369)  Although the narrative gives no details about the law that Kel demanded be changed after Joren’s trial, Turomot volunteering to instruct Kel suggests that despite appearances he approved of her temerity and conduct in court. Yuki’s silence … weariness. ff. (369–70)  Neal’s pairing with Yuki is a subtle part of Squire’s ending: formally, Kel’s Ordeal is the culmination, but displaced by the battle with the killing device and made ironic by Neal getting his girl, Kel’s best female friend, while her own romantic life continues in abeyance. Neal wore … his belt. (371)  The romantic significance of the gift of a shukusen is Pierce’s invention. She wrote … (373)  Romantic inarticulacy is a time-honoured warrior trait, and it is not surprising Kel does not know what to write, but despite her (quasi-forbidden) use of the word ‘love’, the brevity of the moment is another marker of the decline in her romantic life since Cleon’s refusal to deflower her. The realm. ff. (376–7)  Kel’s meditative epiphany is another subtle element of the novel’s ending. Given her feelings about Jonathan’s unfairness and the politics that have wrongfully impeded her path to this moment, and marked egalitarianism in her desire to serve, it is important that her dedication is focused on the people of the nation.

120  Reading Tamora Pierce Now we shall see. … You’ll do quite nicely. (378–82)  The little additional phrases spoken by the Chamber beautifully frame the Ordeal, but its content is puzzling. One element requires Kel to abandon a hopeless position—to achieve resignation—while another repeats the helpless witness of slaughter characteristic of her earlier, lesser visions, and seems to demand the same traumatised defiance. But one must also wonder how different from others’ Kel’s Ordeal might be, especially as the Chamber’s manifestation as a face and its immediate addition of a special task, making her its chosen, appear to have only one precedent—it showed Alanna an image of Duke Roger’s treasonous magery (in In the Hands of the Goddess). It was too vile. (383)  The pile of children’s bodies recalls images of the Sho’ah or Holocaust. She walked out … (383)  It is interesting that Kel’s appearance immediately after her Ordeal—a hallmark of the narratives of other Ordeals—is omitted, but the verb ‘walked’ rather than Neal’s “stumbled” (371) suggests a better demeanour than most. On Kel’s … the inner cream. (384)  There is an image of Kel’s shield by Cara Coville posted on Pierce’s LiveJournal blog, at http:// tammypierce.livejournal.com/8178.html. A distaff border (384)  A distaff is a tool used in spinning, and the adjective ‘distaff’ is used to designate the female side of a family. They had studied them … (385)  Not a lesson that is narrated— but one cannot but wonder how a lesson about the heraldic devices of lady knights went down with Joren or Vinson, especially in Kel’s presence. Lady Alanna stood there. ff. (385–9)  The revelation (for Kel, at least) of Alanna as her patron and Alanna’s explicit statements about Kel’s greater importance as a role-model for women, is the final element of the conclusion, and subtly draws together many structural elements of the first three novels—leaving Lady Knight a clear field.

Protector of the Small  121 2.4 Lady Knight dedication  Lady Knight was the first book Pierce published after 9–11, when she was resident in New York City. It appeared in October 2002, and had an ‘Acknowledgements’ in US but not UK editions: “Anyone who reads this and knows where I live will see clear parallels to the events of September 11, 2001. This is and is not a coincidence. I had planned the fate of Haven and its inhabitants since the mid-1990s, when Mallory [Loehr, Pierce’s editrix at Random House] said she would love to see a new series about a new girl knight, and I began to work out the course of Kel’s adulthood. I forgot where in Lady Knight I had stopped writing when September 11 swept us all into the real world. Afterward, all I knew was that I needed to get back to Tortall. I had to get back to Tortall. I wanted to immerse myself in fantasy because reality was “way too much.” I wasn’t able to sit down at my computer for five days, and when I saw where I had stopped— on Kel’s second return to Haven—my hands began to shake. It took me two weeks to write the next twenty pages, the hardest twenty of my life. I did it because it had to be done; I had to write the book, awaited by so many faithful readers. And then, I confess, when I did the rewrites, I expressed my feelings about war, refugees, and disaster a bit more forcefully than I had in the first draft. So September 11 did and did not shape this book; maybe the right way to put it is that it added muscle and my own personal trauma to what would have been a strong story in any case. Make of it what you like. Think about what’s here and come to your own decisions, that’s all I ask.” maps  The maps are by Rick Robinson. The scale of the area map does not always correspond with distances implicit in the text, one sign of Pierce’s struggle in writing with then undiagnosed dyscalculia, a learning disorder like dyslexia affecting numbers and hence scales. She was diagnosed only in 2007. Inconsistencies are annotated, but the problem does not affect reading pleasure. (It does however have an effect on those writing fanfic.) section-timeline  The fulsomeness explaining Corus and Thayet’s status is presumably to help the novel stand alone.

122  Reading Tamora Pierce Chapter 1  Storm Warnings The Nothing Man (3)  Kel’s name for Blayce and his unimpressive appearance, contrasting with the appalling scale of his crimes, suggests a famous phrase coined by Hannah Arendt (1906–75), who reported for the New Yorker on the trial in Jerusalem in 1961–2 of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963) contrasts Eichmann’s self-identification as a bureaucrat and harmless appearance, with his office job, scheduling trains that delivered millions to extermination camps. As far as Kel knew … (4)  At least one knight has previously been given a vision by the Chamber—Alanna, in In the Hand of the Goddess. Enforced isolation from the Lioness continues to hurt Kel. It was a reminder … (4)  The Chamber’s pyschology is again suspect: it seems unlikely Kel needs such frequent reminding, which damages her. See The killing device … dreams. (41) the growing risk … (4)  The tension between Kel’s quest and necessary subservience to orders is another aspect of Pierce’s revisioning of ‘Song of the Lioness’: Alanna had no such problem. broad-shouldered and solid-waisted (5)  An admirable physique for a knight, but at odds with Tortallan images of the feminine. a winged creature (5)  The appearance of stormwings, which haunt Lady Knight, and Kel’s strong reaction recall Daine’s attitudes in ‘The Immortals’—and their evolution: see the Essay. Stormwings loved battlefields … (6)  The summary is for readers new to Tortall, but in its bluntness signals the increasing age of Pierce’s target audience Shoo! (6)  All else aside, this isn’t a command likely to impress an intelligent, adult immortal who might well be centuries old. Unlike other generations … (8)  Before modern communications provision of information sufficiently rapidly to be of political and military use was a major problem. Rulership in Scanra … the Bloody Throne … (9)  With Squire 323–6, this is as much explanation of Scanran politics and Maggur’s rise as Pierce provides, and while plausible begs many questions. at least fifty of the things (9)  Even this number of devices raises

Protector of the Small  123 questions about their manufacture: see Squire, Kel gaped. … nearly feet tall. (352–3) and How many of these things … (360) Jonathan’s sending … our army … (10)  This makes the army sound feudal and occasional, rather than the standing army it appears to be. TP adds: “Parts of the army—those parts supplied by [Jonathan’s] nobles—are occasional. He needs the standing army to be reliable and to cover his borders, but in times of war, and to ensure in part that his nobles fulfil their obligations to the crown, he bolsters the standing army’s ranks with forces supplied and led by the nobility.” to address him by his first name … (11)  A revealing detail, showing Raoul’s informality and aversion to protocol and Kel’s uncertainty about her new adult status. I can’t … my Ordeal. (13)  The Chamber told Kel the vision of Blayce was “no part of your test” (Squire, 382), but she lacks the confidence to discriminate—unsurprisingly, given the attitudes Raoul has just revealed. evenings spent figuring … (14)  Another feudal detail that does not square with a standing army: a feudal force raised from scratch would not be like the soldiers shown later in the novel. gutters … black stains … (17)  The gutters would be for blood to drain, as on an autopsy table. a big man … (18)  Stenmun is a necessary contrast to Blayce’s Nothing-Man-ness as well as his keeper. Blayce’s murderous paedophilia is based on that of Gilles de Rais (1404–40), a lieutenant of Joan of Arc, and de Rais’s martial skills are transferred to Stenmun. See the Essay. We just shipped twenty more … to spring. (18)  It isn’t clear whether these 30 devices are among the 50 mentioned by Raoul, but there is a horrible twisting implication in Stenmun’s words. The 20 shipped to Maggur must be complete, but are the ten remaining devices or as yet unmurdered children? And “barely enough to make it to spring” because of production speed or because of Blayce’s psychosexual needs? The shortage anticipates the raid on Haven. But see also Squire, How many of these things … (360), where TP’s estimate of numbers suggests this vision may be a foreseeing of possibil-

124  Reading Tamora Pierce ity rather than a current truth. a phrase she had learned from soldiers (18)  Given Pierce’s YA market she could not include barrack-room obscenities, but it should be noted that Kel knows and can use them. your idea of time (18)  The Chamber’s metaphors don’t make much sense but are not supposed to. It may be a less advanced being than Chitral, the other elemental described in Pierce’s work, but paradox and confusion are common with non-linear concepts of time. Your ideas … to me. (19)  The elemental’s ability to read minds and reproduce enemies and deep fears makes its apparent inability to grasp space peculiar, but may reflect its confinement to one place. If you … believe you. (20)  It is necessary to the plot that Kel not tell anyone but the Chamber’s logic is dubious, and what might happen if she went to Raoul and passed truthspell is worth pondering. knights … the war (20)  Oaths of knighthood make them liable to crown command, but how this interlocks with the apparent obligation of lords to provide troops and with the standing army is unclear. three times longer … two weeks … (20)  As it takes at least ten days to reach the Scanran border from Corus without significant snow delays this doesn’t make sense: the time lost would be greater than the two weeks saved. Twice as long would work better. a finger that shook with rage (21)  Raoul has reason to remember stormwings from the Immortals War, and no commander likes a reminder of inevitable casualties to come. TP adds: “Daine got stormwings the right to stay; she didn’t get them human acceptance.” Chapter 2  Tobe They moped. (22)  To be fair, Neal’s and Roald’s relationships are more serious than Kel’s with Cleon, but there is a striking contrast between her stoicism and their moaning. plump and peppery Yamani (23)  Physically and temperamentally, Yuki is an opposite of Kel. Had he forgotten her? ff. (23–4)  Cleon has excuses, but one would think, with Kel’s Ordeal looming, he might have managed one letter before the snows. As in other matters, care for Kel is signally lack-

Protector of the Small  125 ing, and whether he truly loves her, or only the idea of a Lady Knight, is moot. Kel is also more realistic than he, as well as freer-thinking. Kel inspected the skinny urchin … (27)  Tobe’s state and mongrel inheritance recall Peachblossom and Jump when Kel adopted them. indentured servant, not a slave (29)  Indentured service involves a contract to work for a set period with food and shelter provided by the employer, but not usually wages. Historically it was a means of securing farm labour in British colonies, including America, and as some indentured servants were treated badly, like Tobe, there is a tendency to conflate slavery and indenture that Pierce rebukes. Auld Eulama (31)  ‘Auld’ is a Scots form of ‘old’, as in ‘for auld lang syne’ (for old times’ sake); northern Tortallan language, like its burred accent, reflects northern British and Scottish usages. ‘Eulama’ may jokingly refer to the European Latin American Agency, a large firm of literary agents in Italy that has midwived many authors. You know, Mindelan … (31)  Neal’s sudden adoption of noble address (repeated on the next page, but not thereafter) is odd, and presumably a neo-adult phase started by passing their Ordeals. the mark of Scanra (35)  Tobe’s casual phrase, presumably meaning blond hair and fair complexion, reveals a pattern of racial prejudice in northern Tortall; cf. attitudes to the Bazhir. Who will impress the Crown more, swine? ff. (36)  Neal’s deed may be laudable but he nevertheless resorts to high-handed noble and magical bullying. It is implausible that he could devise a spell to imitate what the Chamber did, but Alvik’s punishment echoes various Caribbean slave stories in which slave owners suffer their own blows. poppy … laugh powder (38)  The only indication in this quartet that Tortall has a problem with drug use other than alcoholism. Poppy (detailed as a ‘brick’ that is cut and smoked, 39) would be opium, a narcotic; rainbow dream sounds like a hallucinogen (Mario Party 5 was not released until 2003, and cannot be jokingly referred to); and laugh powder could be any natural euphoric (‘laughing gas’, nitrous oxide, does not occur naturally in a powder form). Numair speaks of “dreamrose” and “wakeflower” in ‘The Immortals’, and Emelan has a drug problem with ‘dragonsalt’, seen in some detail in Magic Steps.

126  Reading Tamora Pierce The killing device … dreams. (41)  Kel is doing to herself what the Chamber did, conflating the true vision of Blayce with testing visions induced by touching its door. This seems more of a burden than a motivation, and again questions the Chamber’s methods. purse … two weeks (42)  Pay is not mentioned again and it seems unlikely that wagons of coin are trundling about a warzone, but Kel may mean credit is given against future payment. How Jonathan finances the war is unclear. section timeline The shorter time-span indicates how compacted the plot of Lady Knight will be, spanning six months, only three in detail. Chapter 3  Long, Cold Road Friendship … passion was gone. (49)  Kel’s continuing worry about what she thinks her fickleness continues to emphasise how isolated she has been and how idealistic she remains. She wanted … account. (49)  Proper military dedication but a convenient reason for Kel to shelve a problem she finds troubling. By comparison with Alanna’s guilt-free sexual relations with Jon, Liam Ironarm, and George, Kel’s fumbles with Cleon and deep anxieties about her physical attractions and fidelity are striking; this decision marks retreat from the narrative of her sexual development, ensuring she will end the quartet still a virgin. I have to marry … starve … (50)  It is a pointed reversal to have a man obliged to marry for money against his will, and commoner in Regency romance than YA fantasy. She felt shallow, coldhearted … (51)  Kel’s judgement is generous to Cleon and harsh on herself—as often. ascairt (52)  A form of ‘a-scared’, not in dictionaries, that seems to have been popularised by Stephen King. It sounds Scottish but isn’t, and may be used as consistent with Tobe’s northern Tortallan. fifty senior knights (53)  How many knights there are is hard to calculate. Kel’s year had only six graduates, but those immediately above her may have had up to 11. Taking eight as an average, and assuming an adult life-span of fifty years but allowing a little for failures and attrition, there might be only four hundred knights at any

Protector of the Small  127 given time, from which desk knights must be subtracted; given what we are shown of training it is hard to see how there could be many more. Fifty thus represents a high percentage of the available total. refugee camps (55)  Refugees are as old as warfare but the concept of organised refugee camps is modern, and far more important in global politics since 1945 than ever before. Historically, no society at Tortall’s technological level has maintained state-run refugee camps. TP adds: “The local nobles won’t take [refugees] and they will be under the military’s feet in a mountainous war zone with only so much level ground on which to camp. They have to do something with the refugees.” here, where … unforgiving north. (55)  Baird’s account underlines a sense that the war has underlying economic causes: northern Tortall is poor by comparison with the south, and the land more marginal; Scanra, further north, must be in worse case. The use of ‘scrabble’ summons the term ‘hardscrabble’, sometimes applied to coalmining life in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, where Pierce lived as a child. will you watch him? (55)  Baird honours Kel’s maturity but ironically Neal will follow her on a reckless mission. Fief Tirrsmont (56)  The home of Sir Voelden, who tried to kill Kel during a joust (Squire, ch. 12): the portrait of its lord’s self-indulgent lack of care for his people bites harder in that light. suckling pig, saffron rice … (56)  Suckling pigs are slaughtered at two to six weeks, and feed far fewer people than an adult pig, while saffron is a costly spice. Tirrsmont’s self-indulgence actively worsens the conditions endured by his liegefolk. An abatis … to jump. (57)  An abatis does deter horses but its main function is to delay attackers, exposing them to defensive fire for longer. It also helps guard against approach by soldiers carrying blazebalm and makes escalade (attack using ladders) more difficult. longhouses (61)  Large, one-room dwellings in which tens of people and livestock share space, typical of low-tech cultures where there is insufficient wealth, land, and leisure to allow family houses. between Fief Tirrsmont and Anak’s Eyrie (63)  This does not agree with the map, which shows Haven west of both fiefs.

