Storm Warning v(ms-1

by Mercedes Lackey

  His eyes widened involuntarily at the thought, and he frantically tried to marshal some kind of excuse to get away, but Rubrik's next words collapsed that notion.

  "She's one of what the Heraldic trainees call 'the Blues,' for their uniforms," Rubrik continued. "What that means is that they share classes with the trainees without being Heraldic, Healer, or Bardic trainees themselves. Some of these students are the children of nobles, but many are lowborn or of the merchant classes, young people with high intelligence who distinguished themselves enough to find patronage into the ranks of the Blues. Most of Natoli's friends are mathematicians and crafters, like Natoli herself."

  The girl nodded briskly, with no attempt at flirtation, which relieved Karal immensely.

  "I've asked her to give you a tour of the Palace and Collegia as a Blue would see it, then introduce you to some of her friends." Rubrik grinned. "You might be surprised. Some of them actually speak rudimentary Karsite."

  Before Karal could stammer his thanks, Rubrik limped off, still chuckling to himself. His daughter examined Karal for a moment, with her arms crossed over her chest and her feet braced slightly apart.

  Evidently she approved of what she saw. "Actually, Father doesn't really understand what I want to do," she said, with no attempt at making small talk. "I'm going to construct devices, engines, we call them, to do the work that several men or horses are needed for now."

  "What, like wind and water mills?" Karal hazarded, and she grinned with delight.

  "Exactly!" she replied. "And I want to build special bridges too, that would allow for the passage of masted ships and—well, that doesn't matter right at the moment. There's still some sunlight, would you like to take that tour now?"

  She seemed friendly enough, even if she wasn't like any female Karal had ever encountered before. It occurred to him that he was meeting a great many women here in Valdemar who weren't like the females he knew at home. He nodded, and she motioned to him to get up and follow her. "You're in the Palace library, I'll show you the others, and the classrooms for the three Collegia first," she said—and proceeded to do just that, with a brisk efficiency that had his head spinning.

  She pointed out things to him that he would never have had any interest in on his own—details of architecture and the mechanics that created the many comforts in the Palace itself. How the chimneys were structured so that the fireplaces in each room drew evenly for instance, or the arrangement of rainwater gutters and cisterns on the roof that put water in every bathing room. It was quite clear that she loved her avocation, and equally clear that flirtation was the farthest thing from her mind.

  The sun set just as she completed her tour, and she marked the crimson glory with a nod of satisfaction. "The Compass Rose should be just about filling now," she said, a non sequitur that caused him to knit his brows in puzzlement.

  "Compass Rose?" he repeated.

  "Oh, that's the place where all my friends and their teachers meet, just about every night," she replied airily. "Father told me to introduce you around, so I figured that I'd take you there tonight and get all the introductions over at once."

  "Tavern?" he echoed. "Uh—tonight? You mean, right now?" I'm not sure I'm up to a strange tavern in a strange city full of strange people....

  "Of course," she said, and set off down the path that led to the small gate in the wall he had first entered when he and Ulrich arrived here, without waiting to see if he was going to follow her. "That's much more logical than trying to track them down tomorrow, one at a time. And much more efficient as well."

  He had the feeling, as he trailed in her wake, that "logical and efficient" played a very large part in how she regarded the world. He could only wonder what some of his teachers back at the Temple would have made of her.

  The gate guards let them out without a comment, and they made their way through the lamplit streets. Natoli threaded her way through the traffic with the confidence of someone who passed this way so often she could have done so blindfolded. The tavern lay just beyond the ring of homes of the highly born or wealthy, but Natoli knew shortcuts that Rubrik apparently hadn't, little paths that led between garden walls and across alleys he would never have guessed were there. By the time the last sunset light had left the sky, they were already at the door of the Compass Rose itself.

  Karal knew what to look for in a good tavern, and he was pleased to find all of it in this one—clean floors and tables, enough servers to take care of the customers without rushing, decent lighting, and no odors of spoiled food or spilled drink. In fact, in the matter of lighting, the Compass Rose was as well-equipped as the Temple scriptorium, which rather surprised him.

  Most of the tables were full, or nearly, but Natoli knew exactly where she was going. "Come on," she told him, as she peered across the room with her hand shading her eyes. "It looks as if everyone's here."

  She started out across the crowded room, expertly dodging chairs and servers as she moved. "We form up in groups according to what we're interested in, and each group has its own tables," she explained over her shoulder, as he struggled through the crowd to keep up with her. "The teachers are all in the back room, of course—you know they've graduated you when they send you an invitation to join them. That's when you stop taking classes and start looking for work or a patron, or start teaching, yourself."

  "Oh," he replied, which was really all he could say, for by that time she'd reached the table she wanted—a long affair surrounded by two dozen chairs at least, all but three of them filled with blue-garbed young men and a few young women, and covered not only with tankards and mugs, and platters of food, but with books and papers, water-stained and dotted with mug rings. Now the reason for the good lighting in here came to him. It looked as if these people were as accustomed to doing some of their work and reading here as in libraries or other quiet places! No few of the people who greeted Natoli were just as foreign-looking as Karal himself, though he was the only one wearing anything other than that ubiquitous blue uniform. They greeted her with varying degrees of enthusiasm, from boisterousness to carefully contained cheer.

