Exile's Valor v(-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  Well, this was a busy place, with a lot of animals coming and going. Maybe they needed all that space for hay and straw storage.

  A cheerful-looking little boy had been up at the top, where there was a crane and a pulley with a rope still hanging from it. Apparently that was what the backdrops had been fastened to. Now he slid down from the upper loft of the stables on the rope there, and he and another stagehand began rolling up the three backdrops on their poles. With another bang, one of the two pieces of scenery that screened each side of the backcloth fell over, and two more men came up to haul it away. The second one followed in short order. In a remarkably short period of time, not only had the sets and properties vanished into the stable, so had the stage itself, which apparently came apart, although it seemed solid enough even with all of those actors leaping about on it. That explained how the troupe had been able to get a stage into their tent that could take the amount of abuse they had been delivering with every performance. Alberich watched in fascination until there was nothing to be seen but a perfectly ordinary-looking inn courtyard with the stables at the rear.

  And that was when Laric emerged from the stable door again and wearily climbed the nearest staircase, heading in their direction. He mopped his red face with a handkerchief the size of a small sail as he came. He was a very big man, with an imposing belly, red-faced, with hair going thin at his temples and surprisingly honest eyes. Not that Alberich was going to trust how someone looked to tell him anything about that person’s real nature.

  His clothing was ordinary enough: a sheepskin vest over a heavy knitted tunic and moleskin breeches. He wore shoes, rather than boots, but most city dwellers did. If you had to go out in fresh snow that hadn’t been shoveled or packed down yet, and you didn’t have boots, you just wrapped your feet, shoes and all, in canvas, and tied it around your calves with twine.

  “Damme, but if makin’ an honest livin’ ain’t the hardest work going!” he exclaimed as they both stood up. “Myste, where you been? I got hauled in to stage manage for this idiot lot, and just when I had some work for ye, ye ups and vanishes!”

  She shrugged. “Army needed clerks,” she said simply. “Now it don’t, so they let me go. Back I came. Got some work at the Companion’s Bell, but it ain’t full-time.”

  “Well, that’s a break fer both of us,” he said genially. “Who’s yer friend?”

  “Bret,” she said, without batting an eye. “Carter. From down-country, on the border. Army don’t need carters now, neither; nothing more to haul down or up.”

  “Ah, hard luck, man,” the stage manager said, with sympathy.

  “Don’t feel too sorry for him!” Myste laughed. “The Army may not need ’im, but damn-near everyone else does! He paid my way in tonight!”

  “Owed her one,” Alberich said, gruffly, but with as much good humor as Myste, and doing his level best to minimize his accent. “Bet ’er a meal an’ a raree-show, an’ she picked this. Warn ye, man—don’t play cards with this one!”

  He hoped that someone who wasn’t an actor wouldn’t think twice about his accent, and took the chance on actually saying something. It was worth the risk; the big man let out a belly-laugh without a single look askance.

  “Myste! You conned another country boy! Listen, man you’re lucky the stakes wasn’t more than just a meal and a seat at a play!” Laric responded, wiping his eyes with that kerchief. “I learned that one a long time ago!”

  “Well, a man looks at her face, he don’t think of card sharp!” Alberich replied. “He thinks pen pusher!”

  “Which she is, she is, but she’s got some system,” Laric replied earnestly. “It ain’t cheatin’, but she’s got the cards in her head, somehow, an’ she can figger the odds of what’s coming’ up—” he shook his head. “I can’t make it work, but she can. So we know better’n t’ play against her.”

  “You get along, Bret,” Myste said, in a kindly tone of voice. “You got a load in the morning, and we might be a while. I can get back by myself.”

  :I’m safe enough with Laric,: she added. Just go wait at the Bell, and I’ll catch up with you.:

  “Right-on,” he responded, as if he was just a casual friend, and left—though with a lot more reluctance than he showed. He didn’t like leaving her alone, even if she knew the man. He didn’t like the idea that she would be walking back to the Bell alone, even though this neighborhood, and the ones between here and the Bell, were safe enough.

  But he had no excuse to linger, once Myste had “dismissed” him, and no place to wait for her to finish her business with the stage manager. Now he was sorry he hadn’t scouted this area beforehand and found some place he could have holed up nearby. If she was going to actually get involved with these people—

  Still. She had her “throwaway purse,” just like he’d taught her. If someone tried to rob her, she’d toss that purse away and run in the opposite direction. And the Three Sheaves was very public. Even near the sleeping quarters, there were people coming and going all night. If something happened, her Companion would be out of the Bell’s stable in a trice and on the way to help. Surely she couldn’t get into trouble . . . he hoped.

  He returned to the Bell alone, going in through the hidden door in the back of the stable to the secret room. There he changed his disguise for his gray leathers, and waited impatiently in the Heralds’ common room for her to return, sitting right at the window so he could see her when she did. Or at least, see her if she came anywhere near the front.

  :She won’t,: Kantor reminded him. :She’ll use the back, just like you did. Alberich, she’s more used to moving around in a city than you are.:

  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.”

&nb
sp; 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 had 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 emot
ional, 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.