Closer to the Chest

by Mercedes Lackey

  Now the thugs looked startled . . . and alarmed. They made some abortive movements as if they were going to try to escape.

  But it was too late. “Git ’em!” someone shouted, and the mobs on either side charged toward the middle, snatching up whatever they could use as a weapon as they avalanched toward Mags’ attackers.

  He just squeezed himself flat against the wall and stayed out of the way. The five thugs went down fast, and there was a lot of kicking and pummeling going on. Once or twice he got hit by accident, but for the most part, the men in this mob were intent on battering the thugs who were on the ground. So he just wedged himself against the wall, held his ribs and tried not to breathe heavily. His “detachment” had worn off with that second hit to his ribs.

  By the time the Watch arrived—which was not too much later—there were only two of the thugs still standing, and they were in bad shape. This lot of the Watch didn’t know Mags; all they saw was one slightly battered, heavily armed man who appeared to be the bone of contention of the scrum, so they collared him first.

  He allowed himself to be collared; the one thing you didn’t do when the Watch decided to grab you was to argue. But one of the warehouse workers (who was unarmed, having waded in with nothing more than his formidable fists) spoke up in his defense. “Har! Carter! He ain’t th’ bastid ye want. Them lot there jumped ’im! ’E was just ’fendin’ ’imself.”

  Now, Mags knew very well that there had been no witnesses when he’d been ambushed. That had been the point of coming at him here, obviously, so he could be beaten and left in the street with no witnesses. But he wasn’t about to argue if the man chose to volunteer himself as his advocate, so when “Carter” turned his red-eyed gaze on the captive Mags, and growled. “Zat true?” Mags just nodded.

  “An’ thet bastid’s th’ un what’s bin messin’ wi’ me sister!” chimed in the worker who’d been the cause of the mobs descending in the first place. He pointed with indignation at an unconscious bully-boy whose face was so battered it was unlikely his own mother would recognize him.

  Evidently this story was also well known to the Watch. The frowning faces turned away from Mags to regard the pile of unconscious and half-conscious thugs with acute distaste and disapproval.

  “Ye willin’ t’press charges?” Carter asked Mags.

  “Hell yes,” Mags said, fervently.

  The Watch trussed up the thugs, recruited a cart from one of the warehouses, loaded their “prizes” into it—ignoring the moans and yelps as they tossed the thugs in without any care for possible injuries—and the entire parade of Watch, cart, thugs, willing witnesses, and Mags headed for the Watch station.

  About two candlemarks later, Mags emerged alone. It had only taken about one candlemark for him and the “witnesses” to make their statements. The rest of the time had been taken up with getting names and addresses, and for the Watch to fetch a Healer from some distance away to come see to him. The Healer also tended to the thugs, although that had mostly been to look them over, pronounce “they’ll live,” and splint a couple broken bones. Mags, on the other hand, as the injured and aggrieved party, was looked over carefully with an eye to possible concussion, and had his ribs bound up as skillfully as anyone up at the Collegia could do.

  :Where are you?: he asked Dallen, as he gingerly made his way toward the inn where his disguises were kept.

  :Back at the inn. If you’d been—:

  :In any danger, I know, you would have rescued me. And I’d have been mad at myself for losin’ all the work I put into Harkon.:

  :So let’s be glad that I’ve arranged for Nikolas to bring a set of your Whites to Flora’s.:

  Mags sighed with relief. Flora, the titular madame of “Flora’s,” would help him out of his disguise and into his Whites, then smuggle him out again through one of the exits she used when gentlemen wanted their visits to her girls to be utterly confidential. And Harkon was a known patron of the place, and since he had no known female relatives, it would not be at all out of character for him to look for some female cosseting at the brothel. Not everything Flora provided had to do with sex.

  In fact, the door-guard summoned one of the House servants as soon as he realized Harkon was in rather battered condition. That servant deposited him in an empty parlor and returned with Flora herself, and two of her girls, one of which was in a very racy version of Healer’s Greens. The neckline was cut practically down to her navel, and the robes were slit up to the waist on both sides.

  This was Cilla, the House Healer. She actually was a Healer; there were three brothels in Haven that had House Healers that Mags knew of, but Cilla was the only one of the three who also served as one of the House girls. Mags didn’t ask why, and she had never volunteered the information; he didn’t reckon it was any of his business, and since none of Flora’s girls worked under duress, he knew it had to be because she wanted to, and that was all that mattered.

  “What on earth did you do to yourself, boy?” Flora scolded, as the three of them helped him get stiffly to his feet, and led him down a hall to what turned out to be a lovely, warm bathing room. It was very welcome; the Watch Healer hadn’t really cleaned up anything but his cuts before taping his ribs and sending him on his way.

  “Didn’t do it to m’self,” he said, as they undressed him, untaped him, and got him into a bath so hot it was just short of painful. He hissed as the water hit his bruises and relaxed while they washed up his face and got the blood out of his hair. “Seems some’un didn’t like m’methods of business, and set six bully-boys on me.”

  “Six!” Flora exclaimed. “Surely not—”

  “They was carryin’ clubs,” Mags pointed out. “Still wouldn’t hev got off this easy ’cept—” he chuckled, and explained.

  A candlemark later, he was clean, his cuts were sealed, his bruises faded to a pale green, and his ribs, while still sore, were about two weeks-worth healed more than they’d been when he walked in. He was also in his Whites, and the servant was conducting him down a tunnel that looked nothing at all like a tunnel—it was beautifully polished wood, floor, ceiling, and walls, and lit by lanterns with topaz glass shades. “Where are we goin’?” he asked the servant, with mild curiosity.

  “The White Horse Tavern,” the servant replied. “This is how all our hot meals are brought over. We could hardly carry them through the streets, and Madame Flora prefers not to have more than a minimal kitchen. She says the smell of cooking food is vulgar, and the lingering aroma of cooked food is distasteful. And if this tunnel serves some of our patrons who would rather not be seen entering and leaving by the front door, you won’t find any of us naming names.”

  “Right-oh,” Mags said genially. The White Horse Tavern was perfect; he could stop there long enough for a good stiff drink to take the edge off the pain of his ribs and wait for Dallen to spirit his way into the stables, then leave as if he’d been there all along.

  :As if you couldn’t find out those names if you wanted to from Flora,: Dallen snickered.

  :How far away are you?: Mags asked.

  :I’m already there. There are pears, and a very nice stableboy who is feeding them to me. Take your time.:

  :Reckon I’ll have dinner, then,: he decided. :Amily’s eatin’ with the Court, an’ I don’t fancy fightin’ my way through the younglings and then tryin’ t’ get myself sittin’ on a bench at the Collegium.: Sitting in a quiet corner of the comfortable inn room, being brought his food by the smiling serving maid, his Whites getting him immediate attention, was much more attractive than fighting his way through a lot of rambunctious Trainees who would pay as much attention to his presence as they would a bench. Less; they could sit on the bench.

  :Good idea,: Dallen replied. :Send me out some pocket pies.:

  • • •

  Amily saw the lights burning in the sitting room from a good distance, and smiled as she hurried her steps along
the garden path. She had been hoping this wouldn’t be one of the nights “Harkon” spent down at the pawn shop until nearly midnight. She wanted badly to talk to Mags about Lord Semel and his family—and about that disturbing priest of “Sethor the Patriach”—and to find out if he had heard anything about the Sisters of Ardana. While the former Temple of Ardana hadn’t been precisely in Harkon’s neighborhood, it had been only a few streets away. If there was any gossip about them, he’d have picked it up by now.

  “You’re back!” she heard from the sitting room as soon as she entered the door. “Good, I hope you didn’t have to foil any assassinations tonight.”

  “Only one near-one, but not of the King,” she said, coming in to find him sprawled in a slightly odd, stiff position in the most heavily padded of the chairs. Did he have to go roof-running today or tonight? I wonder if he sprained a shoulder. Well, he’ll tell me. “There is a new young beauty at the Court, and if evil looks had been daggers tonight, she’d have been slashed to ribbons.”

  She filled him in on Lord Semel (“Yes, he’s one of Kyril’s unofficial field agents, Nikolas has shown me some of his reports” she confirmed when he looked alert and inquisitive at the name) and the entire brood. “Helane is the one causing all the clucking in the henhouse at the moment,” she continued. “I’ve put Lady Dia on to her; we need some notion of her brains and personality. If she’s the kind to meddle just for the mischief of it, we’ll having young highborn lads meeting each other for dawn duels over the right to escort her in to supper. But if she’s clever . . . and willing . . . we might be able to make use of those brains so she doesn’t get into mischief out of pure boredom. She doesn’t fit the Queen’s Handmaidens, since with a title and property and the King’s favor on her family, she doesn’t need the organization to help her along. But she could still be useful in the same ways that Lydia’s friends were.”

  “I’ll have to introduce myself to Hawken then,” Mags replied with a sigh. “If he was just anyone, we could probably afford to let him sink or swim on his own, but as the son of someone who’s got Kyril’s ear, I need to make sure he doesn’t get in with the wrong crowd. You know what I mean.”

  Amily nodded; it wasn’t that the young men of the Court were treacherous or dangerous, at least not the ones here now, it was that they were young men. And in every group of young men there were always those who were inclined to push limits and get into trouble. And every time there was a group of young men like that, there was always another group of people inclined to exploit and prey on them. Blackmail being only one of a number of unsavory possibilities.

  Amily told him about the Priest of Sethor the Patriarch. He made a face as she finished. “Reckon I think I know some of what they’re preachin’, by second-hand. Hard t’keep a eye on ’em though, without we get someone inta the flock. You want me t’do that?”

  “Not yet,” she said, wishing she had a reason to ask him to, aside from I don’t like him and I don’t like the way he treats women. “Are there any rumors about the group he displaced?”

  He shook his head. “There wouldn’t be, though, would there? A bunch of old women in a temple that’s goin’ t’seed wouldn’t have anythin’ worth stealin’, and that’s about the only way I’d’a heard anything about ’em.”

  “Oh, bother.” She moved to sit on the arm of the chair and leaned over to hug him, and he . . . winced.

  “Sorry, love,” he apologized immediately. “I got crosswise of a buncha bully-boys an’ got m’ribs cracked for interferin’ with their masters’ business.”

  “What?” she exclaimed, drawing back immediately lest she cause him any more trouble. “Are you—did you see a Healer? Why did—what happened?”

  “Saw Flora’s House Healer, got tended nicer’n I would’a got up here,” he chuckled. She laughed with him, knowing exactly what he meant. When Flora’s House Healer tended someone, they were cosseted, and cooed over and made much of, where if he’d come up to Healer’s Collegium to get tended, he’d have gotten scolded for getting into a common street brawl and told he was an idiot, and strapped up brusquely. “By way of gettin’ me out without the disgrace of seein’ a Herald comin’ outa Flora’s, they showed me the tunnel t’the White Horse, an’ that’s where I got dinner.”

  She snorted. “As if there have never been Heralds in Flora’s before!”

  “Well, not in Whites, ’less there’d been somethin’ that needed investigatin’.” He shrugged, very slightly. “Anyway, that’s what’s what. Good news is, that lot’ll get shipped out t’do road work someplace far, far away. All their master’s’ll know is they got arrested, just like Dog-Billy an’ Hatchet an’ that lot. Likely they’ll think twice ’bout comin’ after me, maybe even give over usin’ younglings in their gangs.”

  She sighed; this was not the first time he’d returned injured, but it was the first that involved broken bones. “Father never used to come home beaten up,” she said aloud, and only after the words came out of her mouth did she realize it sounded like a rebuke. She flushed and was trying to think of some way to soften that, but Mags was already answering.

  “Actually, he prolly did, he just didn’t let you know about it,” Mags replied with blunt honesty. “Just like he didn’t let you know more’n a quarter of the stuff he was doin’, so you wouldn’t be afeared for ’im.”

  Then he stopped, and bit his lip, looking shamefaced for having said that. They stared at each other in acute discomfort for a while. “I didn’t mean—” they both said at the same time, and stopped.

  “We’re Heralds,” she finally said, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “Whatever we do, the job comes with risks, and we both know that, and we both know there’s no way to avoid them.”

  He nodded slowly. “We can’t help the job. But we can help each other.”

  The tension drained out of the air, and she smiled at him. “Let me start by helping you out of that chair.” She got up, and as she did, her foot hit something smallish, pale, and flat and sent it across the room.

  “What’s that?” he asked, as she chased after it and picked it up. It seemed to be a letter, on the crudest grade of paper, and sealed with a greasy blob of candle wax. She frowned at it, unable to think who at the Court or Collegium would have used paper of this sort to send her a message. And why not just tell her? Unless it was some anonymous tattling.

  I hope we don’t have any small-minded tattletales among the new Trainees. Surely someone in the Court would use old palimpsest for sending an anonymous bleat . . .

  “Message?” Mags asked.

  “I’ll find out in a moment. Someone must have left it here when we were gone, or shoved it under the door.” She opened it.

  You can’t even do the job you’re supposed to, your father has to keep picking up after you. Why don’t you just die so he can do it properly?

  It was “written” in careful block letters, inscribed between three sets of three ruled lines, so there wasn’t even “handwriting” to tell who could have written it. She swore and started to throw it into the fire, but Mags got it away from her before she could.

  He read it and his face flushed with anger. She took it out of his hands. “It’s just anonymous dirt. Put it where it belongs.” She tossed it on the fire.

  He gave her an odd look. “Have you gotten more of these things?” he asked.

  “About a half a dozen all told. I showed the first one to Father, who said if that was the worst I got, I should count myself lucky.” She grimaced. “I hate to think of the sort of things he got over the years, if that’s true.”

  “It probably is.” Mags glowered at where the orange and black ghost of the paper was dancing on top of the logs.

  “Well, that was another thing I never knew, and if he didn’t let it bother him, I see no reason to let it bother me,” she said stoutly. “I just didn’t see any reason to take up your time with this . . . infantile b
ullying.”

  “You’d’a rather he’d told you, at least when you was old enough to take it all right, wouldn’t you?” he asked, with one hand on her shoulder.

  “. . . I suppose so,” she admitted.

  “And I’d rather you’d told me. And now you have. An’ maybe ’tween the two of us, we can figger out where they’re comin’ from.” A small, tight smile crossed his face. “Chances are, it’s a coward with plenty t’hide. They don’t take bein’ exposed well.”

  “All right,” she agreed with spirit. “I have, and we’ll try. And if we can’t figure out who it is?”

  “Hm?” he replied.

  “We’ll make him insane with frustration by being stubbornly happy.”

  The next day, although there was usually a lesser Council meeting scheduled, there was so little to discuss that the King postponed it in favor of a meeting with the Exchequer, the Seneschal, and the Master of the Treasury. “Just building plans,” he told Amily at their usual breakfast meeting. “We’re going to spend the entire morning trying to change each others’ minds. If you have something to do, go and do it.”

  Mags was in his persona of himself, Herald Mags, attending courtroom cases down in Haven, so she had the morning to herself.

  As if that is even possible for a Herald, she thought in the next moment. Because when it came right down to it, “having the morning to herself” didn’t mean she could go curl up with a book, it meant she could go take care of other tasks that did not involve attending on the King. After intercepting Lady Dia before she went to her kennels and filling her in on the newcomers—Helane, in particular—it occurred to her that this was the ideal time to discover if she could track down where the Sisters of Ardana were now living.

  Of course, she could run all over the Collegia and the various places where Records were kept in the Palace . . .

  Or she could go straight to the one creature that probably knew who would know.

  :Rolan, who would know where the Sisters moved?: She waited, while Rolan thought about that.