Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Well, that was true enough. Especially this city, at least the reasonable parts of it.

  It felt like half the night, rather than just a candlemark or so, before he “heard”—rather than saw—the Herald-Chronicler at last.

  :I’m back. Everything went smoothly; it’s a distinct advantage to go disguised as yourself. Don’t get yourself in a knot, Alberich,: she said cheerfully. :I’ve got good news for you. Just let me change into my uniform.:

  He signaled a girl and ordered hot wine for both of them, knowing that by now she must be frozen. She was, thankfully, faster at changing her clothing than most women he had encountered. The hot wine he ordered was barely on the table when she came in, lenses glittering in the lamplight—and fogging up in the transition from cold outside to warm and humid inside.

  “So,” she said, without preamble, sliding onto the bench across from him. She took off her lenses to polish them on a napkin before replacing them on her nose. “Here’s what we’ve got. You want to know how Norris started up this whole show in the first place?”

  “All information is useful,” he admitted.

  “So I’ve learned.” She took a sip of wine. “There were a lot of people displaced by the Tedrels as you know, and quite a few of them ended up here in Haven. Your boy Norris is supposed to be from near the Rethwellan Border, and managed to get separated from the entertainment troupe he’d been with. Laric didn’t say how, and I didn’t ask. Supposedly, he hitched up with a caravan, doing acrobatics to amuse everyone around the fire at night, and ended up at the Three Sheaves along with the caravan. Supposedly, the rest of his group was going to come up to Haven and find him, and they never did. He wasn’t minded to sign up with the Army, but he was running up a big bill at the inn, when he got the idea to put together his own new troupe from some of the other ragtags of entertainers that were drifting in so he could pay that bill without getting put to work in the kitchen. That’s the story, anyway; I suspect at least part of it’s true. He’s definitely an actor, and he’s better than anyone else of the bunch. He’s got ’em all charmed, that’s for sure, and now that they’re doing just as well as he promised they would, there isn’t a one of them will hear a word against him. I don’t know if he’s from Rethwellen, because he’s damn good at putting on and taking off accents. He did at least four in my presence.”

  Alberich almost choked on his wine. “You saw him? You talked to him?”

  Myste shrugged. “It was after I made the bargain with Laric; we were looking over the office I’m going to use. He swanned in with two women on his arms, Laric told him I was going to be checking the books. He looked at me, saw a dowdy lump, wafted a little charm in my direction just to keep his hand in, and promptly forgot me as soon as he turned around and headed out the door. I told you that it’s useful being a clerk. Nobody ever pays any attention to us. Even that business with card counting; Laric’s the only one who ever caught on I was doing it. Everybody else just figured I was lucky.”

  “Evidently so,” Alberich managed. How close a call had it been? He wished he had been there to see Norris’ reaction with his own eyes.

  “Anyway, here’s the thing; the innkeeper is the one taking in the receipts at the door, because he takes his room and board for the troupe right off the top, and now that they’ve gotten popular, Laric thinks he’s skimming. But nobody else can manage to cipher for the numbers that they’re bringing in of an evening now. So from now on, I’m going to go every night they’re putting on a play—which is once every two nights—and go over the books, the head-count, and the innkeeper’s tally.” She grinned. “And I’m doing it all from the room next to Norris’, which is Laric’s office. Which means that I’ll be in a position to tell you when he’s there, where he’s gone if he isn’t, when he’s likely to be back, and to leave my own window open for someone to come and go. If you want to search his room for papers, I can make it happen.”

  Alberich stared at her. “And for how long will this go on?”

  “That, I don’t know,” she admitted. “Laric wants me to come regularly at first, then taper off. He thinks, and I agree with him, that if the innkeeper is skimming, it’s going to be better not to confront him on it, just bring me in. They know what I was at the Three Sheaves, and they’ll know why I’m in Laric’s office with the tally boards. If the innkeeper knows we’re watching him, he’ll be honest, and by comparing the take over time, we’ll know if he’s been honest in the past. And knowing that Laric has me on tap will probably keep him honest when I stop coming around.”

  “So, earliest on the best of our chances will be.” Alberich didn’t like that, particularly, but there was an old saying that beggars didn’t get to pick what they were given. And another that it didn’t pay to inquire too closely about the age of a gift horse.

  :Or, in my case, the color of his eyes,: Kantor said wickedly.

  And Myste was right. The best way to find out what Norris was passing was to search his room for the papers before he got rid of them. Which meant that Alberich was going to have to find a way to copy them, because they might be in code, and he certainly wasn’t going to be able to memorize them even if they weren’t—

  “Is there, perhaps, a way to copy such things?” he asked.

  “Several,” she assured him. “Rubbings, if he’s using graphite or a crayon, damp-paper transfer if he’s using ink. I can show you. We do that all the time to make emergency copies. Of course,” she added judiciously, “when you do that, you get a mirror-image, but that’s no great problem.”

  Alberich took in a deep breath, and let it out in a sigh. “Myste—very well have you done. Thank you.”

  She made a face. “Well, if you’re doing the dangerous bit—and I assume it’ll be you climbing in that window and not some lowlife from around Exile’s Gate that you hired—I’m doing the tedious part. Here I was, pleased I’d finally gotten out of doing accounts, and here I am back into it!” Then she sighed and looked out the window. “And on top of my real work, too.”

  “Worse, it could be,” Alberich reminded her. “On the battlefield, we could be.”

  She gave him a wry glance. “Well,” she admitted. “There is that. I’ll try to keep it in mind when I’m trying to hide you or throw you out a window because your lad Norris came back early.”

  And there just wasn’t much he could say to that, so wisely, he said nothing at all.

  ***

  But as Myste had pointed out, just because they were involved in this after-hours clandestine work it did not make their normal duties go away. He had his full set of classes to train, and as the season edged toward spring, the snow began to thaw, and the blustery winds began to blow, it became more and more of a challenge to hold classes out of doors. At least that wretched game of Hurlee was put on hold, for the ice on the ponds was getting rotten and not to be trusted, but the ground was alternately frozen mud or slushy snow, so the game couldn’t be transferred to some sort of playing field. And, oh yes, he had already heard that there were plans afoot for that, though the players would have to run, rather than sliding. The next thing he’d probably hear was that the Heraldic Trainees were going to try it Companion-back. . . .

  Meanwhile, the replacement mirror finally arrived and was installed. The two miscreants who began that particular adventure were as responsible for creating the new one as destroying the old one, being the ones who had spent an interminable amount of time polishing it to rid it of as many defects as possible. Both Deans decreed that their term of punishment at the glassworks was at an end although they would still be serving double-chores at the Collegium for well into the summer. They had missed the entire Hurlee season, and whenever an animated discussion of the game began, their faces were a study in adolescent disappointment. Alberich wasn’t at all surprised. If ever there were two rascals who might have been born to play a game like Hurlee, it was those two. And it occurred to him that this, alone, might be the worst punishment that could have been inflicted on them. They ha
d missed out on the creation of the game, they had missed out on becoming some of the first experts. From now on, the best they could hope for was to play catch-up to some other ascendant star.

  And in a way he felt just a little guilty, for if it hadn’t been for his own curiosity about where they had picked up their wild ideas, he would never have investigated the actors, and never have known that there was something going on.

  He still didn’t know what it was, of course, but at least he knew there was something. Now he had a fighting chance to discover what it was, and whether or not it was dangerous.

  Nevertheless, he had an important duty to perform, right there at the Collegium, and it was one that he could not give less than his total attention to during the hours when he was teaching, and no few of the hours outside of that time.

  He was training those who would one day become Heralds how to stay alive, when other people wanted them dead.

  And that was a massive task.

  It began with the youngest or the least experienced—not necessarily the same thing, as his tutelage of Myste had proven—and the basic skills of hand and eye coordination, and familiarity with weapons. And while they were learning these things, he was studying them, to determine what their lifelong weaknesses would be (for there had never been a person born who had so perfect a physique that he didn’t have one) and how to make them aware of the fact.

  Then, he would move them into the next stage of their training—how to compensate for those weaknesses.

  By then, they were roughly halfway through their years as Trainees; they had mastered basic skills, and they were as strong and flexible and coordinated as they were ever likely to get. There were exceptions to that last, of course, but those were the exceptions that proved the rule. If they had found him a hard master before, he was harder still at that point, because no one, no one, ever likes having a weakness pointed out, and human nature is such that when one is pointed out, the natural reaction is to try to deny it exists.

  Which was why he would go from master to monster at that point, until not even the most persistently self-delusional could continue to believe anything other than that the problem was real, and Something had to be done about the problem.

  Sometimes the weaknesses were physical—restricted peripheral vision, for instance. Sometimes they were mental. Often, they were emotional, and the biggest lay in the very natures of those who were Chosen as Heralds. These youngsters did not believe in the goodness and decency of their fellow man, they knew it. It was fundamental to their souls.

  And he had to, somehow, prove to them that their fellow man was very likely to plant a knife in the middle of their backs without destroying that deep and primitive knowledge. As Heralds, they had to go into every day expecting that the people around them would all act as ordinary, fallible, but decent human beings who, given the chance, would act decently and humanely. They also had to be prepared for the eventuality that those around them would do nothing of the sort—and be able to cope with such a contradiction without going a little mad.

  Not that all Heralds weren’t already a little mad, but—not that kind of mad.

  Then, once the weaknesses had been identified and acknowledged, he had to train them to compensate for the weaknesses.

  It would have been infinitely easier to do this had his students been, say, Karsite Cadets. Only physical and mental weaknesses would have to be dealt with, because emotional weaknesses literally did not matter to the Sunsguard so long as they were locked down tightly—and he could have proven those weaknesses to them with sheer, brute force, by persistently attacking them at those weak points until even a blind man could see what was wrong. Persuasion always took a lot longer than hammering something home.

  He was generally in that last stage only with those who were in the last year of their Trainee status—it was far, far easier to work with these Trainees, who were quite ready for Whites if only they had a little more experience and skill. For them, he was a mentor, not a monster.

  It had occurred to him, and more than once, that here in the Collegium the Trainees were put through a kind of forced-maturation process that sent them out into the greater world at eighteen, nineteen, or twenty with the mental and emotional skills of someone well in his thirties or older.

  Alas, most of his time was spent in being the tyrant with the heart of stone.

  This was never more true than when the energy level of those in his class was such that the students were near to bouncing off walls as they entered the door of the salle, and he turned them right around and took them outside to run their drills in the mud, the slush, the half-frozen snow, and no matter if it was too wretched out to be doing any such thing. Cold, dampness, and dirt weren’t going to harm them any; if they got too cold, he knew the signs and always sent them back into the salle to warm up at the oven. Not that there was any chance of getting cold enough to fall ill, unless something odd happened to keep them standing about soaked to the skin.

  The Blues, of course, were exempt from this if they chose. However, if they declared their unwillingness in such a way as to be insubordinate, rather than merely electing not to show up for lessons, he had a weapon to either bring them to heel or get rid of them entirely.

  Such as today—with one of the classes that was in their middle, and most difficult period of development.

  And they roared into his salle already in full antagonist mode.

  The battle lines were already drawn; Blues versus Trainees, one ringleader facing off for each side. The insults were flying. Blows would follow, in a moment.

  Except that Alberich waded right into the middle of it, and sent both of them to the floor with a blow to the ear, and the silence that descended was absolute.

  “Well,” he said crisply. “Before it begins, I care not how it started, nor who started it. You brought it into my salle. You will take it out again. There will be no second mirror to be replaced.”

  A nervous titter came from behind him. He didn’t turn to look. Neither boy had moved, and he gave them both looks that should have turned them to ice. “I said,” he enunciated carefully. “You will take it outside. You wish to fight? Well enough. Outside. It ends when I say it ends, and I will be the judge of the winner.”

  The Trainee on the floor had the sense to go pale; he, at least, must have some inkling of what Alberich meant—which was to let the fight go on until they were both too exhausted, bruised, and battered to stand. There would be no winner, short of one of the two being knocked unconscious, which, with the bare hands of a pair of boys fundamentally unskilled in bare-hand fighting, was unlikely. This was, actually, why Alberich did not teach bare-hand fighting to anyone who had not passed into that third and final stage of development. . . .

  But the Blue was one of Alberich’s personal headaches. Arrogant, assertive and, unfortunately, skilled enough to have earned the right to a part of that arrogance. Alberich would have gladly rid himself of the boy—Kadhael Corbie—if he could have. Unfortunately, that was out of his hands. Kadhael was in the class unless and until he took himself out of it.

  The boy looked him up and down, and sneered. “No,” he said.

  Someone gasped.

  Alberich did not move, and did not change his expression by so much as a hair. “I do not believe I heard you correctly,” he said evenly, trying to suppress the thrill of glee the boy’s insolent answer gave him. “What, precisely, did you say?”

  “I said, no. No, I am not going outside. No, I am not fighting by your rules. Who are you to give me orders, old man?”

  Alberich smiled—and Kadhael took one look at the smile and suddenly realized that he had made so fundamental a mistake that there was not going to be any evasion of the consequences.

  “I,” he said quietly, and with the perfect and precise control of Valdemaran grammar that came upon him in moments of stress “am the Collegium Weaponsmaster. As such, when I choose to exercise my rank, within the four walls of my salle and on its grounds,
I outrank, by Valdemaran law, every man, woman, and child in Valdemar save only the Monarch. And within these four walls, the Monarch is my equal, not my superior.”

  And it was all perfectly true. How else could he properly teach the sons and daughters of the highborn? How else could he train high-ranking Guards? How could he drill the greatest warriors and nobles of the realm? How could he ever train the Heirs, if he did not outrank them? To properly train, there would be injuries. They might be serious. And the Weaponsmaster could not be held responsible for such injuries. To be trained, the Weaponsmaster must know his orders would be obeyed, and the only way to be sure of that was to see that his rank on these grounds was higher than anyone else’s in the land.

  Which was why—though he had not learned this until after Dethor had retired—he had that special status within the salle and on the grounds.

  Kadhael looked as if the blow Alberich had given him had knocked every particle of sense right out of his head. He stared, he gaped, he looked as if he could not rightly understand a word of what had been said. “But—”

  “And since you choose not to abide by the laws of this, my Kingdom,” Alberich continued, still smiling. “I banish you. Now and forever.”

  “What?” Kadhael stammered.

  “Out. Go. Do not ever present yourself as my pupil. You may tell your father why you are not here, or not. I care not. I will report this matter to the Queen, the Lord Marshal, and the Provost Marshal—since you are not a Trainee, I shall not trouble any of the Deans with it.”

  “You can’t do this!” Kadhael protested wildly, paling. Alberich knew why. Kadhael’s father had watched Alberich fight and train the Guards for months before the boy had been sent to the salle with a class. Kadhael’s father knew that there was not enough money in Valdemar to purchase the services of a trainer as good as Alberich.

  Kadhael’s father would be very, very unhappy about this.