Barrett started at that, as if the possibility hadn’t occurred to him. “We—are?” he faltered.
Mags nodded solemnly. “Happens they talk t’ me, ’cause I ain’t highborn an’ I got no money an’ no fambly,” he said matter-of-factly. “Y’skeered one wee mite near outa her skin w’ that—ax. That fair?”
Barrett flushed a deep, shamed crimson. So did the others.
:Dallen—: he thought with a sudden burst of inspiration. :Talk to Rolan. Get Nikolas here fast.:
:Oh, I see where you are going with this! Yes!: Dallen’s burst of enthusiasm heartened Mags, and even more so when Dallen continued. :We told him what’s going on. He’s coming now.:
“They keep tellin’ me,” Mags went on, deliberately stalling for time, “thet now I’m a Herald, I gotta think ’bout what I do afore I do it. Aye?”
Barrett nodded, and wouldn’t look at him.
“And—”
Foosteps behind him, deliberate, but brisk, told him that Nikolas had entered the stables. He waited for the King’s Own to make a show of “seeing” them.
“Well, is this some sort of impromptu gathering?” Nikolas’ voice sounded relaxed and genial. “Can’t quite give up Midwinter holidays, lads? Not that I blame you—”
He came up beside Mags, and looked with feigned astonishment at the furiously blushing Barrett, at his shame-faced coconspirators. “Why, what is all this?” he asked, quite as if he had no idea. “This doesn’t look like a celebration.”
Barrett cleared his throat. “It’s—not—sir,” he said, and then launched into a rapid, but painful, explanation of what they had been up to.
“Hmm.” Nikolas raised an eyebrow. “I ... see. And how is this not misuse of your Gifts?”
“I ... uh ...” Barrett looked even more shamefaced if that was possible. “Uh ...”
“It is one thing to pull pranks on people, Barrett. I find some of your antics rather amusing. The circles in the corn fields now, that was inspiring. Very clever, to use boards to press the crops down, and a little sight on your hat to keep the lines straight.”
Barrett gaped at him. “You ... knew ...”
“And using the string to make your circles perfect was a very good use of your geometry class,” Nikolas continued, oblivious to the stunned looks on the pranksters’ faces. “But when it comes to misusing your Gifts ... no. We have to draw the line.”
Barrett stared down at his hands.
Nikolas cleared his throat, causing Barrett to look up. The King’s Own crooked his finger.
“All of you, come with me now,” he said, with a deadpan expression. “We are going to have a conference with some interested parties about this.”
Without a backward look, Nikolas led them all out of the stable, leaving Mags behind.
:Rolan says to tell you that Nikolas says good work.: There was definitely a feeling of pride about that statement behind Dallen’s words. :Now, I think it would be time to get back to your sums. Yes?:
Mags sighed. :Aye,: he replied, and trudged back to his room.
———
The King’s Own Herald was definitely amused.
He sat at Mags’ table, sipping hot tea, and for once there was a smile on his face. It transformed him from forgettable to rather remarkable; there was a liveliness about him that suggested that, back in his past, he might well have been as much of a prankster as Barrett.
“Mags, I must congratulate you and Dallen. You succeeded in solving the ‘haunting,’ you caught the perpetrators red-handed, and you did it in a way that neither revealed your interest in our foreign visitors, nor compromised your connection to me.” Nikolas drank the last of the tea, and set the cup down on the table with a chuckle. “And as a consequence you have managed to allow me to recruit them to my own purposes.”
Mags blinked in sleepy satisfaction. “Gonna let ’em keep hauntin’?” he asked.
“I believe so. A bit more to the purpose, however, and with a great deal more art. We don’t want any more servants terrified. That is not fair to them.” Nikolas turned the cup around and around on the table. “With their Gifted fellow incapacitated, they are, we think, inclined to believe that there are spirits here leagued against them. We’d like to encourage that thinking, but more specifically than Barrett and his gang were originally managing to produce.”
Mags scratched his head. “’Scuse me, sir, but ... I thought they was here t’ make an alliance? How come now ye wanta scare ’em?”
“Because I do not believe they came here to make an alliance,” Nikolas replied firmly. “This was urged on the King by members of the Court whose lands border on Dosteland and Karse, and who would much prefer to see an alliance with these folk against Karse. I was ... less than enthusiastic about this plan.”
Mags nodded. Now this was getting into realms he truly did not understand, and didn’t think he ever would.
“At some point, I will explain all of this,” Nikolas promised. “But the long and the short of it is that I’ve modified my stand on this. I think we can make a very useful, temporary alliance with them, if they think we command some very powerful abilities. So long as they are afraid of us, they will be honest with us. The King is inclined to give this approach a trial. So—” he spread his hands wide. “There you have it. Your friends and fellow Trainees are hereby given leave to prank them all you like.”
Mags laughed. “On’y prank I did on ’em was t’ use that slip-away stuff when they tried t’ get me alone t’ beat on.”
“Well, should they try again, use it again. Only this time, see if you can’t—make it more—showy?” Nikolas suggested. “Make it seem as if some spirit is assisting you.”
Mags’ brow creased. “Well ... all right. Doubt they’ll mess with me again, though.”
“Ah, probably not, but it was a thought. Certainly you’ve done more than enough on that head already.” Nikolas snapped his fingers. “Ah! That reminds me. I’ve arranged for all three of you to get access to the Guard records, with no subterfuge needed. There is no reason why you shouldn’t try to find out about your parents, Mags. No reason to hide behind some other excuse. Your little Bard friend will probably find something in there that is useful to her, and Bardic Trainees have traditionally gotten access there anyway, and as for Bear the Healer, being one of the first truly outstanding herb Healers we’ve had here, he should be given a chance to go through those records to see if there is anything there he can translate into medicines. Caelen was exceptionally impressed with how you handled things tonight, Lena and Bear are certainly more than responsible enough to have gotten passes long ago, so there will be permanent passes for all three of you in the morning. Just turn up at the archives, your names will all be on the allowed list from now on.”
Mags stared at Nikolas, absolutely speechless. Nikolas seemed to understand that he was speechless with gratitude, and smiled.
“There is something else that you accomplished tonight, quite inadvertently, Mags,” he continued. “You and Barrett. There has been some ... strain in the relationships among the members of the three Collegia over all this building. Everyone has his own ideas about priorities, and everyone is watching jealously to see how much effort is spent on what.” He paused. “I think you got some sense of that with what went on around Herald Jakyr—although a good part of the strain between Jakyr and certain Bards has more to do with personal issues than the building. Thanks to Barrett’s gang, we had members of all three Collegia working together, as it should be—and tonight the heads of all three Collegia had a completely cordial meeting, deciding what to do about the young rogues. Frankly, this was only aided by the fact that you made Barrett feel so ashamed of himself that he took the whole of the blame on his own shoulders. Very fruitful. I think we went a long way in mending things.” He stood up and stretched. “And that is enough work for one night, I believe. I’ll let myself out.”
Mags was so astonished by the results of the evening that he stared at the closed door lon
g after Nikolas was gone.
The next morning, as promised, when Mags met Bear and Lena for breakfast, the other two told him with great excitement that they had been told if they appeared at the Guard Archives their names would be on the list of those allowed in. Mags couldn’t help but enjoy their enthusiasm, and filled his plate with flatcakes, buttering them and adding honey. “Well, there we go, then,” he said with a decided nod. “You’ll both get t’ root around in there whenever ye want now. You two reckon it’ll take long fer me t’ find out what I want?”
Lena shook her head. “It shouldn’t. We know the time period we are looking for, and we know the location, right? It should be fairly straightforward. I can go with you and show you how to do archival research right after breakfast if you have the time.”
Bear looked disappointed. “I have a class,” he said reluctantly. “Hang it! I wanted to help!” Then he made a face. “And aye, I wanted to go looking for herb lore, too ... nobody ever thinks to tell anyone about local herb lore. But the Guard does a lot of their own rough-medicine, and I know they use whatever they can get locally.”
Lena patted his hand sympathetically. “It’s all right, Bear, we understand. Once we find what Mags wants to know, we can plan on afternoons or evening when we just hunt out references to medicines and we all three go together.”
Bear had to be satisfied with that. Mags was both on fire with impatience and a little sick with apprehension. No matter what Nikolas or anyone else had said to him, it was still there, that horrible feeling. To find out for certain that Cole Pieters was right, right about him, right about his parents ...
He and Lena hurried over to the Guard Archives as soon as they finished eating. This time the stern individual on guard at the desk looked over his list when they gave him their names. He nodded, and waved them into a short hallway behind him without a word. They opened a door at the end of that hallway, and stepped into what was for Mags a very strange room indeed.
He had expected something like the library. This was nothing like the library.
First of all, they had to go up three stairs to get into it. This was a huge barn of a building, not just a room, with floor-to-ceiling shelves packed very closely together. There were ladders at intervals along the shelves—it was pretty obvious you would need those ladders to reach the upper shelves. On these shelves were identical wooden boxes. Shelf upon shelf, row upon row ... with only a single table with several chairs around it at the door end of the room. He would have thought such a huge room would be freezing cold, but they had some way to heat it that he couldn’t see. Then it occurred to him—the place must be heated the same way that Bear’s indoor herbarium was heated, from beneath the floor. The place had a stuffy feel to it, as if the air wasn’t moving at all. It was also very dry, and the air was scented with the smell of old paper, but oddly, not of dust. In fact, he couldn’t see any dust at all. The lighting was fairly good, too—there were narrow windows up near the roof all the way around, with glass in them.
“Oh, my,” Lena said faintly as she went up to the nearest shelf. “It’s a lot ... bigger ... than I thought it would be. The Bardic Archives aren’t much bigger than the library. Well,” she said, her voice sounding muffled as she moved behind the shelves, “At least they dust regularly.”
Mags followed her. She peered at the end of the box, then at the box next to it, and the one down from it, and perked up. “All right, this isn’t as bad as it looks. These are all nicely organized. I was afraid they were just stuck in here, any which way.”
“I should hope they are well-organized, Trainee. The Guard prides itself on organization.”
Mags could almost hear the unspoken addition. Unlike some other groups I could mention ....
From the back of the room, another old, but erect, man in a blue Guard uniform came walking toward them. He was balding, expressionless, and as impersonal as a lump of stone. “I am the Archivist. I assume since you are here, you have permission, so how can I help you find what you are looking for?”
This time, despite shields, Mags did hear the unspoken addition. I can’t have you running about pulling things down and never putting them back in order, or where they belong. Or worse, putting them back wherever you find room.
Now Mags, who had, up until this moment, loathed his geography and mapmaking class with a sincere and undying passion, suddenly was just as passionately grateful to them. Because now that he had been in those classes, he knew where Cole Pieters’ mine was, so he knew what the nearest town was. And he knew that he had come from somewhere in the vicinity of that town, because he didn’t remember a long journey. He did remember the shouting and screaming, he remembered cowering in a corner, then he remembered being put in a cart and given sweets to suck. It could not have been a very long journey. It had ended in a bare stone room, from which, after several boring days, Cole Pieters fetched him.
“We’re lookin’ for th’ reports from around about a town called Blueflower Hill an’ a place called Cole Pieters’ mine, from about ... twelve, fourteen years ago, sir.” He tried to make his tone and his expression as respectful as possible. This man would respond to respect.
The Archivist nodded. “Very good. That narrows the search down considerably. There are three Guard Posts in that area. Come with me.”
He led them between two of the rows of shelves, and stopped when they were so deeply in that Mags could not really see either end of the room. The man took ribbons out of his pocket, and sorted out a handful of white ones with little blue beads threaded on the ends. Each of the boxes had a ring attached to it; he tied these ribbons off on the rings of several of them.
“I’ve marked each of the boxes you will want to look through with these,” the man said. “You will probably see other boxes marked in this way; if you look through those, be careful not to disturb or remove any markers in the reports. As you finish a box, please remove the ribbon and either leave it at my desk at the rear, or attach it to a new box you wish to look through.” He tapped the end of the box. “The name of the Guard Post and the year are here. The boxes are organized geographically. Put everything back as you found it. You are—?”
“Heraldic-Trainee Mags and Bardic Trainee Lena,” Lena answered for both of them. “We’re looking for information for Mags, sir.”
Mags waited for the Archivist to ask what that was, but he seemed utterly incurious.
“Very good. These will be your colors until you are finished with this particular research. When you have returned all the ribbons, if you wish to pursue another line of research, let me know what it is you are looking for, and I will assign you another set of ribbons.” He smiled thinly. “If it is nothing like as specific as this one, I shall ask you to confine your searches to one small area at a time.”
Lena looked as if she might say something. Mags prevented her from doing so by answering immediately, “Yessir, Archivist sir.”
“If you need me, I will be at my desk in the rear.” With that, he turned smartly about and walked back to the back of the room, heels clicking on the stone floor with military precision.
Mags and Lena looked at each other. Mags shrugged, and reached up, pulling down the first box. “Well,” he said. “Let’s get to it.”
The box was not as heavy as he feared; he hauled it over to the table, and they unloaded the papers inside. It was all organized with fanatic precision. Each report was folded inside a stiffer, thicker piece of paper, and a moon’s worth was tied up with a ribbon or string. There were twelve bundles in each box: a full year’s worth. A year began and ended at Midwinter Night, precisely.
They looked at the bundles, and then at each other. Mags shrugged, and gestured at the box. Lena took out the first moon—Midwinter Moon—and Mags got the second—Ice Moon. They sat down with their bundles and began to skim through them.
The reports were clear and concise, and written in a very legible hand. They also concerned every bit of minutiae on the life of the Guards and the Guard P
ost.
If I ever can’t sleep, gonna see if I can borrow a moon’s worth of reports.
Mags went through his quickly, neatened all the reports so that all the edges were square, tied up the stack again, and went back for Thawing Moon. Lena was still deep in hers. Mags wondered what she was finding that was so fascinating.
Whatever it was, ’twasn’t in my stack.
She finished hers about the same time as he finished Thawing Moon. She got Budding Moon and he got Flowering Moon. And so it went right through the year to Dying Moon, which was the moon that ended on Midwinter Eve.
“Nothing?” he asked, as they put the stacks back in order again.
She shook her head. “And it’s time for class.” He nodded, and hoisted the box up. “I’ll see you at lunch.”
He held onto the ribbon, just in case, and put the box back on its shelf. He looked the area up and down, noted the number that had white ribbons tied to them, and repressed his dismay.
There were a lot of boxes ....
Ah, well. No one told him that this was going to be an easy job. He probably would not have believed them if they had.
If he didn’t run now, he would be late for class. He would worry about all of this later.
———
All three of them met up for lunch, and Bear listened while he and Lena compared notes with every sign of open envy. “Damn these classes,” he growled finally. “It’s not fair.”
“It’s not exactly fun, Bear,” Lena pointed out, as gently as she could. “These are just military reports, and not even from moons when much happens. It’s all about the running of the Guard Post, and it’s not very interesting. How much of what was eaten, lost to vermin, and ordered and delivered. What training was going on. How many leagues of roads cleared of snow in the winter, the condition of the roads in the summer. Whatever troubles the nearby people had that the Guard had to get involved with. Disciplinary actions, who was promoted, who was demoted, who retired, who the replacements were. Evaluation reports on each of the men. There were only two reports from the Herald on circuit there the entire year; that was the only times he called there. At least in the year we looked at, absolutely nothing of any importance happened. Much more of this, and I am going to be caught falling asleep over these things.”
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