Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  There was no finesse in this. Down the road, in at the gates of the Home Farms, riders clutching their weapons in grim silence, hooves pounding like thunder—so loud they couldn’t hear the fighting ahead of them—

  —so loud that the ambushers surely thought it was thunder—

  And they didn’t even pause as they sighted their target. Just as the team had been taught, just as they had practiced for moons and moons, they crashed in among the milling ambushers, exactly as if it was a Hurlee skirmish. They broke into the mob around Selenay, and their sticks went to work.

  In that first and last glimpse, Alberich got the sudden, heart-sinking realization that there were more of them than he had thought there would be, or than he had Seen. A lot more. The odds were roughly two-to-one, in fact.

  Hard on the heels of that realization was another—he hadn’t heard about this down in the rough parts of Haven because the Prince hadn’t needed to recruit anyone for this plan. He’d brought them with him, in the guise of servants, of hangers-on, of sycophants.

  And last of all—even as he raised his stick and Kantor ran straight into the horse of one of these pseudo-servants, he looked up and saw Selenay lose her sword—

  —to Norris. Norris, who had regarded women as mere objects of convenience, and would no more hesitate to kill her than he would hesitate to kill a fly.

  There was a bulwark of fighters three deep between him and her. There was no way he could fight his way to her in time.

  And that was when he saw the incredible, the miraculous, the totally insane.

  Eloran, coming in at full gallop from the side, where there was no one in the way; crashing into Norris’ horse.

  Just as Mical rose in his stirrups, pushed off, and with the momentum of Eloran’s charge behind him, flung himself out of his saddle at Norris. Somehow he wrapped his arms around the actor when he hit, pinning Norris’ sword to his side as they tumbled out of the saddle to the ground. Somehow he managed to stay uppermost. They went over the side of the horse and out of sight.

  Selenay took advantage of the moment of confusion that followed to get Caryo a little farther into the open, where the Companion’s hooves came into play. That cleared a little more space for her to fight, and as Alberich’s stick connected with the man in front of him, Kantor shoved through to her side.

  “Here!” he shouted, and tossed his sword, hilt-first, at her.

  “Here! Alberich!” he heard from somewhere below, and as Kantor pirouetted on his hindlegs, Mical thrust a sword up at him from the ground, hilt first, doing so left-handed, holding his right tight to his belly. Norris wasn’t moving, so the blade was presumably the actor’s. Alberich snatched it, and Mical scrambled out of the way. Eloran rammed his way in beside his Chosen, and, even one-handed, Mical was able to haul himself back up into the saddle.

  From the way he was holding that arm, however, he wasn’t going to be a further factor in the fighting.

  Then it all stopped having anything to do with thought, as the mob closed in around them again, and he and Selenay fought side-by-side against the tightening circle. Kantor kept himself interposed as much as he could between the fighters and Caryo. He was armored; Caryo was not.

  Norris’ sword wasn’t much better than a Hurlee stick, but at least it had a pointed end and not a blunt one.

  And that was just about all that Alberich had time to think about.

  Then, for what seemed like forever, it was all shouting, blow and counterblow, screams and blood and last-minute parries, and far too many people trying to kill his Queen.

  Until suddenly the fighting melted away from in front of him, and those who were not on the ground groaning (or dead) were in full retreat, as the reinforcements came pounding up on their Companions with swords in their hands and rage on their faces.

  And it was at that moment that he looked down and realized that the last man he had bludgeoned to death with that pathetic excuse for a sword was the Prince.

  He had not even known who it was he was fighting.

  ***

  Mical had a broken wrist; there were some slices and cuts to the others, but his was probably the most serious injury. Alberich could have wept with relief; his gamble of putting them into armor had worked, for the Prince’s ambushers had foolishly worn none at all.

  Mical had done the impossible, and Norris’ phenomenal luck had run out just before the Prince’s had, for when Mical had hit him and taken him down to the ground, he had not been able to compensate for his attacker’s weight. All of his agility and training had, after all, counted for naught. He’d broken his neck as they hit the ground together.

  Alberich limped over to where Crathach was tending to the boy, who looked up at him, too weary and full of pain to care about much of anything. “That, one of your fool play-acting moves was,” Alberich growled. “Yes?”

  The boy nodded.

  “And practiced it, you have been?”

  Mical hesitated. “Um. Sort of. With a straw-man. Eloran and I didn’t think it was really going to work, so we’d kind of given up on it, but when we came up on the ambush and saw Norris with Selenay. . . .” He shrugged and hissed with pain. “I knew I couldn’t fight him; it’s not just stage-fighting he knows and he’s better than me. The important thing was to immobilize him long enough for you to get to her.”

  He would have said more, but Alberich held up his hand. “Enough. Good reasoning. Right action. Never do it again. Your neck broken, it could have been, not his.”

  Mical turned a bit green, and not from the pain. Alberich didn’t blame him. This was his first kill, and it had literally been with his bare hands; not an easy thing for a boy of fifteen to cope with. Alberich turned on his heel and left him with Crathach, who was better suited to helping him deal with the emotional ramifications than the Weaponsmaster himself was. Alberich went to find the rest of his team, make sure they were all right, and if not, see that they were under someone’s wing before he went looking for the Queen.

  He found Harrow last of all; the boy was staring down at one of the ambushers’ bodies, running his hands reflexively up and down the Hurlee stick. Just as Alberich came up to him, he looked at his hands and realized what he was doing. With an expression of repulsion, he threw the thing away.

  “I am never playing again!” he said to Alberich, who nodded, understanding all that the youngster could not put into words. That it wasn’t a game anymore; that it would be forever tainted for him. That he could never even think of Hurlee without knowing that he had killed at least one man with his stick.

  “Go to see Crathach,” was all he said, and then made sure that he did so.

  :Why do I think that Hurlee is now going to fade away into the mists that hold all old fads?: Kantor asked, rhetorically.

  :Oh, someone might revive it again, when this lot has gone on into Whites. Not until then. And that’s not a bad thing; it won’t be such an obsession when it comes around for the second time.: He, personally, wouldn’t be sorry to see it go. The business of the Collegia was learning, after all, not gamesmanship. And there were other ways to teach teamwork.

  Selenay was sitting a little way away, under a tree; when Alberich came up to her, Talamir was speaking earnestly to her in a low voice. Alberich caught the name “Norris” and the word “script” before they both looked up at him.

  She had been crying quietly, and she rubbed the tears from her face with the back of her hand. “So it was an act from beginning to end,” she said bitterly. “Every bit of it.”

  “Tailored precisely to you, Majesty,” Alberich agreed, since she seemed to be waiting for a reply. “Sorry, I am.”

  “I don’t want your pity!” she snapped, then wilted. “Damn. I apologize. It’s not your fault. And I probably wouldn’t have listened to you before—” The tears started again; she seemed unaware of them. “It’s not fair. I’m glad you killed him.”

  “Majesty, I am not,” Alberich replied, and she looked up at him, startled. “In death,
he has escaped the consequences of his actions. And left you to deal with them. I am not glad. And what His Majesty of Rethwellan will say and do, I know not.”

  “Leave that to me,” Talamir said instantly. “Although, given not only what Karath claimed but what my agents have verified for me, there was definitely no love lost between the King of Rethwellan and his brother.” He brooded a moment. “No. No love lost at all. He seems to have been—more welcome in his absence than his presence, and it was not by his doing that he was not told of his own father’s death until it was long past the moment when he could have been recalled for the funeral.”

  Alberich nodded; that wasn’t much of a surprise. “So, King Faramentha, not so displeased to hear of this will be?”

  Talamir shrugged. “I believe that if we are discreet, or as discreet as we may be, having roused all of Haven, this will probably be no more than a matter of some delicate maneuvering. In fact, I suspect it will be of more import that it is clear that we do not hold His Majesty responsible for his brother’s actions than that we—were forced to eliminate a Prince of Rethwellan.”

  Alberich caught a little movement from the corner of his eye. Selenay was staring at him. “And when I think of what you’ve been doing so quietly all this time, Alberich—and to think that at one point I thought you were just jealous because he was as good a swordsman as you and that was why you weren’t up at the Palace anymore—you’re—”

  She was about to say it. He cut her off.

  “Selenay, no hero am I,” he told her firmly but gently. “For heroes, look to young Mical, who I think was certain he would be killed when the actor he attacked. Or Myste, who is no great dissembler, and could not have herself defended, had Norris discovered her intent.”

  “If you are no hero, then what are you?” she demanded.

  He managed a smile—the first genuine smile he had felt on his face since she’d married. “Your Weaponsmaster. Your Herald.” And he held out his hand. “I hope, your friend and brother. Nothing more.”

  She took it, and looked long and hard at him, and he knew then that at one point she herself must have had something of a crush on him, now long past—but that she was afraid that he might now be the one with secret feelings for her.

  It wouldn’t have been the first time such a thing had happened. He was just as glad that the whole notion was so absurd. “I always wanted a brother, growing up,” she said aloud, and let go of his hand.

  “Good.” He smiled again. “Then if my advice you will take, you will make of Myste and Mical great heroes, and let your Shadow Herald stay where best he is suited.”

  “And I will second that,” Talamir agreed, and gave Alberich a look that the Weaponsmaster had no trouble interpreting. You can go now.

  :Hmph. We know when we aren’t welcome.:

  :Don’t be absurd,: he chided Kantor. :Do you really want her weeping and raging at us? Then do you want to be embroiled in the political maneuvering this is going to cause?:

  :Well—: Kantor admitted. :No.:

  :Good.: He scratched his head, encountered a patch of someone else’s dried blood in his hair, and grimaced. :I want a bath. Let’s go home.:

  ***

  “I may never forgive you,” Myste said, her head on his shoulder. It was the first time she’d been in his quarters since the rescue, and he was mortally glad to have her there.

  He would be even gladder to have her in his bed—but not quite yet. For now, it was enough to have her in his arms.

  “For telling Selenay to make you a hero?” he asked, amused, and shifted a little on the couch so that his position was a little more comfortable. “Someone has to be.”

  “But why me?” she demanded.

  “Because you earned it,” he replied, staring into the stained-glass face of Vkandis Sunlord. “Because people need heroes. But primarily because you are the least likely hero I can think of.”

  “Well, there I agree with you, but wouldn’t that—”

  “Hear me out,” he interrupted. “People need heroes, and Heralds are that. But Heralds aren’t very ordinary.”

  “Hmm.” She did think about it. “I see your point. Most of them are athletic, and even if they aren’t handsome, the Whites at least make them look distinguished.”

  “But you, my dear Chronicler, represent someone who is just like them, or like people they know. And you went and did something very dangerous, something that your Whites would not protect you from, something that not even your Companion could have protected you from.”

  “Hmm.” She pushed her lenses up on her nose. “I see your point. And Mical?”

  “Everyone likes to have heroes who are young, handsome, and a touch reckless.” He laughed. “It won’t spoil him. He knows if he gets too much above himself it’s back to the glassworks for another couple of moons.”

  She chuckled. “To think all this began over a broken mirror! Isn’t that supposed to mean bad luck?”

  “It was bad luck,” he pointed out. “For Norris and Karathanelan. Because if it hadn’t been for Norris, the mirror would never have gotten broken in the first place.”

  She fell silent then, leaving him alone with his thoughts. Comforting as it was to think that they had closed the circle, he knew that this was not in the least the case. Someone had been Karathanelan’s patron, and Norris’; someone who was high in Court circles and privy to some very personal information about Selenay. And they still didn’t know who that was.

  No, the game wasn’t over yet. And if or when that person was uncovered, there would, without a doubt, be more troubles on the way.

  But at least for a little while, there would be some breathing space. And in the end, that was all anyone, Herald or Queen or ordinary citizen, could ask for.

  “Now,” he breathed into her hair, “would you like to find out how a hero is rewarded?”

  Her response was everything he could have wished for—and he knew that for a few marks, at least, the world would be completely all right for both of them. It would not remain that way for long—

  —but it was enough that it remain that way for now.

  Take a Thief (2001)

  version 2.0 compared to original, reformatted, spell checked finished October 26, 2003

  1

  "GERRUP."

  Skif's dreams shattered, leaving him with vague fragments of being somewhere warm, cozy, and sweet-scented. A toe scientifically applied to Skif's rib cage with enough force to bounce him off the back wall of the under-stair cubby he called his own reinforced the otherwise incomprehensible order that he wake up. He woke, as ever, stiff, cold, and with a growling stomach.

  It was the beginning of another beautiful day at the Hollybush Tavern.

  An' good mornin' to you, too, bastard.

  He scrambled to his feet, keeping hunched over to avoid hitting his head on the staircase, his ratty scrap of a blanket clutched in both hands. His uncle's eldest son looked him up and down, and grunted—probably disappointed that Skif was awake enough that a "pick-me-up" cuff to the side of the head wasn't going to be necessary this time.

  Skif squinted; Kalchan was a monolithic silhouette against the smoky light from the open kitchen door, narrower at the top and swiftly widening where shoulders would be on an ordinary human, his only distinguishing characteristics from neck to knee being a pair of pillowlike arms and the fat bulging in rolls over his waistband. Skif couldn't see his face, which was fine as far as he was concerned. Kalchan's face was nothing he cared to examine closely under any circumstances.

  "Breffuss," Kalchan grunted, jerking his head over his shoulder so that his greasy locks swung in front of his face. Skif ducked his head and quickly folded his blanket, dropping it on the pad of rags over straw that served him as a pallet. He didn't need to dress; in the winter he slept in every stitch of clothing he owned. Satisfied that Skif was on duty, Kalchan went on to awaken the rest of the tavern staff.

  Yah, an' do not a hand's worth of work, neither.

&nb
sp; "Breakfast," was what Kalchan had said, but he hadn't meant that it was time for Skif to partake of that meal.

  As soon as he was out of the way, Skif scuttled out into the kitchen and began the tedious business of lighting the fires, hindered by the fact that his uncle's penny-pinching ways were reflected in every aspect of his purchases. For firewood, he relied on the rag-and-bone men who swept out fireplaces and ovens in more prosperous households, sifting out the ashes for sale to the tanners and soap makers, and selling the clinkers and partially-burned ends of logs to people like Londer Galko, keeper of the Hollybush Tavern. Nor would Uncle Londer actually buy a decent firestarter, much less keep a candle or banked coals going overnight; Skif had to make do with a piece of flint and one of some other rock. The fact that at least half of this "firewood" had been doused with water—which was, in fact, the law—before the ragmen picked it up didn't make it any easier to light.

  Before he could do anything about a fire, Skif went to the pile of sweepings from the floor of the common room that he'd collected last night after the last drunken lout had been rolled out the door. Every bit of dust and fluff that looked as if it might possibly catch fire became his tinder. At worst case, he'd have to sacrifice a precious bit of the straw stuffed into his boots for warmth.

  Heh. Sommun' been trackin' in straw. Hayseed from country, prolly. Oh, ayah—here be nice dust bunny, too.

  Swearing under his breath, Skif hacked his two bits of rock together, trying to generate sparks, hoping one of them would land in the tiny patch of lint and fluff. When one finally did, and finally cooperated with his efforts, he coaxed it into a tiny flame, then got the flame to take hold of the driest of the wood. He nursed it tenderly, sheltering it from the drafts along the floor, begging it to take. Finally, he set it on the sooty hearth, surrounded it with what was left of the dry wood from last night, and slowly fed it until it was large enough to actually cook over.