Closer to the Heart

by Mercedes Lackey

  Daughter of a poor knight with no lands of his own. In the normal course of things, if she had shown no Bardic or Healer talent, no academic brilliance, and did not find the gumption to join the Guard on her own, she would probably have married. And married someone very like her father, or perhaps a moderately well off farmer with the sort of large house he styled a “manor.” But without parents to arrange this sort of thing for her, she’d been thrown on the hands of her nearest relatives, who had, without a doubt, taken her in only because leaving her in the lurch to fend for herself would have reflected badly on them.

  “Lady Dia,” the young woman said—in a voice that was low and sweet, and very pleasant to listen to. “I was hoping you would consider me for a position in the Queen’s Handmaidens. What little obligations I have can be instantly discharged, and no one in the household I am in at present would begrudge me this opportunity, should you grant it.”

  Dia steepled her fingers and looked bland. “Lady Keira, I will be frank with you. There are some . . . awkward difficulties, regarding that.”

  They all waited, with Amily holding her breath, to see what Keira would make of that.

  Keira visibly straightened her back. “Ah, so you heard the rumors. Then I will be frank with you, Lady Dia,” Keira replied. “I believe that I know precisely why this group is being put together. The King would like eyes and ears in dubious households, and who better than young women? If they are plain, they are regarded with about as much consideration as the kitchen cat, and if they are handsome, they are boasted to . . . or hear much across a pillow.”

  All three of the ladies exchanged a startled look. Dia cleared her throat slightly. “Even if that were true, Lady Keira . . . that does not negate the rumors concerning you, which might make placing you problematic.”

  “I think that you can turn that to your advantage,” the young woman replied immediately, taking several steps nearer, until she stood within arm’s length of them. At this distance, although she appeared calm, Amily could tell that she had clasped her hands together to keep them from shaking. “Firstly, there are not many who know me by sight, and I am related to all of them. Secondly, sooner or later, you are going to want someone who is willing to climb into someone’s bed. I have nothing to lose.”

  “My goodness,” Lady Dia said mildly. “You certainly do not believe in beating around the bush.”

  “My lady, I cannot afford to,” Keira said, and to Amily’s surprise, there was very little bitterness in her tone. “I have very little time to make use of my looks. Before my cousin seduced me, there was a chance I could use them to make a decent marriage. Now? I am certain that my dear cousins would make certain that rumors followed me so that any hope of that would be ruined. No one will take me as her companion except perhaps a bitter old woman who will use my foolishness to bully me at every turn. And what else am I fit for? I can’t farm, I can’t cook, and I loathe children—and that’s if anyone would take me for any of those things that didn’t also plan on using me for his pleasure. We both know how unlikely that is.”

  Amily was forcibly reminded of the lecture that Lady Dia had given Violetta. Here was someone without means to hide the fact that she had been romantic and foolish, and had been through everything Dia had threatened Violetta with, and worse.

  “All I know is how to look beautiful, how to make someone else look beautiful, and the usual useless things highborn girls are taught. I can sing, dance, and play a lute passably. I can embroider and alter a garment. . . .” She shrugged. “You know what we are raised to do as well as I. Nothing of use. So I have one opportunity to make the most of my current skills, whatever other skills you can teach me, and my beauty, and that’s as an informant for the King. And I know that the King will not desert me and cast me aside as others have, when I have outlived my usefulness.”

  Her knuckles were absolutely white, and so was her face. Coming here, admitting what had happened to her, and essentially begging them to take her in had cost her a great deal, and Amily could only wonder if Violetta would have had the fortitude to admit what an idiot she had been and do the same.

  :I don’t think Violetta is a good candidate for the Handmaidens,: Rolan advised.

  :Honestly, neither do I.:

  “Sit down, Keira,” Lady Dia told her quietly. “It clearly took much strength for you to come here and speak so frankly to us. And you were quite clever to see through our illusions and understand what we intended to accomplish. Even if the Handmaidens were not precisely what you think they are, I would have found a place for you in my household anyway. Courage is always a useful characteristic. Being able to look your own mistakes in the eye and deal with the consequences without whining about it is another.” She dimpled. “Besides, my husband likes having pretty women about.”

  Keira’s knees gave out, but Miana had been watching her closely and got a chair under her so that she collapsed into it rather than on the floor. “I—cannot begin to thank you for this,” she said, breathlessly. “Lady Emaline—”

  “Used your folly to throw you out when her son ruined you, claiming you had seduced him rather than him being the aggressor, then spread rumors herself to make sure if you told anyone a different story, hers would have reached their ears first,” Dia replied, pouring a cup of water and pressing it into her hand. “This is not the first time I have heard that tale, and it will not be the last, I am sure. But I thought some other cousins took you in?”

  “Not willingly,” said Keira. “And only when I threatened Lady Emaline Keteline that I would go to the Heralds and demand a Truth Spell on myself and her son Brendan to prove that he was the one who lied to me and then discarded me.” Now she looked . . . exhausted. “I leave it to your imagination how these cousins treat me. At least the scullery maids are paid wages and get time off and two suits of clothing a year.”

  For the first time in this conversation, Lady Dia’s expression hardened. And there was a flicker of anger in her eyes. “In that case, I expect you won’t be unhappy if I ask you not to return there, even to collect your things.”

  Keira looked up with an expression of incredulous joy on her face. But Lady Dia held up a cautionary hand. “As I said, I’ll find a position in my household. But before I admit you into the Handmaidens, I need to know if you were absolutely serious when you made that offer to climb into someone’s bed, if that was what was required. I won’t ask you to do that unless it is absolutely necessary—but you are right, I suspect that at some point I may need someone to do that, and I don’t want to count on someone who will back out at the last minute.”

  Keira’s chin came up, and she looked Lady Dia straight in the eyes. “It will serve Valdemar. I’m tired of being a nothing, doing nothing, and helping no one, not even myself.” She shrugged. “I enjoyed being in a man’s bed when I thought Brendan loved me. I expect I can use that as a tool. I’ve been called a whore . . . and I am not so sure anymore that being a whore is a shameful thing. A whore is honest, which is more than I can say for a man who tells you he loves you just to bed you, and throws you out with the fruit skins when his mother objects.” Her jaw tightened a little. “I considered actually turning to whoring rather than endure how my cousins are treating me, but then I realized they’d probably declare me insane and lock me up in a little room rather than be shamed in public that way.”

  “Very likely,” Miana agreed. “They’d probably hire some street tough to hit you on the head and abduct you. Assuming they didn’t hire some street tough to quietly murder you instead before word got around what you were doing, which I think would be far more likely.”

  Keira sucked in her breath in alarm. “That . . . hadn’t occurred to me.”

  “Actually, Miana,” Amily said, “Declaring her insane would be easier. There would be nothing to explain; dead bodies tend to require explanations.”

  Keira looked a bit more relieved.

  Dia’
s expression softened. “My dear Lady Keira, it is not often I find someone with the ability to look at herself and her situation as directly and honestly as you have.” She patted the hand that was still holding the goblet of water. “Consider yourself the first of my pupils.”

  “I approve as well, my lady,” Miana said, with a firm nod.

  They both looked at Amily, who shrugged. “I could put her under coercive Truth Spell in order to make sure everything she said was in order, but we all know she’d pass it,” Amily said dryly. “I just have one question. Why didn’t you just go straight to the King and demand the Truth Spell on you and that little slimy bastard?”

  Keira let out her breath in a long sigh. “As long as it was within the family, it was nothing but rumors, and I thought that with Cousin Jerrold I could live it down and perhaps . . . I don’t know, I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. But if I brought it out in the public, no matter what the Truth Spell revealed, there would always be people who would say I tempted him, or I teased him, or I had it coming, and it wouldn’t be rumors anymore. I’d be in a worse situation than I am now, because the family would completely disown me, and I would still have no way to support myself. Other than whoring, and all I have to recommend myself there is that I’m pretty.”

  Miana stood up. “Lady Dia, if you don’t mind, I’ll get Keira settled into a room, and arrange for wardrobe and other needful things. Am I correct in thinking that we are going to see about changing her appearance somewhat, and giving her a new identity if we can?”

  Dia sucked on her lower lip, then slowly nodded. “First we need to know how many people in the Court know her by sight. Not many, I don’t think. . . .”

  “No one outside House Holberk,” said Keira. “They never allowed me to go to any Court functions, and never allowed me to show my face when there were visitors. My entire function was to wait on Lady Emaline, and when I was sent to Cousin Jerrold, it was to stay out of sight and do whatever they told me to. Originally I think, perhaps, that eventually they planned on marrying me to Cousin Nathan. He’s the only one outside the immediate family they let me be around.”

  “Nathan? Nathan Delmat?” Lady Dia snorted. “That would be to throw him a sweet so he’d will all his possessions to Emaline, I suppose. Dear gods. I’d rather bed a boar.” She waved her hand at the young woman and Miana. “Off with you. Miana, I think there are gowns of mine stored in the wardrobe in the Red Suite that just need some taking in at the bust to fit her. The shifts and under-things should do well enough as they are. I’ll send a note to Jorthun to let him know we have a guest and the first recruit, and I’ll see you at dinner, Keira.”

  Miana led the young woman off, and Lady Dia sat back in her chair and looked at Amily with astonishment. “Well!” she said, finally.

  “That . . . wasn’t how I expected our recruitment to go,” Amily replied. “Do you think that anyone else has guessed what we intend to do?”

  Dia chewed on her lower lip for a moment, then shook her head. “No . . . no, I don’t think so. That is an uncommonly sharp young woman, and she must have been searching for some way to escape her situation for some time. I’m not entirely sure she was certain until she came here and gauged our reactions. Nevertheless, we should be very careful whom we approach from now on. We should go to no one that we are not already certain we want.”

  “Agreed,” Amily replied, with a nod. “Good gods. I wonder how Jorthun is going to take this?”

  “He’ll laugh,” said Dia, wryly. “That’s the problem with having a charming husband who treats me as an equal. It means when I find myself in a situation where I deserve to be laughed at . . . I am. He doesn’t coddle my feelings at all.”

  “Would you want him to?” Amily asked teasingly.

  “Are you serious? Of course not,” Dia chuckled. “It means I get to laugh at him, too.”

  • • •

  Mags found himself at Lord Jorthun’s dinner table, a position that was unexpected to say the least. He hadn’t really known what to expect when Amily contacted him via Rolan to suggest it. He’d seen the enormous formal dining room, rather like a Great Hall, but with the installation of permanent tables. There had been a dais, just like the one at the Palace, with a High Table on it, and three long tables at right angles to the dais where guests presumably ate. Would the Lord and Lady dine alone on the dais with the rest of them sitting at one of the lower tables? Would the servants dine with them, or would they all sit uncomfortably in that echoing room, trying to make some sort of conversation?

  But when he arrived, he was directed to a smaller room at the side of the dining hall. To his relief, there was a much smaller table there, and Amily, Dia, Lord Jorthun, Miana and a stunningly beautiful young woman he did not know were there. The footman directed him to an empty seat beside Amily, and quickly brought him a filled plate from the sideboard. It appeared that when he was not hosting vast parties, Lord Jorthun much preferred a far less formal sort of dining, where everything was brought at once and set out on the sideboard, and you asked the footman for whatever you wanted.

  “. . . walnut should do a very good permanent stain to your hair,” Amily observed, “And your skin, too, if you’d like to pose as the hearty type who is fresh from the country and used to being outside in all weathers.” She turned to Mags. “This is Keira, she is the first of the Queen’s Handmaidens. Keira, this is Herald Mags.”

  Keira showed no recognition of his name, which was something of a relief. Normally young ladies knew him as the Kirball champion, and he didn’t much feel like playing that particular card tonight.

  It had been a very long and hard day, in fact; it had begun with him literally running down a professional poisoner-for-hire he and Nikolas had been trying to catch for months, and ended in Law Court in which he had used coercive Truth Spell in three cases in a row. Right now he was very happy to be sitting here in this handsome room, eating some of the finest roast beef he’d ever touched in his life, with people whose minds didn’t make him want to crawl into a hole.

  “Very pleasant to meet you, Lady Keira,” he said politely, and went back to eating.

  “Mags!” Amily laughed. “Don’t you even want to know why we want to change her appearance? Don’t you even have an opinion?”

  “I figgered you had a good reason for it, but I wouldn’t use walnut,” he said. “It’s too inconsistent. You can get dark patches on the skin that look like a disease. Unless you want her to look like she’s diseased . . . which I’d think would make her not very attractive as a handmaiden.”

  Miana and Amily exchanged a look of why didn’t we think of that and Lady Dia just laughed out loud.

  “I had a couple thoughts,” Mags continued. “You know how highborn that don’t have their own manors end up getting put up in suites in the Palace? And you know how there’s not much room for servants? Well, seems to me that right off, there’s a use for the Handmaidens whiles they’re gettin’ trained.”

  “Ah! I see where this is going!” Lord Jorthun exclaimed. “We have the King request that the ladies in question send their handmaidens and personal maids away, and make use of the Queen’s Handmaidens. Sharing them, as it were.”

  “The Seneschal might vote to give you a medal,” Amily said. “All those personal maids are forever getting into trouble, what with the Guard barracks right on the Palace grounds, and the handmaidens are forever fighting and jockeying with each other.” She made a face. “Not that the highborn ladies are any better, but at least they don’t resort to clothing-sabotage and hair-pulling contests.”

  Mags gave her a startled look. “Serious?” he asked incredulously.

  “They cut a rival’s skirts to ribbons or dump ink or wine all over it just before a High Feast,” Amily told him. “And since they have to use the same back stairs as the servants, they’ll ambush each other out of sight of their masters and get into catfights. If you thought all
the jockeying for husbands was vicious among the girls of Violetta’s rank, you should see what happens among the handmaidens.”

  “I can’t personally vouch for that,” said the stranger, with a little frown. “I was never allowed near Court. But I have heard stories.”

  “Well, I can vouch for it,” said Miana. “Since I live here with my Lord and Lady, I never was on the receiving end of any nastiness, but I’ve certainly come upon girls in a tussle over some fellow who probably didn’t even know either of them existed, and my Lady can vouch for the fact that we’ve had to find clothing on short notice for someone whose gown was destroyed.”

  “As I said, the Seneschal will want to kiss you,” Amily told him.

  “And this will give our girls a chance to show their paces,” mused Lady Dia, in between sips of wine. “It’s not as if the ladies who come to Court need their handmaidens in the way they do at home. There’s entertainment nearly everywhere you look, the Palace is full of pages and footmen and other servants.”

  “Most of the time, they sit idle,” Miana confirmed. “Which is how they manage to get into so much mischief. Herald Mags, this was an excellent idea.”

  “I’ve been known to have one or two,” Mags chuckled. “But why are you wantin’ to make Keira look different?”

  “Because she’s essentially run away,” Amily told him. “There probably aren’t many people who know her on sight, but it would be just our luck for one of them to turn up—”

  Mags held up a hand. “Whoa. When you want someone kept away from folks that’ll recognize her, the thing you do is just that. Keep her away. So I reckon for right now, Keira’s stayin’ here? Any chance at all of those folks as know her’ll come here?”