Changes v(cc-3

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Oh, aye.” Mags chuckled. “Huh. Mice. Cain’t say I like hevin’ m’ face run over i’ th’ night meself. Reckon we better git us a cat?”

  Nikolas sighed. “Yes. I’m afraid so. It’s been a while since I smoked the vermin out. The bugs haven’t returned, not even the black beetles in the cellar, but there isn’t much there to attract them. Mice are another matter, and they’re probably back already.”

  ::I’ll help you find a good mouser,:: Dallen said.

  “Aight,” Mags said. “I’ll sort it.”

  Nikolas cast a ghost of a smile his way. “I rather hoped you would.”

  “Here’s the problem. This cellar was really only meant as another escape route, or a place to hide while someone searched the shop,” Nikolas said aloud, as he shoved the crate that Mags usually sat on aside, revealing a hatch.

  ’E’s talkin’ out loud ’stead’a Mindspeakin’. Which prolly means he don’t want me t’chance getting a liddle bit of whatever ’tis ’e ain’t s’posed t’ tell us. ’cause ’e knows I kin git stuff that kinda spills over. Well, if that was what Nikolas wanted to do... it wasn’t as if Mags had any grounds for objecting. He thought about it carefully, and decided that he didn’t mind. Because Nikolas knew that Mags knew that Nikolas—Mags caught himself before he started snickering. Hellfires, ain’t like he’s insultin’ me. Jest doing whut he was tol’ t’do. Furthermore, Mags had the oddest feeling that if Nikolas thought for one moment that Mags actually needed to know what was going on, he would violate those orders and tell him.

  So I’ll make’t easy on ’im an’ not fuss.

  “I ’spect most shops ’round ’ere hev thet,” Mags observed dispassionately. Or at least, with a good imitation a cheerful indifference.

  Nikolas pulled up the hatch; instead of the ladder Mags expected, there was a good solid—new-looking—set of stairs. Nikolas handed him a lit lantern; he went down first.

  As a home, it was pretty primitive. There were a couple of straw mattresses stacked up against the wall, with some bedding rolled tightly atop them, and that was about it. Mags sniffed; no mouse stink, nothing but damp, but he was glad he and Dallen had acquired the new shop cat anyway. If they started bringing food here in any quantity, mice would follow.

  The walls were extremely crude slat-wall wood, the floor was either hard-packed dirt or soft rock, the tunnel leading out of one side was cut through the dirt, but had been expertly shored up. It was cool. “It’ll do,” Mags pronounced. Nikolas looked vaguely relieved.

  Guess ’e fergits what I come from.

  The only problem was... the floor space was minimal. Not bad for one, not so comfortable for two. “Where’s tunnel go?” he asked, shining the lantern in, but not venturing down it too far.

  “The basement of the shop next door. The empty one. We bought it when we bought this one, to keep it empty.”

  “Huh.” Mags considered that a moment. “Might could sleep o’er there, iffen ye don’ like sleepin’ down ’ere. Thet place got heavy shutters an’ bars over t’winders, ain’t nobuddy gonna see in t’know.”

  Nikolas looked thunderstruck, as if the idea simply hadn’t occurred to him. Mags allowed himself a ghost of a smirk.

  See? I ain’t entirely useless.

  “If it’s cool enough,” Nikolas replied. “I have no idea if that place is going to be a stifling hellhole or a reasonable space to use. But I feel like an idiot for not thinking of that myself.”

  “Outa sight, outa mind,” Mags said philosophically. “So, ye know them liddle ’uns I was follerin’ last night?” he continued, instead of gloating. “I reckon t’take ’em over an’ find out what they was doin’ fer the dead fellers.”

  The King’s Own turned to look at him, wearing a slight frown. “By take them over—you don’t mean—” Nikolas began hesitantly.

  “Nay, ain’t messin wi’ they heads, but I ain’t got time t’lure ’em neither. I gotter git ’em under m’thumb right quick. Iffen them others know ’bout ’em, ye kin bet they ain’t gonna be breathin’ too long.” That, too, had occurred to him this morning. “I reckon t’take over thet gang’uv theirs.” He quickly explained what he had in mind; Nikolas listened carefully. “Reckon I kin hev most’a what they know in a couple nights. Then we figger what t’do wi’ ’em.”

  “You’re probably chasing nothing, Mags,” Nikolas cautioned. “I very much doubt that those men were so stupid as to entrust a couple of children with anything important.”

  That might be true. On the other hand, Mags knew firsthand that adults, men especially, tended to forget that children had minds and ears of their own. They might have overheard something useful. They might have deliberately eavesdropped. And they might not even be aware that what they had heard was important.

  But there was no point in bringing that up just now. It would just sound as if he were trying to dig up specious reasons to go track those children down.

  Mags just shrugged. “Dunno till I find out. Which I reckon t’start on t’night. Reckon I kin cast ’bout fer them new fellers while I’m bullyin’ the liddle ’uns.”

  Nikolas winced—rather as Dallen had done. Mags reflected that it was rather odd that they both felt so squeamish about frightening and intimidating a group of street urchins who were probably already criminals and yet were utterly matter of fact about other, far nastier things.

  Maybe it was because Nikolas was a father and saw his own child reflected in the eyes of every child. If so—

  —’e needs t’ get over thet. Not every child was innocent. Not every child was good. Mags knew that one, firsthand. Always seeing a child as the innocent left you open to not seeing when the child was scheming to take you down.

  It remained to be seen what these three were—innocent, half-innocent, or nasty little monsters. Although the fact that they had banded together and were loyal to each other was a mark in their favor.

  “I won’t need you that I know of,” Nikolas said, “You might as well go see what you can do about these children once we have a look at the other shop.” He looked sheepish. “I haven’t been there, except to make sure all the exits were in order.”

  Mags ran over what he knew of the shop next door in his mind. If this shop was small, the one next door was scarcely more than a hole in the wall. It looked to him as if it had literally been built between two existing buildings, and how the builders had gotten away with that, he could not imagine. Nikolas led the way into the tunnel, which was short and ended in a ladder. While Mags held the lantern, Nikolas climbed it, and opened the hatch at the top.

  Mags passed up the lantern and followed.

  The space he climbed up into was dusty, narrow, and absolutely empty—from inside it was clear that what he had taken for a shuttered window was actually a shuttered hatch. In fact, it looked exactly like a serving-hatch. There was no front door, only the rear and another ladder to a hatch directly in the roof above. There was nothing in this long, narrow room but a single barrel. The good thing was, it was not nearly as warm in here as he had feared, though it was stuffy. It would make a decent place to sleep. And there was a privy in the tiny patch of walled yard that this place and Nikolas’s shop shared.

  “What was this place?” he asked.

  “Alehouse,” Nikolas said briefly. “Or, really, more like an ale stall. You brought your own tankard or pail, bought the ale at the hatch, either took it home or drank it standing at the front. When the owner was prospering, he probably also sold bits of things to eat. Meat pies, sausage, that sort of thing. There are not a lot of these places anymore. It was one thing when this was a busy street during the day and people would snatch a bite and a drink on the way to a job or on the way home from one. But this part of the city stopped prospering, and when you are poor, you drink water, or what you can brew out of what you can scavenge, and you don’t pay someone else to cook your food. And in the rare good times, you want to go somewhere that you can sit down to drink your ale.”

  There was ju
st enough room for them to put their mattresses here without blocking the exit. And this was probably better than the cellar, where it was likely that they’d kick or step on each other a couple of times a night. They spent a little time hauling their bedding over and setting up; by then it was dark, so Nikolas opened the shop, and Mags went out over the roofs.

  He didn’t immediately seek out the children, however. They were secondary to the reason why he and Nikolas were here, after all. He settled in the coolest spot he could find, one with a bit of breeze and nothing digging into his backside; he rested his back against a cold chimney and carefully opened his mind.

  Not a lot. And slowly.

  Nearby thoughts brushed against his. Ordinary folks, settling in for the night after a hard day of work, for the most part. Nikolas’ shop notwithstanding, most of the people in this neighborhood were pretty law-abiding. They’d steal a little if they got the chance, just as he and the mine-kiddies had stolen and for the same reason—not out of greed or avarice, but to eat, to live. But most of them wouldn’t steal from a neighbor, and most of them wouldn’t do anything to harm another person who wasn’t trying to harm them. He didn’t probe; probing was wrong, unless he had a compelling reason to do so. He simply let surface thoughts brush past him. There was a lot of anxiety about money, some hunger pangs that drinking water wouldn’t still. Restless children who had not worn out their energy at their jobs (for everyone worked here), exhausted parents who had come home exhausted and only wanted to stuff a crust into their children and themselves and sleep. Some bright spots of happiness—someone had done well, there had been a good meal, a promise of prosperity, a bit of luxury. Someone was in love, someone was heartbroken, both were not much older than he was. Many were a little drunk, several were very drunk, some were in pain, physical or emotional. A few were ill. Several someones were—he shied away from that particular activity, a little embarrassed. Nothing was so terrible that it required his intervention or that he call for help via Dallen. It was “noisier” here than up at the Collegium; Dallen had explained that as the existence of many old and new shields, and the buffering efforts of the Companions.

  But nowhere was there that peculiar half-emptiness that marked the presence of the foreigners. Which didn’t mean that they weren’t in Haven, it only meant that they were not within a block or so of where he was. That was the problem, the farther he reached, the more mental voices started to press against him, and the harder it became to lock them out. Now, if he was “talking” to a single person, or a few, he could reach quite far indeed without danger. But if he had to do something like this, open his mind to every stray thought that passed by, well— That was a great deal more difficult. Partly, since they weren’t Mindspeakers, it was more difficult to make sense of what they thought, and their thoughts didn’t have the force behind them that caused them to reach farther.

  Which was just as well, since this was rather like being in a room full of people all talking at once. He had to concentrate to sort out what anyone was saying. The farther away he reached, the noisier it became, because it wasn’t possible to block out the nearer folk while reaching for the farther.

  Such things had driven people mad in the past. And they probably would again. He was just fortunate that he had Dallen. The more he came to understand Heralds and Companions, the more it became obvious that Dallen “helped” him far more than most Companions aided and taught their Heralds.

  He put up his shields again, “resting” for a moment in the peace and silence that followed the incessant chatter.

  ::You aren’t exactly the normal sort of person we Choose,:: Dallen commented dryly, ::As you already knew.::

  ::Quit joggling m’elbow,:: he chided, with amusement. ::I think I jest figgered out you got in an’ dumped a whole lotta learnin’ in m’head back when I was lettin’ ye keep me from havin’ fits.::

  When he had first been Chosen, he had understood nothing. Quite literally, nothing. He had been one short step up from a feral thing, and if he had not accepted Dallen’s offer to buffer him from the rest of the world, and to simply supply him with exactly the information he most needed about his new life—well, he certainly wouldn’t have done very well.

  ::It was things you would have learned anyway if you had been Chosen when most are, instead of when you were ready,:: Dallen replied. ::And anyway, most of it was about the managing of your Gift. You had a great deal of information and a great many skills you needed to acquire in a very short time. The consensus among the Companions was, why add the burden of learning how to handle your Gift, too, when I am an expert in Mindspeech and Empathy, you and I have a uniquely strong and open bond, and I could just give you the benefit of what I knew directly?::

  ::So thet’s how come I never needed too much trainin’ in m’Gift?:: he replied.

  ::Exactly so. You didn’t need attention from an outside teacher, because you had the knowledge already.:: Dallen paused. ::It was for your protection, too. What if you’d had Temper impinge on your mind when you first arrived here? As it was, we all had to work hard before we understood that there was a powerful outsider disrupting your thoughts and your sleep.::

  ::Huh. Kinda seems like cheatin’.:: He waited for Dallen’s answer.

  ::It would be, I suppose, if we could do that with every Chosen. But we can’t. You. A few of the Monarchs’ Owns of the past. Some of the Herald-Mages. Not Vanyel, interestingly enough. It requires a peculiarly receptive and open mind, and a point in time where everything comes together so that they are not only receptive, but their minds are prepared to accept everything we give them without question.:: Dallen paused. ::And now you think about this and... ::

  His thoughts were already racing through the implications. ::Ye coulda just dumped in whate’er ye wanted to.::

  He sensed Dallen “smiling.” ::Yes.::

  ::Like... makin’ me think ’bout things a certain way. Makin’ up m’mind for me, pushin’ me t’think one thing’s good, ’nother’s bad.::

  Dallen seemed delighted. ::Yes.::

  ::Ye didn’.:: Actually, he was delighted too. There it was, proof that he was still his own person.

  ::Tempting, especially when you were wallowing in a swamp of delusions of inadequacy, but no. You had—have—to remain you, Mags. All I ever did was give you very, very rapid training so that you didn’t go insane as your Gift blossomed. And at any rate, the time when I could do that so freely is passed; I can still teach you things if I have to, but never with that freedom and ease.:: He sensed mixed feelings now, both pride and a little regret.

  He decided to blunt the regret with a joke. ::Huh. Well, hellfire. I was hopin’ ye could git me through them Courty Graces horsecrap wi’out hevin’ t’ strain m’skull.::

  ::Perhaps we can work on your speech,:: came the sarcastic reply.

  Mags smiled even broader. ::My dear old Companion,:: he said, his mental voice reflecting letter-perfect diction and grammar. ::I fear I must disagree with you. What you are taking for ignorance is part of the persona of the thick-as-a-brick games-player that Nikolas wishes me to cultivate. The less cultured I sound, the more people underestimate me.::

  He paused, eyes still closed, grinning at the mental silence. ::’Tis also harder’n hell,:: he admitted. ::An’ it don’t seem like me, if ye take m’meanin’. ::

  ::... what about those words you make up?:: Dallen finally asked.

  ::It’s on account’a I’m a bonehead, an’ don’t allus ’member what th’ right word is, so I come’s close as I kin.:: That comment nettled him a little. He really did try, after all. ::People figger it out!::

  ::I suppose they do.:: Dallen sighed. ::All right, I don’t think that our quarry is anywhere around you, and at the moment we have no real direction to go in, other than that you sensed they still had a job to do here and were not going to leave until it was done. I am going to try to put my thoughts together and think in what part of the city they might be. You pursue those little thieves.::

  ::
Not thieves, so much,:: Mags corrected him, opening his eyes, and starting to stretch to get all the kinks out. ::The bastiches owed ’em an’ not like they was gonna get paid.::

  ::Point taken.::

  Mags stood up, careful to remain in the shadow of the chimney. ::How you plan to try and figger out where them new bastiches is?:: He paused. ::We need a name fer ’em. Think on’t wouldja?::

  ::All right.:: Dallen sighed. ::This is the part of the job I never really enjoyed. I’m going to do something that—eventually—you are going to be able to do as well as I can. It’s just not very pleasant in this case, and you don’t have the experience that I do to do it yet.:: There was a pause. ::I am going to attempt to put myself inside their skins and think as they do.::

  Mags froze. He was getting better at thinking, because the implications of what Dallen had just said were all racing through his mind.

  ::Tha’s... ugly.::

  ::Yes.::

  ::Tha’s kinda how I figgered out how t’get t’them kiddies.::