Closer to Home: Book One of Herald Spy

by Mercedes Lackey

  —

  Mags got offers of half a dozen cloaks; he took one at random, and he and Dallen managed to drag themselves back up to the Collegium. Dallen got taken away to be warmed up inside and out . . . and so was Mags. Not before he made sure that Amily was with her father; that was only right and proper. And not before he had learned that Rolan had Chosen Amily, which sort of explained why Nikolas had a new Companion. But once he knew that Amily and her father were together and Nikolas was being tended to by nearly every Healer in the Collegium, he did the only smart thing there was to do.

  He got himself into a hot bath, boiled until the water started to cool, and ran more hot water in. Once he actually was feeling too warm, he got dressed and went to the kitchen and ate hot bread and slices of meat straight off the spit and a huge mug of some herbal concoction that Cook swore “will set ye right square up.” Then he sat in the kitchen with his head on his arms and baked in the warmth while the work bustled on around him. He might even have dozed a little; no one stirred him.

  Eventually, he felt like himself and prodded Dallen.

  :You all right?:

  The reply was steeped in contentment. :I cannot believe we made it all come round right.:

  :Me neither. You hurt anything?:

  :Just strains and some bruising. They’d have poulticed me to my withers if I’d let them. I’m going to sleep now. The Healers are done with Nikolas. Amily has had her cry and now she’s just sitting there in disbelief that things turned out the way they did. The King is having a conference, and you’ll need to go shout some sense in them shortly.:

  He sighed, and raised his head from his arms. A glance out the window showed him the sun had gone down. It appeared that, for the larger view, everything was, more or less, sorted out. But that didn’t mean things were any less upsetting or confusing.

  Nikolas had, by every possible standard, died. A quick check with some of the other Companions—he didn’t want to further send already upset Heralds into a worse state by asking them about it—filled him in on what he didn’t already know, and put everything in order for him. Two of the unpaired Companions from the Field had taken it on themselves to give him a fairly exact rendition of the events. Nikolas had died. There was no question about that. The Death Bell had even gotten off four strokes before abruptly ceasing to ring. Rolan had Chosen Amily.

  But then . . . Mags had brought Nikolas back, and Nikolas had promptly been Chosen by that new Companion, Evory. Mags had the shrewd notion that it was Evory’s fierce spirit that had “persuaded” Nikolas not to give up and die anyway . . . but there was no telling for certain, and Evory wasn’t talking about it.

  The King was upset—both because his very good friend Nikolas had very nearly been lost forever, and at least in part because now his Monarch’s Own Herald was not his very good friend Nikolas, but an unknown and untried girl. Amily was a great deal more than upset, and most understandably, because suddenly she was not only Chosen (which she would have been happy about under other circumstances) but because it was Rolan who had Chosen her, and because her father had very nearly died. The entirety of Herald’s Collegium was upset, because something like this had never happened before, not in the entire history of Valdemar. Things were, or were not. When the Monarch’s Own died, he had the good sense to stay dead and not get resurrected to be Chosen again by a different Companion. Of course, no one was crass enough to put it that way, but it was clear enough that was, more or less, the way their troubled and muddled thinking was going. Everyone was concentrating on what had “gone wrong” and not on the bloody miracle they’d all been given.

  Well, Mags couldn’t do anything about that. But he damned well could do something about the most important person, bar her father and himself, in Amily’s life.

  He asked for, and got, a tiny glass of distilled spirits from the cook, and he downed it, even though it nearly made him choke. And with that to bolster his courage (without being enough to muddle his thoughts) he headed straight for the Royal Suite in the Palace, every stride ringing with determination.

  And given his Whites and the look on his face, not even the Guards at the door to the King’s Chambers stopped him when he stalked up to the door and wrenched it open.

  Silence fell immediately, with that sense that a moment earlier, people had nearly been shouting.

  “—what—” said someone into that silence.

  King Kyril looked up from the huddle of Heralds and officials as Mags let the door fall shut behind him. Prince Sedric opened his mouth as if to speak. Mags cut them all off.

  “This here is just about enough of all the makin’ out this is some kinda calamity!” he thundered. “’Cause it ain’t.”

  The room went deathly still. Because . . . well, Herald or not . . . who ever would talk to the King that way?

  Right now . . . with the woman he loved being tied in knots, and everyone acting as if it was somehow her fault that this had happened and if she wanted to, she could just somehow give Rolan back, Mags would have spoken to gods themselves this way.

  “So Rolan Chose Amily? How’s that matter?” he continued, doing his best to imitate the most stern old priest of a stern religion he had ever heard or seen. “For godsake, it ain’t like you lost Nikolas! In fact, you got the best thing that could ever’ve happened! We got a bleedin’ miracle,” he continued, repeating his own thoughts.

  As they all stared at him in shock at that pronouncement, he continued with what he had worked out on the way. “You got Amily, an’ she’s watched her pa do the job of King’s Own since she was old enough t’walk. You think she ain’t got a good idea of what she needs t’do? Not like when the King’s Own dies, an’ the Companion goes and Chooses some youngling what ain’t ever heard of Heralds! An’ Nikolas is bloody alive. You got her pa here to advise ’er. Ye figgered that out yet? ’Tis another bleedin’ miracle! You got th’ old King’s Own right here in person t’ advise the new King’s Own, and that’s aside of havin’ Rolan to advise ’er! You got her pa fit to work, not paralyzed or feeble-minded, but in a fortnight or so he’ll be walkin’ around sensible, an’ now he’s free t’ do everythin’ he wasn’t altogether free t’do before!”

  Now, a great many of those advisors had no idea what Mags was talking about. But those who knew that Nikolas had been the King’s personal intelligence agent and spy suddenly got wide eyes . . . and the King himself looked as if Mags had struck him in the head, he was so dumbfounded by what apparently was a revelation. Prince Sedric, however, was nodding.

  “Majesty—” he went on, pointing at the King. “Ye still got yer best friend, alive, an’ fit t’ do his work. Amily’s still got her pa. Ye got a King’s Own what’s gonna . . . I gotta be blunt here . . . outlive you, barrin’ accident. Which means Sedric’s gonna get a seasoned King’s Own, when th’ time comes, which I hope ain’t soon. Oh, an’ I got more, cause I know Amily, an’ you don’t. Amily might be the best-read King’s Own in the history of ever, on account of she knows them Chronicles like only a Chronicler does. I swear, she’s read ’em all. If there’s a solution that worked in the past, she’ll either know it, or know where to look for it. Which, Valdemar ain’t often had. So?”

  He paused for breath, and stood there, a little belligerently, fists on hips, staring them all down.

  Finally King Kyril blinked three or four times, and took a deep breath himself. By this time, Mags was a master at reading peoples’ faces and posture, and he could practically see the tension running out of the King. As he had figured, they had all gotten themselves tied in knots, wrangling over how all this stuff that had never happened before absolutely had to be bad . . . and to be fair, most things that “had never happened before” had tended to be bad of late. But he had just jarred them all out of that nonsense, and in good time, too. Now they’d all be able to come at this thinking, instead of feeling.

  “So,” the King said, i
n his quiet, bass voice. “Thank you for delivering all of us from our foolishness, Herald Mags. You have rightly pointed out that not only is this not a calamity, it is the best possible outcome we could have had from what nearly was a tragedy, and we have been blessed by the gods themselves to still have Herald Nikolas among us.”

  Prince Sedric caught Mags’ eye, and slowly winked. Mags felt the tension drain out of himself.

  “Well then, beg pardon for interruptin’ yer Majesty,” he said with a low bow. “I’ll just let m’self out.”

  And he did.

  —

  “. . . I would give any amount of money to have seen their faces,” Nikolas said, from the depths of his bed.

  He had not emerged from his ordeal unscathed. Virtually every bit of him was battered and bruised. His left arm was broken in two places, and had been splinted and bound up against his chest. His lungs hurt him when he breathed, although the Healers were making sure they Healed without his also getting pneumonia. And his head had taken several hard knocks. But given what could have been . . .

  Mags shrugged. “King’s Companion tol’ Dallen, and Dallen tol’ me, that they were all workin’ themselves up to some sorta panic. Someone had to go in there and point out that it not only weren’t a disaster, it was anythin’ but.”

  Amily left her father’s side long enough to give him an embrace and a kiss that warmed him right down to his toes. She said nothing, but then, she didn’t have to. Her heart and spirits were battered and sore from everything she had been through in the last several candlemarks, and the fact that without being asked he had dealt with something she was in no state to . . .

  . . . “grateful” was not nearly a potent enough word for how she felt right now, and they both knew it, and both felt it.

  “Really, things is better now than they was afore, except for you havin’ been rolled down the river an’ nearly dyin’ an’ all,” he finished, sitting himself down in a comfortable chair and helping himself to some of Nikolas’ uneaten dinner. “It’s good for me too! Bad ’nuff to have lost the King’s Own, but losin’ Amily’s pa, an’ losin’ m’teacher too?” He shook his head, and stuffed a buttered roll, whole, into his mouth. “I’d’a been a right mess.” He’d have held it together for Amily’s sake, but . . . it wouldn’t have been easy.

  “Rolan says this is why I was never Chosen,” Amily said, in a small voice. “I was always supposed to be King’s Own eventually, and since I was doing so well without being Chosen, no Companion ever wanted to . . . to just be the second best, I suppose. He also says that this wasn’t supposed to happen for a long, long time.”

  “It’s very difficult to describe how I am feeling right now,” Nikolas said into the silence. “Grateful past words to still be alive, just to start with. Getting used to a . . . much closer bond with Evory than I had with Rolan . . . and I wouldn’t have thought that was even possible. But also feeling a little lost. I’ve always been the King’s Own. Just at the moment, I am not at all sure I know how to be . . . just a Herald.” He looked at both of them out of blackened eyes, forlornly.

  But Mags just snorted, before Nikolas could get himself talked into feeling depressed about the change his life had just taken. “How many times’ve you wished you wasn’t King’s Own when ye had to be two places at once?” he asked, logically. “So. Now you ain’t got that problem no more. ’Stead’a havin’ t’ divide yerself between two jobs, ye can do one really, really well.”

  Nikolas tilted his head painfully to one side, and looked at him oddly. “When did you suddenly become a wise old Herald?” he asked. “Who are you, and what did you do with Mags, who had no answers to anything?”

  Mags only laughed.

  —

  He finally persuaded Amily to leave her father in the capable hands of a Healer’s assistant, and come to bed. And before she went to bed, he made her a sort of breakfast-dinner out of what they had on hand in her rooms, making sure she ate every bite of it.

  “I’m feeling . . . bruised,” she confessed, as he settled into bed beside her, and took her in his arms, knowing that tonight the last thing she would want was anything other than simple comfort.

  “Reckon that’s as good a way of puttin’ it as any,” he agreed. “Ye got about as rough a beatin’ inside as yer pa got outside.”

  “I have to keep reminding myself that Rolan would not Choose someone who wasn’t right for the job . . .” she said, her voice trailing off. But then, out of nowhere, her face lit up with a joyous smile. “Oh Mags! I’ve been Chosen! Can you believe it? I’ve been Chosen!”

  He chuckled, kissed her, and held her tight. “Yer the kindest, bestest gal on the Hill, th’ Queen an’ Princess not excepted,” he told her firmly. “An’ Rolan hisself told ye the only reason ye ain’t been Chosen till now was ’cause they was savin’ ye t’be King’s Own. So there. Believe it. An’ don’t worry about not bein’ up to the job. Ye got yer pa. Ye got Rolan. Ye got yerself, sweeting. I just bragged all over ye t’ the King’s face, tellin’ him you know them Chronicles better’n anyone but the Chronicler, an’ if someone ever came up with an answer for anything, you know right where it is. Yer tough. Yer smart. Yer brave. Yer Nikolas’ proper daughter.”

  With the smile still on her face, she broke down and cried a little, for relief as much as anything, he thought. And then she went to sleep.

  After a long, long while, so did he.

  4

  Amily woke up in a panic. Her reaction to panic, however, had been born from years of not being able to move quickly; she froze. With her eyes tight shut, she identified where she was (in bed, with Mags a solid, warm weight next to her) and which bed she was in (her own, in the rooms in Healer’s Collegium) and what time it was (by the sounds in the building, just past the morning bells). When her mind and memory caught up with the rest of her, she realized she had a very good reason to wake up in a panic.

