Author's Note: This story owes debts of inspiration to Lyra Ngalia's 'fic "To Serve and Protect" and Ysabet's "Token." It is AU to the extent that it ignores one (and only one) of Riza's comments about her family in the opening panels of chapter 60. Many thanks to Lance-Corporal Prentice for the weapons inspection; any mistakes that remain, whether of grammar or gun-play, are mine alone.

This story is for D. M. Evans, again. Happy Birthday!

"Miss? There you are, miss!"

The girl uncoiled from her comfortable (if unladylike) seat in the wing chair, as if the word miss had released a spring in her legs. The book on her lap somersaulted to the floor, losing her place irrecoverably, but since she had not turned a page in half-an-hour, that was small loss. She had been watching the dust motes drifting in the light from the library's high windows, and counting them as an alternative to thinking. Now she turned the same abstracted gaze on the footman who had called her. His cravat was disheveled. She told him so. Sometimes, when you pointed things out to servants, you could slip away while they were attending to them.

"Never mind that, Miss Riza," he replied, disappointingly. "Your grandfather's wanted you in the gardens these fifteen minutes. Hurry now."

Since he felt compelled to hurry with her, there was a brief delay at the hall mirror while he retied his cravat. Riza could have found her own way, but this she did not tell the footman. He must know. It seemed to be one of the duties of the house staff to encourage her to take herself out into the gardens whenever they saw her. Fresh air and sunshine, they said. It'll do you good, miss. She liked fresh air and sunshine, but they were a poor substitute for friends and hopscotch and climbable trees. The only person near her age on the estate was Pat, the under-gardener's apprentice, who had no use for girls. And the under-gardener had made it clear that he did not appreciate Riza scaling the oaks or chalking up the slates by the fountain.

So she had taken to sitting in the library with a book from the ranks of dark, heavy volumes lining the walls. Most of them had neither pictures nor conversations and gave off a musty smell when opened. Sometimes she read a little, if she found a story that seemed interesting, but mostly she listened for the doctor's car chugging up the drive on its daily visits. The servants were especially keen to chivvy her out of the house while the doctor was in it, but he had already come and gone today. Riza had been allowed to sit with her mother for twenty minutes afterward, while she was drowsy from the medicine but had not yet fallen asleep. Something else must be in the wind. "Why does my grandfather want me?" she asked the footman as they thumped out the side door and down the steps.

"I believe he has a present for you, miss," the footman said with a strained smile. "Do hurry, miss. The quicker we go, the quicker you'll have it."

Riza obligingly lengthened her stride. She had received several presents since coming to stay at her grandfather's house: first, a china doll with yellow hair bobbed the same length as her own; then a willow-pattern tea set; and most recently, a new paint box from her father, hard at work back home. Unfortunately, such toys had the same faults as fresh air and sunshine. Dolls do not make very interesting conversation over tea, and they compliment every picture, however well or badly drawn, with the same smile. Riza hoped for a pony this time: a bay with a black mane and tail braided with red ribbons, like Falada in the fairy-book.

"Oh, lor'," said the footman, breaking into something just short of a trot.

Riza, skipping behind him, saw Mr. Dodge standing by the sundial at the entrance to the maze. He was her grandfather's valet -- the General's Man, the other servants said, and when they did, she could hear the capital M. He always wore military blues and his face and hands were as brown and scarred and strong as the kitchen floorboards. Riza doubted whether even the grave and masterful butler dared order him about. Mr. Dodge looked her over very keenly as she approached, so she pulled her chin up, turning her elbows out to straighten her shoulders.

"Here she is, Mr. Dodge," said the footman unnecessarily.

"Very good," Mr. Dodge answered. "Dismissed!"

The footman turned on his heel and departed, loosening his cravat again as he went. Mr. Dodge beckoned Riza into the maze. He did not hurry, but his long legs took two steps to every three of hers. She did not ask him why she was wanted, feeling vaguely that questions were not military. Instead, she quick-marched along in his wake, white pebbles crunching merrily beneath her soles. Her left stocking began to slip; she ignored it until it bunched up above her ankle, then stopped to yank it straight again. Mr. Dodge disappeared around the next corner. She ran after him and saw with relief that he was waiting for her at the exit. She had not yet learned the trick of the maze and disliked wandering in circles for Pat to rescue. He was inclined to make rude remarks about her wits.

