Closer to the Chest

by Mercedes Lackey

  :The Exchequer, the Seneschal, and the Master of the Treasury, who are all in that meeting. You could also try down in Haven, and the Lord Mayor’s various record offices, or even one of the messenger services, like Mags’ little lot of runners. But since they might either need a Healer or have a Healer, I would try the Chronicler of Healer’s before I went trudging all over the city. The Healers have to keep careful track of where people live, if they are sent for in an emergency.:

  She grinned. Rolan had come through for her yet again. She trotted over to Healers’ Collegium and took the stairs two at a time, hoping to find the Chronicler in the little office just inside the Archives. Fortunately the Archives were over the Trainees’ rooms, rather than the part of Healers that housed the Infirmary and patients’ rooms. The scents over there were not always pleasant.

  The Chronicler was not a Healer herself since there was no need to have someone who was a Healer merely in charge of records. So the thin, earnest-looking woman who looked up at Amily as she tapped on the doorframe was wearing a plain, practical gown of brown linen. Her office was almost painfully neat; Amily repressed a sigh, wishing she was that organized.

  “Can I help you, Herald?” the woman said, looking oddly hopeful.

  “I think you can, Chronicler,” Amily replied, giving the woman her proper title, which made her eyes light up a little. “Would you by any chance have a record of where the Sisters of Ardana were moved to?”

  The woman blinked at her thoughtfully for a moment. “Why yes,” she said, finally. “I believe we do. We just finished updating the Haven maps a fortnight ago.”

  Actually finding the location in question required leaving the office and having a look through a ponderous volume kept near the door. This proved to be an insanely detailed map of Haven and the Hill, with every building noted. “Ah, here we are,” the woman proclaimed after a moment. She tilted the book so that Amily could see the page, which turned out to be a map of a small area of houses with as much as an acre of land attached. The Chronicler tapped her finger at a spot on the page, where whatever had been written there had been scraped off, and Sis. Ardan. written in its place. It appeared to be outside the city walls, which, if it had been a farm, made sense.

  Amily memorized the location, thanked the Chronicler profusely (which made her go pink with pleasure), and headed to the stable to get Rolan.

  :I don’t imagine that she gets to interact with Heralds all that much, and far less does she get thanked by one,: Rolan observed, as she saddled and bridled him.

  :Probably not. And that explains the blush.: Strange to think that someone who worked, and presumably lived, not all that far from Herald’s Collegium saw so little of Heralds.

  This was going to be a very different set of neighborhoods than she usually rode through; this was not one of the main thoroughfares. Once she was down off the Hill, she and Rolan took a side street, and from the Hill to the city walls they passed along quiet, narrow streets paved in cobblestones, with neighborhoods with few craftsmen of the sort that had to maintain a large shop or works. Instead, most of the buildings were residences, with the occasional small shop on the ground floor that served the neighborhood, the occasional small craftsman or woman who only needed a single room to ply his or her trade.

  :Didn’t this area burn about fifty years ago?: she asked Rolan, as it dawned on her that the buildings here were both oddly new for anything inside the walls, and made of fire-resistant brick and stone, with slate roofs.

  :It did; in fact, the fire that spread through here was the reason for the ban on thatched roofs. Many of the wealthy and highborn hoped to annex this area to the Hill, but the King decreed that those who had lived here had first priority on rebuilding here.: Rolan tossed his head. :There had been rumors that the fire had been started by someone who wanted to do just that. The King quelled those rumors nicely.:

  I wouldn’t mind living here, she thought, If I weren’t a Herald, that is. Although there were people about, the streets were mostly empty, curtains fluttering in the light breeze at open windows in the upper stories. The only cart on the street was the milk-wagon, making morning deliveries before it got too warm.

  The city walls—walls that had once enclosed all of Haven, not just a third of it—loomed up at the end of the street. She passed through a very small gate in the walls, which took her out into another residential district, this one with houses boasting plots of land large enough to garden. The houses here were mixed in age; you could tell which one was the original farmhouse that had stood here, until its lands were divided up to allow for more houses to be built. Prosperous people lived here—not rich, but with a good enough income to have a house all to themselves, and three or four servants. Clerks and craftsmen who made things for those who were rich, men who were no longer farmers, but landowners, who paid other men to do their farming for them.

  Gradually these plots became large enough to supply vegetables for a market-garden; the houses were smaller, more modest—except for the occasional old farmstead, like a hen among chicks. And that was where she found the new Temple of the Sisters of Ardana.

  It was obvious that this had once been the house of an ample farm; this was no mere cottage, it was a three-story structure of whitewashed plaster and black beams, at least three hundred years old, roofed with thatch—thatch which would never have been allowed inside the city because of the risk of fire. At the rear was a second building too grand to be called a mere “barn;” it was identical to the house, save only that the windows in it had clearly been recently converted into glass windows from the sort of half-doors horses or milk-cows could use to observe the outside world from the comfort of their stalls. Then there were some sheds, and a third building that looked like a minature of the bigger one. A guesthouse, perhaps, but when this had been a farm, it had probably served to house the farmhands.

  There was not an ell of ground wasted on mere grass; herbs filled the beds where flowers might have been at one of the prosperous craftman’s houses, and the rest of the land was occupied with a pen for goats with long silky hair, a henhouse, several beehives, and vegetable gardens.

  As she and Rolan rode up to the front door of the house, the double doors of the former barn opened, and five or six elderly people filed out, escorted by two equally elderly women in gray robes. The Sisters of Ardana, I presume, she thought, as they all caught sight of her, and stopped, waiting for her to come to them. She looped the reins over the pommel of the saddle and dismounted, making her way toward them with Rolan coming along behind.

  The eldest, and most erect of the two women stepped forward as she reached the group. “I am Mother Yllana of the Sisters of Ardana,” she said, in an authoritative, but not unfriendly, tone. “How may we help you, Herald?”

  “It’s the other way around,” Amily replied cheerfully. “I found out that you’d been moved, and I came to find out if you had settled in satisfactorily, and if there was anything you needed.”

  Mother Yllana looked as if she wanted to think about what she was going to say, but one of her congregants was not nearly so restrained.

  “It’s not satisfactory, Herald, it’s not satisfactory at all,” said a little bird of a woman in a black gown, with a tilt of her head and a look in her eye that said she meant to put her two coppers-worth in before anyone had a chance to stop her. “We have to come all the way down from above Tanner’s, and it’s not satisfactory at all, what with my knees, and Neldie’s hip, and Thoma’s back and all. It’s a long, long way to come for them as don’t have horses or carts to ride. But we do it once a fortnight, that we do, because we don’t feel comfortable, don’t feel welcome in what that stiff backed old crathur made of our old home, and just who is this Sethor, when it comes down to cases, anyway? Some god from outlandish parts none of us ever heard of! So we come here, and very inconvenient it is, too.” Then she stood there looking at Amily, as if to say, And what do you intend
to do about it?

  “I see,” Amily replied gravely, making no other statement. Rolan held his peace, while she considered the implications. Clearly this woman felt that the Crown was responsible for rectifying her grievance. And to a certain extent, the Crown might very well be. There were several things Amily would like to promise, but she wasn’t going to commit or even comment until she knew whether they actually could be done. The bird-like woman stared at her unblinking for a few more moments, waiting to see if she was going to get an immediate answer, before accepting defeat. “Very inconvenient,” she repeated, and then she and the other members of the Temple congregation made their way down to the road.

  “I hope you won’t mind Klera Coppersmith, Herald,” said Mother Yllana, without any indication that she disapproved of the old woman’s forthrightness.

  “Not at all, she only spoke the truth. It is very inconvenient for them, I can see that, and very unfair to make them come all this way.” Amily cast her eyes over the house and former barn again. “Still, this does seem to be a better situation for the Sisters. From what I was given to understand, your former Temple was in poor repair, uncomfortable, and unsuited to you and the Sisters, given your age and lack of income.”

  There. Let’s see what she has to say about that.

  “Well, it is a better situation for us here,” Mother Yllana admitted, reluctantly. “We have room for a goat herd, and beehives, and our own garden, and a flock of chickens. We haven’t had to spend a copper on food. There’s space for each of us to have her own little room, all together, and it doesn’t feel at night as if we’re a dozen little lost souls at the bottom of a great cavern. We even have income now, yarn from our goats, and cheese, and honey. We’re thinking of brewing mead. This place is easier for us to keep clean, and now we can afford a man to come and do repairs. . . .”

  “But?” Amily prompted.

  “But it’s not convenient for the Temple to be set apart from the Chapter House; setting the Watches of the Night means one of us has to make her way in the dark—and in the winter, that is through the snow as well. And it’s very hard on our congregants. And—” Her voice took on the tone of one who feels very much aggrieved. “—this is not what we agreed to in the first place!”

  Aha— “Oh?” she replied. “What did you agree to?”

  “I am quite certain in my mind that our agreement with those Priests of Sethor”—her tone said, though she did not, whoever or whatever this “Sethor” is—“was that they were to repair our home and make it possible for us to live comfortably in it until the last of us died. And only then were they to take it over. But that is not what happened.”

  “What exactly did happen?” Amily asked mildly, not allowing her expression to reveal that this was exactly what she had suspected all along.

  “Well, we signed the papers, and expected workmen to turn up and begin the repairs. The workmen turned up all right, but with them were men with carts, who told us they had orders to move us.” Mother Yllana clenched her hands in front of her, her chin set with what looked suspiciously like anger. “I objected of course, but the workmen said it was for our own good, because the damage to the roof was extensive, and they couldn’t be responsible for our safety if we stayed. And just as the chief workman said that, a great piece of stone came dropping right down near us!”

  :How . . . convenient,: said Rolan, echoing what Amily was thinking.

  “After that, everyone was so nervous that we packed up and left that very day. The men with the carts even helped—and when we found we were being taken here, it seemed completely delightful. We thought, well, we’ll have a pleasant fall here, and when winter comes we’ll be back in our old home, and snug and warm and no longer drafty.” Mother Yllana frowned. “But winter came . . . and there was no word on when we were to return. So I went myself to see what the delay was, and here were all these men, repainting, putting up the things of this Sethor, and generally acting as if it was their Temple now.”

  It was clear this unpleasant surprise was a wound that was still raw. The indignation in Mother Yllana’s face was unmistakable, nor did Amily blame her. “I assume that you demanded to see the man in charge?” she asked.

  “And I was sloughed off with some under-secretary, who presented me with contracts he said we had signed, and witnesses to swear to it! Except I have my wits, I do assure you and I had never signed those papers! Those papers said we had made an even exchange with the Sethor-priests, this farm for our old Temple.” She shook her head, bitterly. “Of course, I know exactly what they did. They got us to sign something else entirely, and those clever, clever scribes of theirs used our signatures as patterns to forge signatures on the new documents. We didn’t have seals, of course, who would have thought we’d need such a thing! And I could see how it would go—all those men, swearing that we had signed all the papers, and we had mistaken what we had signed, hinting that we were old and possibly losing our wits—”

  “You could have brought it into the Courts and demanded the Truth Spell,” Amily pointed out. “You still could.”

  But Mother Yllana shook her head. “They could claim immunity, by virtue of their religion. And we are not young, Herald. The strain on some of us would be hard, and for what? If I were not so angry at being deceived, I have to admit we got a decent bargain; this lovely little farm, so much better suited to our needs, for that drafty old ruin, falling down around our ears, and in a neighborhood that was not altogether . . . nice, anymore. No, I put it to the Sisters when I returned and explained what had happened, and we held a vote, and voted to make no fuss about it. We did have a man of law look over the deeds and the contract, and there is no deception in that we do own this place, without any question. It’s just—”

  “Being cheated,” Amily suggested. “It’s the principle. And by priests.”

  “Exactly,” Mother Yllana sighed. “And it’s hard on what is left of Ardana’s worshippers.”

  Amily took a deep breath. Now that she had a better idea of what was going on, she also had a better idea of what she could offer. “Do I have your permission to tell your story to the Prince?”

  Mother Yllana’s eyes widened. “Y-y-yes,” she stammered, obviously taken aback. “I—never intended—”

  “You have been wronged, it’s in the Prince’s hands to put some of it to rights,” Amily replied firmly. And it will do no harm at all to the Prince’s reputation either. “At the least, we can make it possible for your congregants to come here in ease and safety, and address the problem of the distance between the Chapter House and the Chapel.” She smiled. “It shouldn’t take much. Supplying you with a mule, a cart and a driver, and building a covered walkway should address both your problems. I’ll suggest that to the Prince, if that meets with your approval.”

  • • •

  :Good thinking,: Rolan told her, as they rode back up to the Palace. :Now, walk me through your reasoning.: Rolan did this a lot; he wanted her to articulate her logic to him before she had to defend it to the King—or anyone else for that matter.

  :I can understand completely that they feel they were swindled, because they were. But it’s also true that in most respects, where they are now is vastly superior to their old Temple. On the other hand they clearly wanted to avoid an actual confrontation with the Sethorites, if that’s what they’re called. And I don’t blame them; the Sethorites are obviously too clever; the Sisters might end up losing the new Temple as well as the old.:

  :Good analysis,: Rolan told her approvingly. :Why the Prince and not the King?:

  :Because the King might feel he had to take official notice of it. The Prince can pass it off as charity to the Sisters.:

  :Excellent. You’re catching on to the nuances of this job. By the way, Prince Sedric is practicing with the Weaponsmaster. I told his Companion that you want to speak with him. I expect he’ll be free about the time we get up there.:

/>   In fact, as they rode up to the stable, Prince Sedric was waiting for them, lurking unobtrusively just inside the door. As he helped Amily unsaddle and rub Rolan down, Amily explained the situation.

  “So I more or less promised them you’d give them a mule and a cart and arrange for a driver,” she continued. “That solves the last of their problems, really, which is how to get their congregants down out of Haven to services.”

  The Prince nodded. Like his father, he was a handsome man in the conventional sense, made more handsome in her opinion by the lurking good humor in his eyes. “I think that’s easily done out of my charity allowance, and I don’t think we’ve ever gifted the Sisters of Ardana. I can have the Stablemaster find one of the stable hands that’s getting on; it will make an easy job for him to retire into, and everyone will be happy. Good solution, Amily. I’ll get it all in motion.” His face darkened a little. “It doesn’t speak well of the honor of those—what did you call them? Sethorites?”

  Amily bit her lip. “I suspect from their point of view, they were perfectly honorable. They traded the Sisters a well-maintained property much more suited to them, and with enough land that they can be self-sufficient, for a place that was in considerable disrepair, in a poor neighborhood. The fact that they tricked the Sisters into it is probably of no importance to them, because . . . well, because I got the impression that they hold women to be only slightly more intelligent and important than a good breeding cow.”

  The Prince looked at her shrewdly. “Something like Holderkin, then?”

  She shrugged. “That’s my impression. But you were there, and maybe I am doing them a disservice.”

  The Prince shook his head. “No, my impression matches with yours. If we challenged them, they’d be astonished to learn we considered they had pulled a swindle. By their reasoning, they simply gave the simple-minded old things what they were too stupid to realize they needed.”