  I’m the King’s Own! I should be in a panic!

  She kept her eyes shut, and her body still, and let herself take comfort from Mags’ presence while she tried to sort herself out. Part of her wished devoutly she could go back to sleep . . . the rest of her wished devoutly she could go back in time to the day before yesterday.

  Because, although she had dreamed for—well as long as she could remember—about finally being Chosen, the last thing she had ever wanted to be was King’s Own, and not just because it would mean her father was dead. Being Chosen was both wonderful and terrifying, in equal measure, but the wonderful part, she thought, would make up for all that. Being Chosen as King’s Own . . .

  She had to remind herself, over and over, for a while, that her father was not dead.

  It helped . . . but not as much as she hoped.

  The enormous weight of responsibility on her felt spiritually crushing. Being a Herald was responsibility enough! This—

  :Rolan!: she thought, desperately, still with her eyes squeezed tight, a few tears of desperation leaking out from her eyelids.

  :Chosen?: the grave voice replied. :Before you ask, this can’t be undone.:

  :Why not?: she demanded. :Plenty of impossible things happened yesterday, why not one more?:

  :Principally, because in order to attempt to undo it, we’d have to asphyxiate you and then attempt to bring you back to life,: Rolan replied dryly. :I don’t think that is an optimal idea. When death severs the bonds, and new bonds are made, the only way to sever them again is death or repudiation. And do trust me, my love, repudiation is not something you want to experience.:

  At the moment, she wasn’t altogether sure of that. . . .

  :You can take my word for it. It’s soul-shattering. I simply won’t repudiate you, so you can put the idea out of your mind.: The Mindvoice softened a good bit. :Besides, you haven’t asked me how I feel about all this.:

  Well, that was true enough. She tried to take deep br
eaths. Breathing deeply was supposed to help with panic. And she listened with all her being to what Rolan had to say.

  :Nikolas was always serving two masters—his task as King’s Spy and his task as King’s Own. I have you all to myself, and I rather like that.:

  She opened her eyes to the darkness of the room and blinked a little. That was . . . a surprise. She’d expected Rolan to prefer her father over her.

  :I don’t prefer either of you as people. You are both wonderful, and I am pleased to have bonded with both of you. I do prefer not having my Herald juggle two jobs. I do prefer not being in a situation where I am forced to sit idly while my Herald puts himself in danger without me near enough to quickly come to the rescue. Yesterday was just the latest of those, and it very nearly ended horribly.: His Mindvoice turned soothing. :I have every confidence in you, Chosen. If I didn’t, I would never have Chosen you myself.:

  She set her chin stubbornly. :But I don’t know anything about being King’s Own!:

  There was a distinct sense of a snort. :Of course you do. Now you’re just being stubborn, and I am not going to sit here and tell you what you already know, when you know you know it, and I know you know it, and you know that I know you know it.:

  Now that made her smile a little. Rolan continued. :And you might think about this, while you are thinking. In what other capacity would you and Mags be able to stay in Haven most of the time?:

  She bit her lip. She hadn’t thought of that. If she had been Chosen in the usual way . . .

  :Even the Heralds serving in the City Courts get rotated out into the Field unless they are handicapped in some way. You’re very fortunate. Mags may get sent out of Haven from time to time, but it will not be often and never be for long. He’ll take over Nikolas’ network of Kingdom-wide agents, and add to it himself, and he will rely on them for anything outside of Haven for the most part. That only makes sense. A spy is only as effective as the extent to which he fits in where he is at, and is both able to penetrate suspect’s lives, and be invisible. That’s unlikely to happen when you are an outsider. Your father has spent years building and maintaining his different characters in Haven itself. Doing the same is just not possible if you are gallivanting all over the landscape, and that doesn’t even take into account the difficulties of a stranger coming into an insular community and trying to establish himself as an agent. It is much better to have operatives planted everywhere, and rely on them. And that is what Mags will do. You two will be able to spend the majority of your time together.: