Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Lavan was grateful for the hall; it allowed him to get into the upper stories without anyone at the party spotting him. He didn't go to his room on the second floor, though—he'd be far too easy to find there. Instead, he headed for the attics up above the servants' third-floor rooms.

  It wasn't likely that anyone would look for him here. The previous occupant of this town manor had taken all of his rubbish with him (or sold it off to rag pickers), and the current occupants didn't have much to encumber the space. Lan's mother had seen to it that the attics had been scrubbed out as thoroughly as the rest of the house before the family moved in, so dust was at a minimum. All that was up here was the stuff that had been too good to leave behind, but wasn't immediately useful. Here were the few articles of valuable furniture—as opposed to the country-built stuff they'd left behind—that didn't (yet) fit anywhere in the house or which needed repairs that hadn't been done. The rest was bales and boxes; the heavy woolen blankets, featherbeds, furs, coats, and clothing packed in lavender and cedar chips awaiting the cold of winter, and the oddments that had been given to the family by important friends or relatives that were too hideous to display on a daily basis but no one dared get rid of.

  Lan opened the attic door and stepped softly in; it was very dark, and he took a moment to let his eyes adjust to the gloom. At last, he had come to a place where the air was comfortably cool, and the sweat quickly dried on his forehead and the back of his neck. The scent of strong soap mixed with herbs still lingered in the air, and the gable windows glowed with the light from the party lanterns in the rear and the streetlamp in the front. The sound of the party was a dull drone up here, but the hired musicians in the garden were actually easier to hear than they'd been in the drawing room.

  Avoiding the dim bulk of the stored furnishings, Lan reached the nearest window without mishap. Once he opened the window and flung himself down on a pile of featherbeds and comforters, it was rather pleasant up in the attic. Or, at least, it wasn't as bad as it was downstairs.

  He could hide out here for as long as it took for the party to end. Although once the noise began to ebb, he knew he'd better sneak back downstairs again, and pretend he'd been there all night.

  I wish I could hide out here forever.

  He closed his eyes and listened to the music. It wasn't what he would have chosen himself, of course; it was rather old-fashioned and played in a manner that suggested the musicians themselves were well aware that they were only there to provide a kind of pleasant background to conversation. Innocuous, that was the best word for it. Lan didn't much care for innocuous music, but he wasn't the one paying the minstrels' fee.

  As his father so often repeated, the one who paid the musician had the right to call the rune. However, that old saw was repeated with a sidelong, meaningful glance at his middle son.

  Lan's stomach knotted up again. As if I would ever forget....

  *

  NO one noticed his defection, or he would have heard about it over breakfast. He kept quiet as Sam bolted his food and headed off to his work with Master Iresh, and as his younger sibs chattered excitedly about the important people who'd taken notice of them. Lavan muttered something about the Guildmaster in response to a direct question, but let Macy and Feodor take center stage. They chattered with animation about all the important people who had spoken with them, and Nelda nodded approvingly.

  Lan's food was as tasteless as bark and loam. He ate without speaking and left the table almost as quickly as Sam had, retreating to a window seat just off the lesser sitting room where he hoped he would be sufficiently out of the way to be ignored or forgotten. In a few moments after he had settled in, the door to the street opened and closed—that would be Feo, going to join their father. Macy's footsteps faded off in the direction of the workroom, where she would toil diligently and happily on embroidery or lacemaking for the rest of the morning. Though she was only fourteen, her work was good enough that she won praise from everyone who saw it.

  Now if Mother is just thinking about them and not about me as she gets ready to leave....

  No such luck. He heard his mother's, footsteps, but didn't turn to look at her, hoping she still might ignore him. "Lan?" she said, and when he didn't respond to her call, she repeated "Lan?" in a sharper tone that warned him not to pretend he hadn't heard.

  Lavan looked away from the window toward his mother, a dull apprehension making him clench his jaw—not that he'd been really looking outside. There wasn't that much to look at; just the tiny little kitchen garden of their town house, surrounded by a high, stuccoed wall to separate their minuscule yard from the neighbor's equally minuscule yard. But it was better than staring out the window in his room, which opened out to a charming view of the blank wall of the neighbor's town house. And anyway, the servants would be in his room cleaning for another candlemark. He couldn't take refuge up there until they'd gone because they'd just chase him out again with their dusting and sweeping.

  "Shouldn't you be doing something?" Lavan's mother asked, her brows knitted with irritation. Her frown deepened when he shrugged, unable to think of an acceptable answer.

  Nelda had kept the splendid figure of her youth, and either through luck or artifice her auburn hair showed not a strand of gray. She was dressed for a meeting of the Needleworkers' Guild, in her fine, russet-brown lambswool gown trimmed with intricate bobbin lace of her own making and design, the sash of her office as Guild Representative of five counties so covered with embroidery that there was not a single thread of the original fabric showing. Lavan had taken very little care with his own clothing, in no small part as a kind of act of defiance. Trews and tunic claimed from his older and taller brother had once been black, but had faded to a washed-out gray, and he wouldn't let his mother redye them. He was afraid if she got her hands on them, or any of his clothing, she'd make them... cheerful. And cheerful was very far from the way he felt since the move to Haven.

  His mother was clearly torn between what she saw as her duty to her son and her duties to her Guild. She hesitated, then solved her dilemma by snapping, "Well, find something!" as she hurried out the door, the heels of her scarlet leather boots clicking on the wooden floor.

  Lan turned back to his contemplation of the garden, but he pulled his thin legs up onto the window seat and pulled the curtain shut behind him, cutting him off from the rest of the second-best sitting room.

  Find something? She wants me to find something? And what is there for me to do around here? Since moving to the town house in Haven, there was nothing to occupy Lan's days. Back home—for no matter what his parents said, this place would never be home to him—he'd had friends, places to go, things to do. Riding, hunting, and fishing mostly, or shooting at targets. Just hanging about together and talking was entertaining enough, certainly more entertaining than listening to Sam natter about the exciting doings in the dye vats. Back when he was younger, that same gang of boys had played at being Heralds or Guards, at fighting the Karsites or capturing bandits. The last couple of years they'd abandoned the games, but not each other. Now there were races to be run, game to chase, rivers to swim, and that was enough for them.

  Then Mother got made Guild Representative, and Father couldn't get us out of the country fast enough. Lan's lip curled at the recollection. No matter how his children felt about it. Archer Chitward had ambition to be more than a simple country cloth merchant. At least in part that was why he had negotiated the marriage with Nelda Hardcrider, the most skillful needlewoman anyone in their area had ever seen. With her skill, and his materials, he reckoned she could make herself into a walking advertisement for his goods.

  Lan knew that was what he'd thought, since he'd said so often enough. His mother didn't seem to resent being thought of as a sort of commodity, in fact he sometimes wondered if the negotiation and speculation had been as one-sided as his father thought.

  He stared out the glass window at the sorry substitute for a forest—a stand of six dwarf fruit trees, an arbor cover
ed with brambles and roses, which would later yield fruit and rose hips, and gooseberry bushes, all neatly confined in wooden boxes with gravel-covered paths between, for a minimum of work. The rest of the garden was equally utilitarian; vegetables in boxes, herbs in boxes, grapevines trained against the wall. The only flowers growing there were those that were also edible.

  With an intensity that left a dry, bitter edge around his thoughts, Lan longed for his wild, unconfined woods. In all of Haven he had yet to see a spot of earth that had been left to grow wild; every garden of every house around here was just the same as this one. The only variations were in whether or not the gardens were strictly utilitarian or ornamental. The parks around which each "square" of town houses were built were carefully manicured, with close-cropped lawns, precise ponds or fountains, pruned trees, and mathematically planned flowerbeds.

  He wanted his horse. He wanted to saddle up and ride until he found a tree that wasn't pruned, a flower not in a planned planting, even a weed. But that was impossible; his horse had been left back in the country. There was no stable here, and even if there had been, he would not have been allowed his horse. The two carriage horses the family had brought with them were kept in a stable common to the square, and cost (as his father liked to repeat) a small fortune to keep fed and cared for. Only the nobly born could afford to keep a riding horse in the city.

  He could have hired a horse to ride—there was a stable with horses for hire and a bigger park to ride them in—but what was the point of that? You weren't allowed to take the beast any faster than a trot, you had to stick to the bridle paths, and the riding park was just a bigger version of the tiny park of their square. Riding in the park was nothing more than a way for girls to show themselves off for young men, and young men to assess the competition. It wasn't even exercise.

  Lan hated Haven; he had since he'd arrived, and he hadn't seen anything yet to change his mind. But he was in the minority, because the rest of his family had taken to life in the city with the enthusiasm of otters to a water slide.

  His mother was at the Guildhouse every day, her daughter with her at least part of the time. Lan's younger sister Macy took after her mother in every way, and it looked as if Nelda would be handing the reins of her position in the Guild over to her daughter when the time came that she wished to step down. Macy adored every facet of city life, and so did Lan's younger brother, Feodor. Feodor tagged after their father the way Macy trailed behind Nelda, absorbing every aspect of the business of a cloth merchant as easily as a towel soaked up water. Lan's oldest brother Sam wasn't even in the equation—he spent so much time at his Master's that Lan scarcely even saw him.

  A proper little copy of Father, he is, Lan thought cynically. And how nice for him that is. Same for Feodor. They never got into trouble just for existing; they never got the long looks of disgust or disappointment. Not once. Back home, that hadn't mattered; Lan was out at dawn and not back until dark, and if his parents were disappointed in him, at least he was able to avoid them.

  Why can't they just send me back home? he thought longingly.

  It wasn't as if they couldn't afford it, not with all the silver his father was throwing around lately. They kept saying that it was time he grew up and took on some responsibilities and made something of himself....

  Why? Highborns don't have to! There are plenty of people with well-off parents who aren't expected to go out and "make something of themselves."

  The only thing he really wanted to do was out of the question, of course. Given a choice, he'd have entered the Guard. He knew he rode well enough to get into the mounted troops; he certainly didn't fancy marching for leagues and leagues on his own two feet. He rather thought he'd look good in the Guard uniform of dark blue and silver, and it was an admitted magnet to attract pretty girls, or at least it had been at home. Even foot soldiers got attention when they passed through Alderscroft.

  The one and only time he'd mentioned his ambitions, there had been such an outcry he hadn't dared say anything about it again. And without family support—well, he could pretty much forget about getting into the mounted troops, at least for a long while. If you brought your own horse and passed the riding trials, you went automatically into the cavalry, but if he didn't have family support, he wouldn't have a horse. And he wasn't so desperate that he cared to just run off and join the ground troops.

  Definitely not. Without some weapons'-training, real training with a Weaponsmaster, he'd go straight into training with that most basic of front-line weapons, the pike. It would be months before he got his hands on a bow or an edged weapon, and all his time would be spent on grueling marches and drills.

  I might as well be a woodcutter, it would be as much work and more interesting.

  And anyway, he couldn't even run off to join the Guard for another two years. Even if he lied about his age and identity, his parents would probably find out where he was and drag him home again.

  Nobody would believe I was sixteen anyway. Skinny and lanky he might be, but he was also undersized. He didn't even look fourteen. Feodor looked older than he did, and was certainly taller.

  Of course, as his father pointed out constantly, a lack of height didn't matter to a merchant or a Guildsman.

  By this time he had brooded himself into a truly black humor, and the moment he heard the housemaids come giggling into the kitchen for their late breakfast, he bolted up the stairs for his room, now carefully polished and scrubbed, any trace of him erased. He took a perverse pleasure in pulling the curtains shut on the morning sunshine and undoing their work by casting himself on the bed, boots and all.

  He closed his eyes, nursing his bitterness in silence, wishing that he could will himself back home to Alderscroft.

  *

  HE didn't realize that he'd dozed off until he started awake to find his mother shaking him and the curtains pulled wide open again to admit the midday sun.

  "Wake up!" she said crossly, the dreaded frown lines making deep creases between her brows. Her face, a perfect oval framed by the braids she wore wrapped around her head, was the very portrait of parental annoyance. Her hazel eyes narrowed with suppressed anger. "When I told you to find something to do, I didn't mean to go take a nap! Here—"

  She thrust the same forgotten roll of tools at him that the Guildmaster had forced on him last night, and Lan suppressed a groan. Was he never to be rid of the blasted thing?

  "Did you hide this in the cushions last night?" she accused.

  He blinked and began to dissemble; she cut him off before he'd gotten more than a word or two out. "Don't bother to lie," she said acidly. "You do it very badly. You did. It's just a good thing that the Guildmaster thought Feodor was older than you—he offered to take Feo as his 'prentice, so Feo can use these, and he won't be offended to see that you've given Feo your present."

  Relief must have shown on his face, for his mother's lips tightened. "Tidy yourself and get downstairs. Your father and I have something to tell you."

  She clattered out of his room, and Lan's relief evaporated, replaced by dread.

  Oh, gods, now what? Was he going to be 'prenticed to someone after all? His heart plummeted, and with cold hands he straightened his tunic and swept his hair off his forehead.

  Feeling as if he were going to his doom, he plodded down the stairs and into the lesser sitting room where he could hear his mother and father talking.

  They both looked up as he entered; his mother still had that tightly-closed expression around her mouth, as if her lips were the opening to a miser's purse, but his father looked less grim. Archer had a milder temper to go with his gray-threaded, tidy chestnut hair, but today there was a sense of sadness around his calm, brown eyes, and his square jaw was set in a way that suggested it would not do Lan any good to argue with the fate planned for him.

  Lan took deep breaths, but still felt starved for air.

  "Sir," he said, suppressing the feeling that he ought to bob like a servant, but keeping his eyes down. "Ma
'am. You wanted me?"

  "Sit down, Lavan." That was his father; Lan took a seat on the nearest chair, a hard, awkward thing that was all angles and a little too tall for his feet to lie flat on the floor. That was the signal for his father to rise and tower over him. Lan's chest tightened, and he truly felt as if he couldn't breathe. "I was hoping for all of my sons to follow in my trade."

  "Yes, sir," Lan replied in a subdued tone of voice, going alternately cold and hot, a feeling of nausea in the pit of his stomach. I'm going to be sick, I know it....

  He looked up through his lashes as his father looked down at him and sighed.

  "Well, having two of my offspring take to the trade is more than any man should expect, I suppose." Archer shook his head. "Lan, have you any idea what you propose to do with yourself with the rest of your life?"

  His feeling of sickness ebbed, but he started to sweat. "Ah—" Don't say that you want to go into the Guard! he cautioned himself before he blurted out the truth. That was not what Archer wanted to hear. "I, ah—"

  "That's what I thought." Archer looked back at his wife, who grimaced. "You know, in my day, you'd have found yourself packed off to whatever master I chose to send you to. You wouldn't have a choice; you'd do what I told you to do, as I did what my father wished for me."

  "Yes, sir." A tiny spark of hope rose in him. Did his father have some other plan? Whatever it was, could it be better than being sent off to some miserable dyer or fuller? Unless—he—oh no—not a temple—

  "If you were lucky, I'd have sent you to be a priest," his father continued, echoing Lan's unfinished thought. "There's some that would say it's the proper place for you."

  "You'd at least be serving your family if we did," Nelda said acerbically. "Which is more than you can claim now, lolling about in bed most of the day and glooming around the house doing nothing the rest of the time!"