Exile's Valor v(-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  He was rather desperately hoping that a thaw would put an end to it, and depressingly afraid that, given the new changes in it, they would be able to play without ice.

  At least, by this point, it was very clear that no more than half of the Heraldic Trainees, and substantially, very substantially less than a quarter of the Healers’ and Bardic Trainees, were going to actually be playing this game. The rest lacked the coordination and, after the initial excitement was over, the inclination. That did not, however, mean that the rest weren’t interested. Oh, no. They were still just as mad about watching it as the rest were about playing it.

  But he could not spare much time to worry about a mere game. He had decided to start taking Keren out on some of his prowls through Haven. And he had yet to come up with a plan to let him discover just what Devlin and that actor were up to.

  The main stumbling block was that he could not think of a way to shadow the young courtier or the actor without alerting them to the fact that someone was watching them. For one thing, he was more than a little wary about trying to disguise himself around the actor, at all. He could fool ordinary folk, but an actor? The fellow might have a style that was ridiculously flamboyant, and exaggerated, but that, Alberich suspected, was for the benefit of his audience, which was not going to react to a subtle performance. The man could not have come up with so clever a plan for passing information if he was not clever and subtle himself. And if Alberich tried to pass himself off as someone who had business being around either Devlin or the actors—

  It seemed impossible; Alberich was certain he’d be caught. He might be able to pass off his Karsite accent as Hardornan or Rethwellan down in the slums, but actors had an ear for accents, and might even be able to correctly identify his. And just how many Karsites were there in Haven? Not many; not many that still had their accent. The paste he used to disguise his scars passed muster after dark, but actors knew about makeup and false hair—he’d never get by an actor without him noticing. How many Karsite Heralds were there? A sufficiently clever man could easily put two and two together.

  As for getting in close, that was impossible. The man—finally Alberich had learned who he was (Norris Lettyn), and where his troupe was operating from (the Three Sheaves in the Cattle Market area)—seldom went anywhere outside of the inn, and never consorted with anyone except his fellow actors and exceedingly attractive, buxom, adoring women. Neither of which Alberich was—nor were Keren or Myste. They might be able to feign the adoration, but the kind of ladies that Norris kept company with were the sort that made men turn in the street and stare after them.

  Not surprisingly, no few of them were ladies of negotiable virtue, but the price they placed on their services was very, very high. They were nothing like the common whores of the Exile’s Gate neighborhood. And Alberich could not make up his mind if Norris was paying for their company, or getting it on the basis of his reputation, popularity, stunningly handsome face, and muscular body. If he was paying for it—where was a mere actor getting the money? On the other hand, someone who looked like Norris did generally had women fawning on him, and Alberich saw no reason to suppose that expensive courtesans were any less likely to fawn than supposedly “honest” women.

  Thanks to Norris’ face and flamboyant style, the troupe was certainly prospering, as was the inn to which they were attached. They didn’t even have to give plays every day for the public anymore. Once every two days, the courtyard was packed with spectators for one of the repertoire of plays they put on, and it certainly wasn’t because of the high literary standards of the things. Moving to that tent on the riverbank during the Festival had been a shrewd move—putting on their play there spread their reputation to the entire city, and the city evidently followed them back to their home ground when the Festival was over. Norris even was beginning to get something of a following among the highborn of the Court—while the plays they put on for the public were hardly great literature, evidently they had in their repertoire a number of classical works, and the troupe had been hired to give private performances at least twice now. There would, without a doubt, be more of those, though how lucrative they were in contrast to the public performances, Alberich had no way of telling.

  Which created another problem. It seemed to Alberich that Norris was living somewhat beyond his means, but without getting close to the man, there was no way to know that for certain. He didn’t know how Norris was paid, or if, now that he had a bit of a following among the highborn, he was getting gifts or patronage.

  If so, then young Devlin would have the perfect excuse to add to that patronage, and even visit the actor openly. So Alberich still did not know what was being exchanged, whether or not it mattered to the Crown, nor how dangerous it was, and at the moment he had no way of finding these things out.

  And there was another thing that worried him, that had nothing to do with the Devlin problem. It seemed to him that Selenay was not looking entirely well. It wasn’t that she looked ill, exactly, but that she looked far more subdued than he liked. It was the death of her father, of course; it couldn’t be anything else. The Festival had been an all-too-brief diversion from her grief, he suspected. He wished he could do something for her, but the honest truth was that he was completely unsuited to that sort of task. All he could do was what he was good at, and let others—Talamir, who was, after all, Queen’s Own—do their job without any interference.

  Assuming that the Hurlee players didn’t drive him utterly mad before spring.

