Intrigues v(cc-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  He had to fight his instincts in order to do as Nikolas had taught him. His instincts told him that as soon as the man turned toward him, he should duck out of sight. He didn’t do that. The man was a trained fighter, and would alert on that sort of movement.

  No, when the man turned to check his rear, he had to be doing something perfectly natural. Watching a busker. Reading an inn sign. Drifting off at a slight angle to the man’s current direction, as if he intended to visit a shop or take a side street.

  Then, when the man turned away again, Mags did something to change his own appearance a little. He bought a drab scarf at a stall, and when the man’s attention was elsewhere, he switched how he was wearing it, putting it around his neck, tying up his hair, making a headband out of it, even a sling. All these things seemed to be working. The man only gave cursory glances behind him and his eyes never lingered on Mags.

  They were heading to the part of the city where beast-drovers and small traders of the sort with a single cart went. It was crowded there, the more so because it was getting on to supper time, and people unfamiliar with Haven—or who were simply frugal—were going from inn to inn hunting for bargains for their evening meal. Every inn had a different “special”—sometimes it was because they had made too much of something that day, sometimes because they got a good deal on some foodstuff or other. The smart traveler sought these out to save a few pennies.

  Mags felt as if every nerve was stretched as thin and tight as one of Lena’s harpstrings, the closer they came to this inn-district. He felt sure that the man was staying here, somewhere—and maybe there were more of the foreigners than just the one. Mags tried to vary his posture as well as his appearance—even his gait, although in the crush that was less than successful. But when the scarf was on his head, he slouched, as if discouraged. When it was a sling, he limped. When it was around his neck, he swaggered.

  The bawling of animals in enclosures, the cursing of the drovers, people being shoved out of the way and cursing back—you would have to shout at the top of your lungs to be heard in this din. It was all a nightmare of noise and heat and dust and smell. Dung and sweat stink mingled with food and beer odors, making him feel a little sick.

  It was very hard to keep up with the man without shoving and making himself conspicuous. He had to take advantage of his small size, and duck through every available gap, and still keep track of the man.

  The man definitely had a goal in mind, though—his movements were purposeful and a bit impatient. Mags was more and more certain by the moment that he was staying somewhere in this district.

  This part of Haven was absolutely full of people who were strangers to the city and to each other. Innkeepers didn’t bother to keep track of anyone, so long as the reckonings got paid and you weren’t crowding more people into a room than you had paid for.

  He realized that this was exactly what the foreigners needed; incurious landlords and a steady stream of strangers coming and going. Even in the dead of winter, this district had a fair amount of traffic; Haven was a big city, and there were a lot of mouths to feed, more than could be fed purely by the effort of the local farms.

  Maybe—probably—they’d found a place to hide until things in Haven got back to normal after the blizzard. There were plenty of places in Haven that would have sheltered them, plenty of people as well, and not necessarily criminals, either. They could have posed as stranded travelers and stayed at a Temple Hostel, for instance. Or they might have thought far enough ahead and arranged for a bolt-hole down in the city when they had first arrived. They could even have done so through an intermediary, who probably wouldn’t have cared what nationality they were as long as their gold was sound.

  The inns here would have been better, though, for people not used to waiting on themselves, nor taking care of their own day-to-day needs, like finding food and cleaning their own clothing. All they gotta do is move from inn t’ inn regular, an’ they’re pretty much not gonna get noticed. Inns would do virtually anything you wanted for a price. Presumably they had the price.

  He hung back a little; it was actually easier to keep track of the man now because he was pushing his way through the crowd, creating a little area of disturbance—something else Nikolas had taught Mags to watch for. He followed that area until he actually saw the man mount the steps of an enormous drovers’ inn—the Silver Bullock.

  He gave the fellow some time to get away from the door, and sauntered inside himself.

  He almost had his heart stop when he realized the man he had been following was still in the common room, but he steeled himself to show nothing, instead, peering around the room as if to try and find something, then fixing an “aha” look on his face when he spotted the bar. He went up to it, ordered a pint, and then ostensibly looked around for a place to sit.

  There were several within earshot of the man he had been following; the best was a single stool against the wall. He wound his way toward it and sat himself down, fixing his gaze on a sturdy serving wench and sipping the potent beer. Clearly it was “Spring Beer,” from the bottom of the barrel; it tasted strong enough to use for brass-polish. As such things went though, it was decent; the common-room here was clean and well-run, and the food smelled all right.

  He kept his eyes on the rest of the patrons of the inn, and his face in a faintly pleasant expression. Meanwhile he strained his ears as hard as he could to overhear the conversation—it was in Valdemaran, and the man that the foreigner was talking to seemed to be local. The two of them were making no effort to hold their voices down, so obviously they didn’t care if they were overheard.

  “. . . need more help than I can get from ’pothecaries with the crazy one,” the native Valdemaran was saying. “The honest ones won’t sell me what you’re asking me to get, and the others—” he shrugged. “You take your chances. Maybe they’ll sell you what you want. Maybe they’ll sell you poison, or dried grass. Maybe they’ll tell the Guard you’ve been asking for those herbs. There’s just no telling.”

  The foreigner muttered something that sounded like a curse. “There must be something—”

  “You can tie him up and gag him when you aren’t feeding him. You can keep him dead drunk and hope that doesn’t kill him. You can just let him rave—”

  So it sounded as if the fellow that Bear was treating was still with them! They were probably trying to get hold of the same herbs that Bear had been using.

  :Nikolas has alerted some of the Guard. We’re on the way.:

  :Are there any Heralds or Trainees nearer to me down ’ere?: He really didn’t like the naked-feeling of being in this inn with no one else nearby.

  :We’re alerting them.:

  Maybe needing someone to treat the lunatic was why they had kidnapped Bear... and maybe the reason they had kept him in the Archive was because they had no place else to put him, and they needed things to clear out after the blizzard before they could escape. It would have been very hard to move a prisoner and their raving lunatic quietly until the snow cleared off. Maybe they had been hoping no one would bother coming to the Archive. Maybe they had figured on drugging Bear and smuggling him out with their baggage. Maybe—

  A sudden shout of unknown words made him glance to the side with alarm. And there, not more than the length of a horse and wagon away from him, was another of the bodyguards. One of the ones who he had humiliated, and who was not likely to have forgotten his face.

  The man shouted again, and pointed at him, as the one he had been following shoved the Valdemaran aside and reached for a knife.

  Oh hell!

  :RUN Mags!:

  He didn’t have to be told twice. In fact, he didn’t have to be told at all. He was already on his feet and heading for a door he expected led to the kitchen.

  It did. With at least one of the two men practically on his heels, Mags ducked between two serving girls, rolled under a table on a floor littered with vegetable peelings, scrambled to his feet and was out the door on the other side o
f the room before one of the two girls had finished her shriek of outrage and alarm.

  The door led to a narrow hallway, with two more doors in it. He gambled and wrenched open the farthest.

  He found himself standing on a set of steps above a brick-walled space used for storing things for the kitchen that weren’t wanted yet and could stand weather. And for buckets of garbage. The place stank and was full of flies. There was a wooden gate opposite him, with a lock on it.

  Hell. He made a running leap for the gate; his fingers just caught the top, and he hauled himself over it as the door behind him banged open again. He tumbled down into the alley on the other side, and looked wildly in either direction.

  And realized he had no idea of where he was.

  He picked a direction and ran.

  He was in the middle of a rat-warren of walls and out-buildings and alleys going off in every direction, with huge walls and the sides of buildings on either side of him.

  The alleys were too narrow to allow anything better than the tiniest of donkey-carts to go by. And he could feel his pursuers right behind him. There was no time to think, no time to do anything other than react. He dodged down every promising escape route he could find, only to discover he was still in the maze. He felt Dallen trying frantically to get to him, but it was a long way down from the Collegium and the streets were packed.

  He made another turn, his sides burning, and found himself in a cul-de-sac of windowless walls going up two stories on either side of him. At the back there was a bricked-up privy-aperture right above him. He turned, but it was too late. There was a man blocking the entrance. The same man that had recognized Mags and shouted. He was one of the bodyguards; very big, strong, and trained. And armed, which Mags wasn’t.

  Mags rushed the man anyway. Maybe if he took the bodyguard by surprise—

  He dropped and rolled when he was almost on top of the man, hoping to knock his feet out from under them, but the foreigner must have been ready for that. The man dodged, and out of nowhere, there was a tremendous thwack to Mags’ head, and he saw stars, then felt himself hauled to his feet by the collar and pinned to the wall by his shoulders.

  The look in the man’s eyes absolutely terrified him, because it was both furious and utterly impersonal.

  “You, horse-boy,” spat the bodyguard. “What are you doing here? How did you find us? Who sent you?”

  “I don’ know nothin’—” Mags began, and the man delivered a blow to his gut that doubled him over, and a second to his face that opened up a painful gash along his cheek. The pain that went through his body and skull drove all thought right out of his head.

  “Who sent you?” the man repeated.

  “I don’—” This time the blow to his gut was followed by a slam into the wall that rammed his head against it. He saw stars again, and his vision grayed out. He could hardly breathe.

  “Tell me!” the bodyguard spat, and slammed his head into the wall again. He couldn’t even think well enough to defend himself.

  “You will tell me!” A blow to the jaw loosened his teeth as well and his mouth filled with blood.

  The trumpeting of an enraged stallion interrupted the interrogation, and the man whirled, dropping Mags, who slid down the wall, and slumped to the dirt of the alley, dazed.

  Dallen’s bulk filled the end of the alley. The Companion shrieked with rage, dancing in place, but unable to wedge himself into the narrow space.

  The man spat a curse and wrestled his sword out, banging it against the walls on either side of him. He plunged at Dallen in a fury. Dallen lashed out at him with forehooves, but had to give way. The man must have practiced fighting against a warhorse, if not a Companion, because he kept dodging the lethal hooves and getting in closer and closer with his blows, and it was clear he was aiming to slash open one of the big arteries or veins of the legs.

  Mags fought off the dizziness, the dazzle in front of his eyes, and the nausea and pain of the beating, trying to get his breath again, trying to get up and fight back. After all, this wasn’t the first time someone had tried to beat him to death—and Dallen needed him! He fumbled for, and found, his knife. As he had been taught, he weighed it carefully in his hand for a precious moment. Squinting until the double images resolved into one, he flung the little blade at the man’s back.

  The man howled and cursed in pain. The knife lodged for a moment in his shoulderblade, then clattered to the ground.

  In a fury, he looked from Mags to Dallen and back again, and evidently realized that where there was one Companion, there soon would be more.

  He turned back to Dallen, but this time, the whirlwind strikes of his sword were meant to drive Dallen back, not to kill him. The moment that Dallen’s bulk was clear of the cul-de-sac entrance, he darted away.

  Mags dropped to his knees, then doubled over again, unable to decide what part of himself to hold, since so much hurt.

  He wished he could pass out; unconsciousness would be very welcome right now. Unfortunately, his body refused to cooperate.

  :Mags!: The frantic call rang through his skull and made more stars explode behind his eyes.

  :Don’—think s’hard—: he gasped mentally. :—hurts—:

  Slowly, he managed to get to his feet again. With one hand on the wall and the other on his gut, he stumbled to the entrance and fell against Dallen’s neck. Dallen immediately knelt in the filth of the alley to let him drag himself over the Companion’s back. He put both his arms around Dallen’s neck, hanging on as best he could, balanced on the broad white surface like a sack of roots.

  Dallen lurched to his feet without unbalancing Mags. :Then others will chase him,: came a whisper of thought. :I am getting you back up to the Healers now.:

  And without another thought, Dallen sped grimly back up to the Collegium, with Mags clinging dizzily to his neck.

  :S’allright, : he managed, as they were about halfway there. :Been beat this bad afore—wha’s goin’ on?:

  :The others are converging on the inn right now, with the Guard,: Dallen said. :They’ll try and catch the bastards.:

  :Shouldn’ we—:

  :No. We are doing nothing. You have done enough. You are in no shape to assist in any way at all.:

  Dallen rushed through the gates, passing Guards that were nothing more than blue blurs to Mags, and into the Collegia grounds.

  :I’m taking you to Healers’ Collegium,: Dallen said, when they didn’t stop at either the stable or at Heralds’ Collegium.

  Finally Dallen stopped. They were met at the door by a single Healer and by Gennie, and the flash of outrage in Dallen’s mind that there was not a herd of Healers waiting for them was enough to set stars dancing in front of Mags’ vision again.

  :Sorry,: Dallen said, and damped down the connection between them so that less was getting through. But it was very clear that he was still enraged.

  “Calm down,” the Healer ordered, wincing, as Gennie helped Mags down off of Dallen’s back. “He’s one single Trainee who’s been beaten up; he’s neither bleeding to death inside, nor has any broken bones, I can tell you that much. Stop acting as if he was going to die at any moment, you big fool.”

  Dallen snorted and whinnied angrily, as Gennie held Mags up so the Healer could peel back his eyelids and peer into his eyes.

  “He has a mild concussion. His insides are badly bruised, but quite intact. I’m sure he hurts all over. Stop fussing,” the Healer snapped.

  “Tol’ ’im—been beat this bad afore—” Mags managed.

  “And you shut up. Companion, go to your stable. Trainee, you are going straight to a bed. Give him a hand, Trainee Gennie, and both of you follow me.”

  With Gennie keeping him from falling over, Mags followed the Healer into a part of the Collegium he had never been before—a big room with a great many beds in it, most of them empty. Gennie helped him down onto the nearest one, then when the Healer started to strip Mags’ clothing off of him, flushed crimson and beat a hasty retreat.

/>   The Healer peeled everything off him but his boots, singlet and hose, tossing the clothing aside. “That Companion of yours could stand to have better manners,” he grumbled. “It’s not as if you’re the only sick or injured person here right now.”

  Mags thought about saying something, but his jaw hurt too much to move. In fact, everything hurt more and more the longer he sat here.

  He winced as the Healer’s hands moved over his body, probing the places where the blows had fallen. Then he sighed with relief as the hands rested on those spots, as warmth poured from the hands, and the relief from pain followed the warmth.

  “Your assailant has done this before,” the man said laconically. “He was quite methodical about inflicting the most pain while doing the least damage.”

  “ ’s thet good?” Mags asked, as the room started to spin in circles around him. “Uh, I dunno’f’I’m gonna be sick—”

  The man’s hands rested on his head a moment, and some of the dizziness cleared away, and with it the nausea.

  “Well, it isn’t bad for you,” the Healer said. “It means most of this is soft tissue damage, and I can tend it myself without help. One decent night and a day of rest and you’ll be fit to go right out and Kirball to your heart’s content. Yes, yes, I know you are on one of the Kirball teams, and I am very much aware that your captain wants you ready for the first game. And you will be. But not until you get that day and night. So—”

  A hand to the middle of his chest shoved Mags down onto the bed. He wasn’t expecting it, and fell right over.

  “You need time for that concussion to clear up, and a number of medicines and some more Healing. You can talk to whosoever you want, but you stay there until tomorrow afternoon. Maybe even until the next morning, if I decide I have the time to continue treating you and you need it.”

  Mags blinked up at the man, owlishly. At least there was only one of him now, not two. “Dinner?” he said hopefully, for now that the nausea had begun to ebb, his stomach was growling.