  "This is Karal," his guide said, when they'd finished. "He's with the Karsite ambassador. Secretary."

  "Really?" One of the nearest, a young man with sharp, fox-like features and a wild shock of carrot-colored hair, raised his eyebrows in surprise. Then he grinned, and said in careful Karsite, "I would be grateful, good sir, if you could tell me the direction of the Temple."

  "South, about four hundred meiline from here," Karal replied shortly in his own tongue, then continued in Valdemaran. "Your accent is really quite good, but you need to form your gutturals farther back in your throat, and they're like hoarse breathing, not like gargling."

  "Ah! Alberich never could explain that properly, thank you!" the young man said, and he hooked the nearest empty chair with his foot, dragging it over. "Have a seat, won't you? Natoli, we need your help on the drawbridge project."

  Karal took the proffered chair as Natoli helped herself to another, and was immediately engulfed in a technical discussion of which Karal understood perhaps half. The center of attention for the group was a huge piece of paper, covered with scribbles surrounding a drawing of a bridge, that they had placed in the middle of the table so that everyone could look at it at the same time. Someone got him a tankard of light ale, and someone else shoved a plateful of cheese-topped bread rounds at him, and everyone else at the table acted as if he belonged there, so he simply sat and listened while they thrashed out whatever the problem was. When the topic turned to other subjects—the problem of the drawbridge having been satisfactorily dealt with—on the occasions when he could contribute a word or two, he did.

  To his pleasure, these people ignored what he looked like and where he came from in favor of what he thought and said. Granted, at the moment, that wasn't much—he was much more comfortable with simply listening to the others—but the few things he did say were treated with no more and no less respect than what an
yone else said.

  He drank his ale and kept his ears and his mind open, covering a great deal of astonishment by hiding his expression in his tankard. He had never before seen anyone with the kind of unbounded curiosity these young men and women shared. They talked and acted as if there was nothing that was impossible, from flying like birds to moving beneath the surface of the water without needing to breathe, like a fish. And they behaved as if there was nothing, no subject, that was "not meant for man to know."

  He knew what most of his teachers would have said by now. At one point or another, every single one of the people sitting at this table uttered something that could be taken as blasphemous, and at least before Solaris' day, blasphemers met with the Fires.

  By the time Natoli declared that they both needed to get some sleep and led him back out into the cold darkness, his head was swimming with so many conflicting ideas and emotions that it felt as if a hive of swarming bees had come to rest inside it. Excitement warred with nervous fear, and he was glad that the darkness hid his expression from Natoli as she led him back to the Palace. Her own excited monologue about some mathematical progression or other required only that he make vague noises in response from time to time and covered the fact that he couldn't have answered even if he'd known what it was she was talking about.

  The guard at the gate knew her very well, it seemed, and shook his head when the two of them approached. "I don't know what I'm going to tell your father, young woman," he said, as soon as they came within earshot. "Out until near midnight, and with a young man!"

  "Who is someone Father told me to introduce around, so you can curb your lurid thoughts," she replied smartly. "As for coming in late—if he doesn't ask, you don't have to tell him, do you?"

  The guard continued to shake his head, but he opened the gate for them and locked it behind them without another word.

  She left him on the path to the Palace, parting from him with a cheerful wave and a promise to meet him tomorrow. "I live in the dormitory with the Bardic students," she told him. "Most of the people you met tonight actually live in town, rather than on the Palace grounds, but since Father's a Herald, they let me live here. Will you be free right after lunch tomorrow?"

  "Uh—yes," he said, responding before he could think.

  "Good, then I'll meet you in the Palace library." And without giving him a chance to say anything else, she trotted off into the darkness.

  He made his way back to the Palace in something of a dazed condition. The guards he encountered must have recognized him, since only two of them stopped him to ask who he was and where he was going. He managed to find his way back to the suite with a minimum of stumbling around in the dark, as most of the halls were lit by a minimum of lamps at this time of night.

  He waved a silent greeting at the corridor guard, who grinned as if he had his own ideas about where Karal had been. The door was unlocked, and he pushed it open slowly, hoping that it wouldn't creak. The suite of rooms was dark but for a single candle burning in the night-lamp, and he made his way to his own room, stepping carefully to keep from waking Ulrich up.

  He felt a certain amount of guilt at not leaving a note for his mentor. I only hope Rubrik told him that Natoli carried me off... even if Rubrik didn't know where we were going. He had the feeling that there was going to be a lot of explaining to be done in the morning.

  At least he was used to staying up this late. When Ulrich didn't need his services, he generally read until just about midnight anyway. He didn't seem to need as much sleep as some people did, which was very useful, given the number of times Ulrich had needed multiple copies of documents at short notice.

  He pushed open the door of his own room and closed it carefully behind him, heaving a sigh of relief as it shut with a minimum of sound. Only then did he turn around—

  And froze.

