“Only if I get caught—in which case I’ll have a good story ready. And you’d better be ready to back me up!”
“But—”
“Never you mind, but! Life’s been too quiet around here. Nothing to get my blood stirred up. Besides, I don’t intend to do this for nothing, you know. You owe me, lady-o.”
“Skif,” she replied unthinkingly, “If you can help me prove what I suspect, you can name your reward!”
“Thank you,” he grinned, waggling his bushy eyebrows in what he obviously thought was a lascivious fashion, but which fell a lot closer to absurdity. “I’ll do just that!”
Talia succeeded in sparing his feelings by smothering her laughter as he bounced jauntily out.
“Elspeth’s nurse?” Jadus was so startled by Talia’s question that he actually set My Lady down. “Talia, why in the name of the Nine would old Melidy want to keep you away from Elspeth?”
“It’s not Melidy that’s doing it, it’s the other one,” Talia replied, “Hulda. Melidy really doesn’t seem to do very much, actually; she mostly just knits and nods. Hulda seems to be the one giving all the orders.”
“That puts another complexion on things entirely,” Jadus mused. “Youngling, how much do you know about the current situation—the background, I should say?”
“Not one thing—well, almost nothing. Selenay told me that her marriage with Elspeth’s father wasn’t a good one, and that she felt that a lot of Elspeth’s Brattiness is due to her own neglect. And since nobody mentions him, I supposed her husband was either dead or vanished—or banished. That’s about all.”
“Hm. In that case, I’d better tell you starting from the Tedrel War. That was when Selenay’s father was killed.”
“That was at least fifteen years ago, wasn’t it?”
“Just about. All right; Karse intended to overrun us without actually declaring war. They hired the entire nation of Tedrel Mercenaries to do their dirty work for them. The King was killed just as the last battle was won—and if I’d just been a little more agile he’d still be alive—” he sighed, and guilt washed briefly over his features. “Well, I wasn’t. Selenay had only just completed her internship when the war broke out; she was duly crowned, completed the work of mopping up the last of the Tedrel, and settled down to rule. As was to be expected, anyone of rank with a younger son to dispose of sent him to the Court. One of those visiting sons was Prince Karathanelan.”
“With a name like that, he could only have been from Rethwelian.”
Jadus smiled, “They are rather fond of mouth-filling nominatives, aren’t they? He was, indeed. He was also almost impossibly handsome, cultured, intelligent—Selenay was instantly infatuated, and there was nothing anyone could say that would make her change her mind about him. They were wedded less than a month after he’d first arrived. The trouble began soon after that.”
“Why should there have been trouble?”
“Because he wanted something Selenay could never, by law, give him—the throne. Had he been Chosen, he could have reigned as equal consort, but no Companion would have anything to do with him. Selenay’s Caryo even kicked him once, as I recall. He had brought a number of landless, titled friends with him, and the Lord knows we have unclaimed territory enough, so Selenay had granted them estates. He didn’t see why she couldn’t just as easily give him rank at least equal with hers.”
“But why didn’t he understand? I mean, everyone knows the law is the law for everybody.”
“Except that outKingdom the monarch’s word frequently is the law; he wouldn’t or couldn’t accept that such is not the case here. When he couldn’t get what he wanted by gift, he began scheming to take it by force, under the mistaken assumption that it was his right to do so.”
Talia shook her head in disbelief.
“At any rate, he and his friends, and even some of our own people, began plotting a way to remove Selenay and set him in her place. And to allay any suspicions, he reconciled with Selenay and had his own nurse travel here to help Melidy with Elspeth. I don’t think that his intention was to kill Selenay—I really do believe he only intended to hold her until she agreed to abdicate in his favor or Elspeth’s with him as Regent. I do know for a fact that his friends were far more ruthless. Their intention was assassination, and they planned it for when Selenay was alone, exercising Caryo. It might have worked, too—except for Alberich’s Gift.”
“Alberich has a Gift? I never guessed ....”
Jadus nodded; “It’s hard to think of Alberich as a Herald, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Talia confessed. “He doesn’t wear Whites. I scarcely ever see Kantor, with or without him. And that accent and the way he acts; he’s so strange—where is he from, anyway? Nobody ever told me.”
“Karse,” Jadus said to her surprise, “Which is why you’ll never hear a Herald use that old saying ‘The only things that come out of Karse are bad weather and brigands.’ He was a captain in their army—the youngest ever to hold that rank, or so I’m told. Unfortunately for him—though not for us—his Gift, when it works, is very powerful. It caused him to slip a time or two too often, to seem to know far more than he should have, especially about the future. His own people—his own company of the army—were hunting him as a witch because of that. They had him cornered in a burning barn when Kantor galloped through the flames to save him. Well, that’s another story and you should ask him to tell it to you some time; the pertinent thing to this story is that Alberich’s Gift is Foresight. Without telling Selenay why, he insisted on accompanying her, along with a dozen of his best pupils. Every one of the ambushers was killed; among them was the Prince. The official story is that he was killed in a hunting accident along with his friends.”
“I suppose that’s marginally true. They were hunting Selenay.”
Jadus grimaced. “Child, you have a macabre sense of humor.”
“But didn’t his own people have anything to say about such a flimsy tale?”
“They might have, except that circumstances had changed. As it happened, their King had since died and the Prince’s brother was reigning, and there had been no love lost between the two of them. The new King knew what his power-hungry sibling was like and was just as pleased that the scandal was shoved beneath the rug so neatly. Well, after that Selenay was kept very busy in attempting to ferret out those conspirators who hadn’t actually been among the ambushers—and to tell you the truth, I still don’t think she’s found all of them. I’ll tell you now what I’ve suspected for some time—Talamir was murdered because he was about to propose to the Council that Elspeth be fostered out to some of his remote relations. They were isolated folk of very minor noble rank. They weren’t going to put up with any nonsense from a child, and they were isolated enough that there was no chance Elspeth would be able to run away. But they are stubborn folk and Talamir was the only one likely to be able to persuade them to take the Brat on, and when he died, the plan was given up. But that all came later—after Selenay had been so busy that she had very little time to spare for Elspeth. Up until two years ago none of us had any inkling of trouble—we just turned around one day, and the sweet, tractable child had become the Royal Brat.”
“What’s all this got to do with Hulda?”
“That is something I can’t tell you; I’d been under the impression that it was Melidy who was in charge of the nursery, but from what you’ve observed that doesn’t seem to be the case. That’s exceedingly disturbing since I would have bet any amount of money that Melidy was the equal of anyone, up to and including Alberich! I can’t picture her just handing everything over to a foreigner.”
“Something’s changed drastically, then,” Talia mused. “And it looks like it’s up to me to find out what.”
“I fear so, youngling,” Jadus sighed, seeing the determination in her eyes. “I fear so.”
Another change in Talia’s life was in the way the other students treated her. Hitherto they had assumed Talia’s reticence was due to a
wish for privacy and had honored that wish. Now that they knew it was simply due to shyness, they went out of their way to include her in their gossip and pranks. Sessions in the sewing room were no longer a time for Talia to hide behind a mound of mending.
The change was signaled one afternoon when there were no boys sharing the task. Nerrissa was the current target of teasing about her most recent amorous conquest. She was being quite good-humored about it, but the jibes were getting a little tiresome. She looked around for a possible victim to switch the attention to, and her eye lighted on Talia.
“Ridiculous! And old news as well,” she replied to the most recent sally. “Besides, there’s somebody here who’s managed to captivate a lad who’s a lot harder to catch than Baern is.”
A chorus of “Who?” greeted the revelation.
“What?” Nerrissa’s eyes glinted with mischief. “You mean none of you noticed anything? Bright Havens, you must be denser than I thought. I would have figured that someone else would have seen that our Skif’s attentions to Talia are a great deal warmer than brotherly of late.”
“Oh, really?” Sheri turned to look at Talia, who was blushing hotly. “1 thought you were my friend, Talia! You might have told me!”
Talia blushed even redder and stammered out a disclaimer.
“Oh, my—” Sheri teased. “So vehement! Sounds to me a little too vehement.”
After a while, Talia managed to stop blushing and to give as good as she got. From then on, her relationships with her fellow students were a great deal easier.
Meals were another time when she could forget the problems with getting closer to Elspeth. There had always been a certain amount of pranking about in the kitchen; Mero saw to it that their hands were always too full for them to get into mischief, but he put no such rein on their mouths. Mero himself was a favored target, and Talia, with her innocent face, was now the one generally picked to try and fool him.
“Haven’t you forgotten something, Mero?”
“I? I? Talia, you are surely mistaken.”
“I don’t know, Mero,” one of the others chimed in. “It seems to me that the salt cellar is missing—”
“By the Book! It is! What could I have done with the cursed thing?” He searched for it with feigned panic, watching out of the corner of his eye while they passed it from hand to hand, grinning hugely. At last Talia got it back again and placed it prominently on the table while his back was turned.
“Ha!” he shouted, pouncing on it. “Now I know I looked there before—” he stared directly at Talia, who shrugged guilelessly.
“Kobolds,” he muttered, while they smothered giggles. “There must be kobolds in my kitchen. What’s this place coming to?”
Five minutes later he got his revenge.
“Would you say, young Talia, that you are a fairly good hand in the kitchen?” he asked, as the hoist went up with the precious salt-cellar on it.
“I—guess so.”
“And would you say that you know how to prepare just about any common dish of your Hold people?” he persisted.
“Definitely,” she replied injudiciously.
“Ah, good! Then certainly you can show me what to do with this.” He dropped an enormous gnarled and knobbly root in front of her.
Talia, who had never seen anything like it in her life, coughed and tried to temporize, while Mero’s grin got wider and the rest of the kitchen helpers giggled.
Finally (since it was evident that he wasn’t going to feed them unless she admitted her ignorance or told him how to prepare it) she confessed to being defeated.
Mero chuckled hugely and took the thing away, replacing it with their lunch. “What is it, anyway?” Griffon asked.
“A briar burl,” Mero laughed. “I doubt Talia could have done anything with it that would please a human palate—but she might have managed a gourmet meal for a termite-ant!”
Meals themselves were high points of the day. She had a permanent seat now at the second table, sandwiched between Sherrill and Jeri, across from Skif, Griffon, and Keren. To the eternal amusement of the girls and their teacher, both Griffon and Skif insisted on cosseting her, Griffon with the air of a big brother, Skif s intentions obviously otherwise although he attempted to counterfeit Griffon’s. Griffon wasn’t fooled by Skif in the least
“Watch yourself, you—” he growled under his breath. “You treat my Talia right, or I’ll feed you to the river with your best clothes on!”
Sherrill and the others overheard this “subtle” threat, and their faces puckered with the effort not to laugh.
Skif retaliated by picking Griffon’s pockets bare even of lint without the larger boy even being aware of the fact.
“More greens, brother?” he asked innocently, passing Griffon a plate containing his possessions.
Talia had to be saved from choking to death as she attempted to keep from giggling at the dumbfounded look on Griffon’s face.
That night Talia was on the receiving end of unmerciful teasing when they all got their baths at the end of the day.
“Oh, Talia—” Jeri piled her hair on the top of her head and simpered at her in imitation of Skif. “Would you like a—mushroom? Take two! Take a hundred!”
“Oh, thank you, no, dear, dear Skif—” Sherrill batted her eyelashes coyly at “Skif.” “I’d much rather have a—pickle.”
“I’ll just bet you would, wouldn’t you?” Skif replied, with a leer.
About this time the real Talia was torn between hilarity and outraged embarrassment. “I don’t know where you get your filthy minds—” she said, attacking both of them with a bar of soap and a sponge. “But they plainly need a good scrubbing!”
The episode degenerated at that point into a ducking and splashing match that soaked every towel in the room and brought down the wrath of the Housekeeper on all three of them.
“Hist!” someone hissed at Talia from behind the bushes next to the entrance to the gardens. She jumped, remembering all too well the misery of the months previous—then relaxed as she realized the whisperer was Skif.
“What on earth are you doing in there?” she asked, getting down on hands and knees, and seeing him in a kind of tunnel between two planted rows of hedges.
“What I told you I’d do—spying on the Brat. There’s something I want to show you. Squeeze on in here and follow me!”
She looked at him a bit doubtfully, then saw that he was completely serious, and did as he asked. They crawled through the prickly tunnel for some time before Skif stopped and Talia all but bumped into him. He signed at her to be quiet, and parted the twigs on one side, just enough for both of them to peer through.
Elspeth and her two nurses, Hulda and Melidy, were no more than a few feet away. They had no problem listening in on their conversation.
“Oh, no, dear,” Hulda was saying gently. “It’s quite out of the question. Your rank is much too high for you to be associating with Lord Delphor’s children. You are the Heir to the Throne, after all.”
Talia bit her lip angrily as Elspeth’s face fell. Old Melidy seemed to wake up a little from her half-doze. Her wrinkled face was creased with a faint frown as she seemed to be struggling to remember something.
“Hulda, that ...” she began slowly,”... that just doesn’t seem right somehow ....”
“What doesn’t seem right, dear?” Hulda asked with artificial sweetness.
“Elspeth isn’t ... she can’t ....”
“Be expected to know these things, I know. Now don’t you worry about a thing. Just drink your medicine like a dear love, and I’ll take care of everything.” Hulda poured a tiny glass of something red and sticky-looking and all but forced it into Melidy’s hand. The old woman gave up the struggle for thought and obediently drank it down. Not long afterward she fell asleep again.
Skif motioned that they should leave, and they backed out of the hedgerow on all fours.
“That’s what I wanted you to see,” he said, as they exited the hedge in a di
stant part of the garden. “Hold still, you’ve got twigs in your hair.” He began picking them out carefully.
“So’ve you. And leaves. She must be drugging Melidy, and keeping her drugged. Witch! But how did the old woman get into a state where she allowed herself to be drugged in the first place?”
“You’ve got me; I can’t hazard a guess. Ask Jadus, maybe he knows. Want me to keep watching?”
“If you don’t mind. I want to know if she’s doing this on her own or at someone else’s direction. And I want to know what else she’s telling the child.”
“Oh, I don’t mind; this is fun! It’s like being back on the streets again, except that now I’m not in danger of losing a hand or being hungry all the time,” he grinned.
“Oh, Skif—” she stopped, unsure of what to say next. Then, greatly daring, she leaned forward on an impulse and kissed his cheek lightly, blushed, and scampered away.
Skif stared after her in surprise, one hand raised to touch the spot she’d kissed.
Jadus didn’t know anything about the state of Melidy’s health, but he directed her to one of the Healers who would.
“Melidy was ill about two years ago,” she said thoughtfully. “Do you know what a ‘brainstorm’ is?”
“Isn’t that where an old person suddenly can’t move or talk—maybe even falls unconscious for a long time—and then gets better, slowly?”
The Healer nodded. “That’s what happened to Melidy. She seemed to have recovered completely, at least to me. I might have been wrong, though. Lady knows we aren’t infallible.”
“Maybe you weren’t wrong—or maybe she was affected in some way that you wouldn’t have noticed,” Talia replied, sounding much more adult than she appeared, and making the Healer’s eyes widen in surprise. “Keldar’s mother had a brainstorm after she brought her to live at our Hold. She seemed completely all right—except that you had to be very careful what you said to her because she’d believe anything you told her, no matter how absurd it was. That might have been what happened to Melidy.”
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