"Come along," said Mr. Dodge.

Her grandfather was waiting in the gazebo on the south lawn, between the formal gardens and the bluebell wood. A polished walnut box with brass fittings rested on the bench beside him. Riza sighed. Not a pony, then. Her mother used to tell of playing croquet on the south lawn, but the box did not look large enough to contain a croquet mallet. Riza mounted the steps into the gazebo and curtsied to her grandfather, as she had been taught. "Good afternoon, sir," she said.

"Good afternoon," replied her grandfather. He was dressed in plain, tweedy clothes that Riza thought suited him much better than his general's uniform. His hair bushed out in a thick fringe around his bald pate and his glasses caught the light, hiding his eyes. Without another word he stood, took her hand and led her out onto the lawn, while Mr. Dodge picked up the case and followed them.

Riza wriggled her fingers. She disliked holding hands: her father's palms were sweaty, and her nurse held on too tightly and dragged her when she dawdled, and her mother's fingers were cold and so thin now that she was afraid to clutch them. Happily, her grandfather took the hint and broke their grip before discomfort forced her to be discourteous. "Here we are," he said briskly. "Now, then, Mr. Dodge."

Riza looked around. Here was simply the middle of the lawn, facing toward the wood. Several yards away, incongruous against the neatly trimmed grass beneath and artfully disordered brush behind, was a sawhorse with five tin cans balanced atop it. Riza frowned, then jumped as Mr. Dodge knelt suddenly down before her, like a clasp knife folding up. He held out the box, its fasteners gleaming in the sunlight. She glanced at her grandfather, who nodded, his spectacles flashing as his head bobbed. "Go on," he said. "Open it."

She did. Inside lay a brace of pistols. She did not touch them, but waited for someone to explain the joke. That was something else her mother had said: that the family loved practical jokes, as well as charades and amateur theatricals. Riza was not fond of these things -- yet another sign that she was, as the servants whispered, her father's daughter, not her mother's. Her nose prickled. She inhaled, very quietly, so as not to give herself away.

"Well done," said the General unexpectedly. "The first rule of firearms is to treat every weapon as loaded. It is also wise to refrain from meddling with a weapon in whose use you have not been instructed. Mr. Dodge will teach you the handling of these, however, and then you may meddle as you please."

Startled, Riza half-turned toward him, but Mr. Dodge called her attention back to the pistols with a snap of his fingers. He named the parts and their functions; she parroted the explanations back to him. He showed her how to load and unload, then had her practice until the procedures lost their strangeness. The hazy sun was warm on the back of her neck; perspiration gathered on her forehead and under her collar, but she hardly noticed, engrossed by this new, grown-up task. At length Mr. Dodge conceded that she had caught the knack of it and waved her aside. Dexterously loading one of the pistols himself, he presented it to her grandfather.

"Now," the General said. "Watch closely. You may wish to cover your ears," he added, as he raised the pistol and sighted.

She had no time to follow that advice before he fired. One can dropped from the sawhorse with a dull plink! that overlapped the delayed echo of the report off the distant face of the house. Another shot, and another can plink!ed onto the grass. Riza finally lifted her hands to her ears. Her grandfather fired three more rounds; two missed, but the last knocked a third can from the sawhorse. The General returned the gun to Mr. Dodge, who unloaded the remaining round and laid the weapon back in its case.

"Your turn," said the General to Riza.

She learned how to stand braced and balanced against the recoil, first. "It's a bit different for a lady from a gentleman," said Mr. Dodge, "but you'll know when you've got it -- " and he gave her shoulder a shove that laid her on her back -- "you won't fall over." That mastered, she was permitted to point an unloaded pistol at the target, her index finger resting on the trigger guard as the two men catechized her: Never touch the trigger unless you intend to shoot. Don't aim at what you can't see. Don't aim at anything you'll be sorry to see take a bullet. She listened, committing their precepts to memory even as impatience twisted inside her like a rubber band beneath the keel of a toy boat. The gun was heavy; her muscles were already straining to hold it steady. "May I take my turn now?" she asked.

The General nodded.

Riza loaded the pistol herself, took her stance, and fired. The recoil staggered her, but she kept her feet. Undisturbed, the tins winked as downy clouds dodged across the sun. Her second shot went wide as well, and the third, and the fourth. After Mr. Dodge rearranged her grip, she squinted again at the can furthest to the left and squeezed the trigger.

The bullet struck fairly, and the can fell.

Riza gaped, remembered some of her manners, and turned the gape into a whoop. "I hit it!" she crowed.

"So you did!" agreed the General. "But," he added, raising his forefinger as a smile wreathed her face, "can you hit it twice?"

"I can!" she said, bending her gaze on the target and lifting her weapon.

And she did, twice more, before her arms trembled with fatigue and her teeth ached from the reports and her grandfather called a halt to the lesson. "A good beginning," he said. His eyes -- sharper even than his Man's, she saw, when the swift shadows rolling over the lawn revealed them behind his glasses -- regarded her with judicious approval. "Practice diligently and you may someday take prizes."

That joke Riza understood, having read that prizes was another term for spoils of war, and she laughed to think of herself capturing a baggage train and sharing out the plunder with her mates. Her grandfather chuckled, too. "For now, however," he said, digging in his jacket pocket, and completed the thought by handing her a comfit wrapped in waxed paper.

Leaving the General to collect spent casings, Riza trotted back to the house with Mr. Dodge, the pistol case cradled in her arms. A breeze accompanied them into the maze, rippling through the yews as the clouds bumbled along overhead like sheep being herded to pasture. Riza sucked on the comfit; despite the waxed paper, it was fuzzy with lint and somewhat stale, but still sweet. She resolved to practice diligently, as her grandfather had advised. It would mean taking plenty of fresh air and sunshine, so the staff would be pleased. And though she might not be her mother's daughter, she could at least prove herself her grandfather's granddaughter.

When they arrived in the gun-room, she discovered that the lesson had not ended, but merely recessed for the duration of the walk. Mr. Dodge provided her with rags and oil, rods and brushes, and set her to work disassembling and cleaning the pistols. At her sigh he switched one of the rags sharply across her knuckles. "None o' that!" he said. "These are yours now and you'll keep 'em clean, if you don't want a misfire to burn that pretty face."

"Does my grandfather clean his own guns?" Riza asked.

"That's my job," admitted Mr. Dodge, "but he's the General. You do as I bid till you're in his place."

"Yes, sir!" she replied smartly. He flicked the rag at her knuckles again, but without much force, and she bent her head to her task.

It took some little while to complete and Mr. Dodge left her to it, except to point out any spots she happened to miss. She could not well judge the passage of time in this quiet, windowless chamber, though she guessed, from the pinched feeling in her middle, that she would be called for tea soon. Tomorrow, she thought, she would tell her mother how she had spent the afternoon with her grandfather, and perhaps see the lines in her mother's forehead smoothed away by something other than the doctor's injections. Then the nurse might let them sit together for a whole half-hour and say, It does her good to see you, miss, when she left ...

Riza snapped the second pistol shut. She was about to hand it to Mr. Dodge for inspection when the gun-room's door burst open with more force than she had seen applied to any door on the estate (except the one to the under-gardener's shed, which stuck). It would have slammed against the wall and scarred the paneling, but for the footman stretching out to catch the knob with his fingertips. "There you are, miss!" he gasped.

His face was rumpled with emotion. The pinched feeling in Riza's stomach abruptly expanded up through her chest to her throat.

"Miss," the footman choked. "Miss, your mother -- "

Riza pushed herself to her feet, but said nothing. The footman collected enough of his wits to make a little speech, full of incoherent explanations and clumsy sympathy, but she heard none of it. Instead, she turned the gun over and over in her hands, the words barrel and muzzle, trigger and cylinder and hammer recalled to her mind as the parts passed in review before her eyes. It was too bad, really, that she wouldn't be able to tell her mother what she had learned.

"Miss?" asked the footman, recognizing at last that he was not being attended to.

Mr. Dodge put a hand on Riza's shoulder. She twitched away, and laid the pistol aside.