  There was someone waiting for him on his bed, a long, pale form that lay curled up against the pillows. It wasn't Ulrich, unless Ulrich had suddenly acquired a pair of green-gold eyes that glowed in the dark.

  He gasped, and the lamp in the bracket beside the door lit itself with a little puff of sound.

  As the lamplight steadied, a slender, cream-colored body uncurled itself gracefully from the place where it had been lying, near the head of the bed, cushioned by the pillows. The green-gold disks became the widened pupils of a pair of intensely blue eyes, surrounded by a brick-red mask. The otherwise pale-cream face was topped by a pair of brick-red ears, both of which were swiveled to face him. A red tail switched restlessly, curling up and curling down again, rather than thudding against the bed as a dog's would have.

  :Well, you certainly have been enjoying a night on the roof,: the Firecat said in his mind. Its tone was amused, genial, and quite friendly.

  It's a Firecat. A Firecat—in my room, on my bed, talking to me.

  "I—uh—" He stared at the Cat with his mouth dropping open, unable to make his mind or his body work properly. What was a Firecat doing here? And why was it in his room?

  :Close your mouth, child, you look like a stranded fish,: the Cat said, and purred with high good humor. :I'm not here to drag you off to some kind of punishment. I've simply been sent here to give you some advice from time to time—advice your mentor wouldn't be able to grant you. That was what you wanted, wasn't it? Someone you could trust to advise you!:

  He was irresistibly reminded at that moment of an ancient proverb. "Be careful what you wish for—"

  :Indeed. "—you might get it." Quite true, which is why it's a proverb, but in the current situation it's not entirely apt. I'd have come here even if you hadn't wished for an advisor you could trust. This is an unstable situation, and you are in the middle of it. You are central to a number of complicated problems, the confidant to several key persons, and we simply couldn't have you walking about and chancing blunders without a little guidance.:

  "Oh," he said, weakly, and could not help wondering if he had already blundered somewhere?

  :Oh, Bright Flame, no! You've been doing just fine so far. And I'm not here to steer you into some kind of predestined future. Just at the moment, no one knows what may be coming, how this situation will resolve itself. No, not even the Sunlord Himself. The advice I am to give you will simply be based on a little more information than you have access to. If we are all very lucky, we will all work to bring this to a good conclusion.:

  The Cat tilted its head to the side, waiting for his response.

  "If that's supposed to be comforting," he replied with more bravado than he felt, "it isn't."

  :Good. I'm not here to comfort you. I hope you're nervous; given what I know, you should be. Now, just shed those clothes and get into bed, you'll need the sleep.: The Cat moved down to the foot of the bed and sat there, watching him, its bright blue eyes fixed on him in a way that suggested if he didn't hurry up and do what he'd been told, the Cat would—help.

  Probably by shredding the clothes right off my body.

  He quickly stripped off his clothing, and slipped into bed. The Cat arranged itself comfortably near his feet, without weighing him down, and gave its paws a quick wash. :By the way,: it said, as he put his head warily down on the pillow. :That Herald with the limp did come by and tell Ulrich that his daughter had kidnapped you, and not to wait up. And my name is Altra.:

  Altra? But wasn't that the name of the Son of the Sun who—

  He didn't even get a chance to finish the thought, for he fell asleep instantly.

  Birdsong coming down his chimney woke him—which meant it must be a fair day, rather than a stormy one. Perhaps the Heralds had finally gotten their weather-magic working.

  He stretched and yawned, without opening his eyes. Odd. I dreamed that a Firecat was here last night. What a strange—

  He opened his eyes as his foot encountered a heavy weight at the foot of his bed. The Firecat raised his head and blinked at him.

  :Good morning. As you see, I'm not a dream.: Altra yawned, showing a formidable set of te
eth. :You do have a very comfortable bed, and I am pleased to report that you neither toss nor snore.:

  "Uh, thank you." He racked his brain for something to say. What do you say to an Avatar of your God? "Hello, heard any good Sunlord jokes recently?" "Good morning, how may I worship you?" "Can I get you anything for breakfast? Uh—fish? Milk?"

  :Nothing, thank you,: Altra replied loftily. :Firecats are above such mundane considerations as eating.:

  Well that was something of a relief. If the Cat didn't eat, it didn't probably didn't eliminate either, which meant he wasn't going to have to find a box of sand somewhere—or would a Cat be able to use facilities made for humans?

  Oh, this was too much to think about—but how was he going to explain the presence of a huge feline in his room, when he hadn't arrived with any such thing? "It followed me back from the tavern"? And how was he going to explain the presence of a Firecat to Ulrich, who knew what they were?

  :Don't be surprised if you don't see me very often,: Altra continued, getting up and giving a full, nose-to-tail stretch. His claws were as formidable as his teeth. :I have other business to worry about. Your master is as much in need of that bit of advice now and again as you are. I'll just drop in discreetly whenever you require the extra information I'm privy to—and if you think you really want it, I'll also give you—ah—"fatherly" advice, in the absence of your real father, if you feel too embarrassed to ask Ulrich.: Altra actually winked slyly. Meanwhile, I shall be—invisible.: