Exile's Valor v(-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Only papers,” Alberich countered. “And what would the purpose be, of the poorer actor paying the highborn, rather than the reverse?” He shook his head. “No. And I think not, the papers were directions to something stolen. Which leaves—information. Paid for by the highborn, gotten by the actor. So—why the exchange in the midst of the play?”

  “Because our highborn fellow does not want to be seen making clandestine visits to a mere player.” Talamir seemed very certain of that point. “Someone like that would never come up the hill or be allowed even in the gates of one of the manors. Let me tell you, there is nothing more certain about the Great Houses than access to them.”

  “Surely as an actor, easy would it be to feign to be the servant?” Alberich hazarded.

  Again Talamir shook his head. “Every servant in a Great House will either have worked for the family for generations, have come from the family’s country property, or have been personally vouched for by other servants. Every delivery person will be from a particular set of shops and will be known to the servants. Even the folk who come to take off the trash are personally known to the servants—what the highborn discard is picked over by dozens of lower servants before it gets to the bins outside, and then the right to cart off what is left is jealously guarded.”

  “Hmm.” Alberich blinked; he hadn’t known that. Well, so much for ever trying to insinuate himself into a Great House as a servant! “And the boy could not come to the actor in a more secret way?”

  “Hah.” Talamir raised an eyebrow. “Not where they are. And people take note when they see someone richly dressed hanging about a ’common’ venue. No matter how careful he was, someone would see him. Unless, of course, he was as practiced in deception as you are, which is highly unlikely.”

  “And the resources have, as well,” Alberich reminded the older Herald. “Without the Bell, my movements could not possible be.”

  Talamir’s lips formed into a thin line. “The question is, what information, why, and to whom is it going?”

  “And does the Crown have interest?” Alberich added. “It could be, we need do nothing about it. It could be, this is only to do with the rivalries among the titled.”

  Talamir looked thoughtful as Alberich put the empty tankard aside on a little table that stood between their chairs. “It could be, I suppose,” he admitted. “But it seems a great deal of trouble to go to simply to acquire information about a rival. And why the connection with a troupe of common players?” He shook his head. “No. I don’t like it. I scent something else here.”

  Alberich was willing to bow to his experience. “So, you think it is something surely to do with a larger issue? Still, it could signify only that someone has an interest, and is not hostile.”

  “Or not. The Karsites are not our only enemies.” Talamir looked pensive. “Or it could be agents of a putative ally, who wishes to learn more than we’ve told him. In which case—we need to establish if there is any harm in letting him continue to operate.”

  Alberich snorted at that. “Allies can cause as much harm as enemies, and are less suspected.”

  “Hmm. There are times, my suspicious friend, when I am glad that you are who and what you are,” Talamir replied after a long silence. “That had not occurred to me.”

  Alberich shrugged. “I am, what I am,” he replied. “In Karse, one keeps one’s friends close, and one’s enemies closer.”

  “And in Karse, suspicion is no bad thing.” Talamir pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes in a grimace. “Let us start with the obvious. You might as well add yourself to Selenay’s bodyguards tomorrow. The entire Court will be down at the Festival, and I’ve no doubt that your mysterious young man will be in the midst of the throng. You’ll have your best chance to spot him then, and I can identify him for you.”

  That was a shortened version of “You’ll show him to Kantor, who’ll pass the image to Rolan, who’ll show it to me, and I’ll put a name to him.” Alberich nodded.

  But he wasn’t happy. “Hoped I had, the crush to avoid,” he sighed. He still wasn’t comfortable rubbing elbows with the titled, even when he was playing so “invisible” a part as that of a bodyguard.

  “Well, you can’t,” Talamir retorted, with an unusual level of assertion. “I won’t be around forever, and it is well past the time when you began taking up the duty of spy within the Court as well as down in Haven.”

  If anything, that made Alberich even more uncomfortable—because no matter what he did, he couldn’t take Talamir’s place within the circles of the Court. For one thing, even if he’d been Valdemaran, he wouldn’t fit. For another, no one was ever likely to confide anything in him. He just didn’t have the face for it.

  But he held his peace. There were more ways of undoing a knot than splitting it with an ax. There were Heralds permanently assigned to the Collegium who might serve as his eyes and ears among the highborn, especially the women. Ylsa, perhaps. And there were Trainees coming up who were highborn themselves who might be trusted to play clandestine agent.

  “My best, I will ever do,” was all he said, and he and the Queen’s Own got down to the business of trying to find other ways for Alberich to set eyes on the young man in question again—just in case, against all probability, he did not show his face at the Festival.

  Because in Alberich’s experience, the thing that you planned for always turned out to be the one that was least likely to happen—and the one that you had never thought of was the one that landed in your lap.

  6

  Selenay’s day at “her” Festival dawned cloudless, bright, and bone-chillingly cold. Alberich and the others had planned on forgoing Formal Whites for the sake of warmth, but the ever-resourceful seamstresses had provided the entire escort with heavy woolen capes lined and trimmed with white fur, white fur mittens (fur inside and out), and heavy stockings trimmed at the top with fur, which would make the boots look as if they had been lined and trimmed with fur. As a result, they all looked smartly turned out and entirely festive.

  When they had all arrived to escort Selenay down to the river, one wag suggested that they ought to have their capes festooned with the same bridle bells as were on the Companions’ parade tack, a suggestion which had earned him a handful of snow down his back. After that, he kept his thoughts on costume to himself.

  They made quite a little parade, going through town. Fortunately, no one had thought it necessary to make a real procession out of it, though people were lining the streets, waving and cheering, the whole way.

  “I think your people love you, Your Highness,” said one of Lord Orthallen’s hangers-on, patently hoping to curry favor, for he still had his mouth open to continue with a compliment when Selenay laughed.

  “I think they love the Queen’s Bread they’re getting today, and the feast I’ve arranged for tonight,” she replied, and Alberich smothered a smile. For this, the final official day of the Festival (although people would probably stretch things out for as long as the ice held), she’d arranged for bread to be distributed in the morning until the supplies ran out, and meat, wine, and bread for the same time as the Court Feast this evening. If the fountains weren’t running with wine instead of water, it was because it was too cold; instead, there would be hot wine available in huge cauldrons along the bank, alongside fires where various beasts were roasting on spits, and more of the bread that had been baked well in advance, and stored cold. Although the notion of “whole roasted oxen” was a romantic one, for practicality’s sake, what was going to be offered was just about any beast that could be spitted and roasted and would provide enough meat to satisfy a portion of the crowd. There were quite a few sheep, for instance, and a great many pigs, domestic and wild.

  Selenay had been as generous as her purse would allow. If anyone had seen these creatures alive, he would have been well aware that they were all, well, not exactly prime. Most of them had come from the Royal Farms, and were past breeding or working age. Still, they’d been well te
nded all their lives, and if they were going to provide somewhat tough eating, well, as one old man once told Alberich, “Forbye, much chewin’ makes it last the longer, and tough be tasty.” Most of the people who would be swarming the fires didn’t taste meat more than a few times in a year, and it was almost never anything like beef or mutton.

  And as for those who could afford better, well, they could take their purses and go buy it.

  In fact, the fires were already being set up for the cauldrons, and the carcasses turning over their flames when they arrived at the river. It occurred to Alberich, as the scent of roasting meat filled the air, that the food merchants were not going to do badly out of this, after all. The meat wouldn’t be ready for hours, but people would be hungrier with the scent of it in their noses.

  For all that he disliked the crush, the sidelong glances, the discomfort of his position as Selenay’s shadow, Alberich could not begrudge the Queen a single moment of her day of relative freedom. All he had to do was to catch a glimpse of her face to know that she was enjoying herself for the first time in—well, in far too long. She was smiling a great deal, even laughing, and there was a glow on her that made her look more alive than she had in months.

  It didn’t take a MindHealer to know why either. This day at her Ice Festival was, perhaps, the only time she had spent since her father’s death that wasn’t shadowed with memories. Sendar had never presided over such an occasion; guided only by old Chronicles, her friends, and her own imagination, this was something that Selenay had created for herself. It had taken Alberich a little aback to see her smiling.

  With special nail-studded shoes to give traction on the ice (for the blacksmith had finally come up with something that worked as well as the ice cleats) the Queen, her escort of Heralds, and their Companions came down onto the rock-hard river just about a candlemark after dawn to view the ice sculptures. When a winner had been chosen and rewarded, she went on to watch the childrens’ races and present medallions, money, and skates to the winners. Alberich enjoyed that; the children were enthusiastic and excited without turning it into the cutthroat competition he’d seen watching the preliminary races of the adults. The losers were disappointed but consoled by the sweet cakes Selenay passed out to all the competitors, and the winners so bursting with joy that they could hardly contain themselves.

  By midmorning she was ready to taste the three finalists in the meat pie, the mulled ale, the spiced cider, and the hot and ice wine competitions. Then, fortified, she returned to the exhibition area for the fancy skating.

  By this time, Alberich was both cold and frustrated, for he hadn’t yet seen the young highborn fellow he’d been hoping to identify. When Selenay retired to the Royal Pavilion set up on the ice for a hot meal and a chance to catch her breath, he left her in the guard of Keren and Ylsa, and went prowling.

  Selenay never had her noon meal in the presence of her Court; by the time she had a chance for that respite, she was generally sick to death of most of them, and wanted nothing more than a little privacy to go along with her food. She wasn’t going to change that habit now, so Alberich had a good candlemark to roam about the Royal Enclosure to see what, if anything, could be seen.

  There wasn’t much. Just a few of the younger set who were already sport-mad, and some of the older ones who never missed a chance to hover in the presence of royalty, and had done so even in Sendar’s time. Alberich decided that he would have the best luck if he sidled in near the former and tried to eavesdrop on their conversation, so he got a skewer of basted meat from one of the cooks serving up food alfresco, and stood just behind a likely pair, slowly eating and staring off at nothing in particular, doing his best to be ignored.

  “. . . Jocastel may think he’s clever, taking the whole house for the day,” one of them sniffed, “but they shan’t see anything but the middle of the races.”

  “Well, none of them will, except for Redric. He took that warehouse.” The other nodded at a warehouse on the opposite bank, whose docks were festooned with greenery and a few pouting girls wrapped up to the eyes in expensive furs.

  “Oh, yes. Well, trust him. That entire set is gambling-mad. They’ll be there all day.”

  “And so will Jocastel’s, and I doubt that any of them will be watching even the middle of the races.” A knowing tone crept into the young man’s voice. “Redric may have snared most of the ladies, but Jocastel got the keys to his father’s wine cellar.”

  The first one snorted. “Idiots. The lot of them. You can guzzle wine anytime, but when is there likely to be another Ice Festival in our lifetimes? The last one was over fifty years ago, and every champion skater who could get here in time is going to be in the races today! Listen, the big races will begin as soon as the Queen comes back out—I’m for hunting down one of those broom-ball tournaments I’ve heard of. The Terilee might thaw, but the pond up at the old pile will hold for months yet, and I’ve a mind to get a bunch of the lads together and try the game out ourselves!”

  “Oh, now there’s a plan!” enthused the second, and both of them moved away, gesturing at each other.

  Well, that explained why there was no one here to speak of . . . a gambling party in a warehouse, a drinking party in a rented house, and that pretty much accounted for most of the youngsters of the Court.

  Alberich wandered over to the vicinity of a quintet of older men, who were glaring at the young ladies on the dock with disapproval and muttering at each other. “What are their fathers thinking?” grumbled one, just as Alberich got within earshot. “The idea! Going off to some rented hovel unescorted—”

  “Oh, it isn’t the daylight hours that I would be concerned about,” said another sourly. “But who’s to say what’s going to happen when the Feast is going on and some of them slip off, unsupervised?”

  Alberich eavesdropped shamelessly a little more, learning only that most of the “younger sets” weren’t even planning to come down to the Royal Enclosure until the sun set. The older courtiers would be trickling in during the late afternoon, but they weren’t the ones Alberich was concerned with.

  He returned the skewer to the care of the cooks, and drifted back to Selenay’s Royal Pavilion feeling heartily annoyed at humankind in general and that feckless lot of highborn in particular. Hang it all! Why couldn’t all those eager parents insist that the young men come down here to dance attendance on the young—and eligible—Queen? Why were they allowing their offspring to gamble and drink away the afternoon without even trying to steal moments of Selenay’s time? What were they thinking?

  :They’re probably thinking that if Selenay hasn’t indicated her interest in any of them by now, there’s no point in freezing their manhood off to try to impress her today,: Kantor observed dispassionately.

  :Hmph.: Alberich nodded to the Guards at the entrance, and pulled back the door flap, feeling entirely disgruntled. :Then there’s no damned point in my being here now.: The Royal Pavilion had been set up with a kind of antechamber to keep out the coldest air; he parted a second set of door flaps just inside the first.

  :Yes, there is. It will get everyone used to seeing you playing bodyguard, so that no one will think twice about it tonight,: Kantor retorted.

  It wasn’t much warmer inside, but at least there were carpets laid over the ice, and braziers of coals on sheets of slate atop them that provided little pockets of warmth. The light in here was a lot more restful than out on the frozen river, too; the pitiless sunlight glowed through the painted canvas rather like the light coming in through his precious colored window. And it was out of the wind.

  “Alberich!” Selenay called from amid a heap of furs and cushions piled on a high-backed settle that had been brought down from the Palace, her cheeks glowing, her eyes sparkling. “What’s to do between now and the Feast?”

  “More races,” he replied. “The really serious ones; all the champion skaters that could get here in time are going to be competing. Out there will be some intense rivalry; the prizes for the adult r
aces are considerable, and to claim one bragging rights will bestow for a decade.”

  “Really!” She looked entirely pleased. “How exciting! Have we referees along the course?”

  “Absolutely,” Keren replied, before Alberich could answer. “Not only is there the prospect that someone is likely to cheat, there’s the fact that if someone goes down, there might be a fight over it. He’ll probably claim he was fouled, and he might take a part of the field with him. We have this sort of thing every Midwinter where I’m from.”

  “And there is, I hear, much gambling over the outcome,” Alberich added. “So, more incentive there is, to cheat.”

  “And if someone’s accused of cheating?” Selenay looked from Keren to Alberich and back again. “What do I do? Whoever is accused will deny it, no doubt.”

  “Depends on how and where in the race, and if a referee saw it,” Keren said judiciously. “Let the referee handle it, unless enough people got taken down. Then, if you’re inclined, you can have ’em run the race over again. Presumably, everybody’d be equally tired, so they’d all be on the same footing. If I were a betting person, I’d lay odds you’ll have to rerun at least one race this afternoon. This is going to be the climax of the Festival for a lot of people—not even the Feast is going to eclipse it. Feelings will be running high.”