A/N: I wrote this for anythingatall, who has just a bit of a thing about Lerant. ;)

While I've got your attention (or, uh, not, as the case may be... but seriously!) I'd like to mention a new Tamora Pierce fansite, which promises to be so many kinds of brilliant I lost count of them. It's just opened and it's being run by Treanz-Alyce; drop in and say hi! :) http:// fiefgoldenlake .proboards .com /index .cgi

Disclaimer: TP owns Tortall.

One of Lerant’s brothers was a real scholar, so talented he earned a scholarship to the University despite the disadvantage of the Eldorne name, but bitter and faintly anarchistic. He had nothing in particular against the king or royal family, his manners were impeccable- but he was a cynic, and he liked to shock, liked to fulfil expectations of all the dire unnatural things an Eldorne might do or say. He had the looks that characterised the Eldorne family, the green eyes and classic bone structure, looks to make anyone stand out in a crowd, but all Lerant thought when he saw his brother’s trademark bitter sneer was Ye gods, if the wind changes and freezes your face like that, they could use you for a gargoyle on the Graveyard Hag’s shrine.

One of the things he said frequently, wearing that sneer, was “There is no right- there is no wrong. There is only popular opinion.” Of course, the elders quickly hushed him, called him amoral and told him to keep his opinions to himself, but he just smirked as if they’d proved his point for him, and in the end he had the last laugh, for the words stuck in Lerant’s memory like resin to skin.

He believed it- sort of - in a way. He had thought about it a little, about concepts of right and wrong, about where they came from and why they were considered valid, but standard-bearer for the King’s Own was not a job that gave one the time for philosophical contemplation, nor was it one that provided companions to philosophically contemplate with- until Keladry turned up.

Well, Lerant had never in the five or six years he’d known her tried to have a conversation with her about anything less mundane than who had been responsible for Wolset’s unfeasibly purple hair, but he rather thought that she thought about things like right and wrong, thought about them properly. He’d seen her frozen cold with anger, ready and able to snap someone’s neck with her bare hands, and then recollect that the man in question was unarmed even if he was a serial rapist- and drag him up by the tunic and off to justice no less rough than that she would have meted out, but sanctified by a judge and a jury and a trial. He thought that she maybe put more thought into the way others were treated than anyone else he knew, and that she was readier to say ‘that isn’t fair’ than most, readier to ignore tradition if she honestly thought it was wrong. Ready to offer the nephew of a traitor friendship or an indentured boy the protection that was his by law, but he had never been given.

He thought that if there was anyone who he would trust to define right and wrong for him, it was Keladry. Sparrows, pigsticker, evil horse and all.

So when Lord Raoul asked for volunteers to follow her over the border and help her, he was one of the first to agree.