Intrigues: Book Two of the Collegium Chronicles (a Valdemar Novel)

by Mercedes Lackey

  Wax was valuable. He considered using mud instead, but he was afraid of getting something into his eyes that would infect them. What to do . . .

  :Turn right,: Dallen said suddenly into his mind.

  Mags didn’t argue. He went down the first right-hand street he came to, and discovered himself in the chandler’s street—but in the alley, not the street itself. And although wax was valuable, and candle ends would always be collected to be melted down and made into new candles, he soon realized that tiny bits of it were not so valuable that here anyone bothered to pick them up out of the alley. He prowled the expanse with his nose practically pressed to the hard-packed dirt, picking up a drop there, a drip here, and pressing them together in his hands. With patient gleaning, by the time he got to the end of the alley he had a nice ball of wax about the size of his fist, and it was a pleasingly unpleasant color as well, close enough to flesh-color to blend, and mottled with threads of red, blue and ocher. If he made a flat sheet of it and pressed pieces over his eyes, it would look at first glance as if he had had a horrible accident and his eyes were covered with scar-tissue. It wouldn’t pass a close muster, but most people wouldn’t look a second time.

  And the staff was easy; he just went through the alleys of the better homes again, and found a place where the gardeners were doing tree trimming, dashed in and nicked a piece when the gardeners were too busy to see him. As an added bonus, in the garden-midden he found what had been an ornamental bowl for flowers, which now had a chipped rim and a big crack in it. That would do for his begging-bowl.

  By midmorning, he was established. He settled himself just out of the way of foot traffic, his eyes sealed with wax and bandaged, his staff across his lap, and the bowl, which looked nicely forlorn and battered, in front of him.

  He dropped some of his shields, ever so cautiously, and let the thoughts, and particularly the images, of the people passing by seep into his mind. Uppermost for the most part were concerns about where they were going, so he got lots of glimpses of the street and the people in it.

  Until the madman somehow connected with him again, this was Mags’ best hope of finding him; looking for the foreigners through the eyes of other people.

  Now and again he heard the metallic sound of a small coin falling into his bowl. When he did, he murmured a quiet thank you, groped convincingly for the token, and stuffed it in his pocket.

  Dallen was a comforting presence in the back of his mind again, even if the Companion was mostly drugged and comatose. There were a hundred questions he wanted to ask, and unfortunately, right now, he couldn’t.

  Foremost was the suspicion that at least part of the reason why Nikolas wasn’t giving him help was that the King’s Own was testing him again.

  If that was so, well, he was actually all right with that. He still felt as if he needed to be punished—or at least to atone in some way—

  Maybe someone else would have resented this, but he was trying to be honest with himself, and if he had been in Nikolas’ shoes, he’d have done the same. After all, Mags had run away from the Collegium; Nikolas had to be sure that he could count on Mags to do what he was asked to do.

  So Mags had to prove himself, show he was still able to perform as he had been taught, and do so without any outside support.

  While he watched the passing crowd through the eyes of the crowd itself, he pondered where it might be likeliest to find the foreigners now. Would they have tried to hide themselves in the slums?

  Don’t think so. One of the things that Nikolas had taught him was that each block in the poorer sections of Haven was like a village. Everyone knew everyone, and they all knew each others’ business. For a lot of foreigners to suddenly intrude—well, they would stand out. It would be obvious that they weren’t poor, no matter how they tried to disguise themselves. And—hmm.

  Another question to ask Dallen: just how widespread were the stories about foreigners’ plotting the King’s death? If such tales were current all over Haven, there were plenty of people who would report their presence to the Guard, no matter how they themselves felt about the Guard, or whether or not they were lawbreakers. Because there was bound to be a reward tied to their capture, and there is nothing like a reward to make the former lawbreaker turn law-abiding citizen.

  So he could probably dismiss the slums.

  On the other hand, they had stolen horses now. They didn’t have to be in Haven at all. They could be anywhere within half a day of the city, though it was likeliest that they were closer than that.

