Changes

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Staples?” Bear wasn’t the only one that looked puzzled, but this time it was a first-year Bardic student who suddenly popped his head up.

  “Like a jeweler!” the boy exclaimed. He scrabbled in his belt pouch for a writing stick and began to sketch on the tabletop. “My cousin’s a jeweler. Sometimes you have to join stone or metal together, and you don’t dare put heat to it. So this is what you do. You drill a hole. You cement in one end of your wire. You bend that like so, and so, make it flat to the surface, you drill another hole, and you cement the other end of the wire in, make sure it’s flat to the surface, and you can even burnish it into place, like inlay—”

  Nods all around the table. “Oh, and you know what else I would do, once you have your staples in place all around the bone?” said Pip. “I’d get pliver-suede and fish-skin glue and sinew—”

  “Or maybe horsehair, or gut, or harpstring wire—” put in one of the Bardic students.

  “Aye, any of those. And I’d glue the pliver down, all the way around the break, then I’d glue the string and wrap the break. Just like fitting an arrowhead to the shaft. That’ll hold the staples in place, the staples will hold the bone from shifting and the pins and the glue will keep the pieces from falling apart.”

  “I think that’ll work,” Bear said slowly, then grinned. “I think that’ll work!”

  “Might want to make two, and call on one of those fellows that makes the fancy colored-glass windows.” It was Lord Wess, who had popped over from the Palace to have the noon meal with the team as he often did. “He might be able to do something with that copper foil and lead they use. Try that on the second model instead of the glue and leather and sinew.”

  “No reason why not,” Bear agreed. “Then, if we can get one that’ll hold through being used to make a mold from, we can make as many plaster copies as we like!” He looked around at the small mob that had gathered. “You’re terrific!” he burst out, beaming like the sun. “You’re all terrific!”

  Mags smiled quietly to himself. ’Tis all askin’ th’ right questions. Then makin’ sure when ye ask ’em, there’s plenty of people about.

  ::These are people used to thinking, Mags. You need people who are used to thinking. Otherwise you might as well go down to the kennel and ask the dogs, you’ll get about as much help.::

  ::Eh, I ’spose thet’s true.:: Only partly true though. He reckoned you could get about anybody to think if you just coaxed at them long enough.

  He finished his lunch quietly as the chattering died down. Someone brought some paper so the one lad could copy his rough drawings of stapling onto something more portable than the top of the table, and Bear could put everything else into coherent notes, and things generally got back to normal. “So,” he said, once Bear had tucked his precious notes into one of his books. “Now, ’bout Lena.”

  Bear sighed and shook his head. “What about her? Mags, I—I don’t know what to tell her, really. And she cries, and I feel like breaking something because I don’t have anything good to say, or anything at all really, and—”

  Bollocks. Ev’body knows how they feels ’bout each other but them.

  “Whoa-up,” Mags stopped him. “Goin’ at this all wrong, like. Ye oughter ask yersel’—what the hell is goin’ on here? This’s Marchand we’re lookin’ at. If th’ attention ain’t on ’im, ’e finds th’ center of attention an’ sits on’t. If there’s a more self-centered feller i’ th’ whole damn Kingdom, I never heerd of ’im. So now ’e goes and picks up this raggedy tad-bit what’s got a lot of what makes a Bard an’ brings ’im ’ere, an’ why? Goodness uv ’is heart?”

  Bear stared at him. “Put that way—”

  “There’s somethin’ in’t fer Marchand,” Mags said firmly. “I know it. I jest don’ know what ’tis. All I know is, gotta be somethin’ ’e can’t git from Lena, so—” he made a dust-off motion with his hands. “ ’E knows ’ow she feels. Ain’t like ’e’s gonna lose ’er no matter ‘ow ’e treats ’er. So ’e gits whut ’e wants from this pet, an’ then Lena gets a crumb or so when ’e reckons ’e wants somethin’ from ’er.”

  Bear looked at him in mingled admiration and despair. “You’re right. That feels right, it matches the man perfectly. But I can’t tell Lena that!”

  Mags tilted his head to the side. “So? I thin’ I know what yer thinkin’. Sure, tell ’er, she likely won’t b’lieve it. So what’ll make ’er believe?”

  “I don’t know,” Bear said slowly. “But I can think about it.”

  “Good.” Mags smiled. “An’ i’ th’meantime, ’stead uv tryin’ t’ think uv some daft thing t’say, which you ain’t good at, ye know, jest tell ’er—no, show ’er, thet she’s as good a Bard as anybody else up ’ere, an’ then get all stern wi’ ’er and tell ’er that it ain’t ’er pa she needs t’please, it’s ’er teachers. ’Er pa ain’t gonna grade ’er—they wouldn’ let ’im, even if ’e’d teach, which ’e’s too bone-lazy t’do.”

  “Amen to that,” Bear sighed, then managed one of his old grins. “All right then, I’ll take all this to the Dean. He’s made it clear that once I find solutions to things, he’ll see to it that they’re implemented. He told me he wasn’t going to give me an excuse to skip class and go larking about Palace, Collegia, and Haven.”

  “As if ye would!” Mags laughed.

  Bear reddened a little. “Well . . .” he admitted. “Maybe a little . . .”

  Mags smacked him in the shoulder and left him to finish his meal. He headed for the kitchen. If Lena hadn’t eaten, and he was pretty sure she hadn’t, bringing her a basket was a good excuse to work his wiles on her.

  Mags did not go to Lena’s room himself; for a start, that would have been improper, and for another, he wanted a little bit of backing before he tackled his friend. So, counting on the fact that she encouraged people to come to her, he presented himself with not one, but two baskets of nuncheon at the door of the office of Master Bard Lita Darvalis, Dean of Bardic Collegium and head of the Bardic Circle. The door, as he had been told was usual, was open. The Dean liked her students and teachers to know that she would ever shut them out or refuse to see anyone, regardless of rank and status. Lita was oblivious to the quiet cacophony of her Collegium—people practicing anything and everything in their rooms, in the practice rooms, with their teachers, alone or in groups,voices lecturing in classes, people just talking. A lot. Bards seemed to do that.

  The very air of Bardic hummed. He had the slightly confused impression that if all the people were suddenly snatched away, Bardic Collegium would still murmur quietly to itself, like a bell that hums on and on after it has been struck.

  He tapped politely on the doorpost, and the Dean looked up. Her brows creased. “Mags?” she said. “What brings you here? Shouldn’t you be—”

  “Got a candlemark,” he assured her. “I brung ye nuncheon, Dean Lita.” He held up a basket with a sprig of rosemary tucked under the lid. “Cook put in whut was on offer ’e knowed was yer favorites.”

  “Knew,” she corrected automatically. “And brought. Thank you Mags . . . now what’s your real reason for being here?”

  Lita did not look all that imposing sitting behind her cluttered desk, with an open window framing tree branches behind her. She just looked like an ordinary middle-aged woman, handsome rather than beautiful, dark-eyed, with dark, graying hair. Her Bardic Scarlet outfit was no uniform—unlike the Heralds and Healers, the only thing “uniform” about what Bards wore was the color—and it was not particularly fancy. She generally favored a split skirt, a belted tunic and shirt tailored like those that the Heralds wore, and at the moment, both were made of very lightweight, breezy material, so she looked just a bit gypsylike. There were ink stains on her writing hand, and the only sign that she was the Head of the Bardic Circle was the Seal of her office in the form of a ring on that hand.

  But Mags had seen her perform, and he knew that the moment she put her hand to the strings of one of her favored instruments, you would for
get everything about her, and be caught up completely in whatever story she was telling you. Afterward, if someone were to ask you what she looked like, you would probably use words like “goddess,” and “regal” and “queenly.”

  Mags chuckled, not taking offense in the least, and put the Dean’s basket on the least cluttered corner of her desk. “Lena,” he said, simply.

  The Dean rolled her eyes. “That girl . . . how Marchand threw such a child, I will never know. He lives to please himself, she lives to please everyone but. On the other hand, I could wish all my students gave me the sorts of problems she does. I tell you, it is far from comfortable presiding over a Collegium where by rights we should count double enrollment.”

  Mags had been about to say something about Lena, but the comment caught him off guard. “Ah, what, ma’am? Double enrollment?”

  “My Trainees and their egos,” she said, making a face. “All right, what can I do to help you?”

  “Twa thin’s,” he said. “Fust one, git some’un t’drag ’er outa ’er room so’s I kin feed ’er and talk to ’er.”

  Lena nodded. “And?”

  “Second one, I dunno whut ’tis, but ye gotta hev some way uv showin’ ’er ye figger she’s as good nor better’n Marchand’s new pet,” he pointed out. “Ye know Lena. Ye know thet boy is gonna make ’er feel like ’er pa’s wrote ’er off as a failure. Tellin’ ’er ain’t gonna talk to ’er gut. Ye gotta show ’er.”

  “Oh, bother,” the Dean said, torn between exasperation and amusement. “You would say something like that. I’m a Bard, young man, we’re all about words, not deeds.”

  He dared to raise an eyebrow at her.

  She raised one right back at him, trading him look for look.

  “I can keep this up all day, you know,” she said conversationally. “I am the past mistress of the admonishing brow. You cannot hope to beat me. Besides, I agree with you. But I am not going to coax and cosset her. That was all very well when she first came here and was terrified, lonely, and shy. She’s older now, and I am not going to allow her to fall into the trap of being weak and bleating like a little lost lamb because she wants attention. It’s not attractive, it’s not appropriate, and it’s not Bardic.”

  “Yes’m,” he said obediently, resuming his normal expression.

  “Unnatural child,” she complained. “You have the looks of someone barely old enough to be admitted and the mind of an old man. A conniving, calculating, scheming, plotting old man.”

  “Yes’m,” he admitted. “Schemin’ kept me breathin’ i’ the’ mine.”

  She made a wry face. “I imagine it did. All right, I’ll tuck your second demand in the back of my poor overworked, enfeebled brain and let it simmer. Perchance the Goddess or the Angel of Music will take pity on me and stick an answer in there for me, before my mind melts of the heat. And I’ll summon a Lena-extractor now—no, wait. I’ll get her myself. I haven’t been out of this chair in candlemarks. You wait here.”

  Suiting actions to words, the Dean got up and left him standing there, basket handle in his hands. The Dean’s office was on the same floor and corridor as the rooms for the female Bardic Trainees—for reasons that would have been obvious to anyone with the least knowledge of restless young men and women, all of them very far away from the parental eye. In no time at all, she was back, with Lena in tow.

  He was relieved to see that Lena didn’t look too bad. She’d been getting some sleep, since her eyes weren’t red or dark-circled. She did have that slightly distracted air she usually had when she’d been working too hard, though.

  “There, now. You see? Even the wretched Cook is worried enough about you missing meals he sent one of your friends over with a basket. You should be ashamed of yourself, Lena,” the Dean scolded, gesturing at Mags as they came in. “What is the very first thing we tell you youngsters when you get here? Hmm?”

  “Your body is your instrument,” she said without thinking.

  “And what would I do if you neglected your instrument, let it get shamefully out of tune, didn’t keep the wood oiled and polished, allowed the strings to break?” the Dean asked sharply, with a fearsome frown on her face.

  Mags stilled his feelings of alarm. The Dean was acting as she had said she would, and he couldn’t fault her. She had been teaching Bardic Students for a very long time indeed. He had to believe she knew how to handle someone like Lena.

  He waited for Dallen to say something, but Dallen remained silent. So . . . he hazarded that this meant Dallen agreed with the Bard.

  “Take it away from me until I deserved it again,” Lena whispered, her head hanging.

  “Well, I can’t exactly take your body, can I?” The Dean sniffed. “But I can take you out of that room and tell you that if you don’t stop driving yourself into the ground, I am going to suspend you from all classes and assign you to the stables for a moon. No music. Plain ordinary labor. Nothing that would harm your hands, of course, but other than that, subject to the orders of the Stablemaster.”

  Lena looked up sharply, her mouth agape with shock. “You’d—what?” A faint flush of outrage passed over her pretty face. Mags felt encouraged to see it. The Bard might be right. It might be that what Lena needed to make her stronger was a bit of opposition, not support.

  The Dean crossed her arms over her chest. “I am responsible for you, for your health, for your well-being. If you refuse to take care of yourself, I will give you no choice in the matter. A month of good healthy work carrying water and feed and shoveling manure should undo all the nasty things you’ve been doing to yourself. When you see your meals, you’ll devour them because work made you hungry. And you’ll be so tired at the end of the day that you’ll fall asleep whether you want to or not. It’s not as if you have anything to fear in your studies; you’re so far ahead now that you’ll probably get your Scarlets a year early, if not sooner than that.” The Dean shifted her weight to one foot and raised an eyebrow so eloquently that Mags was ashamed of his own effort earlier. “So. What is it going to be? Start acting like a perfectly normal girl, study and create, yes, but also eat and play and sleep? Or am I going to have to put you to stable duty?”

  Lena stared at her, eyes wide and shocked, and finally remembered to close her mouth. But what had startled her was not the parts about stable duty. “Get—get my Scarlets—a year early?” she stammered.

  The Dean threw up her hands. “What, am I speaking Karsite now? Didn’t I just say that? Haven’t your teachers been implying as much? Yes. Or sooner than that. You don’t have to worry about falling behind. You’re making the rest feel rather badly, actually, which is scarcely fair. That poor little brat Marchand brought in is terrified of living up to your standard. He’s sure that if he dares say a word to you, you’ll somehow magically and instantly see him for a fraud and have him thrown out.”

  “I—what?” Lena’s jaw dropped again.

  “I must be speaking Karsite,” the Dean muttered, loudly enough that both of them could hear her quite clearly. “No one understands a word I say today. Lena, there is only one thing in which you are not so very far ahead of your yearmates that they would resent you if you were not a pleasant and friendly person. You need to work on performing in front of large audiences alone. And to be absolutely honest, I’ve put people into Scarlets that never mastered that. There are plenty of Bards out there who won’t play for more than a dozen people at a time.”

  “There are?” Lena said, dazed.

  “There are—however, do not take that as permission to slack. I want to see you trying, and trying hard, to overcome your stage fright. And since you are so far ahead, believe me, much more will be required of you than your yearmates. But for now, I want to see you learning how to be a person. You can’t create if you don’t have experience.” She none-too-gently turned both Mags and Lena around and shoved them at the door. “You. Two,” she said, enunciating with exquisite precision. “Out. Eat. Play. Do not come back before your next class. Or I shall visit
great wrath upon you.”

  Lena still seemed stunned, so Mags grabbed her elbow and towed her out of the office.

  From there it was a short trip down the stairs and out the door. The coolest place he could think of to have their impromptu picnic was a kind of cave-grotto down by the river. Most of the time it was entirely too damp to be pleasant, but he was pretty certain it would be nice today. And he didn’t particularly care if someone else was there, either.

  Which was just as well, because there was: a couple of young highborn fellows from the Palace, one in brown linen with all the edges piped in red, and one in a dull green of much better quality than the first. They were engaged in a spirited game of hares-and-hounds, laid out on one of the little stone tables this place held. They looked up when the two Trainees came in, waved in a lazy fashion, pointed at the other side of the grotto, and went back to their game.

  The cool in here was a fabulous relief from the heat outside. There was just a bit of a damp smell, but with an overtone of green that made Mags think it came up from the river. Moss thickly carpeted the floor, the artifical “cave wall” of the grotto was cold to the touch, as were the stone benches on either side of the three little stone tables. Mags set the basket down and took a seat as Lena did the same.

  By this point Lena was mostly over her shock. She won’t b’lieve it, a-course, not e’en when ’twas th’ Dean hersel’ what tol’ ’er she was thet good. Not once she starts t’thinkin’ bout it. Which would be where Bear would come in. Once Bear started showing her what the Dean had just told her, Lena just might, slowly, start to accept that it was nothing about her that made her father treat her like something he’d scraped off his boot. No, it was all about Bard Marchand and what Bard Marchand wanted.