  ***

  “The problem is,” Myste said, over a good slice of beef in the Bell, “you don’t understand the sports-minded.” Both of them were in disguise; he as a middling craftsman, she in some of her old garb from her previous life, including the spectacles she had worn then, lenses held in frames of wire. This was the first time he had brought Myste down into Haven to try out her disguise, but it was more for his benefit than for hers. He wanted to look like an ordinary craftsman in the audience at the Three Sheaves, and if he didn’t have to talk, he stood a better chance of passing as Valdemaran.

  “The bloody-minded, not the sports-minded,” he muttered under his breath, then said, louder. “And you do?” It seemed unlikely. Bespectacled Myste held as much aloof from the Hurlee madness as he did, as far as he could tell.

  “As a matter of fact,” she retorted, “I do. I was raised here, in an ordinary family, and not in a Cadet School. People with a bit of leisure time. Ordinary folk like sport, even if they don’t play a game, or at least, don’t play it well. That’s why they like to cheer on those who do.”

  “That, I do not understand, at all,” he admitted, reluctantly.

  She sniffed. “You ought to. It’s part of what makes it easy for a sufficiently unscrupulous leader to get his people involved in a needless war. Look, it’s like this, as I reckon it. People like to be in groups, on one side, so they can tell themselves that their side is better than the other. They can get the excitement and the thrill of being worked up about just how much better they are than the other side is. And when they’re in a group doing that, then the excitement is doubled just because everyone else is doing the same.”

  “That, I understand,” he said darkly. “So you are saying that being sports-minded, a little like being in a war is?”

  “Without the bloodshed,” she replied, and sighed. “Without the consequences. People like competition, but at the same time, they like cooperation almost as much. With something like Hurlee, you get to either be on a team, or for a team, and you get cooperation, like being in a special tribe. But then, your team goes against someone else’s team, and there’s your competition. It satisfies a whole lot of cravings all at once. It’s like a bloodless war, and then you get to go out and buy each other beer afterward, and you get cooperation all over again.”

  He shrugged. It made sense, he supposed. He thought about how he had been shouting at the end of the last skating-race, along with everyone else. If even he could get caught up in a sport to t
hat extent, then what Myste said made sense.

  And there wasn’t any warfare going on. People who had been used to living with a conflict and an enemy now found themselves with nothing of the sort. Maybe those who had actually fought were perfectly comfortable without having an enemy, but those who hadn’t—particularly all those youngsters—might be looking for a focus for all that energy.

  So maybe that was why Hurlee had suddenly become an obsession. And probably, as Myste expected, within a couple of months it would turn into a sport like any other. At least, now that the rules had been agreed on, and things had sorted out into a round-robin of regular teams with exact rosters, the situation wasn’t quite so out-of-hand. Certainly the whole scheme of forbidding participation if marks fell off was working—miraculously, even with the highborn Blues, and heretofore, if their parents weren’t concerned with marks, there had been no way to effectively discipline them.

  Maybe Hurlee wasn’t so bad after all.

  “So where exactly is it that we’re going?” she asked.

  “The Three Sheaves Inn,” he told her. She nodded, though she looked surprised. He had explained his situation with regard to young Devlin and his contact Norris, and the difficulty he found himself in trying to get close enough to make some sort of judgment about it. “I thought, at the least, into the play-going crowd we can insert ourselves. Good for me, for open my mouth I cannot, without myself betraying, so you can do the speaking for us both. Good for you, it would be, and it may be that an opportunity you will see that I cannot.”

  “Fair enough,” she agreed, and glanced out the window into the thickening gloom of twilight. “And I might. You never know. Besides, I wouldn’t mind seeing this actor fellow, if he’s setting young hearts afire.”

  Alberich snorted. “Not just young,” he corrected, and finished the last of his meal.

  “All the better, then.” She chuckled at the expression on his face, and pushed off from the table without another word.

  “Now, something did occur to me,” she said, as they moved out into the cold, snowy streets, passing a lamplighter who was climbing up to light one of his charges. “Had you considered paying one of those low-life pickpockets you hang about with to snatch young Devlin’s purse when you think he’s carrying what you’re looking for? Tell him you want the papers, he gets anything else.”

  Since it had not occurred to him, he almost stopped dead in the street to stare at her. “Ah. No,” he managed at last.

  “Should be easy enough,” she pointed out. “I suppose you’d have to make up some cock-and-bull tale about why you wanted it done. And you’d have to work the whole setup just for the other lad to do the snatch-and-run so he’ll get away clean, maybe even interfere with some of the constables to keep them from nobbling him. But between what you paid the fellow and what he’d get off Devlin, I’d have to think that it’d more than pay him to keep his mouth shut about it.”

  His mind was already at work on the problem. He could sacrifice one of the problematic personae if he needed to. If one of them was never seen again after getting the papers, it wouldn’t matter if the thief in question couldn’t keep his mouth shut, because there’d be no one to betray. It was definitely an idea, and a good one. Not perfect, but—

  —but it opened up a whole new set of ideas. It hadn’t occurred to him to make use of the criminal element. There were other possibilities here. If, for instance, he could discover which room in the inn Norris used, perhaps he could send someone to search it. . . .

  “You do know that someone might recognize me at this inn, don’t you?” she continued conversationally. “Not as a Herald, of course—I’m certain nobody actually knows that’s where I went when I quit my job. My Choosing was pretty quiet, actually, and since I was right in Haven, I persuaded Aleirian to let me finish out my work for the day, hand in my notice, and slip out without a fuss.”

  “Modest of you—” he began.

  She laughed. “Hardly. I didn’t want anyone who wanted a favor showing up at the Collegium looking for me. Anybody who knew me would recognize me as Myste Willenger, the accountant and clerk, not Herald Myste. Except for the Wars, I haven’t set foot outside the Collegium Complex since I was Chosen.”

  “Really? Well, that would not harm anything,” He pulled the hood closer around his neck; this damp cold seemed to be more penetrating than the dry cold of Festival Week. “In fact, it might be a good thing.”

  “Reestablish myself in my old haunts?” She glanced at him sideways. “Well, if you want me to do that, I can. I’ll think up something to tell anyone who asks where I’ve been—”

  He had to snort at that. “Where else, but for the Army working?” he asked. “At least until the Wars ended.”

  She stared at him a moment, and stumbled over a rut, then smiled. “You’ve got a good head for this,” she said. “You’re right, of course. All those soldiers needed feeding, supplying, paying—that needs clerks.”

  “And now, half of them disbanded are, and no more need for extra clerks.” That was certainly true enough. Just as it was true that an Army the size of the one that Sendar had assembled had required a vast force of people to support it.

  “Which is why I’m back—” Her smile spread. “But of course, the reason I’m not back at my old job is because I was replaced. Which I was, but when I was Chosen. So—”

  “A job you must have.” He frowned over that thought.

  “Not necessarily—”

  “No, wait—an idea I have. The Bell. That is safe enough. A note I will leave; it will be arranged, should anyone ask.” Not that anyone would; no one was likely to ask about a minor clerk and accountant, but it was best to cover every contingency. “For the master, you do the records, and the taproom clerk you are, also. You board there as well.” This was common enough. Just because people were supposed to be literate didn’t mean they were good at reading and writing. Often enough, they were willing to pay someone else to write a letter for them—and of course, any legal documents absolutely required a clerk to draw them up.

  “That’ll do.” She sighed with satisfaction. “I like to have everything set out, just in case.”

  “As do I. Alike, we think, in that way.” And before he could say anything else, although there were a couple of half-formed ideas in the back of his head, it was too late to say anything.

  Because the Three Sheaves was looming before them, and with it, a good-sized crowd milling about at the door, waiting to get into the courtyard for the performance. They joined it, and at that point, kept their conversation to commonplaces.

  ***

  The one excellent thing about having Bardic Collegium right on the grounds of the Palace was that there were always musicians of the finest available at a moment’s notice. The Hardornan Ambassador from King Alessandar had expressed an interest that afternoon in hearing some of the purely instrumental music that Valdemarans took for granted, and Selenay had been able to arrange for that wish to be gratified with an impromptu concert after dinner. Ambassador Isadere was finally rested enough from his journey and formal reception to show some interest in the less formal pastimes of the Court—which meant, to Selenay, the ones where she wasn’t required to pay exclusive attention to him, or indeed, to anyone. Bardic Collegium responded to her request for an instrumental ensemble with what almost seemed to be gratitude; she’d been puzzled by that at first, but then, after a moment of thought, she realized that she had not made such requests more than a handful of times since she’d become Queen, whereas her father had called on Bardic, either for simple musicians or true Bards, at least every two or three days. Perhaps they took this as a sign that things were getting back to “normal.”

  Well, even if she didn’t feel that way, was it right for her to impose her depressed spirits on everyone else?

  No, it wasn’t. No matter what she felt like, wasn’t it her duty to put on a sociable mask?

  Besides, entertainments like this meant she wouldn’t really have to p
ut on more than the mask. When she thought about it, she realized that anyone who was really listening to the music wouldn’t require anything from her except that she not be dissolved in tears.

  So when she sent a note back to Bardic thanking them, she asked if it would be possible for them to supply musicians of the various levels of expertise to her as they had to her father—and as often. The immediate response was that they would be overjoyed to do so, and would even save her the trouble of trying to decide on informal entertainments by setting them up with her household, as they had done for Sendar.