With so many years of mine workers foraging nearby, there were no berries within a reasonable distance of the mine, and the most obviously edible things were also long ago grubbed up and eaten. But if you knew what you were looking for and you were prepared to graze like a goose, spring was the one season when you could actually go to sleep with a full belly if you could slip away for a while.
Now, this spring, he could sleep with a full belly every night—if only his belly wasn’t so knotted up with tension that it was hard to eat anything at all. Such irony.
As one day turned into another, he found the Field to be his new sanctuary, safer even than his room or the Heraldic Archives.
As he would sit studying, sometimes his attention would be taken by one of the things he would immediately have pounced on and devoured this time last year, and he was reminded that no matter how uncomfortable things were, they were so much better than they could have been. He might not have survived this past winter. Even if he had, right now he would have been half starved, always tired, always afraid.
But it was hard, very hard, to try to keep his spirits up. The constant weight of unfriendly regard on him wore his spirit down.
It was harder still to have to come to meals and the occasional study session with Bear, and see poor Lena. Lena had gone from bright and happy—even if her happiness had a false cause, it was real happiness—to crushed and bewildered.
That first little “informal concert” had been the last that Mags had been invited to. And, he supposed, the last that Lena had been invited to participate in. With the dark stories in the wind again, Bard Marchand had pulled back from Mags abruptly, not even acknowledging that he knew the Trainee if they happened to cross paths. And that meant Lena was no longer of any use to him. She didn’t say anything, but Mags could tell, by the way she drooped and looked forlorn, that her father had once again abandoned her as well as Mags.
He actually felt worse for her than he did for himself.
He wouldn’t have said anything to Lena about it, though, but Bear brought it up. Actually, Bear brought it up several times and finally, one night, wouldn’t let go, asking her “What’s wrong?” until she finally answered.
“I never see Father anymore,” she said unhappily. “I don’t know why, or what I did to offend him but I never see him at all now, and he doesn’t reply to my notes.”
And again, Mags wouldn’t have said anything, but Bear had evidently had enough of this. He got that stubborn look on his face, pushed his lenses up on his nose with one finger, and leaned over the table.
“He won’t see you because Mags is in people’s bad books again, and therefore, Mags isn’t on the list of people he looks good knowing,” Bear said, bluntly. “All he ever wanted was to meet up with Mags and make it look as if Mags was a friend of his. You were nothing more than his way to get to Mags easily. He just doesn’t care about you, Lena; all he ever cared was that everyone would know that he knew the Kirball star and the hero of the hour, because he collects people like that just to get an advantage.”
Lena turned shocked eyes on him. “How—why would you say such a thing?” she cried, looking as if she was about to cry. “Father never—Father wouldn’t—he’s a famous Bard, why would he do something like that?”
Mags sighed. He couldn’t leave Bear to take this one alone. “He’s sayin’ it ’cause it’s true,” he said. “Nobody wanted t’ tell ye, but thet’s what he’s like.”
Lena looked from him, to Bear, and back again, stricken dumb.
“Lena, what has he ever done for you, for your family, besides remind them once a year how lucky they are that he married into your house?” Bear urged. “Where does his money come from? Your family, and whatever gifts he gets from his patrons. Does he ever send any of that back? No. Who got you your first music lessons? Him? No. Your ma. Who saw to it that a Bard heard you play and sing so you could get sent here, him? You’d think that would be natural, wouldn’t you, once he found out you were a musician? But no. It wasn’t him, it was your grandpa, you told us that yourself. Had he ever heard you sing and play before you got here? No.”
“Did ’e even recognize ye when ’e sent me off on that errant?” Mags added softly. “Not thet I noticed. In fact, you was pretty upset ’bout it at th’ time, an fer a goodly while after. I’ fact, you was upset ’bout it right up till he started payin’ ’tention to ye. Aye?”
Bear took Lena gently by the shoulders and shook her a little. “Lena, think. Think about it. Haven’t you felt him using the Gift on you a little, and using his personality on you a lot, to get you to forget all that? Haven’t you felt him pressing you to worship him the way Amily worships her pa?” He didn’t let her answer; he looked at Mags instead.
:Tell her I have,: Dallen said sadly. :Of course, that is unethical, but he used his Gift so little that he could always claim he didn’t realize he was doing it because he wanted his daughter’s regard back. And he would probably be believed.:
“Dallen says he has,” Mags told her. “ ’Cept, of course, Amily’s pa deserves thet sorta worship, aye? Ye jest have’ta see ’im with her, how much he takes care’a her, how he makes sure she’s all right afore he goes an’ does things. Mebbe he gotta think’a Valdemar an’ th’ King first, but he makes sure someone is lookin’ out fer Amily. Like Master Soren an’ Lydia. Yer pa? He ever make sure ye got so much as a spare harpstring? He ain’t done nothin’ t’ deserve nothin’ from ye, if ye was t’ ask me. He never done nothin’ t’ get ye here, an’ aside of that one concert, never done nothing for ye when ye got here. Never made sure you was all right. Never made sure there was someone t’ watch out fer ye.”
“You have the Gift too, Lena,” Bear urged. “Use it! Shake off what he did to you and see him!”