128  Reading Tamora Pierce The nobles … their game. (63)  Selfish politics are comprehensible but the implications confusing: Tirrsmont can refuse to house refugees even when they are his own liegers, and southern lords can refuse to allow refugees onto their lands, but the Crown has an obligation to house and feed them within a warzone. You are. (64)  Wyldon’s decision shows moral courage as well as good administration: he knows Kel will resent it, but in appointing her to command despite her inexperience is strongly endorsing her. I did my best. (64)  This is more debateable. The forces assigned Kel are, as events prove, wholly inadequate for the task. close to the Vassa (65)  This is at odds with the map, which shows Haven about 20 miles south of the Vassa and with no Tortallan fortification between it and the river. Fanche (67)  The name seems to be Pierce’s invention, though Fanchon is a diminutive form of François. Never had … or joke. (68)  Realisation of how constrained Wyldon was as training master is vital in making him more sympathetic, and recalls Kel’s relief at the camaraderie she found with the Own. It does not, however, reflect well on Wyldon’s pedagogy. Saefas (68)  This name seems to be Pierce’s invention but has a Gaelic feel consistent with other markers of northern Tortall. Anyone else … into trouble. (69)  A damning indictment of the military value of knights highlighting Kel’s professionalism, and an ironic set-up, as devotion to duty and sympathy for commoners will lead her to pursue her own disobedient course, if not amusements. Will you … Mindelan? (70)  It is not clear whether Kel has a choice: soldiers cannot refuse legal orders; can knights? Chapter 4  Kel Takes Command technically … her command (73)  More self-deprecation—Kel is the commander, and others should obey her. stag who met the Goddess (74)  A subtle joke: the stag is an early symbol of Christ and St Hubert was commanded to a pious life by a stag between whose antlers a crucifix appeared. April was a chancy month (74)  Echoing the first line of Eliot’s

Protector of the Small  129 The Waste Land (“April is the cruellest month”), which itself invokes the opening of Chaucer’s General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. Normally … until May. (74)  This, with mixed deciduous and evergreen woods (75), implies a climate equivalent to those above 50º north (southern Sweden, the Baltic States, British Columbia); Scanra must extend into zones equivalent to those above 60º north (Norway, northern Sweden, Finland, Siberia, Alaska). forded … thirty miles (76–7)  A detail that does not square with the map: 30 miles downstream is pretty much at the junction of the Greenwoods and Vassa, where a ford is unlikely. her last … a hammer (77)  Kel may be thinking of building Giantkiller (Squire, 327–8), or of using her warhammer to open the headdome of the killing device at Forgotten Well (356–7). stocks (78)  Wooden boards between posts, with holes through which a prisoner’s feet are placed, forcing them to sit or lie; in a pillory a similar system binds arms and head, forcing one to stand. the walkway lining the upper wall (78)  Properly, an alure. a small … the mageblasts (80)  A sly irony: as keys worn on a belt mageblasts invoke the bunch worn by the mistress of a house, handing over which (to a new bride) marks transfer of reponsibility—a topos in Regency and other historical romance. a homestead nearby (80)  A place never seen nor mentioned again. back to Scanra (81)  A puzzling statement, unless Elbridge means ‘penal mines near the border’. These are convicts, not prisoners of war, and PoWs returning to Scanra would be being set free. The convicts’ … need (81)  The problem with Elbridge’s mistrust is military, not just humanitarian: soldiers whose weapons have to be unlocked and issued are not much use in a surprise attack. hard and sound (82)  The timber is well seasoned (dried after cutting), not green. Seasoned timber is stronger, and if green timber is used for building it will dry, warp, and crack in place—but as trees are still being cut, the stock of seasoned timber must be exhausted. placed low … archers (83)  Properly, the part of the wall above the alure is the parapet. In a fort it would probably be crenellated, with crenels (or embrasures) through which to fire and merlons (bits left sticking up) to offer shelter, but Haven seems to have a straight

130  Reading Tamora Pierce parapet. Pierce’s decisions about using architectural terminology— abatis, but not alure or parapet—presumably reflect her (and her publisher’s) concerns about the vocabulary of her target audience. the forty … promised her (83)  For all Wyldon’s concern for refugees and sound construction, the resources allocated Kel are woefully inadequate—a theme that proves important, and a political as much as a military indictment of Tortallan thinking. Two of the other six men … (87)  The replacements for Derom and Symric, killed at Forgotten Well (Squire, 348, 353). She’d known two men … (91)  Presumably Kel is thinking of Ivath Brand and Urfan Noll, sentenced to ten years in the mines for kidnapping Lalasa (Squire, 151–2). dog-skinner (92)  There is a kind of hunting knife still called a dog skinner, and historically dog leather was used to make riding gloves. she’d imagined … folly. (93)  Another emblem of revisioning: Kel’s army duty replaces Alanna’s exotic quest, and taking command she has to address a motley band at supper, not make a rousing speech like Shakespeare’s Henry V before Agincourt (4.3.18–67). section-timeline  The focus contracts still further. Chapter 5  Clerks honey wagon (100)  US slang for a manure cart (or manure spreader or portable outdoor toilet). human waste spread powerful disease (103)  Most dangerously cholera, transmitted in contaminated water. a hole in his heart (103)  A congenital defect, most commonly a hole in the septum dividing the chambers of the heart that affects pressure and blood flow. The only treatment is surgical. If the hole is small the sufferer may not be aware of it and live a full life, but larger or multiple holes impair fitness and can kill at any time; stress is dangerous because it raises blood pressure. He makes us nervous … (109)  A vivid illustration of the price of power—Numair would harm no Tortallan casually and expends effort on refugees’ and soldiers’ defence yet is feared and avoided—and a meta-comment on the importance of Kel’s Giftlessness in making her

Protector of the Small  131 an approachable, successful commander. Only once … task here. (110)  Kel is presumably thinking of Wolset at Forgotten Well (Squire, 350–1); she has forgotten Quinden during the training exercise in Page (205–08). You know what you command? ff. (111)  Fanche is accurate. The contrast between the resources Wyldon allocates troops and refugees is increasingly important and is, if understandable, perverse, giving those least able to defend themselves the poorest chance to do so. the enemy was everywhere … ff. (113–14)  It is hard to work out the logistics of the war: if Scanran troops are penetrating the border along its length one would think total numbers sufficient to invade in strength, and Maggur’s strategy (raids, larger armies, killing devices, and sieges) makes limited military sense. something bright and shiny … (115)  This suggests a process like hypnotism; Numair is presumably so strong he needs no prop. I don’t recall … (115)  Numair’s absentmindedness is amusing, but Kel would not forget something important properly taught; there is implicit criticism of the training regime Wyldon superintended. shamans, or mages (117)  It is unclear if this equates shamans and mages, but a shaman enters an altered state of consciousness (commonly using a drug) to communicate with spirits, requesting healing or other power by supernatural intervention; Mircea Eliade called shamanism a “technique of religious ecstasy”. Shamanism is consistent with what is known of Scanra, but what spirits shamans communicate with, and how such ability relates to the Gift, are moot. two killing devices (121)  If dramatically satisfying, logistics are puzzling: the devices are transported by wagon, so how these got here unnoticed, and why a party of “thirty or so” (116) has two are uncertain. It suggests Haven has been singled out for its children, but the raiding party does not seem equipped for that purpose. Chapter 6  Defence Plans crying … mother (123–4)  Who else hears the released spirits is moot, but it matters psychologically that in killing these devices Kel is (as at Forgotten Well) close enough to hear, and to be haunted—

132  Reading Tamora Pierce especially with her knowledge of Blayce gained from the Chamber. Nets … pickaxes (125–6)  Kel’s swift idea shows her addressing the threat as best she can, in striking contrast to the army: the possibility of attack by killing devices has been evident for months, but very little seems to have been done. a sling (128)  Slings are among the oldest weapons. Comprising a pouch between lengths of cord, whirled at high speed before release, a slinger can cast a stone of 50–500g (2 oz to 1 lb) at sufficient speed to kill and at ranges exceeded only by the longbow and modern composite bow, both vastly more expensive to make. when three … were killed (133)  A very Kel-ish self-deprecation: she killed all three herself. I’m not doing harm … (133)  Kel is persuading herself, probably wrongly. Numair is struck by her certainty, and details of her vision—the involvement of Stenmun, architecture, the numbers of devices—might assist Daine’s search for Blayce’s location. I wager … Blayce does. (133)  Interestingly, Baird will be proven wrong: Maggur has given Blayce children of his own liegers. But his point about tolerating evil means and people who further one’s goals connects Joren, who saw nothing wrong in harming Lalasa to hurt Kel, with Maggur’s use of necromancy and child-murder. All this … we can. (134)  Events make this unnecessary but one may doubt Numair’s confidence. Despite clear understanding of refugee camps as “storehouses of fuel” nothing has been done, and what is proposed is months away at best. bolster … camps (134)  There must be more refugee camps along the border, and while Numair is doing all he can to bolster defences, there is no evidence the army is and (given Haven’s vulnerability) clear evidence that nothing like enough has been done. how the Yamanis build … (135)  It seems odd that Tortallans would not have the concept of a stone glacis as a part of defensive military architecture, though the lack of proper defences at Haven is consistent with its general expedience. She knew … its contents. (135)  Merric has no good reason for resentment: he was with Kel when they met the bandits in Page, and saw her performances in training, as well as wanting her reassur-

Protector of the Small  133 ance before his Ordeal (Squire, 372). He must know she is a better commander than he would be, and Kel may misinterpret his crooked smile and “mocking toast”: he may mock himself rather than her, and she may be over-sensitive because of her self-doubts. the Sorcerer’s Dance (136)  The name summons ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’—a poem by Goethe, written in 1797, for which Paul Dukas wrote music in 1897, and which Walt Disney animated in a famous sequence in Fantasia (1940). The tale is of an apprentice who tries to use magic to save himself doing chores, but cannot control the broom he enchants; Numair, fortunately, has greater skill. cressets (136)  Metal containers for oil, tallow, etc. burned for light. When you’re … by surprise. (136)  The knowledge of servants and their invisibility to employers are articles of faith in Regency and other aristocratic romance, and the trope of the ‘clever slave’ who knows more than their master goes back to the Roman comic dramatists Plautus and Terence in the third and second centuries bce. Chapter 7  Tirrsmont Refugees playing … demented piper… (139)  The image of Numair becomes that of the Pied Piper of Hamelin (in Browning’s poem), but where he stole children away because their parents cheated him, Numair defends children and wants no payment. he has to blow … (140)  A telling illustration of the truth that great gifts have great costs: Numair pays for his magical strength. power stones (141)  Probably black opals, expensive, rare, and in short supply in Tortall before the Immortals War, but now mined at Dunlath (see Wolf-Speaker). admiration for … pole arm. ff. (144–7)  Unproblematical within the narrative, Kel’s military training of children is a moral poser: in the real world such behaviour would for good reason be criminal under laws of war forbidding recruitment of child soldiers, but the children’s desire to learn and Kel’s to teach seem admirable. tailor-fashion (147)  Cross-legged; ‘tailor-wise’ is also used. She beat a fast retreat. (148)  Despite cool dealing with Numair’s magic when others were spooked, Kel is affected by Daine’s magic.

134  Reading Tamora Pierce the Tirrsmont refugees … (148)  The problem with Tirrsmont is set-up in chapter 3: see The nobles … their game. (63) He’s sweet … notion. (150)  A good example of a structural issue of which Pierce makes consistent use: readers familiar with ‘The Immortals’ know that Numair is sweet, but in adopting Kel’s pointof-view ‘Protector of the Small’ sets that aside to be rediscovered here. Kel similarly provides new views of Jonathan, Alanna, Raoul, Daine, and others in ‘Song of the Lioness’ and ‘The Immortals’. a man in his fifties. ff. (151–2)  Idrius Valestone deepens the oddity of what goes on at Tirrsmont: given his relative wealth, why was he unable to evacuate himself? and unwelcome at Tirrsmont? Dragged off our lands … (152)  This is odd: one would think refugees had fled a Scanran threat, not been forcibly taken into military custody. It seems possible Tirrsmont has used the war to steal from his people, as Valestone perhaps suggests (153). Those buildings … the boards. (152)  See hard and sound (82). a shameless chit … (153)  The automatic hostility to Kel as a woman and its accompanying assumption of promiscuity is less prominent in Lady Knight—she has knighthood, command, and professional respect—but Valestone is a reminder of the mindset that can only think of women in derogatory sexual terms. It is interesting that he is himself a victim of Tirrsmont, who shares his bigotries. Because my mother … entirely. (154)  Kel associates baldness with impotence; there may be an underlying reference to a stag’s antlers as a sign of potency (a stag with a withered antler will be found to have a damaged testicle on the opposite side). If you go … by midnight. (155)  This does not fit with the map, which indicates the distance to Mastiff by this route as 60+ miles. brass-faced wench (155)  ‘Brass-faced’ is a new insult levelled at Kel, and in a way a tribute to her exercise of command: for an 18-year-old to face down a man of Valestone’s age is impressive. scarlet … garment. (157)  In mediaeval dyeing scarlet was made from insects in the genus Kermes (root of ‘crimson’); the association with wealth was not the cost of the dye, but that finer thread (much more expensive) took dye better, so coarse peasant clothing was rarely dyed in bright colours.

Protector of the Small  135 Few of … learn. (157) Kel presumably means that few soldiers understand the use of a spear as a polearm; they would know how to throw one, but in defending a fort throwing spears are of little use. Chapter 8  First Defence Barrabul, Keon, Dortie (159)  Barrabul is an old Norse name that transferred to Irish Gaelic (and thence to Australia), Keon an Irish variant of John. Dortie is probably shortened and could indicate various names, but the Irish connection adds something to the flavour of northern Tortall. a fair … animals. (161)  Daine’s voice adds to condemnation of Tortall’s military and its thinking. Vanget is a skilled commander but given Daine’s role in the Immortals War his apparently complete failure to understand the resource she represents is shocking. The older woman (162)  Daine is 24 to Kel’s 18. whore of Tortall (165)  With command and weariness Kel’s vocabulary becomes blunt, and the ironic gap between the truth of her virginity and slanderous reputation for promiscuity intensifies. ravens and jays (165)  Species capable of loud cries: these must be wild birds responding to Daine’s magic. cuirass (165)  Covering the torso—breastplate and backplate. Milady … at my back— (166–7)  Oluf does not want to lead convict soldiers into battle because he doesn’t trust them not to ‘frag’ him—a reflection of the way he treats them. escort … the stocks (168)  The first time Kel orders punishment beyond latrine duty: an important step in command. any civilians … could fight (169)  It is a further indictment of the army’s attitudes that the refugees had no guards. When the … had been. (173)  Numair’s tactic repeats what he tried to do to the ‘skinners’ in The Realms of the Gods, ch. 1. grey-faced, his eyes tormented (176)  Numair is not only drained magically—he has killed more Scanrans than any soldier. To shoo off stormwings (178)  Echoing ch. 1, p. 6. section-timeline  The focus drops to one day; this and most subsequent sections have only one chapter.

136  Reading Tamora Pierce Chapter 9  Mastiff Mastiff had … jump them. (181)  The double palisade described is what defensive fortification ought to look like. The gap between the walls is a killing field for any attackers who make it over the outer palisade. The abatis makes it difficult for attackers to reach the base of the outer wall, where they may be sheltered from fire from the inner, and can set blazebalm bombs or equivalent. killing devices and a battering ram (184)  The weak point in any wall is the gate: the devices would pull people to fight it, weakening defence around the gate, which could then be battered open—with sufficient attackers, end of story. brutal practicality (184)  Owen is correct: Tortallans are fighting a war of position, around forts to defend territory, but Scanrans are fighting a war of manoeuvre. Vietnam was different, but there may be an echo of the asymmetry that bedevilled the US in that conflict. Without Haven … executed. (185)  Kel’s daydream is anticipation and false trail. As she discovers, stopping Blayce on her own is not a possibility, and she does return despite fears of punishment. to see with you (186)  A typo in the UK edition: the line must first have read ‘to meet with you’, and been half-corrected to ‘to see you’. between the border … north. (187)  On the basis of the map in Squire Vanget was operating well into Scanran territory (though the position of Northwatch on that map cannot be correct). The enemy … shreds. (187)  Maggur has only begun organising his army to fight as an army, rather than raiding, and the maintenance of discipline on the battlefield is the hardest thing to learn. Hanaford … Fief Jonajin (188)  Neither is shown on the map, and Jonajin is mentioned only once more (206). They see … navy service. (188)  Wyldon’s explanation brings into focus one oddity (historically speaking) of Tortall. Balance between crown and magnate nobles is mediaeval—the last magnate revolt in British history was in 1601—but conscription on a national scale is Modern, and began with the French Revolutionary Wars. He and his friends … orders. (189)  The need is clear, legality is not. The refugees are not subject to army discipline, only camp disci-

Protector of the Small  137 pline. In reality this kind of issue can cause serious difficulties. They weren’t … that bad. (190)  Kel’s summary illustrates anxious sticking to regulations and less formal understanding that makes her a good commander. Her use of ‘mutiny’ is problematical: to mutiny one must be bound to service; see previous annotation. She had made the Stump smile! (190)  Another important step in humanising Wyldon, consistent with his relaxation in field command. See Never had … or joke. (68) war-dogs … scent-hounds (191)  An old categorisation. The Romans used Molosser dogs to fight (ancestors of St Bernards, Newfoundlands, and Pit Bulls, among others); modern scenthounds include bassets, beagles, foxhounds, and coonhounds. she preferred Jump … (191)  There is a sharpness to Kel’s preference for mongrels over purebred dogs with specific functions. We’re assuming … Gallan. (192)  Wyldon’s analysis makes sense, and Maggur might need the profit from selling captives—but how does Wyldon know children are sent to Blayce? And if he understands that means the manufacture of more devices, why is more not done to get children out of harm’s way? Both politics and logistics would be horrendous, but so is the damage done by killing devices— and the discussion (192–4) shows command understands that, so their inactivity is troubling. his own putrid reasons (192)  The first hint of Blayce’s perversion, which aligns everything Kel opposes: bullying, sexual predation, and Scanran invasion. But the gods … by now. (195)  Daine echoes the Chamber’s difficulty with time but it does not occur to Kel she has already been chosen as “such a vessel”. One explanation lies in the damage to her confidence done, subtly but tellingly, by hatreds and difficulties she has faced, and by separation from Alanna, preventing Kel’s sympathetic training as a woman and deeper knowledge of the gods. The big man … straggled in. (195–6)  Kel’s dreams continue to torment her like visions she experienced touching the Chamber door: she has internalised its nightmares. civilians … to Haven. (197)  The problem deepens: if civilians with children were not safe at Giantkiller, why are they supposed

138  Reading Tamora Pierce safe at Haven with poorer defences and fewer guards? section-timeline  The focus remains very sharp. Chapter 10  The Refugees Fight I’m not … precisely. (203)  A sign of Kel’s inexperience: she means he is in charge of patrols—but he is subordinate, as he knows. milord (204)  Merric is not a lord, but from Kortus’s point-of-view (and any private’s or NCO’s) milording is playing safe. noodles (205)  Any form of unleavened dough rolled flat and cut or pulled into shapes; technically, all forms of pasta are noodles. There were … broke up. (206–10)  Kel’s decisive intervention, swift comprehension, and summary justice show her at her best as a commander. There is an echo of her resort to physical strength with Wolset at Forgotten Well; cf. Only once … task here. (110) besom (210)  A broomstick, like ‘witch’ a derogatory term for a woman. bratling (210)  Both ‘brat’ and the rarer ‘bratling’ are historically associated with beggars and the lowest classes. mead (211)  An alcoholic drink made from fermented honey, stronger than beer but weaker than spirits. so many headaches (212)  Almost certainly from tension, caused by neck muscles becoming tight and jaw clenching. The ploughing … black earth. (215–16)  Kel’s understandable incompetence with ox and plough (echoing her problems with carpentry) is important as a more extended comic episode, that … She had an opportunity … cheers. (217–19)  … is reinforced by the refugees’ victory—but both are set-ups for a dark turn. section-timeline  The timespan re-extends to a month, but all but three days are covered in the first six pages of the chapter. It seems probable that the section extends to 4 June. See next section-timeline. Chapter 11  Shattered Sanctuary Write a notice … no change. (224)  Though she would hate the idea, Kel is as a commander properly becoming more political, sup-

Protector of the Small  139 pressing news to help morale. a clump of angry … day. (224)  It is unclear why Pierce has Neal’s notion of an elected council fail. The theme is not developed because events supervene, and there is a case that authoritarian and feudal Tortall is not ready for democratic local politics—but one suspects a dig at the real-world behaviour of many politicians. Kel knew they were right. (227)  Psychologically, yes, but Kel’s deep-seated worry is prophetic and Zamiel’s confidence misplaced: the 50 raiders (223) would have been a more serious threat if the defence were a squad light, and no Scanran party the refugees defeat had killing devices. The underlying problem is the scant resources afforded Haven, the moment a complex example of the right thing not being the safe thing. a boy (229)  The timing is problematical: Kel left Haven only the previous morning, and rode to Mastiff; Tobe left later, and on foot. Company Eight and Company Six … (230)  Wyldon is shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. They hit mid-mornin’. (230)  Suggesting Stenmun waited until Kel, other knights, and escort left. iron mantises (230)  Tobe’s description horribly suggests aspects of the devices’ appearance (see Figure 12). Wyldon led … ff. (231–55)  This is the point Pierce means in her ‘Acknowledgements’, where writing was interrupted by 9-11, and the following ‘twenty pages’ were “the Figure 12. A praying mantis hardest twenty of my life”; see the (Mantis religiosa). Picture credit: Marco Bernardini note on the dedication. Wild creatures … (231–2)  This echoes the behaviour of wild animals when immortals reappeared, in Wild Magic, and the quietness that alerts Kel at Forgotten Well. The same topos occurs in Trickster’s Choice when Ali travels to Lombyn. the rough bridge … (233)  A detail suggesting the Scanrans knew what they faced. See They hit mid-mornin’. (230).

140  Reading Tamora Pierce Looking … east wall. (233)  The assault by the killing devices would pull defenders from the gate, leaving it vulnerable to the battering ram—the same tactics as at Giantkiller. dogs … cats … (234)  The dead animals echo the spidren-killed kittens that decided Kel to accept knight training (First Test, ch. 1) She could name everyone … (235)  This elegiac passage shows Kel’s knowledge as commander and brings home the personal loss despite shocked and Yamani suppression of emotion: the icy distance she maintains is a means of coping with grief and consuming rage. Sixty … most of them soldiers (236)  ‘Most’ must mean two-thirds or less: there were six squads, less Connac’s and those with Merric. Allowing for convict soldiers who have been captured, there cannot be more than 40 here, but the presence of uniforms is misleading. The actual figures turn out to be 64 dead and 35+ soldiers (241–2). A stormwing … wings. (236–7)  Kel’s first conversation with a stormwing hits hard, not only as a reminder that for all their vile appearance and behaviour stormwing purposes are moral. They acknowledge rules and purpose, and Kel has been acting very idio­ syncratically. The relative civility of the conversation sets up events at Rathhausak. You couldn’t have known … (240)  Except that Kel did. A redheaded toddler … (241)  The child’s incidental death echoes events at Haresfield (Squire, 61). She cut … (243)  Kel’s care for livestock is sensible but requites Daine’s trust in her to care for animals as well as people section-timeline  As action is continuous between chs 11–12, the previous section must end on 4 June, not 3 June. Chapter 12  Renegade You would have been suspicious (248)  Merric’s awareness of his mistake partly explains his later determination to come after Kel. You didn’t— (249)  Merric (like all at Haven) was outmatched, but his appreciation of what could happen is less than Kel’s. Kel stared … come calling. (251)  Kel’s bitterness is justified: the army protects itself but fails to protect those most at risk.

Protector of the Small  141 reporting like a good little clerk (252)  Kel’s self-recrimination echoes her thoughts as a page about ‘desk knights’. The mages … them completely (253)  This seems inefficient: why not just melt the headdome? We have other problems … (253–4)  Wyldon is not wrong and Kel does not know of the threatened crossing by a substantial army, but Wyldon is not putting together what he knows of Blayce and killing devices. For Scanrans to ‘resupply’ with children is as great a threat as any troops. He is in a bind, but there is an element of hauteur in his willingness to abandon commoners. a ragged twist of bright red yarn (255)  A symbolic reminder of the children who have been stolen, and their special claim. You’re going … killing device. (256–7)  Unlike Alanna, Kel has been brought to a moment in which there is no good choice, only one of evils, and has to follow heart and conscience without real hope. At Fort Mastiff … ff. (257–68)  The only passage that abandons Kel’s point-of-view—showing loyalty Kel has built among friends and superiors and raising an interesting question about Irnai’s prophecy: see That’s the one … ff. (351–6). one green knight (258)  For the first time Wyldon is openly irrational with emotion—he made Kel a commander. This is … her maid. (258)  Raoul’s remark reminds readers as well as Wyldon of the parallel between crises Kel faced over Lalasa’s and the refugees’ kidnaps. Raoul hand-signalled … ff. (259–61)  Raoul also shows better than Wyldon in promptly taking what steps he can to support Kel. But that’s treason … (261)  Even on the basis Merric suggests, and despite Seaver’s agreement construing Kel as having deserted ‘in the face of the enemy’ (263), it is difficult to understand how her actions could be called treason. Charges of mutiny, desertion, or disobeying orders would be more probable but ‘treason’ heightens tension. He’d just … Come on. (265)  Owen’s alliance with Tobe is between the youngest rescuers, and it is telling that Owen thinks of Tobe as Neal and the others do not. liver chestnut (266)  A dark reddish-brown shade. three stormwings … (268)  The stormwings may only be follow-

142  Reading Tamora Pierce ing in hope of a fight, but given their known care for children and the involvement of the Chamber and Irnai, they may know more than the narrative reports. Chapter 13  Friends Not until …  (269)  To make sense of the timeline, Kel must have already spent one night on the road. See men’s quiet voices … (274). puddles of molten iron (269)  Wyldon reported the killing devices had to be ‘melted completely’ (253), but they cannot still be molten. a strange giggle (269)  A sign of incipient hysteria. Some of Kel’s less rational behaviour here suggests post-traumatic stress. bled dry (270)  Bled to death: Hildurra’s wounds were not intrinsically fatal, but became so untreated. the local forest god (272)  There are many traditions of local gods but they are not encountered elsewhere in Tortall: Kel’s lonely mission makes her more pious. The brief summer night (273)  If the Vassa is, as it seems to be, at a latitude equivalent to 50°+ north, June nights would be only 5-6 hours, and would shorten quickly going further north. Few Scanrans … enter it. (273)  Tortallan soldiers have been reported as superstitious about rebuilding Giantkiller, but no particularly marked Scanran superstitiousness about ghosts has been reported—the opposite, given what Blayce does. men’s quiet voices … (274)  Accepting the distances on the map, Dom and co. cannot have reached Giantkiller on the same night they left Mastiff. It must now be 7 June, which fits with section-timelines and confirms there is an unreported night Kel spends travelling from where she left Connac to where she finds the melted killing devices. There wasn’t … with her. (274)  That even Hoshi being untied and led out did not wake Kel indicates her exhaustion; and she cannot have slept for more than 2–3 hours. the laws I’m breaking (276)  It seems unlikely that Kel is breaking any laws, in the statutory sense; she is disobeying one order. blackmail … extortion (277)  Lofren seems to have a popular rather than legal distinction in mind—that blackmail is seeking to

Protector of the Small  143 obtain money by threatening to reveal something, while extortion is forcing someone to do something by means of a threat. In UK and US law, extortion is defined more narrowly than blackmail, and may be restricted to a government official accepting money or property in return for official action. If Raoul … Wyldon (277)  Kel’s conviction that she will be— ought to be?—punished is a displaced guilt, less for disobedience than for being away when Haven fell. As with her reference to ‘laws’ (276), it is not rational. I’m not about … (280)  But Kel has already commanded these men, at Forgotten Well, albeit in Dom’s absence. one of her year mates (280)  There are five other knights in her year: four join her mission (281), the fifth is encountered here. Quinden’s contempt for commoners seems to extend to the soldiers he commands, though he blindly endangers himself too. Neal, Merric, Seaver, Esmond (281)  It is a testimony to Kel’s leadership as well as friendship that all her year-mates bar Quinden join her: against the hill bandits they had no choice, but this is an elective acceptance of danger at her side. This is treason (281)  As elsewhere, Kel’s insistence on the word is not rational: desertion would be more reasonable, but it isn’t clear whether Merric and Neal (whose official posts are at Haven, while Merric is still on the sicklist) are even disobeying orders. Kel fumed silently … (282)  Almost none of Kel’s thoughts in this paragraph are sensible: she has left rationality behind in her emotional extremity and commitment to save her people. red yarn (283)  Besides the resemblance to a paperchase, the trail of yarn evokes the story of Theseus’s escape from the labyrinth after killing the minotaur; Kel however is tracking a monster to its lair. Chapter 14  Vassa Crossing dead over a day (284)  If the woman has been dead less than two, Kel and co. have already gained on the refugees. Assuming Haven was attacked on 3 June, it is now 7 June, and one would think the captive refugees would have passed this point no later than 5 June.

144  Reading Tamora Pierce We—we … together. (285)  Kel’s care for the corpses, however constrained, echoes her treatment of Scanran dead and extends the contrast between her behaviour in war and that of her enemy. Rot your eyes (285)  The phrase is usually ‘damn your eyes’: the change avoids Christian implications and is right for stormwings. They are … to be. (286)  This is a wisdom Daine spends all four volumes of ‘The Immortals’ learning: see the Essay. a column … heading west (286)  Presumably some of the forces Vanget and Wyldon are gathering to meet Maggur’s attack. smugglers. ff. (289–300)  The existence of smugglers complicates—and makes more realistic—the picture of Scanra and the war. Apparently Scanran, and living in Scanra, they have contacts with Tortallan intelligence and seem to be clanless. Questions are begged about what or whom they usually smuggle in peacetime. You meet … her husband (289)  One wonders what intelligence gathering took Neal and Alanna to Scanra within the past four years, and it is interesting there has been no previous indication that Neal had the kind of knowledge a visit might be expected to produce. Business is always brisk (290)  The implication of significant unofficial cross-border contact and activity raises many questions. The hand of fate … On her. (293)  This also raises questions. Kel has always been free of any trace of the divine (in sharp contrast to Alanna and Daine: see the Essay), and has been chosen by the Chamber—but ‘fate’ lying on her, visibly to a powerful hedgewitch, suggests divine and not simply wild-magical purpose. See also But the gods … by now. (195) only half a day ahead (293)  Kel and co. have definitely gained on the refugees: the Scanrans attacked Haven on 3 June, and if they did not complete their Vassa crossing before the morning of 7 June, it took them at least a full day—plausibly, with at least 600 people, 200 horses, and wagons to get across in six boats (302). They’re well paid … harm. (294)  But who is well-paid—Maggur? military authorities? civil ones?—and what smuggled goods or people are sufficiently lucrative to generate such bribes? Is that trade of benefit to Tortall, or does George protect the smugglers as a conduit of information?

Protector of the Small  145 Stenmun Kinslayer (295)  The first use of the epithet with its vile implications: in almost all cultures kinslaying is an especially heinous form of murder. murrey (296)  An archaic term for a stew of veal and other meats flavoured with mulberries. Having seen … so well (296)  Kel suspects the calves must have been rustled. You won’t believe me … ff. (297)  There is a severe irony in Kel— the Girl, the Lump, supposed by many unfit for knighthood—having been specially chosen by the elemental of the Chamber. Despite Merric’s friendship, her doubt is justified. I’m so glad … knighthood. (297–8)  Presumably, in the Masbolle family, only the oldest son is expected to become a knight. krater (298)  The same word as ‘crater’, from the same root— Greek krater, a bowl (though pronunication may vary, with cray-tur as the geological form, and krah-ter, the Greek pronunciation, for the cup). It is odd that Scanran, with strongly Scandinavian features, should have a Greek word Tortallan lacks. the horses’ armour (299)  Horse armour, or barding, may be plate or scale (overlapping disks on leather). There are usually five parts: shaffron (head), crinet (neck), peytral (chest), flanchards (sides), crupper (rump); a cloth covering all is a caparison. Human armour gets fairly detailed narrative treatment; horse armour is mentioned rarely but requires as much attention, and is awkward to put on and remove; it also slows horses as much as plate armour slows people. section-timeline  The focus again contracts to a single day. This date of 8 June confirms that Kel spent a night travelling alone (5 June) before being found by Dom at Giantkiller (6 June). Chapter 15  Enemy Territory They reached … mountains. (308)  Even if they are using the track shown on the map as cutting the angle of the Vassa and Smiskir roads, the rate of travel is not compatible with the map’s scale. Weapons are armed long-axes (309)  A typo in the UK editions; ‘armed’does not appear in others.

146  Reading Tamora Pierce They dared not … his life. (309)  Scanrans have previously been reported as requesting mercy strokes when wounded and considering death preferable to wholly dishonourable capture. That settled … her life. (310)  Kel’s horror is understandable, but highlights an oddity. She killed her first man at twelve, and has by now killed dozens: cold blood is different, but the issue is not dealt with a sustained way. the local people … abandoned weeks ago. (315)  It is not clear how populated this part of Scanra is, nor what people remain. In the whole Scanran journey Kel and co. meet no-one except the two parties of soldiers and the villagers at Rathhausak. He’s just united … understand that. (315)  Neal’s and Uinse’s observations raise far-reaching political questions the narrative does not explore—not least Uinse’s experience of hungry Scanrans. I’d guess about … Pakkai … (316)  On the basis of the map, Kel and co. have travelled more than 60 miles since crossing the Vassa, in (at most) about 16 hours, as well as having the two skirmishes. They had two hundred … to Scanra. (317)  This implies the raiding force comprised at least 150 (still with Stenmun) + 100 (here) + 200 (departed west) = 450 soldiers, as well as at least six killing devices (two killed at Haven, four on the road). The 200 who went west are presumably joining the larger raiding force, confirming that the attacks are co-ordinated and Wyldon’s judgement strategically as well as morally in error. civlian slavetakers (317)  The existence of organised civil slavery in Scanra raises a host of questions. To this point Carthak and the Copper Isles have been heavily implicated in slaving and raiding for slaves, but not Scanra; and there has been no indication of seizure of Tortallan civilians to sell as part of Scanran tactics. Additionally, how a substantial slave economy squares with Scanrans’ marginal land, food shortages, and clan structure are puzzles. several thin pieces of iron (318)  While the presence of a locksman among the convicts is plausible, it is less clear who among Kel’s company was carrying lockpicks, not casually manufactured. For every three … tired. (319)  How this is consistent with Uinse’s estimate (317) of 200 fighters, of whom 100 are soldiers, is unclear.

Protector of the Small  147 It would imply a total guard force of 400, not logistically credible. It was soon over. (320)  The casualty ratio—at least 200 Scanrans killed without any Tortallan deaths—is fantastical, and anticipates the incredible rescue at Rathhausak. One explanation would be that the gods aid Kel and co. far more closely than reported; another that in steering the novel to its climax Pierce elected to let slide some of the military and logistical realism that has hitherto been characteristic. He hurt me. (320)  One must assume Peliwin was raped—to be expected from slavers, and an echo of both Lalasa and Vinson. the river to wash. (321)  Compulsive desire to wash is a common response to rape. Esmond and Seaver, Connac … (323)  Connac is a continuity error (in both US and UK editions), as he is present at Rathhausak (374–5) and dies there (392). Logistically it makes more sense for Connac to go with c.300 adults, who otherwise would be accompanied by only three knights; even so, Kel had 33 fighters (including herself) to rescue the adults: assuming 14 depart (Connac + 10 + 3 knights) and 10 join (Gil + 9 survivors of his squad), she has 29 to pursue Stenmun and rescue c.200 children. section-timeline  The rate of travel is more credible: the map suggests it is c.50 miles from the confluence of Smiskir and Pakkai to Rathhausak. Chapter 16  Opportunities It was forsaken country … (327)  A first indication of the fate of Rathhausak—given the topography, castle and village should connect with the world along the valley; that it is forsaken indicates isolation, helping to explain why Blayce’s base has not been found. a man skinned alive (329)  In Greek myth the satyr Marsyas was flayed, and Christian tradition holds that St Bartholomew was flayed before crucifixion. It was used into the middle ages to punish crimes deemed especially heinous, and remained in the imaginary through Titian’s The Flaying of Marsyas and Michaelangelo’s depiction of St Barholomew with his skin in his Last Judgement. They’re camped three miles up (330)  Kel and co. have caught up

148  Reading Tamora Pierce quickly, given that Stenmun started up the Pakkai 12+ hours ahead of them: the children’s attempts to impose delay must be working well. If they picked … and bored. (330–1)  Kel’s logic is puzzling: why should Stenmun be more likely to turn and attack if he discovered himself pursued during the night than he would be at dawn? Besides … Gallan. (331)  Entirely logical, this represents a shift in Kel’s thinking; fortunately, she does not face the dilemma of being able to rescue the children before they arrive at Rathhausak—but if she could, would she willingly leave some with Stenmun? The man had chosen carelessly … (332)  Presumably because he does not know himself pursued or think it possible—an over-confidence that becomes a theme in the climax. It was time. ff. (332–4)  The scene is presented half-comically, but what Kel is using is usually called ‘psychological warfare’ and ‘sleep deprivation’. five infants (333)  The possibility of using infant spirits to guide killing devices raises questions. Would the devices, for example, know how to walk? Or have the coordination to fight and kill? almost a tenth … force (335)  Kel is thinking positively: 9/150 is just over one-sixteenth. They trotted … one infant. (341)  These children are mentioned again once, as staying hidden during the assault on Rathhausak (363). It’s an illusion (344)  Implicitly Stenmun must have a mage with him, good enough to create the illusion and leave it behind, but if so that mage plays no other part in the defence. Alternatively, the mage may have come from Rathhausak—Blayce himself?—as the … Three black metal killing devices … (348)  … presumably did. A narrative from the Scanrans’ point-of-view would be very revealing. The third device … unnatural life? (348)  The use of a disabled or impaired child to fuel a killing device raises more questions about the necromancy involved. See five infants (333). Kel loosed her arrow … their ropes. (348–50)  Each time Kel encounters devices they are dealt with more easily—one at Forgotten Well was a terrible struggle, two attacking Haven were despatched quite quickly, these three go down in a minute or two. Practice makes perfect—but one wonders why the rest of the army has not been able

Protector of the Small  149 to learn to deal with them better. Its iron prison … ghost away. (349)  The phrasing again recalls the defeat of Sauron in The Lord of the Rings, when his mighty tower fell; see Squire, White steam … shape apart. (357). flails (350)  Lengths of wood joined by a chain, so one can be held and the others swung, used for threshing grain; all the Rathhausakers’ weapons are agricultural tools. Why can’t we fight … doing? (350)  As there are only 29 rescuers, it is fortunate they don’t encounter opponents who “know what they’re doing”. This speech of Owen’s might be regarded as ‘lampshading’ a narrative improbability. That’s the one … ff. (351–6)  Irnai’s prophecy of Kel and those who would—haphazardly—be with her again points to divine purpose. The Chamber speaks through Irnai, but one must suspect the involvement of Shakith at least. See But the gods … by now. (195) and The hand of fate … On her. (293). On the north … the air. (352)  The scenery is improbably dramatic (“hundreds of yards” implies 1000+ ft), befitting the climactic scene. Corpses hung … empty. (352–4)  The display of bodies in cages or chains until they rotted is called ‘gibbeting’, and was normal judicial practice in the UK until 1832. The point is partly deterrence, partly a refusal to afford an executed criminal dignities or rites of burial. Tonight. … way inside. (353)  The participation of villagers in the rescue invokes events in James Whale’s film Frankenstein (1931), loosely based on Mary Shelley’s novel; Blayce is as much a mad scientist as an evil mage. None … in a hurry. (353–4)  Some of these disturbing details come from the trial of Gilles de Rais, on whom Blayce was based (see the Essay). De Rais’s many murders of children had a sexual content, and some victims were sodomised, but there was also evidence of the dressing-up games mentioned here, that rape in any usual sense was not necessarily involved, and of necrophilia. One value of the games was to lull the child-victim into a false sense of security so the assault came as a greater shock, affording de Rais sadistic pleasure. section-timeline  The focus remains tight, the action continuous.

150  Reading Tamora Pierce Chapter 17  The Gallan’s Lair Couriers say … south (359–60)  Amid the horror of Rathhausak, this offers oblique confirmation that beneath Maggur’s warlordism what drives Scanran aggression is hunger and the need for less marginal land. Food export would be a sensible Tortallan policy. First it was just … them gone. (360)  This chilling account evokes Goethe’s Der Erlkönig, ‘The Erlking’ (1782), derived from Danish legend, in which a faerie spirit preys on children. (The history of de Rais and the legend of the Erlking have also been notably combined by French novelist Michel Tournier in his prize-winning Le Roi des Aulnes, 1970, translated as The Erlking and The Ogre.) from raiders (360)  One wonders what raiders there are in southern Scanra—other Scanrans? or do Tortallans raid over the border? Given chattel slavery, slave raiding is also a possibility. children by cartloads (360)  This evokes the Child Catcher, created by Roald Dahl in his screenplay of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. a hundred and seventy … (361)  Stenmun was said to have 150 men guarding the children (321), of whom 18 have been killed; Gil’s figure includes the garrison of the castle. By then Rathhausak … (361)  Here and in Kel’s thought on 362, Rathhausak means Maggur; cf. Cavall, Goldenlake. Fief Rathhausak (361)  Zerhalm may be speaking Common: it is not clear that Scanra has a feudal system of fiefs in the Tortallan sense, and the account of Maggur’s rise as a warlord dragooning clans under his banner does not suggest feudalism of Tortall’s kind. Agrane (362)  Agrane is a town and surname in Morocco; here it may also reflect Greek agra, the hunt. Connac’s squad (363)  A continuity error: see Esmond and Seaver, Connac … (323). It’s an illusion … ff. (366)  Kel’s indictment is justified, and the limits of Blayce’s magery are suggested by comparison with the spells whereby Numair concealed the secret exits at Haven and elsewhere, which griffin-bands could not penetrate. jumped, and levered (367)  An achievement in full armour. burlap (367)  A coarse canvas, often of jute, used for sacks.

Protector of the Small  151 Gydo and Loesia … ff. (371–2)  These girls were among the first to begin weapons training with Kel—but if it makes sense for them to fight, why not others among the older children? portcullis (373)  A grating of iron or wood, fixed into grooves on either side, that can be raised vertically. curtain wall (373)  The stretches of wall between towers etc.. It was nearly over. (377)  The logistics of the fight are improbable. Including the sentries, the deaths of c.30 men have been narrated, five at Kel’s hands, but every one of the 31 attackers (including Gydo and Loesia) must have done as much to take down 146 defenders. Just money? (379)  Before the French Revolutionary wars most armies had a large mercenary component, but the Tortallan–Scanran war has been presented as national; Stenmun may be as unusual as his assignment from Maggur. She brought … his skull. (380)  There is symbolic satisfaction in Stenmun’s death from the butt rather than blade of the glaive, and a blow like that used to kill cattle. The ignominy, and dying at the hands of a woman, would doubtless gall him. and spat on him (381)  An extremely strong action for Kel, given her usual care even for enemy dead. Then she … to death. (381)  How Kel manages this without removing her cuirass is moot. Chapter 18  Blayce You’re Tortallan … ff. (384–6)  The excuses and justifications Blayce offers are not those of de Rais or Eichmann, and incoherent— he was forced, had only necromancy to work with, his talent required expression, he has no particular loyalty to Maggur or Scanra. Nothing could justify his treatment of children, but he could more reasonably claim Scanran need for an advantage to offset Tortallan wealth. nearly six long months (387)  It is a shock to realise it is less than six months since Kel’s Ordeal and first vision of Blayce. That was … pendant spell. (387)  Even now Kel maintains her habits of harsh self-judgement and self-punishment. Gods all bless (388)  It is unclear whether the Chamber merely

152  Reading Tamora Pierce wishes Kel well or is in fact speaking for the gods. It was a foolish thing to do. (389)  Or, as it turns out, an intuitive one: Kel must in some way sense that the cat is alive. Lofren and Corporal Fulcher (392)  Symmetrically, on each occasion that Kel commands Dom’s squad two men are killed (Derom and Symric at Forgotten Well). He was … killed him. (392)  Loesia’s distress reflects ‘Stockholm Syndrome’—the sympathy of a kidnap victim for kidnappers who treat them well—but also obliquely underscores that for all her grief for friends Kel is a psychologically hardened as well as militarily trained killer, and has been since she was 12. most commonplace monster (394)  The rephrasing of Kel’s thoughts about the Nothing Man again summons functionaries of the Sho’ah (‘Holocaust’) like Eichmann—who facilitated and committed unimaginable evil yet was seemingly an ordinary man. This paradox has been extensively explored in literature of the Sho’ah. Was it a curse … his wishes? (394)  It seems more likely that Maggur found both Blayce and Stenmun. Leave them … (394)  Kel’s acceptance of stormwing defilement extends her necessary treatment of Scanran soldiers killed en route to Rathhausak, and in coming full circle from her encounter with the stormwing in ch. 1 marks the end of the main narrative. section-timeline  In the UK (but not US) editions there is a pagebreak here, with no chapter-heading but the timeline “18 June, 460 HE / The Tortallan border”. The date should be 16 June. It took them five days … ff. (395–401)  This closing passage has a truncated feel that probably reflects editorial pressure about length (in UK editions, First Test has 213 pages, Page 252, Squire 389, and Lady Knight 406), but besides compressing the journey back into a paragraph, events challenge realism. To have Wyldon and Raoul, the district’s senior commanders, waiting (presumably for a while) at the Vassa is improbable, and if they (and a significant detachment of Tortallan soldiers) were present, why should Kel and co. need the smugglers to cross the river? Additionally, and despite pleasing symmetries with the end of Page, neither Kel’s disbedience nor pressing

Protector of the Small  153 claims for reward (having struck the single most decisive blow of the war to date) are dealt with wholly satisfactorily. their Tortallan counterparts (395)  This is odd: the smugglers on the south bank of the Vassa are in Scanran territory (288). three days before (396)  Taking the UK edition’s “18 June” to be an error, this implies Merric and the adults crossed on 13 June: without horses for most refugees, they took four days to retrace the route Kel and co. covered in one. will you take a gift … (399)  It is hard to see how Wyldon’s decision not to file charges against Kel for disobedience can be construed as a gift; nor does it seem likely he would so consider his actions, but proper discussion of the issues involved would need to wait until Kel was healed and able to report, and be substantial, presumably ruled out by pressure of length. Interesting news … ff. (400)  The news is more than interesting: if “Everyone with half an eye can see this war turns on the killing devices” (194), Kel has in effect won the war all but single-handed. The spymasters … devices. (400–01)  If they heard Kel’s report, the spymasters might think the truth a better weapon that this easy lie. Kel smiled crookedly. (401)  As well she might, having just been deprived of public credit for her efforts; she might also see that the issue of her disobedience will be buried with her heroism. Epilogue Evin Larse (404)  A trainee Rider in Wild Magic, a friend of Daine. His rapid rise might be attributable to sponsorship by George Cooper. If he’s like … knighthood? (404)  Irnai’s casual prophecy serves as a summary of events-to-come by way of closure and farewell. the Greenwoods Bridge (405)  This must be newly built, following the destruction of the bridge at Haven. She had also … attackers. (405)  It sounds horribly as if New Hope, like Haven, is not built with full defences. Giving her … harm’s way. (405–06)  Though perhaps meant as a form of reward, this sounds as if Jonathan continues to shirk the real issues involved, and takes an easy route round the problem.

154  Reading Tamora Pierce Lovers … didn’t have. (406)  This nicely frames one of the most challenging and unconventional elements of the quartet—that for all the possibilities with Cleon, Kel remains a virgin and (one suspects) as uncertain of herself sexually as she is confident as a commander. The suggestion of seeing Dom has contributed to wide assumption of a Kel–Dom relationship by readers: see the Note on Fanfiction.

3. Essay  The Making of Mindelan Tamora Pierce’s Marvellous Schools of Knighthood and Reading This essay incorporates material from my essay ‘Of Stormwings and Valiant Women’, in Of Modern Dragons and other essays on Genre Fiction (HEB, 2007), and in shortened form in my Sightline on ‘The Immortals’ (HEB, 2007).

Tamora Pierce has a remarkable talent not simply for sequels but for sequel quartets. ‘The Protector of the Small’ (1999–2002), Pierce’s third Tortallan quartet, was thematically a sequel to her first, ‘Song of the Lioness’ (1983–8), following a girl to adulthood as a trained knight; and in her other fantasy world, overlapping with ‘The Protector of the Small’ in composition, the ‘Circle of Magic’ quartet (1997–9) was swiftly followed by ‘The Circle Opens’ (2000–03). Both sequel quartets revisit, reflect on, and rewrite their precursors, a process the poet Adrienne Rich, fusing ‘revising’ with ‘re-envisioning’, usefully called ‘revisioning’. Moreover, both sequel quartets are longer and aimed at older readerships than their precursors, so the processes of growth and education they narrate are embodied in the extensions of the narratives. The ‘Circle of Magic’—Sandry’s Book (The Magic in the Weaving, 1997), Tris’s Book (The Power in the Storm, 1998), Daja’s Book (The Fire in the Forging, 1998), and Briar’s Book (The Healing in the Vine, 1999)—is a fine achievement, aimed at younger readers but enjoyable by all. Pierce cleverly gave her orphaned, almost-teenage protagonists distinct craft affiliations and skills as well as magical talents predicated on them, and she spins, weathers, forges, and gardens individual and collective growth into serial tales. Each novel is individually strong and all are mutually supportive, making the whole more than the sum of its parts—as the youngsters together are far more formidable than any can be alone. Volume by volume they face in turn serious dangers—earthquake, piracy, forest fire,

156  Reading Tamora Pierce epidemic—and must mature early, but through mutual aid grow. Yet good as ‘Circle of Magic’ is, ‘The Circle Opens’ is better. In each volume—Magic Steps (2000), Street Magic (2001), Cold Fire (2002), and Shatterglass (2003)—one protagonist, separated during far-flung travels with a mage-teacher, has to mage-teach an unwilling apprentice while terrifyingly involved in solving murderous crimes. Prematurely wise heads must rapidly grow wiser still in dealing with the younger heads of their pupils and with adult vileness, while the magical gifts each has must be turned to detection. The emotionally wounding horror of the crimes—blood-soaked magical assassination, organised gang-crime, arson with mass fatalities, and serial murder— places a tremendous burden on adolescent teachers and their pupils, but makes personal developments a growth into civil, social, and political maturity. Shatterglass especially, closing the quartet, runs serious risks with its material. Set in a culture modelled in part on traditional Hindu society, with prathmuni as an equivalent of ‘untouchables’ who deal with dead bodies, leatherwork, and ordure, and are thereby made ‘unclean’, it posits an enraged and grossly disturbed prathmun serial killer. His victims are yaskedasi, female entertainers (not prostitutes) from the pleasure-district of Kaphik, and their strangled bodies are left displayed in public and sacred spaces—a horrid gesture intended by the killer to flaunt the death taboo and taunt the upper castes who enforce it and enslave prathmuni, and a tactic that does ultimately help provoke social and legal reform. As a serial-killer novel, deploying all appropriate topoi and psychology, and a ‘Young Adult fantasy’ Shatterglass caps a strikingly effective fusion of hard-boiled crime writing with children’s literature and the Bildungsroman. Children’s writers had occasionally tackled serial killers before, but not without protest. There was, for example, a terrific fuss in 1993 when Stone Cold by Robert Swindells won the Carnegie Award for Children’s Literature: written when there were many young people living rough in London (rules about social benefit having been changed for 17–18-year-olds), it tells of a young runaway who lives on the streets through a winter, and witnesses a serial killer preying on homeless folk he believes no-one will miss. A good, honourable

Protector of the Small  157 book that deserved its award, it is also cheerless, not to everyone’s taste, while Fernando Vallejo’s La Virgen de los Sicarios (1994), translated as Our Lady of the Assassins and filmed in 2000, about teenage killers-for-hire in Medellin’s cocaine-trade heyday, is not written for children. Pierce’s Shatterglass is far more leavened with humour and drolleries, and structurally includes a comedic trope in making the mage-pupil (in previous volumes pre- or just adolescent) an older man reduced to child-status after being struck by lightning, so younger must teach older. In tandem a second, very young magepupil is introduced—the (foster-)daughter of two of the killer’s victims, an innocent through whom the harm he does is tragically focused and tonally contained. The result is a novel tough not just on crime and the causes of crime, but also on its effects, and our abilities individually and communally to surmount them. Given proximity of composition, what happens in Shatterglass is intrinsically of interest to readers of ‘The Protector of the Small’. Though set in chivalrous Tortall and predominantly concerned with female knighthood, that quartet also ends with a novel that whatever else it may be—excellent YA fantasy, extraordinary version of Frankenstein, and Brechtian meditation on the politics of war—is finally a novel about stopping a paedophile serial killer. Intense, highly successful generic fusion is another quality Lady Knight shares with Shatterglass, and the (continuing) process by which Pierce achieved those triumphs is as fascinating as it is illuminating. Many feminist authors have written good books about girls coming of age, fighting adult prejudice and cruelty to realise individual talents, and following their hearts by their own lights. There are realistic writers, who get stuck into the real challenges women face in education and employment, with sexuality and pregnancy; others write fantasy stories—and not just as a sort of ‘sugar to make the medicine go down’. Fantasy settings and conventions allow unusual approaches to real subjects, including education, employment, sex, and pregnancy, and at the same time ask about deeper hopes and fears than jobs and boyfriends. They’re also fun to read, and readily become important furniture in a (growing) reader’s head.

158  Reading Tamora Pierce Pierce is very much like that. Most writers for children, however feminist, would think their job well done if they published a successful quartet of novels about the first woman in more than a century to become a knight. But far from resting on her laurels Pierce went on to consider the first woman (and person) in Tortall to be a Wildmage, the second woman to become a knight, the first woman in centuries to become spymaster of the Copper Isles, and most recently a girl who isn’t first anything, just honest, talented, and determined to be a good ‘Dog’, a Provost’s Guard. Alanna the Lioness, Daine the Wildmage, Lady Knight Keladry, Alianne Cooper, and Guards-woman Rebekah Cooper are plainly similar heroines, strong women followed into adulthood, professional success, and sexual maturity. They are also all different, and getting progressively more ordinary. Alanna is ‘God-touched’, a chosen vessel of the Great Mother Goddess. Her striking purple eyes and powerful magecraft prove it, as do emblematic success in knight-training, divine cat-companion Faithful (also purple-eyed), and amazing feats of heroism. Daine is semi-divine, the daughter of Weiryn of the Hunt—but for most of ‘The Immortals’ doesn’t know it, and is scared of her own powers and possibilities. Keladry is much more normal: if highly trained and unusual, she makes it through determination, bruising hard work, innate kindness, and a principled unwillingness to let bullying go unchecked. Alanna’s daughter Alianne has ‘the Sight’ and a God to call on, but Kyprioth causes as much grief as he gives opportunities, and the joys she wins are her own. Her ancestor Rebekah is equally normal, and lacks advantages of nobility and relative wealth—but has Kel’s determination and like Alanna has the help of a purple-eyed cat, this time called Pounce, and the helpful ability to hear ghosts. Successive quartets show Pierce revisioning herself. Alanna is bursting with proud indignation at being absurdly and horribly undervalued in a sexist world. Righteously aided by the Goddess and Faithful, she shows ’em all just what a Lioness can do. But how many of us have the advantage of a divine cat and friendly goddess? To be fair, Alanna has problems with boyfriends—a woman wearing armour and notoriously trained to kill not being every man’s dream, even if very sexy; which Alanna isn’t, though striking with her purple eyes.

Protector of the Small  159 But how realistic does Pierce make her? After all, Alanna’s problems lie in choosing between Prince Jonathan, heir to the throne, with whom she sleeps (no-one the wiser), and George Cooper, Tortall’s King of Thieves—not exactly every woman’s difficulty. The most realistic thing is that in the end Jonathan has to marry for political reasons and his queen, Thayet, is a woman Alanna rescued and likes though she doesn’t want to. Thayet is also a royal beauty, natural diplomat, and born leader, and Alanna is too honest not to realise she would herself make a terrible queen and be a liability both for Jonathan and the Tortall she is sworn to defend. This does not make ‘Song of the Lioness’ sound good fare for younger readers, and there is an oddity in the pitch of that first quartet explained by its origins. Pierce has often said in interview that she had written a long fantasy novel for adults for which she could find no publisher, and took advice to recast it as a quartet for children—a process she had already accomplished in raiding it for story-telling material while working as a Housemother. The original novel has never been released, but implicitly a fair amount of ‘adult material’, presumably attending sex and violence, was removed while fundamental structure was retained. As a result the outline sounds more advanced than the novels prove in reading, and a number of features, from brief explanations of words to fairly short, episodic chapters and illustrations mark ‘Song of the Lioness’, despite its feminism, as a quite traditional mid-century children’s fiction. What came next was far less so. ‘The Immortals’ is overtly the tale of Daine but at its heart are Pierce’s most extraordinary creation, stormwings—human-bodied and -headed, steel-winged and -clawed, filthy beyond belief in their habits. It’s a marvellous conundrum because they are in origin and purpose utterly moral. They desecrate as they do to persuade foolish humans that there is no honour in battlefield death; that to kill is to fail, regardless of outcome. Stormwings have real depth, and Pierce is clever in how she reveals it, for as much as Daine herself, her pony Cloud, and her teacher (eventually lover) Numair, they are the story of ‘The Immortals’, from early in Wild Magic to the end of The Realms of the Gods. The first stormwings Daine sees in Wild Magic are the first

160  Reading Tamora Pierce immortals she has ever seen, and she can sense only wrongness:   Shrieks, metallic and shrill, tore the air. Eight giant things— they looked like birds at first—chased the hawk out of the cover of the trees. Immense wings beat the air that reached the women and ponies, filling their noses with a stink so foul it made Daine retch. The ponies screamed in panic.   Daine tried to soothe them, though she wanted to scream too. These were monsters. No animal combined a human head and chest with a bird’s legs and wings. Sunlight bounded off talons and feathers that shone like steel. She counted five males, three females: one female wore a crown of black glass. (26–7)

Everything counts to damn stormwings. Beyond their stench, the hawk they chase is Numair, shape-shifted, and they serve Ozorne, the villain of the quartet. This queen, Zaneh Bitterclaws, is especially nasty, and her enmity for Daine a theme of Wild Magic. Bitterclaws dies at the last, but the fact of stormwings remains and they are never absent from Daine’s thoughts for long. When in Wolf-Speaker Daine again sees stormwings, working for Ozorne at Dunlath, renewed loathing is understandable but meets surprising opposition. Numair and Cloud remind her stormwings are what they were made to be, and growing experience of immortals, including spidrens and hurroks as well as the basilisk Tkaa, gives Daine a better context in which to understand them. Even so the necessary shove comes (as in ‘The Circle Opens’) from a younger child, Maura of Dunlath, who flees her home because she knows her ruling half-sister and brother-in-law are committing treason; finding her with stormwings circling above, Daine assumes she is in danger and rides in with crossbow up only to have Maura block the shot:   Stormwings were landing on the ground in front of them. Three moved out of Daine’s sight. Turning, she saw them settle on the road behind her, cutting off any escape. Coldly she levelled her weapon at the nearest Stormwing, a male who wore a collection of bones braided into his long blond hair.   He stared back at her, contempt in his eyes, then looked back at the younger girl. “Tell her we mean you no harm, Lady Maura.”   “You’re on speaking terms with them?” Daine asked.

Protector of the Small  161   Maura shrugged. “They visit Yolane and Belden a lot. He is Lord Rikash.” (160–1)

A strained, three-way conversation follows:   “Let us talk of this away from prying ears,” Rikash said, an eye on Daine.   “We can speak of it now. Daine can’t tell anyone. She’s stuck here, too.”   “Quiet!” ordered the Stormwing. “You’re a child. You do not understand what is taking place, and you must not speak of matters you cannot comprehend.”   Her sense of humour overpowering her hatred of Stormwings. Obviously he liked Maura, or he would have bullied rather than debated with her. She also could see debate was useless. Maura had the bit between her teeth, and would not obey orders. “Go on,” she urged the fuming immortal. “Shut her up. I never thought to see you stinkers baulked by anyone, let alone a ten-year-old.”   Rikash turned red under his dirt, and a few of his own flock cackled. “It is hard for us to bear young,” he said, a hint of gritted teeth in his voice. “That being the case, we value others’ young, particularly when they are neglected. Affection has led me to indulge Lady Maura more than is wise.” (163–4)

This is a virtue neither Daine nor readers can ignore, and a stormwing motif. Laying with difficulty steel eggs that do not always hatch, their numbers have declined, not least thanks to Daine and Bitterclaws’s arrant hostility. She was evil; Rikash may stink and do as stormwings do, but is a cultured being richly capable of kindness. When he and Daine face off at the end of Wolf-Speaker, as she did with Bitterclaws in Wild Magic, neither’s heart is in violence and a stand-off begins. The second pivot comes in The Emperor Mage. Travelling to Carthak Daine again meets Rikash, and his king, Jokhun Foulreek— but finds his previous monarchs, Barzha Razorwing and her consort Hebakh, in Ozorne’s menagerie. Rikash and others had thought them killed by Foulreek, when in fact he plotted with Ozorne to betray them to captivity as the price of a stormwing alliance. These captive royals are impressive, as dignified in captivity as Bitterclaws was a screeching menace when free, and have things to say that strike

162  Reading Tamora Pierce home. The plot winds to a conclusion in which Ozorne escapes Daine by becoming a stormwing, at which point his human spells fail and Barzha is free. As he sets off in pursuit of Ozorne, Rikash is able to give Daine some very good news, and the balance of her feelings shifts again into mellower acceptance of all things for what they are. This journey of virtue is completed in The Realms of the Gods— where immortals also dwell. Trapped there, Daine discovers Rikash, whose poetic surname is Moonsword, has made himself known to her parents and mentor, the Badger. Finding herself dining with one great, two minor, and three animal gods, as well as the mage she is beginning to discover she loves and a stormwing, Daine passes far beyond her feelings when she first saw Bitterclaws. The novel plays out mutual debts between Daine and Razorwing, who helps her, and plays into a stormwing tragedy. Ozorne as stormwing proves as tricky as Ozorne the Emperor Mage, and neither Rikash nor Razorwing can slay him. Mastering stormwing magic, cruelly vengeful, he forges a grand alliance against Tortall, as well as a secret alliance with Uusoae, Queen of Chaos, and suborns a majority of stormwings, using them (most unnaturally) as one more kind of killer. Only Razorwing, Rikash and 60-odd others remain loyal to stormwings’ moral purpose—preventing war, not waging it—and must in the end fight their own kind over that purpose, a stormwing civil war in which, inevitably, yet more perish. As tensions rise, Daine finds unexpected companionship: Leaning on the rail, [Daine] squinted at the shore. She wanted to get moving.   “Fretting about your stork-man?” Rikash inquired, lighting on the rail beside her. He dug steel talons into the wood. “He’ll be fine. Mages always are.”   “I’d feel better if I could be there to look after him.”   “Then stay.”   “I can’t,” Daine replied, shaking her head. “I don’t want Kitten there without me when the big noise starts. In the Dragonlands, I saw—she’s just a baby still. She ought to be in a safe place. Since she isn’t, I need to be with her, as much as I can.”   “You’re breaking my heart,” drawled the immortal.

Protector of the Small  163   “Got a bit of sand in your crop?” she demanded irritably. “A swallow or two of oil should wash it right out the end that does your thinking for you.”   To her surprise he laughed. Around them, she saw goldskinned Yamanis and Tortallans make the Sign against evil. “I deserved that. Don’t mind me.” (216–17)

This time a dragonet in Daine’s care is the orphan in the case, as Maura was in Wolf-Speaker. Daine’s camaraderie with Rikash now scares others, for whom stormwings are not as evil as they once seemed to Daine but who don’t share jokes with them. And inevitably Rikash dies assailing a chaos-dweller loosed by Ozorne that threatens Lord Raoul and takes three immortals and a god to kill:   “Rikash—no!” someone cried in a voice that cracked as it rose. “No! No! NOOOOO!” It was her voice. If she screamed loud enough, long enough, he would live. She hadn’t realized that he meant something to her. She hadn’t known he was her friend. (242)

The phrasing echoes the first lesson the Badger taught Daine way back in Wild Magic—“If you look hard and long, you can find us. If you listen hard and long, you can hear any of us, call any of us, that you want.” (Wild Magic, 24)—and the wheel comes full circle. Daine as mature and beloved Wildmage can do almost anything, looking, listening, and becoming, but cannot recall Rikash from the dead, and mourns. She can and does intercede with the gods on stormwings’ behalf, and readers learn in Trickster’s Queen that her second child is “baby Rikash”. But the stormwing is gone to the Peaceful Realms, and the babe commemorates the lesson he taught in life about care of and for the young, and the valiant life of the woman who learned it. The stormwings’ moral is the message of Wilfred Owen’s great World War One poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’. Walking behind a dying man after a chlorine-gas attack, Owen saw it as it was: If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin ;

164  Reading Tamora Pierce If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

The “old Lie”, from the Odes of the Roman poet Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65–8 bce), means ‘it’s sweet and proper to die for your fatherland’. Bishops, heroes, politicians, and family have said it down the ages, one way and another, to make a loss of husband or son seem less bitter. Then again, tell it, as they say, to the marines, and you wouldn’t like the answer. Nor are the stormwings a traditional kind of enemy, for growing girls or anyone else, and their key behaviour, smearing battlefield corpses with dung and playing with them, isn’t traditional fare in any literature. They owe something to classical harpies, but their spirit is closer to that of Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) in his tremendous anti-war play Mutter Courage und ihrer Kinder (Mother Courage and her Children, 1939). Even more than Stone Cold or thinking it right to give Owen’s great and terrible poem to schoolchildren, the popularity and acceptance by publishers and readers alike of Pierce’s strong storytelling signalled a new strength and range of children’s writing. And the process was only beginning, for satisfying as ‘The Immortals’ is, it exposes (especially in stormwings) the weaknesses of ‘Song of the Lioness’, and so made Pierce consider the need to return to the subject of female knighthood. The problems Pierce identified with hindsight inform the startingpoint of ‘The Protector of the Small’. Alanna is god-touched and Tortallans know it, as they know she made it through knight-training in disguise—so she cannot serve as a role model and other female candidates for knighthood have not come forward. What is the worth of the realm’s first female knight in a century if there is no second? It was imperative therefore that the new heroine, Keladry, be with-

Protector of the Small  165 out magic or a goddess. Though soon possessed of a faithful mongrel dog, Jump, of sterling character and dubious morals, and granted through Daine some special relations with animals, Kel has to rely on herself, time and again, and finds she can do so through disciplined mental and physical effort. To make Kel’s fierce determination plausible Pierce gave her a particular early childhood. Her parents were ambassadors to Yaman, a version of imperial (largely Heian) Japan, and early in their residence, when Kel was five, her mother saved two sacred swords by holding off pirate-raiders until guards came. As part of the Emperor’s thanks Kel’s family moved into the palace, and she trained with other children in martial disciplines—standard for Yamani ladies of rank. The different culture sheds light on Tortallan feminist effort and martial training, Yamani noblewomen being trained to kill others or themselves, but nevertheless remaining pawns of men from birth and of their mothers-in-law after marriage. And all Yamanis are imbued with extreme stoicism and emotional control or repression, for public display of emotion is considered weakness and reason for shame. Kel’s trained physical stamina, stoicism, and ‘Yamani mask’ are vital in surviving the criminal and psychopathic bullying to which she is subjected in page-training. She is also given brothers who have trained as knights and can advise her, and all the Mindelan siblings have a social background explaining their determinations. Their father succeeds in securing a Yamani treaty, a diplomatic coup that results in the marriage of Jonathan’s son and heir Prince Roald to Princess Shinkokami—whom Kel unwittingly befriended in the palace when Shinko’s parents were temporarily in disgrace, and other, more knowing children shunned her in case it rubbed off. Kel and her brothers believe in their parents and the greater motive of cultural tolerance and international alliance. They sweat to train and uphold the monarchy because they believe in Jonathan and Thayet as reformers, though Jonathan disappoints Kel in his compromises, especially about female equality. This background explains Kel’s class-consciousness, suppressed in Yaman but rapidly developing in sexist, snobbish Tortall. To ‘old nobility’, her father’s family’s recent title marks them out as

166  Reading Tamora Pierce ‘Johnny-come-lately’ gatecrashers of their ‘natural’ (i.e. older) ranks and privileges. Antiquated laws on Tortall’s books support a horrible status quo in which nobles may fight to the death over (supposed) insults, while if the victim is a commoner anything short of murder is punishable at most by a fine. Masters legally take servants’ earnings at a cruel rate, and beating is common. So too are harassment, sexual assaults, and rape, although the temples of the Great Goddess act as sanctuaries for battered women, sending privately maintained squads of hard women armed with sickles to mete out justice. The monarchy and magistrates of Tortall accept these squads, but do not themselves do much to protect women. Money is a major consideration in corrupting justice, but social snobbery amounting to bigotry and habituation to abuse are also indicted. ‘The Protector of the Small’ develops very unexpectedly as a quartet. First Test and Page are in some ways similar to the opening volumes of ‘Song of the Lioness’: Alanna and Kel are, after all, undergoing the same training at the same school. But beyond the shared topoi of bullying and sexism to be overcome, both quartets send brave, growing heroines on a quest of great significance, and those quests are very different. Alanna went to a distinct sub-culture, the desert-dwelling and tribal Bazhir, to prove herself away from her home-ground, then won from a mountain-spirit (who tested her with icy cold and combat) the fabled Dominion Jewel. It’s an excellent yarn, and as heroic feats go up there with the best. Kel, however, has different talents, and faces a different challenge. Raoul of Goldenlake is her knight-master, and when (in Squire) she thinks the problem he sets her irrelevant, he explains things clearly, to readers as to Kel:   “Sir, people never wanted me to make it to squire. They won’t like it any better if I become a knight. I doubt I’ll get to command a force that’s larger than, well, just me.”   Raoul shook his head. “You’re wrong […] I have some idea of what you’ve had to bear, to get this far, and it won’t get easier. But there are larger issues than your fitness for knighthood, issues that involve lives and livelihoods. […]   “At our level, there are four kinds of warrior,” […] He raised a fist and held up one large finger. “Heroes, like Alanna the

Protector of the Small  167 Lioness. Warriors who find dark places and fight in them alone. This wonderful, but we live in the real world. There aren’t many places without any hope or light.”   He raised a second finger. “We have knights—plain, everyday knights, like your brothers. They patrol their borders and protect their tenants, or they go into troubled areas at the king’s command and sort them out. They fight in battles, usually against other knights. A hero will work like an everyday knight for a time—it’s expected. And any knight has to be clever enough to manage alone.” […]   “We have soldiers,” Raoul continued, raising a third finger. “Those are warriors, including knights, who manage so long as they’re told what to do. These are more common than lone knights, thank Mithros, and you’ll find them in charge of companies in the army, under the eye of a general. […]   “Commanders.” He raised his little finger. “Good ones, people with a knack for it, […] they’re as rare as heroes. Commanders have an eye not just for what they do, but for what those around them do. Commanders size up people’s strengths and weaknesses. They know where someone will shine and where they will collapse. Other warriors will obey a true commander because they can tell that the commander knows what he—or she—is doing.” […] “You’ve shown flashes of being a commander. I’ve seen it. So has Qasim, your friend Neal, even Wyldon, […]. My job is to see if you will do more than flash, with the right training. The realm needs commanders. […] If you have what it takes, the crown will use you. [...]” (116–18)

This has merits beyond clear prose and good analysis. Raoul is a kind man who thinks to build up Kel’s confidence. “At our level”, he says—including her with himself—and extends not a promise (maybe to be kept, maybe not) but a truth: “The realm needs commanders. [...] If you have what it takes, the crown will use you.” The training Kel gets riding with the Own to every corner of Tortall to fight mortal and immortal enemies, or help where disaster strikes, is a training in command. Working alongside soldiers and non-commissioned officers Kel earns respect, and experience of her cool head in emergencies induces trust in her as a commander. In

168  Reading Tamora Pierce tandem, Raoul teaches her to joust, and the royal progress preceding Roald’s and Shinkokami’s wedding provides an arena in which her achieved skill (and lack of magical assistance) are displayed to the kingdom. But on the northern border with Scanra, in a summer plagued by hit-and-run raids, a new factor enters the war, worse even than immortals. Clanking like the dreadful tanks of World War One (1914–18), ‘killing devices’ are made from iron-clad giants’ bones and have triple-jointed arms spiked at every joint and fingered with lethal knives. Worst of all, as Kel and a squad discover in managing to kill one by smashing open its head-dome, what powers the awful things is a child’s ghost. Children, Kel realises, are being slaughtered wholesale by a mage for the ghosts he can imprison in each device with his necromancy. Killing this mage become Kel’s primary quest as a Knight, and his death the climax of the quartet. The plain truth, through all the exciting trappings of knighthood and a fine war story notable for attention to refugees, is that the mage, Blayce, is a serial child-abuser and killer. He pampers and dresses-up children until the time is ‘right’ to kill them, and while his sexual perversion is never made explicit, his grotesque cruelty, use of torture, summary executions, and desecration of corpses are spelt out. Pierce draws on many sources to create and manage him. Historically he is based on Gilles de Rais (1404–40), a lieutenant of Joan of Arc who abused, tortured, and murdered at least c.120 children. Pierce knew of this monstrous paedophile-killer and “after years of obsession” “made the mistake of reading George Bataille’s translation of the court transcripts […] Blayce was my way of getting him out of my head” (e-mail to the author, 5 Aug. 2007, quoted with permission). This historical model was primary, but de Rais’s martial skill was transferred to Blayce’s lieutenant, Stenmun Kinslayer, while he is physically weak, greasy and pale—stigmata of vile magic—and other sources were drawn in. Perched in his remote castle, sending Figure 13 Gilles de Rais

Protector of the Small  169 soldiers to scour countryside and refugee-camps for children to ‘process’ in his dark lair, Blayce is horribly like child-stealing monsters of northern legend, nixes or nicors (like Grendel in Beowulf), or the Erlking from whom (in Goethe’s poem) a father cannot save his son. On the face of it Kel’s female knighthood and virginity cast her as Joan of Arc to Blayce’s de Rais, but in rescuing 200 children from Blayce’s castle, and cleansing his evil with sword and fire, Kel and the victimised villagers who aid her resemble the angry crowds who storm the castle in James Whale’s film Frankenstein (1931)— appropriately, for the killing devices are also unnaturally living, pesudo-human monsters assembled from dead (mechanical) parts (cf. Edward Scissorhands, another version of Frankenstein.) And in contemporary terms, Kel as Protector of the Small is a one-woman Society for the Protection of Children, a crusader like Esther Rantzen, who founded the charity Childline in 1980s Britain, or parents in the US who campaigned in the 1990s for ‘Emily’s Law’. In foreground action she is a Lady Knight who must command a refugee camp, but her campaign to hunt down Blayce is a very different kind of fantasy. By comparison with the serial killers in Stone Cold and even Shatterglass, Blayce is one of the most appalling villains in any Young-Adult fiction, but by dressing him as a mage Pierce makes a tough issue enjoyably available in a gripping narrative. And by linking him as murderous paedophile to his killing devices Pierce connects a male child-killer with warfare. Blayce’s production-line sacrifice of ‘peasant’ or ‘enemy’ children is disturbingly like the endless slaughter of needless royal and political wars. Children are central as victims and avengers (Kel is only just 19 at the end of Lady Knight); and while adults hideously prey on children or faff about doing nothing to stop predators, Kel and friends act, blindly but with vital success—an old formula adapted to excellent purpose. It helps that there are so many sources, miraculously balanced. Just as the disparate gods of Pierce’s pantheon rub along, so fantasy novel and school story, quest and romance, crime tale and legend fuse into a single, multi-faceted plot. Erlking and Frankenstein aspects balance the serial-killer, and that aspect stops older elements from being fusty, while threaded through all is an issue Kel inherits from

170  Reading Tamora Pierce Daine to work through herself, stormwings—like killing devices, monstrous organic-mechanical fusions armed with razor-bodyparts on whom death attends; but unlike them, drivingly moral. Stormwings are absent from First Test and Page, but readers are reminded of them in Squire and they reappear when killing devices enter the narrative. In Lady Knight they have a central if intermittent role as Kel, riding to war, must cope with their presence, stink, and implications. Profoundly hostile, as Daine was, Kel is the only commander to deny them enemy bodies—in revulsion, and because she understands enemies as people she must kill, not hate, for her sake as much as theirs. And one stormwing, a female of Yamani appearance, continues to ask a pointed question by perching and staring at Kel. In balking stormwings, does she honour the dead who threatened those in her care? The issue is marvellously complex, for Kel is, after all, a Lady Knight, powerfully drawn and sworn to chivalric ideals—but what price ideals on a battlefield where murdered child-ghosts power killing devices? Or measured against the terrible truth stormwings were created to teach? In ways far distant from Alanna, Kel confronts the limits as well as values of chivalry and the demands of army discipline. The stakes are greatly heightened by a superior plot-twist that forces Kel to choose between the lives of children and obedience she vowed, so when she does kill Blayce, she believes herself foresworn—and this time the fallen enemy, including Blayce and his chief lieutenant in child-stealing are left for stormwings. What matters is partly the sense of special punishment for the very worst villains, righteous defilement of defilers, partly the thrilling pitch to which the quartet rises—a well-trained, hard-working, and polite girl leading a minor mutiny of soldiers and refugees to rescue hundreds of children from a monster so vile none can pity him, and whom no other has been able to find, let alone stop. That in killing Blayce Kel also stopped all the existing killing devices, effectively winning the war for Tortall, is generous icing on the cake—already so rich none would be needed. And that is to do with the complex lessons Kel has learned in growing, that Pierce extends to her readers. ‘The Protector of the Small’ is a first-class fantasy Bildungsroman,

Protector of the Small  171 and read against the earlier Tortallan quartets, ‘Song of the Lioness’ and ‘The Immortals’, an education not only for Keladry in knighthood, but for all in reading, and so in moral awareness. Humorous, crusading, stern with horrors and rich with beauties, Pierce’s narrative of Keladry of Mindelan, taken seriously, forces a reader to make and consider connections—between the behaviours of parents and children, rule and war, amoral killing and immoral creation, and devices and stormwings. The fantasies of military feminism in ‘Song of the Lioness’ give way to the need for refugee camps to offer maternal welcome and yet sustain military discipline in defence; and a relatively thin (though varied) political context gives way to a far more densely realised and thought-provoking portrait of a society and an individual woman within it. Pierce is as moral and instructive an author as one could wish for children, not least for her persistent refusal to rest on any laurels and inspiring revisioning of her own successes as a novelist.

4. A Note on ‘Protector of the Small’ Fanfiction For a more detailed account of fanfic, see my ‘Of Criticism and Continuities’, in Of Sex and Faerie: Further Essays on Genre Fiction (HEB, 2010). For Pierce’s tolerant attitude to fanfic see http://www.tamora-pierce.com/faq.html#fanfic.

Fanfiction (fanfic) refers to stories (fics) by fans using characters and settings created in someone else’s work. If that work is in copyright, fanfic is not legally publishable—but has become so popular on the Web that most authors and publishers ignore it unless someone tries to sell it or contrives to give particular offence. Fandoms vary greatly in size as well as in the quality and length of fics. Many writers are young and inexperience may show in awkward plotting, missing or unrealistic psychology, and the like. But there are also many talented writers whose work is superior, and at its best fic is a profoundly creative form of criticism—a written response to a narrative embodying one reader’s understanding as a resource for others, prompting thought and developing appreciation. Good fic-writers have to know the world they borrow very well, and even short fics—supplying ‘missing scenes’ or retelling one from another viewpoint—can reveal things one missed in the original narrative or usefully challenge understanding of its world. Longer fics can go further, and in developing a variant version of the original world (an ‘Alternative Universe’, or AU) may offer a sustained critique of it. Fanfic is of particular interest here because Tamora Pierce’s Tortallan series have generated what is perhaps the largest fandom in English for books that have never been filmed or televised. It is notable among fandoms based on Young Adult fantasy in attracting, as well as some talented younger writers, a number of older, more experienced writers, so a significant proportion of fics are of high quality. There are over 10,500 Pierce fics of all lengths posted at FanFiction.Net (FFN) alone, most Tortallan (rather than Emelanese), and allowing for duplicate posting, hundreds more (primarily short)

Protector of the Small  173 at Goldenlake, Sheroes, Archive of our Own, and other sites. (The figure was accurate in August 2013. Readers unfamiliar with FFN are warned that its organisation of Pierce fanfic is odd: originally, all were in a single ‘Tamora Pierce’ category, and when it was divided into constituent series much was misplaced. There are currently nine Pierce fandoms, for ‘Song of the Lioness’, ‘The Immortals’, ‘The Protector of the Small’, ‘Trickster series’, ‘Beka Cooper series’, ‘Circle of Magic’, ‘Circle Opens’, ‘Will of the Empress’, & ‘Melting Stones’. All but the first contain more-or-less what they ought, but ‘Song of the Lioness’, with 8,100+ fics, is the old catchall, where some writers post regardless, so it contains fics for all series. This makes browsing awkward, but FFN allows filtered searches; by comparison, while Goldenlake is the most vibrant Pierce discussion site, with excellent fics, searching is awkward.) Fanfic based on ‘The Protector of the Small’ exhibits some distinct themes and interests. Setting aside short work, which may deal with almost anything, many more substantial fics continue Kel’s story after Lady Knight, either (a) at New Hope or on another assignment, or (b) with Tortall’s third Lady Knight, whom Kel may train as a page or take as a squire; some continuations focus on the next generation, usually including Kel’s, Neal’s & Yuki’s, and Daine’s & Numair’s children. A second substantial group of long fics are AUs in which Kel is prejudicially dismissed by Wyldon after probation, and seeks an alternative course of warrior training, often in Yaman but sometimes with the Queen’s Riders or Shang warriors. A third, smaller group of fics chooses a reverse-angle and retells canonical events from another point-of-view—often Dom’s, sometimes Neal’s or that of more marginal figures among pages and squires (including Roald, Seaver, Faleron, and Owen) or adults (including Jonathan, Raoul, and Wyldon). A large fourth group comprises fairly pure romances, while continuations, AUs, and reverse-angles may also pair Kel with Dom; there are also pairings with Cleon (though he is notably less popular), Neal, and others, including Owen, Roald, Wyldon, and—much the hardest challenge—a Joren somehow saved from the Chamber of the Ordeal’s fatal judgement. (This last pairing may reflect a sense that in killing off Joren but letting Vinson live, however punished, Pierce

174  Reading Tamora Pierce made a decision the writer questions.) These four types of fic are most numerous, but there are many others, including, for example, modernisations placing Kel and/or other characters in a contemporary setting, metafics allowing one or more adult characters to read the novels, and crossovers transporting characters to another world or from elsewhere to Tortall. Restricting myself to longer (and with a few exceptions complete) fics there are four continuations I recommend (and recommendations are made with the written consent of the writers). Perhaps the most interesting is Reprise (2009) by FFN-user ‘Taxie’, which runs to 44,000 words. (As FFN exaggerates lengths by counting coding as words I round figures down to the nearest thousand, or for fics of over 100,000 words, nearest ten thousand.) Like many continuations it sends Kel back to Scanra to deal with another threat from King Maggur, but the nature of the threat is unusual, cunning, and unpleasant, and in its psychological darkness the narrative comes far closer to Pierce’s toughness of mind than many fic writers who prefer romantic ‘fluff’ to sustained action. Taxie’s narrative skills are superior: there is a notably thoughtful subplot involving Daine, whom writers often simplify, and the epilogue has a most satisfying riff on the child-seer Irnai and her prophecy about Neal’s life and daughter. Much more comical is a series of long fics by FFN-user ‘Silverlake’—The Scarlet Shield (2006), Training Master Mindelan (2006–07), Love and Money (2007), Pride and Determination (2008), and Eventfully Ever After (2008–10), individually between 27,000 and 150,000 words, and currently totalling over 350,000. A further instalment, Afterwards, has been in progress since 2010. These fics vary in approach and balances of romance, comedy, and action: the first (as the titular echo of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter suggests) deals with Kel as an unmarried mother in a continuing struggle against Tortallan conservatives and sexual bigots, while the sequels concern the next-generation training and adventures of (female) pages and squires who follow in Kel’s wake. My own favourite is Training Master Mindelan, which sees Kel replace an ailing Padraig haMinch and bring a delightfully maternal and sensible approach to the whole business. What makes it valuable as well as enjoyable is the critique

Protector of the Small  175 of the seriously flawed and inadequate training Kel receives in canon and a sometimes very funny character development of Wyldon as he finds himself necessarily becoming more liberal in old age—a logical extension of the point at which Pierce leaves him in canon but offering much scope for comedy. Cameo appearances by Alanna, Daine, and other canonical characters also make for sustained interest and humour. Another striking ‘next generation’ continuation is the 100,000word The Healer’s Daughter: Gift (2007–08) by FFN-user ‘Fateless Wanderer’. Chronicling the steps to knighthood of Neal’s and Yuki’s daughter Inara, Gift is distinguished by good writing and inventive, taut plotting that (drawing on Daine’s experience in Wild Magic) includes an original immortal based on deer and thoughtful psychological treatment of the healing Gift that runs in the Queenscove family. It is the first novel of a quartet, and 64,000 words of a second book are posted (The Magician’s Apprentice, 2008–12); the quartet should be completed with Royal Squire and The Princess of Sarain (email to the author, 14 Feb. 2011; cited with permission). There is also the unfinished This Heart of Mine (2008–11+) by FFN-user ‘Dark Rose of Heaven’, labelled as a Kel/Wyldon fic and in its first 51,000 words laying a basis for that development with uncommon sensitivity and skill. What makes it stand out is that it sends Kel to Carthak as part of a Tortallan delegation negotiating Kalassin’s marriage to Kaddar. Carthak plays a far greater role in ‘The Immortals’ than in ‘The Protector of the Small’, and is correspondingly a rarer fic destination for Kel than Scanra or Yaman, but Dark Rose of Heaven incorporates material from The Emperor Mage and has some compelling world-building describing the Carthaki court and high society in the aftermath of Ozorne’s deposition and death. Matters are getting very interesting with the start of a Grand Progress around the empire to match that of Roald and Shinkokami in Squire, but what will happen remains to be seen. Turning to AUs, there are two stand-out fics by FFN-user ‘AllyMarty’, both pairing Kel with Joren—Redemption (2008), which runs to more than 100,000 words, and The Only Volunteer (2008–09), which tops 370,000. Each is impressive, the later and longer one especially so—a second attempt at the business of redeeming Joren that reworks

176  Reading Tamora Pierce and greatly improves on the first (as ‘The Protector of the Small’ revisions ‘Song of the Lioness’). In Redemption it is the Chamber that sets Joren on a new path, sparing his life because it managed to hammer humility into him and the Great Mother Goddess sees a possibility of his improvement; but in The Only Volunteer deviation from canon begins much earlier, making Joren Kel’s page-sponsor and tracing the impression she slowly makes on him. Ally-Marty provides an interesting, plausible explanation for Joren being as he is in canon, exploring more deeply just how unpleasant a man his father is and the humiliation he suffered in home life and (on account of his beauty) in his first page-year, and making him severely dyslexic—a bully by conditioning and by way of compensation. Joren’s motivation and makeup is in canon relatively weak—he is what he is, superficially beautiful but mean right through—and Ally-Marty’s response to that weakness in characterising him goes hand-in-hand with humanisation of him into a man who may still not ‘deserve’ Kel but is at least someone one can begin to understand her coming to love and desiring to protect. Another remarkable Kel–Joren AU is the 61,000-word The Snarl in the Depths (2009), by FFN-user ‘Sulia Serafine’. This combines a not uncommon trope, arranged marriage for Squire Kel following some financial disaster for her family (here a destructive flood at Mindelan), with a much rarer one—the disgrace of Stone Mountain after Burchard’s posthumous conviction for treason. Mindelan needs money, Stone Mountain is forced to seek alliance with a house in royal favour, and when Kel discovers her sister Oranie may be betrothed to Joren she insists on taking her sister’s place. The story of Kel’s and Joren’s accommodations of their mutually unwelcome marriage is extremely unusual, in its haunting, persuasive psychology and sexual explicitness, and Sulia Serafine generates an extraordinary tension from the clashes of public and private events and perceptions. AUs can also be created if continuations are transformed by a new Pierce volume, as happened to The Squire Years (2001–03) by FFN user ‘Quatre-Sama’—a 22,000-word continuation of Page mostly written before Squire was published. Such fics are a valuable record of what readers were speculating about while an original series was in progress—a set of possibilities later readers, with canon available,

Protector of the Small  177 may not consider—and Quatre-Sama has interesting observations about the ‘choosing a squire’ problem with which Squire begins. Extending reforms Wyldon began after Kel’s battle with hillmen, a wargaming competition involving senior pages and squires is staged for prospective knight masters to watch, and Kel finds herself pitted against Cleon and Joren. Alanna, George, Raoul and others are involved, with persuasive handling of character and plotting. QuatreSama has also written excellent short fics, about people (she is a Kel– Wyldon shipper) and animals, including Jump and the griffin. Among reverse-angle fics adopting Dom’s point-of-view the best sustained is the 95,000-word Unwritten Love (2008–09) by FFN-user ‘starzgirl’, which covers much of Squire and all of Lady Knight and (unlike some Kel–Dom fics) takes seriously the problems for Dom of mixing romance with military command. It also sticks closely to canon, and consistently illuminates it with acute, wry observation as well as cleverly complementary invention. But the reigning queen of reverse-angle fics is FFN-user ‘lionesseyes13’, whose Broken to Bridle (2009–10) considers Owen’s squireship to Wyldon in 220,000 words. lionesseyes13 is rather philosophically-minded, and characterisation and dialogue sometimes suffer because differences in age, understanding, and temperament that mark real voices are flattened by her concerns—but there is an enormous advantage, in that intense dialogue drags much that usually goes unspoken into the light. Handling of Owen and Wyldon is excellent, and uses an extracanonical fact (posted at ‘Sheroes’ in 2005): Lord Wyldon and his wife Lady Vivenne today announced the betrothal of their youngest daughter, Margarry, to Lord Wyldon’s former squire, Sir Owen of Jesslaw. Court gossip has it that young Lady Margarry informed her father of her choice of husband, upon which his lordship was then heard to mutter, “At least the boy’s half-broken to bridle.” Other court gossip reports that Sir Owen’s reply to requests about his reaction to his betrothal were that he finds Lady Margarry “quite jolly,” and that she likes horses and dogs as much as he does. http://www.sheroescentral.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=6&topic_ id=54497&mesg_id=54497&listing_type=search

178  Reading Tamora Pierce Having dealt with a progressive squire under a conservative knightmaster, lionesseyes13 followed up with another reverse-angle fic with the opposite pairing, a conservative squire under a progressive knight-master—Voice of the Desert (2010–13), dealing with Zahir’s squireship to Jonathan, that runs to 350,000 words. “I sort of  see Broken to Bridle as my Songs of  Innocence […]  and Voice of the Desert as my Songs of Experience in the POTS fandom” (email to the author, 6 Dec. 2011; quoted with permission). Voice of the Desert is often necessarily concerned with specifically Bazhir issues, but deals very interestingly with Zahir’s evolving attitudes to Joren in the context of Joren’s trial for procuring the kidnapping of Lalasa. Among fics to which romance is openly central perhaps the most unusual are the 41,000-word Hope Comes from Within (2005–08) by FFN user ‘Lela-of-Bast’, and the 35,000-word I Have Loved None But You (2009) by FFN-user ‘sirladyknight’. Both pair Kel with Dom, but in Hope Comes from Within the tail end of the Scanran war claims one more victim, and Kel is left a pregnant widow. Despite all the material in canon concerning anti-pregnancy charms Kel ends Lady Knight still a virgin, as uncertain about practical sexuality as she is boldly successful in her military career. Lela-of-Bast reverses the emphasis, bringing a distinct, feminist perspective to Tortall that richly complements canon, insisting with Kel’s grief on the real costs of war and knighthood while expanding with maternity issues Pierce leaves unresolved or deals with only sketchily in relation to Alanna. I Have Loved None But You adopts a different strategy, using Austen’s Persuasion as the model for a tale in which Kel, for muddled if not wrong reasons, refuses Dom’s proposal and endures some hard years alone before events bring them together again. sirladyknight picks up Kel’s canonical worry about fickle teenage emotions and develops it into the personal uncertainty of Austenite romance, while courtship antics by assorted Mindelan nephews and nieces provide necessary distractions and red herrings in a well-paced and satisfying story. My last recommendation and the most remarkable fic of all, combining all four categories, is very long and still unfinished— Fallen (2006–12) by FFN-user ‘ConfusedKnight’, which runs to over 410,000 words in 81 chapters and has received 11,300+ posted

Protector of the Small  179 reviews. Kel is typically enough dismissed by Wyldon at the end of her first page-year, and after a brief, miserable period at a convent in the City of the Gods runs away to pursue training in another manner—but what happens thereafter is anything but typical. The plot shouldn’t be spoiled (there is a deal of mystery and suspense) but she winds up in Scanra—and the canonical characterisation of Scanra and Scanrans is another of the quartet’s (relative) weaknesses, for with the exception of Stenmun and the villagers of Rathhausak its Scanrans are little more than faceless enemies, defeated offstage by Raoul or Vanget or serving as glaive-fodder for Kel. ConfusedKnight took exception, and her world-building of a massively more detailed Scanra consistent with canon but with more coherent economics and politics, and a vibrant culture, is one of which any published author could be proud. When Kel eventually faces the Tortallan–Scanran War she does so with a very different, interesting view. Many canonical events still happen as they ought—Neal’s and Cleon’s page-training does not stop because Kel is dismissed, nor Roald’s betrothal and marriage to Shinkokami—but are inevitably seen from a new perspective, while other events and characters are recast to fit the AU; so one never knows whether what happens next will be canonically familiar, half-familiar, or estranging. ConfusedKnight is a superior writer with a sure grasp of pacing, a fine sense of the balances between description, dialogue, and action, and a take on the world of ‘The Protector of the Small’ that is at once a tremendous endorsement (you don’t voluntarily write 410,000 words over six years about something you don’t love) and a sustained, well-grounded critique of specific issues. Anyone who likes Pierce’s quartet will find it a rewarding and very thought-provoking read that leaves them waiting eagerly for new chapters. There are many, many more fics, longer and shorter, that are well worth a look, and if you’ve ever wondered whether any of the girls who saw Kel joust with Wyldon made it as a knight, how the baby griffin she cared for remembered her in its later life, whether Lindhall Reed ever visited New Hope, if Jump kept a very secret diary during Page, or even what would happen if—mindbogglingly—Wyldon was able to read First Test and actually understand what was then

180  Reading Tamora Pierce going on inside Kel’s head, there are some seriously surprising—and surprisingly serious—fanfic answers out there to enjoy. Major Pierce Fanfic Sites: FanFiction.Net  http://www.fanfiction.net/book/Tamora_Pierce/ Goldenlake Forum  http://fiefgoldenlake.proboards.com/index.cgi The King’s Own  http://fanfiction.fiefgoldenlake.com Sheroes  http://www.sheroesfans.com/dc/dcboard.php Archive of our Own  http://archiveofourown.org/tags/Protector%20of%20the%20Small%20-%20Tamora%20Pierce/works

The Dancing Dove  http://thedancingdove.yuku.com/directory LiveJournal  http://piercefic.livejournal.com/ Individual Works: Taxie, Reprise

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5317603/1/Reprise

Silverlake, The Scarlet Shield, Training Master Mindelan, Love and Money, Pride and Determination, Eventfully Ever After, Afterwards http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2721050/1/The_Scarlet_Shield http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2781800/1/Training_Master_Mindelan http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3573365/1/Love_and_Money http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4228711/1/Pride_and_Determination http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4471079/1/Eventfully_Ever_After http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6041449/1/Afterwards

Dark Rose of Heaven, This Heart of Mine http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4108281/1/This_Heart_of_Mine

Fateless Wanderer, The Healer’s Daughter

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3900185/1/The_Healers_Daughter_Gift http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4110153/1/The_Healers_Daughter_The_Magicians_Apprentice

Ally-Marty, Redemption, The Only Volunteer http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4430917/1/Redemption http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4648148/1/The_Only_Volunteer

Sulia Serafine, The Snarl in the Depths

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4784485/1/The_Snarl_in_the_Depths

Quatre-Sama, The Squire Years

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/280136/1/The_Squire_Years

Protector of the Small  181 Starzgirl, Unwritten Love

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4357377/1/Unwritten_Love

Lionesseyes13, Broken to Bridle, Voice of the Desert http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4907630/1/Broken_to_Bridle http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6238094/1/Voice_of_the_Desert

Lela of Bast, Hope Comes from Within

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2698968/1/Hope_Comes_From_Within

Sirladyknight, I Have Loved None But You

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4901231/1/I_Have_Loved_None_But_You

ConfusedKnight, Fallen

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3271761/1/Fallen

182  Reading Tamora Pierce A Necessary Legal Note The legal position on fanfiction is complicated, and as (i) I have myself written a fic novel continuation of Lady Knight, and (ii) I sent this work in draft to Tamora Pierce for her comments, it is necessary that I make some legal matters as clear as they can be. I, John C. Lennard, born in Bristol, UK, in June 1964, and presently resident in Cambridge, UK, as the author under the username ‘Bracketyjack’ of the derivative work Lady Knight Volant, posted at LiveJournal, FanFiction. Net, and Archive of our Own, where it is freely available to read (hereafter THE DERIVATIVE WORK), do hereby acknowledge and declare my rational beliefs and understandings as follows:   (1) that THE DERIVATIVE WORK utilises copyrighted material and infringes upon those copyrights;   (2) that the sole holder of those infringed copyrights is Tamora Pierce, born in South Connellsville, Lafayette County, Pennsylvania, USA, in December 1954, and presently resident in New York state, USA, as published by Random House of New York City, USA;   (3) that any copyright(s) I may in any jurisdiction be supposed or decided to hold in THE DERIVATIVE WORK should be and is (or are) secondary to the copyrights held in the USA and worldwide by the said Tamora Pierce;   (4) that under no circumstances whatsoever is it possible for the said Tamora Pierce, in any medium whatsoever, existing or future, to infringe any copyright/s I may be supposed or decided to hold in THE DERIVATIVE WORK. And I further declare and attest that my purpose in making these acknowledgements and declarations in this present work, Reading Tamora Pierce, The Protector of the Small, due to be published in the calendar year 2013 by Humanities Ebooks LLP, of Tirril, near Penrith, in the United Kingdom, in which work I will be the sole copyright holder, is to guard the said Tamora Pierce and her agents against any claim whatsoever, in any jurisdiction whatsoever, alleging failure by her or her agents to defend her copyright/s against my acknowledged infringement of them, and further against any claim whatsoever, in any jurisdiction whatsoever, alleging any supposed infringement by the said Tamora Pierce or her agents of any secondary copyright/s I may be supposed or decided to hold in THE DERIVATIVE WORK. Signed: John Lennard 24 September 2012

5. Bibliography 4.1 Works by Tamora Pierce NOVELS SET IN TORTALL ‘Song of the Lioness’ Alanna: The First Adventure (New York: Atheneum, 1983) In the Hand of the Goddess (New York: Atheneum, 1984) The Woman Who Rides Like a Man (New York: Atheneum, 1986) Lioness Rampant (New York: Atheneum, 1988) Omnibus editions: The Song of the Lioness Quartet (box set, New York: Random House, 2004) The Song of the Lioness Quartet (London: Scholastic Point, 2004) ‘The Immortals’ Wild Magic (New York: Atheneum, 1992) Wolf-Speaker (New York: Atheneum, 1994) The Emperor Mage (New York: Atheneum, 1995) The Realms of the Gods (New York: Atheneum, 1996) Omnibus edition: The Immortals Quartet (box set, New York: Random House, 2004) ‘Protector of the Small’ First Test (New York: Random House, 1999) Page (New York: Random House, 2000) Squire (New York: Random House, 2001) Lady Knight (New York: Random House, 2002)

184  Reading Tamora Pierce Omnibus edition: Protector of the Small (Mechanicsburg, PA: Science Fiction Book Club, 2004) ‘Daughter of the Lioness’ Trickster’s Choice (New York: Random House, 2003) Trickster’s Queen (New York: Random House, 2004) ‘The Provost’s Dog’ Terrier (New York: Random House, 2006) Bloodhound (New York: Random House, 2009) Mastiff (New York: Random House, 2011) NOVELS OF THE CIRCLE ‘Circle of Magic’ Sandry’s Book (variant title, The Magic in the Weaving, New York: Scholastic, 1997) Tris’s Book (variant title, The Power in the Storm, New York: Scholastic, 1998) Daja’s Book (variant title, The Fire in the Forging, New York: Scholastic, 1998) Briar’s Book (variant title, The Healing in the Vine, New York: Scholastic, 1999) ‘The Circle Opens’ Magic Steps (New York: Scholastic, 2000) Street Magic (New York: Scholastic, 2001) Cold Fire (New York: Scholastic, 2002) Shatterglass (New York: Scholastic, 2003) The Will of the Empress (New York: Scholastic, 2005) Melting Stones (New York: Scholastic, 2008)

Protector of the Small  185 SHORT STORIES ‘Plain Magic’, in (i) Douglas Hill, ed., Planetfall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), and revised in (ii) Mercedes Lackey, ed., Flights of Fantasy (Logan, IA: Perfection Learning, 1999) ‘Testing’, in Helen J. & M. Jerry Weiss, eds, Lost and Found (New York: Tor, 2000) ‘Elder Brother’, in Bruce Colville, ed., Half-Human (New York: Scholastic, 2001) ‘Student of Ostriches’, in Tamora Pierce & Josepha Sherman, eds, Young Warriors: Stories of Strength (New York: Random House, 2005) ‘Hidden Girl’, in Helen J. & M. Jerry Weiss, eds, Dreams and Visions (New York: Tor, 2006) ‘Huntress’, in Firebirds Rising: An Original Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy (New York: Firebird, 2006) ‘Time of Proving’, in Cricket 34.1 (September 2006): 12–18 ‘The Dragon’s Tale’, in Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois, eds, The Dragon Book (New York: Berkley, 2009) Tortall and Other Lands: A Collection of Tales (New York: Randon House, 2011) (Collects all the stories listed above, with the previously unpublished ‘Nawat’, ‘Lost’, and ‘Mimic’.) WITH TIM LIEBE White Tiger (New York: Marvel Publishing, 2007) Many of Pierce’s novels are available as audio-books from Full Cast Audio, at http://www.fullcastaudio.com/. (Notably, Melting Stones was released as an audiobook a year before being published in hardback.)

186  Reading Tamora Pierce 4.2 Works about Tamora Pierce and Children’s Writing CRITICISM Brown, Joanne, & Nancy St. Clair, Declarations of Independence: Empowered Girls in Young Adult Literature, 1990–2001 (Lanham, MD, & London: The Scarecrow Press, 2002 [Scarecrow Studies in Young Adult Literature 7]) Cart, Michael, From Romance to Realism: 50 Years of Growth and Change in Young Adult Literature (New York: harperCollins, 1996) Dailey, Donna, Tamora Pierce (New York: Chelsea House, 2006 [Who Wrote That?]) Egoff, Shiela A., Worlds Within: Children’s Fantasy from the Middle Ages to Today (Chicago & London: American Library Association, 1988) Kunzel, Bonnie, & Susan Fichtenberg, Tamora Pierce (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007 [Teen Reads] Lennard, John, Tamora Pierce: The Immortals (Tirril: HumanitiesEbooks, 2007; Amazon Kindle edition, 2010) — ‘Of Stormwings and Valiant Women’, in Of Modern Dragons: Essays on Genre Fiction (Tirril: Humanities-Ebooks, 2007; printon-demand, Troubador, 2008; Amazon Kindle edition, 2010), pp. 187–223 Lehr, Susan, ‘Wise Women and Warriors’, in Susan Lehr, ed., Battling Dragons: Issues and Controversy in Children’s Literature (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1995), pp. 194–211 Melano, Anne L., ‘Utopias of Violence: Pierce’s Knight’s of Tortall and the Contemporary Heroic’, in Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics 3.2 (2009): 89–98 (available online at: http://www.uq.edu.au/crossroads/Archives/Vol%203/Issue%202%202009/ Vol3Iss209%20-%2013.Melano%20(p.89-98).pdf)

Protector of the Small  187 Sullivan III, C. W., ed., Young Adult Science Fiction (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999 [Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy 79]) Trites, Roberta Seelinger, Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000) INTERVIEWS http://www.tamora-pierce.com/index.html 4.3 Websites http://tamorapierce.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page (The Tamora Pierce Wiki) http://tpwords.wordpress.com/ (Words of Tamora Pierce) http://fiefgoldenlake.proboards.com/ (The Goldenlake Forum)

A Note on the Author John Lennard took his B.A. and D.Phil. at Oxford University, and his M.A. at Washington University in St Louis. He has taught for the Universities of London, Cambridge, and Notre Dame, and for the Open University, and was Professor of British & American Literature at the University of the West Indies—Mona, 2004–09. His publications include But I Digress: The Exploitation of Parentheses in English Printed Verse (Clarendon Press, 1991), The Poetry Handbook (1996; 2/e, OUP, 2005), with Mary Luckhurst The Drama Handbook (OUP, 2002), and Literature Insights on Hamlet, King Lear, Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet, Nabokov’s Lolita, and Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses. He is the general editor of the Genre Fiction Sightlines and Monographs series, and has written Sightlines on works by Reginald Hill, Walter Mosley, Octavia E. Butler, and Ian McDonald as well as two critical collections, Of Modern Dragons and other essays on Genre Fiction (2007) and Of Sex and Faerie: Further Essays on Genre Fiction (2010).

Humanities-Ebooks.co.uk All Humanities Ebooks titles are available to Libraries through Ebrary, EBSCO and Ingram Digital (MyiLibrary.com)

Some Academic titles Sibylle Baumbach, Shakespeare and the Art of Physiognomy John Beer, Blake’s Humanism John Beer, The Achievement of E M Forster John Beer, Coleridge the Visionary Jared Curtis, ed., The Fenwick Notes of William Wordsworth* Jared Curtis, ed., The Cornell Wordsworth: A Supplement* Steven Duncan, Analytic Philosophy of Religion: its History since 1955* John K Hale, Milton as Multilingual: Selected Essays 1982–2004 Simon Hull, ed., The British Periodical Text, 1797–1835 Rob Johnson, Mark Levene and Penny Roberts, eds., History at the End of the World * John Lennard, Modern Dragons and other Essays on Genre Fiction* C W R D Moseley, Shakespeare’s History Plays Paul McDonald, Laughing at the Darkness: Postmodernism and American Humour * Colin Nicholson, Fivefathers: Interviews with late Twentieth-Century Scottish Poets W J B Owen, Understanding ‘The Prelude’ Pamela Perkins, ed., Francis Jeffrey’s Highland and Continental Tours* Keith Sagar, D. H. Lawrence: Poet* Reinaldo Francisco Silva, Portuguese American Literature* Trudi Tate, Modernism History and the First World War* Laura Vivanco, For Love and Money: the Literary Art of the Harlequin Mills & Boon Romance* William Wordsworth, Concerning the Convention of Cintra* W J B Owen and J W Smyser, eds., Wordsworth’s Political Writings* The Poems of William Wordsworth: Collected Reading Texts from the Cornell Wordsworth, 3 vols.* * These titles are also available in print using links from

http://www.humanities-ebooks.co.uk

Humanities Insights These are some of the Insights available at: http://www.humanities-ebooks.co.uk/

General Titles An Introduction to Critical Theory Modern Feminist Theory An Introduction to Rhetorical Terms

Genre FictionSightlines Octavia E Butler: Xenogenesis / Lilith’s Brood Reginal Hill: On Beulah’s Height Ian McDonald: Chaga / Evolution’s Store Walter Mosley: Devil in a Blue Dress Tamora Pierce: The Immortals

History Insights Oliver Cromwell The British Empire: Pomp, Power and Postcolonialism The Holocaust: Events, Motives, Legacy Lenin’s Revolution Methodism and Society The Risorgimento

Literature Insights Austen: Emma Conrad: The Secret Agent Dickens: Bleak House T S Eliot: ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’ and The Waste Land English Renaissance Drama: Theatre and Theatres in Shakespeare’s Time William Faulkner: Go Down, Moses and Big Woods Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury Gaskell, Mary Barton Hardy: Tess of the Durbervilles Hardy: Selected Poems Ibsen: The Doll’s House Hopkins: Selected Poems Ted Hughes: New Selected Poems Philip Larkin: Selected Poems Lawrence: Selected Short Stories

Lawrence: Sons and Lovers Lawrence: Women in Love Paul Scott: The Raj Quartet Shakespeare: Hamlet Shakespeare: Henry IV Shakespeare: King Lear Shakespeare: Richard II Shakespeare: Richard III Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare: The Tempest Shakespeare: Troilus and Cressida Shelley: Frankenstein Wordsworth: Lyrical Ballads Fields of Agony: English Poetry and the First World War

Philosophy Insights American Pragmatism Barthes Thinking Ethically about Business Critical Thinking Existentialism Formal Logic Metaethics Contemporary Philosophy of Religion Philosophy of Sport Plato Wittgenstein Žižek

Some Titles in Preparation Political Psychology Plato’s Republic Renaissance Philosophy Rousseau’s legacy Austen: Pride and Prejudice Blake: Songs of Innocence & Experience Dreiser: Sister Carrie Eliot, George: Silas Marner Eliot: Four Quartets Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby Heaney: Selected Poems James: The Ambassadors Lawrence: The Rainbow Melville: Moby-Dick Melville: Three Novellas Shakespeare: Macbeth Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet