Tamora Pierce

Eleven-year-old Alanna, who aspires to be a knight even though she is a girl, disguises herself as a boy to become a royal page, and learning many hard lessons along her path to high adventure.

On her first tour as a knight errant, Alanna assumes a position of influence with a fierce desert tribe, makes some changes in the role of women in the society, and continues her own emotional development.

Aly fails to foresee the dangers that await as she uses her magic to safeguard Dova and her younger siblings, despite knowing that her thirteen-year-old charge might be queen of the Copper Isles when the coloolonial rulers are defeated.

Alianne is the teenage daughter of the famed Alanna, the first lady knight in Tortall. Young Aly follows in the quieter footsteps of her father, however, delighting in the art of spying. When she is captured and sold as a slave to an exiled royal family in the faraway Copper Islands, it is this skill that makes a difference in a world filled with political intrigue, murderous conspiracy, and warring gods. -- from Amazon.

Pursuing her desire to be a knight, Alanna learns many things in her role as squire to Prince Jonathan, but fears Duke Roger, an ambitious sorcerer whom she knows she will one day have to face.