  So if I was one’a them, what would I want right now?

  The one he was linked to had clearly wanted something, and it was an actual object. Mags had the impression that very recently he had decided he had left it behind somewhere. There was no doubt it was important, very important.

  Maybe that was why he was back in the city! They must have stayed at a lot of inns in order to keep from arousing suspicion by staying too long in one. The lost object would probably be in one of those inns.

  Now, the inn Mags had found them living at was not exactly a cheap one—not luxurious, but not cheap. He doubted that they would ever stay in a cheap place. In a decent inn, when you left something behind, the innkeeper held it until you turned up again and asked for it; it paid them to do such a simple service, for it guaranteed repeat customers.

  Perhaps one way to go about this would be to consider just where in the city a foreigner could stay without causing comment in the middle of winter, besides that row of inns on the Trade Road.

  Well . . . time to consider what he had learned from Master Soren, and at Master Soren’s gatherings. There were only a limited number of kinds of merchants that would need housing in the middle of winter. If the foreigners were trying to avoid detection, they would have to be careful about what they were trying to pass as.

  One thing sprang instantly to mind. At the Midwinter Festival, he had overheard a conversation with a Master Goldsmith. If he recalled this correctly, the man had been recounting—with great pleasure—the long negotiation he was having with a particular gem trader who had decided to overwinter in Haven purely to keep the bargaining going. So gold and gem merchants would remain . . . particularly if staying would get them a really good bargain.

  They was sportin’ a mort’o sparklies, he recalled. Huh. I wunner if they was like t’ sell any on ’em? If so, the gems they were selling would lend verisimilitude to pretending to be gem traders. And no one thought twice about gem traders being foreign. In fact, if he had been in their shoes, and had not established an alternate safe house down in Haven, that would be exactly what he would do. Well, unless he thought of something even safer.

  Well, that gave him an outline for another course of action. Investigate the inns—and there couldn’t be many—where the goldsmiths were. That could be a bit difficult in his current disguise, but not impossible.

  Do wool sellers overwinter? It would be easy enough to find that out with a day or so of lingering in that part of the city.

  Horse and cattle traders—no. There were horse fairs from Midsummer on, but they stopped at the first snow. There was a cattle fair for weaned calves at Midsummer, then nothing until the fall, but by the time the first snow fell, cattle traders were safely back home. No use looking there. Same for sheep and other livestock. Besides, aside from exotic breeds of horses, like Shin’a’in, the sellers were all Valdemaran.

  Spices, dyes and medicines . . . maybe. He’d have to lurk again.

  Grain . . . no, and anyway all sellers would again be Valdemaran, not foreign.

  He wracked his brain. A merchant that was foreign would have to be selling something exotic and very expensive, and in order to overwinter, he would either have planned to be here, or got caught by surprise.

  All right. That narrowed things down quite a bit.

  Weapons . . . no. That would make them stand out, which was something that they wouldn’t want to do.

  What about a reason for being in Haven that had
nothing to do with selling anything?

  Aha. Scholars. Virtually every Temple had a library and archives. Now that might be the answer. If they were pretending to be scholars, they could move from inn to inn without causing comment, and only needed to go out “to study” during the day to keep up the ruse. No one thought twice about scholars being foreign, peculiar, or reclusive.

  And that led to another, sobering thought. What if all those trips down into Haven on the part of the bodyguards had NOT been to get drunk, but to scout out potential places where they could all go should they need to abandon the Court?

  He hoped that Nikolas had thought of that.

  Never mind. Concentrate on what he could do; that was the important thing right now.

  He picked up his begging bowl and held his staff out in front of him, sweeping it back and forth in little arcs to “feel” his way. Which he wasn’t actually doing, of course, he was using other peoples’ glimpses of him to figure out where he was going. It could have been disorienting had he not gotten used to it while he sat in his corner this afternoon; it was a bit difficult to do, but not disorienting—like trying to thread a needle by looking at it in the mirror.

  That only made him go slowly, and with the appearance of fumbling a bit, which was all to the good; it added to the realism of his performance. It amused him a little to think that all he needed now would be for some kind-hearted soul to take his elbow and offer to lead him where he wanted to go.

  He had made sure to get up and move only when the crowds had thinned out so as not to inconvenience folk too much. No one appeared terribly irritated by him, and most simply cleared out of his way with no fuss.

  Since the last place that his quarry had been was that section of inns on the Trade Road, that was where he headed; his first position hadn’t been too far from there, so that was all to the good. It took him about a candlemark to slowly walk there, find a reasonable place to set up—visible, but out of traffic—and settle in. He thinned his mental shields a little more, this time hoping to pick something up specifically about his quarry. A few moments later, he heard someone speaking—to him.

  “What happened to you?”

  The tone sounded more suspicious than concerned. He re-focused on the nearer stray thoughts, and got an image from people around him as well as the man himself. Ah, the person in question was a City Constable, checking to be sure that he was an “honest” beggar. He hadn’t known that they checked on beggars; good thing that he had made his preparations!

  “Burnt, sir,” he said softly, and slipped his bandage a little. It was dusk, and what looked passable by daylight was hideously convincing by twilight. “Accident.”

  He felt the man’s involuntary recoil and had to suppress a smile of satisfaction. He pulled the bandage back up.

  “I’m sorry for you, lad. You can set up here,” the man said, and Mags heard his footsteps going off.

  Once again, Mags set to listening in on unguarded, errant thoughts. It was a lot like working in the mine, actually. A lot of tedious chipping and sifting through things you couldn’t use and didn’t want, hoping for a sparklie.

  The Constable returned—this must have been a regular patrol for him—and paused. Through the eyes of a curious passer-by, Mags watched him lean down and felt something warm placed in his hand; a chance thought from the Constable himself told him what it was—a meat pie!

  “Oh, thankee, sir!” he said, his voice warm with very real gratitude. It had been a very long time since that half pie this morning, and this was what some of the inns called a “Drover’s Pie,” twice the size of the normal ones, with meat in one half and apple in the other. “Been a good bit since brekky.”

  “Eh, inns on the Row feed Guards and Constables free,” the man said with a trace of embarrassment. “They give us too much, and I thought you could use it.”

  “A kindness still be a kindness, sir,” Mags replied. “Ye took thought, aye? Many wouldn’t. Thankee.”

  The man was pleased, if still embarrassed, and moved off on his rounds.

  Mags savored the aroma of the pie; it was a good one. He bit into it, by purest chance getting the meat end, and slowly chewed and swallowed. It was a very good pie, made all the better by the fact of the Constable’s kindness.

  :Damn,: Dallen muttered sleepily.

  :What?:

  :I’m not there to get the apple end.:

  Mags almost laughed.

  He stayed there until long after dark, “listening,” waiting, patient. A few more coins dropped into his bowl, he got some tantalizing hints about his quarry when someone asked about the increased patrols and the inn servants talked about horde of Guard and Heralds that had descended on an inn further down the road.

  :Dallen, did th’ foreigners leave anythin’ behind when they scarpered off?:

  :Nothing but the Lunatic,: Dallen replied. :Otherwise the place was scoured clean.:

  So whatever it was that—damn it, he had to give his quarry a name.

  Temper, he decided. For the man certainly was in a towering temper.

  . . . whatever it was that Temper had left behind, it hadn’t been at the last inn. And he learned that the Constables and the Guard had been to every inn on the row with descriptions of the foreigners, asking if they had stayed there. They had, of course. But again, they had left nothing behind. In fact, they were careful not to leave so much as a stray hair or a nail paring behind, which had struck the innkeeper whose thoughts Mags was watching as being odd.

  He got nothing more after that—well, nothing pertinent, although he did learn that at astonishing number of married men brought clandestine lovers to these places . . . As the night weathered on, and the inn common rooms began to empty out, he caught the thoughts of the Constable again. The man was approaching, a bit reluctantly . . . hmm. Mags wondered what he was about to say.

  “If you were to curl up farther back in that nook to sleep,” the Constable said, standing over him, “You’d be out of the way and I wouldn’t need to ask you to leave for the night.”

  Mags chuckled. “Thankee sir, but I got a safer place. Time fer me t’ be gettin’ on then?”

  “I’m afraid so,” the man said apologetically, as Mags got to his feet with the help of his staff, and picked up his bowl. “We’re not supposed to allow people to sleep on the street. Rules are rules.”

  “Rules’re there fer a reason, sir. Reckon it keeps them like me safe, too. Be fair easy fer someone to decide he didn’t care for the look’a me an’ give me a kick or three. Goo’night t’ ye.”

  “And to you,” the Constable replied, relieved that Mags had made no fuss. “And good luck.”

  Mags made his way down the street, a little hampered by the fact that there weren’t a lot of people about whose eyes he could use. But as soon as he was well out of sight of the Constable, he ducked into a darkened doorway, and with relief, peeled the wax off his eyes.

  With wax and bandage tucked away safe, and his bowl and staff under his arm, he made for the part of town where he had found his cozy sleeping spot at a quite brisk pace, energized by the unexpected bonus of that pie. On the way he had the good fortune of running into a street vendor who was just packing up, who was happy to sell him the remainder of his stock for the handful of small coins Mags had been given today. Though the skinny sausages and tiny, bite-sized pies the man handed over were beginning to dry out, and had been made of the cheapest possible scraps and innards in the first place, nevertheless Mags had not scrupled to eat a half pie dropped in the dirt this morning, and he wasn’t going to cavil at eating these now.

  He got a drink at a public fountain and horse trough in a square on the way to his goal, after devouring the sausages (since the pies would keep better). There was a line of workmen having a bit of a wash-up at another public horse trough, and he took advantage of the opportunity to do the same.

  By now, inns were closing their doors, and he was in a good position to scramble up to his chimney pots without being noti
ced as drunks who were disinclined to pay for a spot on the floor to sleep off their liquor were turned out into the street. With the staff tied to his back and the bowl inside his shirt, he made it up before the local Constable came by on his round.

  He tucked his pies right up against the chimney-pots to keep them warm and settled in.

  :Anythin’ from anybody?: he asked Dallen.

  :Nikolas is testing you in part,: Dallen replied dryly. :As you suspected. But there is reason to think there is someone up here who is in contact with our quarry. Whether it is someone at Court, a servant, or even a Guard . . . we can’t tell. And whether the person is in collusion or being duped . . . we can’t tell that, either.:

  :’Till I actually find something, don’t matter,: he replied.

  :They’re moving me back to Companion’s stable tomorrow,: Dallen continued. :Healers’ only has one stall for Companions, so, there it is. I’ve been politely asked to vacate and agreed. I’m allowed to stand on my own a very little bit, and the rest of the time I can lie down, so . . . time to give the stall back in case someone worse than me is brought in. It will be nice to be in my own stall again. And they will still keep working on me.:

  :Wisht I was there,: Mags replied wistfully. :Well, cain’t be helped.:

  :And I wish bones healed faster.:

  Mags hesitated, then asked the question that had been haunting him. :Bear said—:

  :I am quite aware of what Bear said,: Dallen replied dryly. :Allow me to point out that Bear has never healed anything but a horse, and cannot possibly know what to expect from a Companion. I am healing fine, and my legs will be just as strong as before. You and I will be playing Kirball as soon as you get back up here. Or . . . all right, maybe not quite that soon, but certainly before Midsummer.:

  Mags heaved a sigh of intense relief.

  :Companions are not often crippled, except by age,: Dallen continued. :Bear couldn’t know that, of course. It’s—well, for the same reason we stay white. So rest easy, Chosen,: he added fondly. :We’ll soon be Kirball champions again.: