Heralds of Valdemar (A Valdemar Omnibus)

by Lackey, Mercedes

  “Do you like it?” she asked, trying to elicit some response from the child.

  Talia was overwhelmed. She’d slept all her life in a bed shared with two of her sisters in the barracks-like attic of the Housestead. This room—now all her own!—seemed incredibly luxurious in comparison. Sherrill seemed to understand, and let her contemplate this wealth of privacy for a long moment.

  “Oh, yes!” she replied at last. “It’s—wonderful!”

  It was more than wonderful; it was a long-wished-for haven, a place she could retreat to where no one else could go. Talia hadn’t missed the fact that there was a bolt on the inside of the door. If she wanted to, she could lock the whole world out.

  “Good! Now we go see the Housekeeper,” Sherrill said, interrupting Talia’s reverie before she had a chance to really get used to the idea of having her own room. “She’ll get your supplies and put you down on the duty roster.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A question at last! I was beginning to wonder what had happened to your tongue!” Sherrill teased gently, and Talia flushed a little. “It’s the tradition of the three Collegia that everyone share the work, so there are no servants anywhere around here. In fact, the only people in the Collegia that aren’t students and teachers are the Cook and the Housekeeper. We all take turns doing something every day. The chores never take that long to do, and it really drives home to the ‘gently-born’ that we’re all equals here. If you’re sick, you’re excused, of course. I suspect they’d even have us doing all the cooking if they weren’t sure that we’d probably poison each other by accident!”

  Sherrill chuckled; Talia laughed hesitantly, then offered, “I can cook. Some.”

  “Good. Make sure to tell Housekeeper. She’ll probably put you down as Cook’s helper most of the time, since most of us don’t know one end of a chicken from the other.”

  She chuckled again as she recalled something. “There’s a Herald that just got his Whites a month or so ago, his name is Kris, who was one of the ‘gently-born’ and pretty well sheltered when he first came here. First time he was Cook’s helper, Cook gave him a chicken and told him to dress and stuff it. He hadn’t been the kind that does any hunting (scholarly, you know) so Cook had to tell him how to slit the chicken for cleaning. He did it, then looked inside and said ‘I don’t need to stuff it, it’s already full!’ He still hasn’t lived that one down!”

  By this time they’d descended the stairs past the landing on the first floor and had reached the bottom of the staircase. Sherrill knocked twice at the door there, then opened it and entered. Behind the door was a narrow, whitewashed room lit by a window up near the ceiling; Talia reckoned that the window must have been level with the ground outside. This room contained only a desk, behind which sat a matronly, middle-aged woman who smiled at them as they entered.

  “Here’s the new one, Housekeeper,” Sherrill said cheerfully.

  The woman measured Talia carefully by eye. “Just about a seven, I’d say. We don’t get many Chosen as small as you. Did you bring anything with you, dear?”

  Talia shook her head shyly, and Sherrill answered for her. “Just like me, Housekeeper Gaytha; the clothes she stood up in. You’re going to have to have a word with Queen Selenay about that—the Companions never give the Chosen any time to pack!”

  The Housekeeper smiled and shook her head, then left the room by a door in the wall behind her desk. She returned shortly with a pile of neatly-folded clothing and a lumpy bag.

  “Collegium rules are that you wash before every meal and have a hot bath every night,” she said, handing half the pile to Talia and half to Sherrill. “Dirty clothing goes down the laundry chute in the bathroom; Sherrill will show you where that is. You change the sheets on your bed once a week; you’ll get them with the rest of the girls, and the old ones go in the laundry. If you’ve been working with your Companion or at arms practice, change your clothing before you eat. There’s no shortage of soap and hot water here, and staying clean is very important. Heralds have to be trusted on sight, and who’d trust a slovenly Herald? You can get clean uniforms from me whenever you need them. I know this may not be what you’re used to—”

  “I had trouble with it,” Sherrill put in. “Where I come from you don’t wash in the winter since there’s no way to heat enough water, and you’d probably get pneumonia from the drafts. I never visit home in the winter anymore—my nose has gotten a lot more sensitive since I left!”

  Talia thought of Keldar’s thrice-daily inspections, and the cold-water scrubbing with a floor-brush that followed any discovery of a trace of dirt. “I think I’ll be all right,” she answered softly.

  “Good. Now as Sherrill has told you—or should have—you all have small chores to see to every day. What can you do?”

  “Anything,” Talia replied promptly.

  The Housekeeper looked skeptical. “Forgive me, my dear, but that doesn’t seem very likely for someone your age.”

  “She’s older than she looks,” Sherrill said. “Thirteen.”

  Talia nodded. “They were going to make me get married, so I ran away. That’s when Rolan found me. Keldar said I was ready.”

  The Housekeeper was plainly shocked. “Married? At thirteen?”

  “It’s pretty common to marry that young on the Borders,” Sherrill replied. “They don’t wait much longer than that back home. Borderers treat themselves and their children just like they do their stock; breed ’em early and often to get the maximum number of useful offspring. There’s no one true way, Housekeeper. Life is hard on the Border; if Borderers were to hold by inKingdom custom, they’d never be able to hold their lands.”

  “It still seems—barbaric,” the Housekeeper said with faint distaste.

  “It may well be—but they have to survive. And this kind of upbringing is what produced us a Herald that has a chance of turning the Brat back into a proper Heir. You’ll take notice that Rolan didn’t pick any of us.” Sherrill smiled down at Talia, who was trying not to show her discomfort. “Sorry about talking about you as if you weren’t there. Don’t let us bother you, little friend. Not all of us have had the benefits of what Housekeeper calls a ‘civilized upbringing.’ Remember what I told you about not washing in winter? Housekeeper had to hold me down in a tub of hot water and scrub me near raw when I first got here—I was a real little barbarian!”

  Talia couldn’t imagine the immaculate and self-assured Sherrill being held down and scrubbed by anyone—still less could she imagine Sherrill needing that kind of treatment.

  “Talia, can you cook or sew? Anything of that nature?”

  “I can cook, if it’s plain stuff,” Talia said doubtfully. “Only the Wives did feasts; they were too important to be left to us. My embroidery isn’t any good at all, but I can mend and sew clothing and knit. And weave and spin. And I know how to clean just about anything.”

  The Housekeeper suppressed a chuckle at the exasperated tone of the last sentence. That tone convinced her that Talia probably was capable of what she claimed.

  “It’s so unusual that our students have as much experience in homely tasks as you do, that I think I’ll alternate you as cook’s helper and in the sewing room. There’s never any lack of tears and worn spots to be mended, and there’s generally a dearth of hands able to mend them. And Mero will be overjoyed to have me send someone capable of dealing with food for a change.” She handed Talia a sheet of paper after consulting one of the books on her desk and writing in it. “Here’s your schedule; come see me if it’s too hard to fit in among your classes and we’ll change it.”

  Sherrill led the way back up the stairs to Talia’s new room. Talia examined her new clothing with a great deal of interest. There were loose linen shirts, meant to be worn with thigh-length tunics of a heavier material, something like canvas in weight, but much softer, and long breeches or skirts of the same fabric. There were some heavier, woolen versions of the same garments, obviously meant for winter wear, a wool cloak, and
plenty of knitted hose, undergarments, and nightgowns.

  “You’ll have to make do with your own boots for a bit, until we have a chance to get you fitted properly,” Sherrill said apologetically, as she helped Talia put the clothing away. “That won’t be for another week at least. It’s too bad—but there’s nothing worse than badly fitted boots; they’re worse than none at all, and Keren will have your hide if you dare try riding without boots. Unless it’s bareback, of course.”

  They’d only just finished making up the bed when a bell sounded in the hall outside.

  “That’s the warning bell for supper,” Sherrill explained. “Get one of your uniforms, and we’ll go get cleaned up and you can change.”

  The bathing room was terribly crowded. Sherrill showed her where everything was located; the laundry chute, the supplies for moon-days, towels and soap—and despite the press of bodies managed to find both of them basins and enough hot water to give them at least a sketchy wash. Talia felt much more like herself with the grit of riding and the last trace of tears scrubbed away. Sherrill hurried her into her new clothing and off they went to the common room.

  Supper proved to be a noisy, cheerful affair. Everyone sat at long communal tables, students and adults alike, and helped themselves from the bowls and plates being brought from a kind of cupboard in the wall. It seemed much too small to have held all that Talia saw emerging from it; Sherrill saw her puzzled look and explained over the noise.

  “That’s a hoist from the kitchen; the kitchen is down in the basement where Housekeeper’s office and the storerooms are. And don’t feel too sorry for the servers. They get to eat before we do and Mero always saves them a treat!”

  Talia saw several figures in Herald’s White interspersed among the student gray.

  “The Heralds—are they all teachers?” she whispered to Sherrill.

  “Only about half of them. The rest—well, there’s Heralds just in from the field, a few retired from duty who choose to live here and don’t care to eat with the Court, and a couple of ex-students that have just gotten their Whites that haven’t been given their internship assignment yet. There’s also three Heralds on permanent assignment to the Palace; to the Queen—that’s Dean Elcarth; to the Lord Marshal—that’s Hedric, and we don’t see him much; and the Seneschal—that’s Kyril, and he teaches, sometimes. They almost always have to eat with the Court. There ordinarily would be a fourth, too, the Queen’s Own, but—” She stopped abruptly, glancing at Talia out of the corner of her eye.

  “How—what happened to him?” Talia asked in a small voice, sure that she wasn’t going to like the answer, but wanting badly to know anyway. The Queen had said—as had her tales—that being a Herald was dangerous, and there had been something about the way people had spoken about the former Queen’s Own that made her think that Talamir had probably encountered one of the dangers.

  “Nobody seems to be sure. It could have been an illness, but—” Sherrill was visibly torn between continuing and keeping quiet.

  “But? Sherrill, I need to know,” she said, staring entreatingly at her mentor.

  Her urgency impressed Sherrill, who decided it was better that she be warned. “Well, a lot of us suspect he was poisoned. He was old and frail, and it wouldn’t have taken much to kill him.” Sherrill was grim. “If that’s true, it didn’t gain the murderers anything. We think the reason he was eliminated was because he was about to convince Selenay to send the Brat out to fosterage with some family that wasn’t likely to give in to her tantrums. I guess you don’t know—the law is that the Heir also has to be a Herald; if the Brat isn’t Chosen by a Companion, the Queen will either have to marry again in the hope that another child will prove out or choose an Heir from those in the blood who are Chosen. Either way, there would be an awful lot of people maneuvering for power. Poor Selenay! Any of the rest of us could just choose a partner and go ahead and have as many children as needful, without bringing a possible consort and political repercussions into it—but there it is, she’s the Queen, and it has to be marriage or nothing. It’s not a nice situation.” Sherrill regarded the tiny, frail-seeming girl at her side with sober eyes. She was beginning to have a good idea why Elcarth wanted Talia weapons-trained so early.

  Talia thought Sherrill had a talent for understatement. Her revelations concerning the former Queen’s Own frightened Talia enough that the rest of her speech—which rather bore out the Holderkin assertions of the immorality of Heralds—passed almost without notice. “What about the—the people who poisoned Herald T-T-Talamir?” she stuttered a little from nervousness. “Would they—am I—would they try to—hurt me?” As she looked into Sherrill’s eyes, watching for the signs that would tell her if the older girl was speaking the truth, she could feel her hands trembling a little.

  Sherrill was a little surprised at Talia’s instant grasping of the situation—and hastened to reassure her. Those big brown eyes were widened with a fear even Sherrill could read. “They won’t dare try that particular trick again, not with the suspicions that have been raised. What they probably will try and do is to make life unpleasant enough for you that you give up and leave. That’s one reason why I warned you about the Blues. They might get orders from their parents to harass you. You should be safe enough with us, and I’m fairly sure you’ll be safe with the Bardic and Healer students, too.” Sherrill smiled down at Talia, who returned the smile, though a bit uncertainly. “Talia, if anyone bothers you and you think you can’t handle them, tell me. My friends and I have taken the scales off the Blues a time or two before this.”

  Maybe. Talia wanted to trust her—desperately wanted to fit in here, but even of her kin only two had ever proved willing to back her against others. Why should a stranger do so? She ate in silence for a while, then decided to change the subject. “How many students are there?”

  “About sixty in Healer’s, forty in Bardic, and with you, exactly fifty-three in Herald’s Collegium. The number of Blues varies; there’s never less than twenty, not often more than fifty. I couldn’t tell you the exact number right now, you’d have to ask Teren. He’s Elcarth’s assistant, and you’ll have him as your first instructor tomorrow.”

  “How long does it take to become a Herald?”

  “It varies; around five years. Usually we arrive here when we’re about your age, most of us get our Whites at eighteen; I’ll probably earn mine next year. I’ve seen younger Chosen, though, and Elcarth wasn’t Chosen till he was nearly twenty! And Havens! Elcarth made up for being Chosen so late by being made full Herald in three years! After you get your Whites, there’s a year or year and a half internship in the field, partnered by a senior Herald. After that, you’re usually assigned out on your own.”

  Talia thought about this for a while, then asked worriedly, “Sherrill, what—how do I learn what I need to do?”

  Talia was so earnest that Sherrill laughed sympathetically. “You’ll learn, don’t worry. You’ll have Orientation class first. We’ve had four more Chosen in the past month, and they were only waiting for Rolan to come back before starting it. For the rest—you’ll be placed in your classes according to where the Dean feels you fit in, which means you may be taking some classes with me, and some with beginners.”

  Talia smiled suddenly. “In other words, you throw the baby into the River and see if she learns to swim quickly!”

  Sherrill laughed again. “We aren’t quite that extreme! Are you finished?”

  Talia nodded, and they carried their implements to the hoist inside the cupboard. “I’ve got dishwashing tonight, so I’ll have to leave you on your own,” Sherrill continued. “Will you be all right alone, or would you like me to find someone to keep you company?”

  “I—I’ll be all right. I would like awfully to see the Library if you don’t think anyone would mind.”

  “Help yourself, that’s what it’s there for. Just remember not to wait too long before you take your bath, or all the hot water will be gone. I’ll come by for you in the morn
ing.”

  Sherrill clattered down the stairs and Talia climbed cautiously upward.

  * * *

  Sherrill was grateful that dishwashing took so little time, and equally grateful that Mero let her off early when she told him that the Dean needed to speak with her. Elcarth would not have given her the signal he had—in fact, he would have said what he intended to openly, in front of the child—had he not felt that there were things he needed to discuss with Sherrill that he would rather Talia were not privy to.

  As she had pretty much expected, Sherrill found him waiting for her in the cluttered little room attached to his suite that served him as an office of sorts. It was hardly bigger than a closet, and piled high with everything under the sun, but he would never move to anything more spacious, claiming the clutter would “breed” to fill the space if he did so.

  “Any problems getting away?” he asked, removing a pile of books and papers from one of the chairs, a comfortable, padded relic as old as Elcarth.

  “I had dishwashing—it made a convenient excuse. Right now Talia’s probably having raptures over the Library,” Sherrill replied with a half-smile, taking her seat as Elcarth perched himself behind a desk heaped with yet more books and papers.

  “Good; can I take it as given that you don’t mind being her mentor? She needs one rather badly, and you’re the only student with the kind of background that’s close to her own.”

  “Poor little thing—no, Dean, I don’t mind at all. Although I don’t think my background is all that close.” Sherrill frowned slightly, thinking about the little that Talia had allowed her to learn. “You know Evendim clans, we’re all noise and push, and we’re almost incestuously close. I got the feeling she’s been sat on so much that now she’s afraid of being punished for breathing—and I got the feeling nobody’s ever bothered to give the poor thing a little love. She holds everything inside; it’s hard to read her, and I don’t recall much about Holderkin from class.”