A hundred emotions, all negative ones, chased themselves across Lena’s face—and then her face crumpled, she buried it in her hands, and sobbed.
“I thought he loved me!” she wept into her hands. “I thought he finally loved me.”
Both Bear and Mags made a move to hold her; Mags pulled back and gestured to Bear to comfort her. Pushing his lenses up on his nose, he pulled her into his shoulder and let her sob.
“One day someone is going to not get charmed and beat the stuffing out of him,” Bear said, in a growl. “And the sooner that day comes, the better. But let me tell you something, Lena. One day, when people say ‘Bard Marchand,’ it will be you they are thinking about and not him. And one day, when someone says ‘Tobias Marchand,’ others will wrinkle their foreheads and say, ‘Don’t you mean Lena?’ and they’ll have to be reminded that Tobias happened to be the father of the really, truly famous Bard Marchand.”
Mags nodded in silent agreement.
“Families,” Bear added, in tones that indicated that something more had shortened his temper than just having to work with difficult patients.
“Wha’s got ye riled?” Mags asked.
Bear sighed. Lena sobbed on, oblivious to what they were saying. Well, Mags couldn’t blame her. This was a horrible blow to her. Here she thought her father had finally noticed her, was impressed by her, and had come to love her. The fact that all these emotions had been created in her by her father in order to manipulate her was probably unbearable right now.
“Got a letter from my family,” he growled. “My brother’s turning up. Head of the Sweetwater House of Healing, if you please, and he’s going to demand that I do my duty to the family, come home, and get married on Midsummer and start spawning babies. They still haven’t given up on that.”
Lena’s sobs were easing off. She sniffed wetly and Bear offered her a scrap of clean cloth. She took it, pulled away from him, and he reluctantly let her go.
“M-maybe you just ought to go along with that for a l-little,” she said, with a faint stammer. “At least your family cares about you, and if you just give them what they want for a moon or two, you can come back here—”
“I don’t want that girl,” Bear snarled, sou
nding startlingly like his namesake. “I don’t love her! I am not going to get shackled up to some girl I hardly know just so my parents can be grandparents, and it’s not as if they aren’t already, because they are. If I marry anyone, it’s going to be someone I love and would do anything for, not someone my parents picked out because they’re neighbors! Someone like—” he paused. “Never mind. It just won’t be her.”
Lena stared at him, startled by his vehemence. He looked down at his hands. “Sorry. That kind of just jumped out.”
“Nothin’ t’ be sorry fer,” Mags offered. He shook his head. “Sometimes it seems like we all oughta just run away from here, an’—an’ that’s when I run out, cause I dunno what we’d do t’ keep ourselves fed an’ housed up.”
“I could always be an animal Healer,” Bear said sourly. “At least animals are always grateful to you. Nobody thinks you’re second-rate because you treat them with medicine instead of a Gift. Animal Healers are always in demand.”
“I could be a traveling minstrel,” Lena answered, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose. “I’m good enough for that right now. Maybe we should do that. Run away and do that. Show them all.”
Mags shrugged. “I got nothin’. All I know’s mine work. Jest end up i’ the same situation, jest wi’ a better master. Mebbe. I misdoubt Master Cole was th’ on’y mine owner t’ treat ’is miners thet way.”
And Lena sighed. “Traveling minstrels starve a lot,” she said forlornly. “And my father still wouldn’t notice or care.”
“Well then,” Bear said stolidly. “No running away.”
They all sighed, and looked at one another.
As Mags made his way back to his room in the stable that night, he resolved one thing. He was going to at least ask King’s Own Nikolas if he could help Bear.
If, of course, he could ever see the man.
He decided to take the bull by the horns—or at least, the heifer. He was going to help Amily that evening, since Nikolas hadn’t shown up at his room or even given any indication that he was ever going to continue the lessons again, so he would ask the one person who surely knew where her father was.
“Lissen,” he said, before they got down to work. “Gotta ast ye somethin’.”
She raised her eyes to look at him. “Of course,” she replied.
“I need t’ see yer Pa. Nikolas,” he said, looking her in the eyes.
She looked away, but laughed, though it wasn’t exactly the laughter of someone who was hearing a joke. “We all need to see him,” she told him, still not looking at him. “He has become a phantom. I know he’s still here in Haven, because dirty plates and filthy uniforms appear in our rooms and have to be taken away, but I haven’t actually seen him personally in the last few days.”
Ever since th’ new set’ a visions, Mags thought bleakly. Aye, that figgers. Bet he reckons it’s me after all an’ he’s tryin’ t’ find a way t’ stop me.
“Well, when ye do, tell ’im I need t’ see ’im?” he pleaded. “It’s pretty important.”
“If I see him I will,” Amily replied, looking uneasy, and maybe a little guilty. “But sometimes he does this and I don’t see him for—well, once it was for three moons.”
Well that would be a bit too late . . .
But it would be ungracious to act like a boor about it. Amily couldn’t help what her father thought or did. “All right,” he replied. “Thenkee. Now, hand me my share, aye?”
She did so, and he couldn’t help but note that her hand was shaking a little as she did it.
Bear’s place at lunch was empty.
For a moment, Mags had the crazy thought that Bear’s brother had arrived and essentially kidnapped his sibling—but no, that wouldn’t be possible, would it? Surely no one here would allow that.
:Dallen?: he asked first, before voicing the question aloud.
:No clue,: the Companion replied. :Let me ask some of the others—though, mind you, we usually don’t know what’s going on up at Healers’ Collegium. They have good shields and don’t leak much.:
“Anybody know where Bear is?” he asked aloud. His only response was headshakes.
Well, there was no point in worrying about it. Bear was often called away; this was probably just another one of those times.
They were almost done with the meal when Bear turned up, finally, looking bad. Ragged. He dropped down into his seat and stared dully at his empty plate, a plate which Gennie and Mags took, filled with the leftovers and shoved in front of him.
“Eat!” said Gennie.
“He’s dead,” Bear said, mechanically picking up a fork and getting a mouthful. “I don’t understand it. He just . . . died. He shouldn’t have died. I was crazy-careful about dosages and combinations. I tested everything on myself first—”
He stopped, as if he had said too much. No one else seemed to notice the gaff, they were all staring at him in puzzlement.
“Who died?” Halleck asked.
“Lunatic,” Bear said dully. “The crazy foreigner. I just don’t understand it. I thought I had his fear and his heart rate under control. He was fine last night. I made sure he took everything. The new stuff I gave him was working, at least I think it was, there were moments when he was even coming out of that fear-fit he was in . . .”
“Oh, him.” Halleck shrugged. “Bear, I know he was your patient, and you have to feel bad about that, and I know that the senior Healers trusted him to you to treat, but face it, they only did that because they couldn’t do anything with him. They’d already given up on getting him sane, and everyone else had given up on getting any information out of him. So it’s not as if it’s a tragic loss . . .”
Halleck trailed off, seeing that he wasn’t getting through to Bear.
Mags knew why. Entirely apart from the fact that Bear took the care of every patient he had very seriously, there was the implication that his skills were nowhere near as sharp as he and everyone else had thought. Failure put him one step closer to being hauled home, and his brother was due here any day.
And Mags hadn’t exactly done anything about getting Nikolas to intercede for him.
Of course, that was because Nikolas wasn’t anywhere to be found, but that was beside the point. He hunched over a little with guilt, and finished his lunch in a hurry. “ ’M sorry, Bear,” he mumbled as he got up to leave. “I don’ think ’twas yer fault, if thet means anythin’.”
Bear didn’t even look up.
Mags heard the shouting long before he got to Healers’ Collegium. One voice was Bear’s; the other was very like Bear’s, just deeper. The accent was even the same, which pretty much identified who it was.
Bear’s brother was here.
“. . . and now you see what happens when you think you can muck around with midwife potions and try to do what only a skilled and Gifted Healer can!” shouted the deeper voice. “You are in way over your head, Bear! We should never have allowed you to come here; you let a few early successes go to your head and they made you think you could actually do what only a real Healer can, and now you see the result! You managed to kill a valuable asset to the Crown!”
Mags hesitated. Should he leave? He had no right to listen to this.
But he couldn’t seem to make his feet move.
“I didn’t—”
“Bah, don’t tell me that, I know you, I can read you like a Mindspeaker. Even you think you killed him!” There was steel in that voice, the steel of someone who was absolutely certain he was in the right, and no one was going to tell him any differently. “It’s time you stopped mucking about with potions and accepted your responsibility to the family. You are coming home and getting married. If you want to spend your time dosing animals when you get there, fine. But no more of this ‘herbs can replace a Healer’ idiocy. Good gods, that medicine chest notion—that is appalling! How many more people do you want to kill with that?”
“They’d die anyway,” Bear shouted back. “At least this way they have a chance!”
> “You don’t know that! In fact, it’s far more likely that they wouldn’t die without all those leaves and roots, because they would be wise and send for a Healer right away, instead of mucking about with beans and flowers until it’s too late for a real Healer to save them!”
“The Circle—”
“The Circle will see it my way after this,” the brother said, scornfully. “Killing a patient tends to make them wake up and take the blinkers off. So you just resign yourself to doing what you are told for a change. And start packing. There’s going to be a wedding at Midsummer if I have to drag you to the altar tied up.”
Silence, the slamming of a door, then the sound of something breaking.
Slowly, carefully, Mags approached the door to Bear’s conservatory. He tapped gingerly on the window.
Bear opened the door, and glared at him. “I suppose you overheard all that,” he snapped. The young Healer Trainee was disheveled and red-faced with anger. His hair looked like a bird had made a nest in it.
“I gotta think yer whole Collegium overheard thet,” Mags said tentatively.
Bear snorted.
“I—” Mags hesitated. “I dunno what I kin do t’ help—”
Bear exploded. “Well you should have thought of that when I first told you about it. You should have gone to Herald Nikolas and gotten him to help me! But no, you selfish pig, all you could think about was being a Kirball hero and how persecuted you are, and making everyone feel sorry for you.”
That was so unjust it took Mags’ breath away.
Intrigues: Book Two of the Collegium Chronicles (a Valdemar Novel) Page 23