Eye Spy

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Then I’ll make sure that every juror has to undergo Truth Spell to ensure that they aren’t among that group,” Amily replied firmly. “The judges too.”

  “What about the families of all those littles?” Perry asked. “Are they going to be all right? After all, Remp’s wife and Dudley aren’t being charged, and they own those properties. What if they throw the families out on the street? Or worse, so the younglings can’t testify?”

  “I made certain sure t’bring thet up, no worries, Perry,” Mags replied. “They’ll be put somewhere safe.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past Dudley to hire thugs to silence them,” Abi said darkly. “He’s worse than his father.”

  Mags looked at her oddly for a moment, then nodded. “Yer Mama’ll make sure th’ King knows thet.”

  “Well, what I want to know,” Perry interjected. “Is what else you have for us to do at the Fair!”

  7

  Amily came in to the family dinner late and looking resigned. “Well,” she said as she sat down, “it seems we are not finished with Fenris Remp quite yet.”

  Mags put his fork down. “What happen’d?”

  “It appears that more people than I would have suspected owe him money, and he has been putting pressure on all of them to somehow get the charges against him dismissed,” she replied. “It won’t happen, of course. He was running a criminal enterprise. But this is making things very complicated.”

  “Am I going to have to testify?” Abi asked.

  “No,” her mother and father both answered at once. Mags nodded to his wife, who took up the tale. “No, because we have the reported goods that were stolen in the report of the Watch, and the goods were found in the possession of his underling. He was found in the tent, and, providentially, your purse is the one his underling chose to give him his ill-gotten gains in, and that was on his person when he was arrested. He’s not going to be able to squirm out of this, although he’s trying every trick he can think of.” She frowned. “The jury pool is dismayingly small.”

  “Add th’ Queen’s Handmaidens?” Mags suggested. “They’re all highborn. They should qualify, aye?”

  “I’ll suggest it. But what should have been simple has been overcomplicated by all the strings he’s trying to pull. Virtually every bit of Court business today was hearing and dismissing petitions from his debtors.”

  But what Abi was thinking about was not the trial—it was how Fenris Remp’s inevitable incarceration was going to free his son to do pretty much anything he wanted to do—at least, outside the walls of the Palace. She’d heard he held grudges, and he certainly had a powerful one against her. She was going to have to tread very carefully. Legally, he was old enough to completely take over his father’s estate and wealth, and that meant he’d have plenty of money at his disposal. From this moment on, she was going to have to watch what she said and did even more carefully than she usually did. Just in case.

  Then again, he still has no idea what kind of person he’s up against.

  A person—for instance—who had plenty of backing.

  She waited until there was a lull in the conversation. “Is Dudley Remp likely to take over for his father, or is Remp’s wife?”

  Amily frowned again. “Mari Remp is a nonentity. It will probably all fall into Dudley’s hands. He’s old enough by Valdemaran law. Why?”

  But Mags got it immediately. “Because th’ young barstard ’as a powerful grudge ’gainst Abi, love. She humiliated ’im, broke ’is finger, an’ got ’im tossed outa the Blues.”

  “And he holds grudges, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn he has his own fingers in a lot of dirty pies,” Abi said frankly.

  Mags pondered this a moment. “Whatever ye do, make sure ye got witnesses. If’n anybody starts accusin’ ye of anything, demand Truth Spell; yer Mama an’ I’ll be willin’ to put it on ye anytime, any place. But what I think ’e’s like to do is get ye thrown outa the Blues, like ’e was. An’ I jest had a notion for that.” He chuckled. “I’ll be havin’ a word with yer teachers.”

  “How can you—?” Because she knew exactly what her father was talking about. The likeliest thing was that Dudley would set things up to make it look as if she’d cheated. And how could her father prevent that?

  “If’n I tell ye, it won’t be a surprise,” he admonished. “Jest leave it up t’me.”

  And she had to be contented with that.

  * * *

  • • •

  The trial was a sensation, though Abi suspected it was more because of the dirty secrets Fenris Remp was expected to reveal about those indebted to him than anyone’s interest in a strongly disliked man on trial for organizing a petty theft ring comprised of children.

  If so, it was a relief to those who had secrets to hide and a vast disappointment to those who wanted to learn those secrets that the King himself ordered it to be a trial by Coercive Truth Spell. Given Remp’s history with Mags’ family, King Sedric had Herald Jered set it, rather than Mags or Amily.

  The courtroom was literally a Court Room; one of the common rooms of the Palace that had had the furniture cleared from it, a podium brought in for the judge, a seat for the accused, and benches for the jury and audience. Afternoon light streamed in from the windows on the right hand side of the wood-paneled room, and though they were open, the air felt stale and stuffy.

  Abi was in the courtroom, although she took care to disguise herself thoroughly with a ginger wig, abundant freckles, and a very expensive gown borrowed from Kat. She was within eyeshot of Dudley Remp, whose eyes skimmed right past her as he scanned the crowd. She wondered what he was looking for. Friends? He wasn’t likely to see any. Enemies? Possibly. Or maybe just people his father had leverage over, who might betray themselves by their nervousness—Fenris Remp probably hadn’t handed over the secrets of those names to his son, and those names would be very valuable indeed.

  The judge in the case was the High Court Judge of Haven, the Honorable Bader Genberg, whose reputation was as spotless as his white judicial robes. There was no hope for preferential treatment there. Abi watched with amusement as Remp was brought into the court, objected to being subjected to the Truth Spell, had his objections dismissed on the spot, and then sat down in front of Herald Jered.

  Within moments, Fenris Remp was surrounded by a bright blue glow as he scowled and sweated.

  “State your name,” the judge ordered.

  “Fenris Iven Remp,” Remp growled.

  “Why were you in the tent from which you were seized at the Fair in Haven four days ago?” the judge asked crisply.

  Remp told him. Told him everything. From how he had coerced people who owed him back rent into signing their children over to him as indentured labor, to discovering that people paid a fraction for the labor of a child of what they would have for the labor of an adult, to hitting on the notion of setting up a theft ring as soon as the Fair arrived in Haven. He described how he had thought about petty theft but realized pickpocketing was going to be much more profitable after consulting with an actual cutpurse—Shackle, the man he’d left in charge of the operation. He related how he had the man literally teach the children what to do, and when the first day of the Fair arrived, set them to work. Abi felt a little sick when she thought of those children. Now they knew how to steal, how easy it was. How many of them would go right back to stealing on their own once the trial was over? And they’d be caught, of course. When caught by the Watch, child thieves were generally sent away to a correctional school to learn a trade and pay back the people they had stolen from. But they generally weren’t caught by the Watch. They were generally caught by the people they were stealing from, and . . . that seldom ended well.

  By the time Remp was done, sweat poured down his face and neck from the effort of trying to resist the spell. Abi wondered if the judge was going to have him describe the methods by which he’d
frightened, bullied, or beaten the children into obeying—

  But the judge did not, and after a moment of looking over the jury, Abi realized why. Other than the couple of Handmaidens in the jury box, these were not people who would be moved by Remp’s treatment of a few children whose parents were clearly no good, since they’d willingly signed over their own offspring to clear their back rent. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” they would tell themselves sagely. And it was entirely possible that Remp’s defense would be to muddle everything by pointing out that the children were probably thieves before Remp ever got to them.

  So the judge was avoiding all that. Right now he was sticking to the facts; it was just incidental that those facts were going to outrage everyone on the jury.

  “Do you have anything to say in your defense that relates to what you have told us already?” the judge asked, when the flow of words slowed to a trickle, and then stopped.

  Is he going to—? she wondered.

  But no. The Truth Spell still compelled him. He knew very well the children hadn’t been thieves before he had them taught to be. “No,” he said, between gritted teeth.

  “Very well then. Herald, you may dismiss the spell. Bailiffs, you may return the accused to custody. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you may retire to consider your verdict.”

  The bailiffs removed Remp, who glared at the jury out of piggy eyes that tried to bore holes in them. The jury studiously ignored him, and filed out to the deliberation room behind the courtroom. The audience whispered among themselves. Dudley continued to scan them while his mother wept into her handkerchief. He made no effort at all to comfort her.

  It couldn’t have been more than a quarter candlemark before the bailiff assigned to the jury returned and led the jury back in. The man they had appointed to speak for them stood, while the rest sat.

  “I am to assume you have reached a verdict,” the judge stated.

  “We have, your Honor,” stated the man, whom Abi did not recognize but whose clothing proclaimed him to be at least as prosperous as Remp. He handed the bailiff a slip of paper, who in turn handed it to the judge. The judge read it.

  “Bailiffs, you may inform the accused that he has been judged guilty on all charges. I hereby sentence him to ten years in gaol for every child in his contemptible enterprise, sentences to be served consecutively, for a total of one hundred eighty years.” The judge banged his gavel on the bench. “Remand him to custody immediately. Jury, you are dismissed. Clear the courtroom.”

  The voice of Remp’s wife, giving vent to her feelings in a wordless wail, soared over the babble. The judge cast a single look of pity in her direction, then left.

  The trial was over.

  Abi had expected to feel elated, or at least satisfied, but . . . instead, she was only filled with a sense of discontent. She hung back while the room cleared, trying to analyze her feelings, but couldn’t come up with a reasonable explanation. Eventually, she left the now empty room, sure of only one thing.

  This wasn’t over yet. Not for her.

  * * *

  • • •

  It proved pretty easy to follow her father’s directive that she wasn’t to do anything without witnesses; after all, she spent almost all of her hours when she was not at classes either studying with Brice, Emmit, and Rudi, or with Trey, Niko, and Kat. Or with all six, since getting together for math help had gotten to be a regular event. Regular enough that King Sedric decided to give the three actual appointments as royal tutors and pay them, much to their delight and amazement. If Dudley tried any schemes to accuse Abi of anything, she never heard anything about it, probably because of those precautions.

  She and Kat and Perry did get down to the Fair again for a run at some of the entertainments, all three of them dressed as apprentices. They managed to squeeze in an acrobat show, a play, an animal show, and a dance troupe, all in the same afternoon. But despite Kat’s urging, neither she nor Perry were particularly interested in shopping. Maybe because except for when they were actually in the tents, enjoying the shows, the two of them kept looking out of the corners of their eyes for cutpurses and those who might be acting as distractions.

  When weeks passed and nothing at all happened that was any worse than difficult schoolwork problems, anyone else might have decided that Dudley had forgotten about her, or had far too much to do with running his fathers’ business than to worry about the girl that had humiliated him in public.

  Abi knew better.

  “Honestly,” Kat said one day, as Abi checked her book bag compulsively to make sure there was nothing in there that shouldn’t be. “Why are you letting that dolt obsess you like this? I swear, every time we walk out you check your shadow to make sure it’s not his. He’s got his hands full right now, and I’m sure he’s forgotten you.”

  “Except that he doesn’t have his hands full,” Abi countered. “I checked. His father set up a very careful trust a long time ago—I suppose in case he died or became incapacitated, since I’m sure the idea someone might catch him and put him in gaol never entered his mind. Dudley has absolutely nothing to do except spend the allowance the Trust gives him—except maybe try to wheedle more money out of his mother from her allowance. All the important decisions are made by a panel of Trustees. If he wants to spend his own money on property or some other business venture, he can, but he can’t touch a penny attached to his father’s business beyond what’s doled out to him until he turns twenty-one.”

  Kat whistled as they strolled back to the Royal Suite. “That can’t set well with him.”

  “One more thing to blame me for,” Abi sighed. “I know he’s planning something. I can feel it. I just wish I knew what it was.”

  “He’ll be trying to set you up as a cheat, no doubt.” Kat nodded her thanks as the right-hand Guard opened the door for them.

  “And how do I stop that if he’s being really clever—or more like, has a clever flunky to help him?” she asked, helplessly. “I feel like I’m sitting under an ax that is hanging by a hair, waiting for it to fall!”

  “Didn’t your father say he’d thought of something?” Kat countered as they took their favorite seats in the solar and got out their history books.

  “But he won’t tell me what it is!” Abi countered in despair.

  “Depend on it, it’s clever,” Kat soothed. “And that when that ax falls, it’s not going to fall on you.”

  Abi just groaned.

  “Abi! This is your father! The King’s Spy! If you don’t think he can outthink one fat dullard and his scummy friends, then shame on you!” Kat scolded. “This isn’t a lot of Karsite agents or Sleepgiver assassins! This is a former schoolboy and whatever support he can dredge up from his father’s flunkies.”

  Abi blinked at her, then realized she was absolutely right. If Mags couldn’t be more clever than Dudley Remp and his (probably unwilling) helpers, he might as well give up the position of King’s Spy and take up riding Circuit in the Field, because he would have lost whatever edge and cleverness he had.

  “I keep forgetting it’s not just a random Herald,” she said sheepishly. “It’s Papa, and you’re right. And even if he himself hadn’t thought of anything, he could have consulted Lord Jorthun and Grandfather.”

  “That’s the spirit!” Kat crowed. “Now . . . help quiz me on this section. I’ve got a test tomorrow.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Kat was not the only one with tests. Once the Fair was over and gone and the instructors had given their restless pupils a chance to settle back to work, it was time for a veritable barrage of tests. So far as Abi was concerned, the most important was the Combined Math test, which took an entire afternoon and covered every single one of her classes that involved any kind of math. There were fiendishly complicated problems that involved geometry, trigonometry, and algebra, in combinations she’d never seen
before, besides many of the usual single problems.

  It was a grueling session, and nothing less than an ordeal for many of the Blues; one boy actually broke down in the middle of it and needed to be taken out of the room. It was hard, hard work for Abi and she had a terrible headache when it was all over. She was so tired she was actually sick, and went straight home and laid down in her dark room, only coming out for supper—and then only to drink a lot of tea and eat some fruit. This was literally the hardest she had ever worked before in her life, and it was an entirely new experience. She was used to learning quickly and getting things right easily, and on the one hand, if this hadn’t been something her entire progress in the Artificers was being graded on, she’d have enjoyed the challenge. But it was, and she thoroughly sympathized with the boy who hadn’t been able to bear the pressure. More than once, she’d wished her Gift hadn’t put her in this position and envied Perry.

  The physical headache was gone by morning. But there was another headache about to occur.

  It always took several days for all the exams to be looked at and graded. Four days later, Abi got called out of class in midmorning, and her stomach began to churn. Because she was certain—this was it. This was the moment Dudley struck. Somehow, some way, he had rigged things to make it seem as if she was cheating. But if she said anything now, if she insisted Dudley was trying to disgrace her—it would look as if she was guilty and was trying to head off an accusation. Besides, who would believe anything so absurd? Dudley had been expelled, he was now (nominally at least) in charge of his father’s business, and he had much more pressing things to think about than one girl. No one would ever believe he was holding that kind of grudge and could be that obsessive and petty.

  She went where she had been sent—to Master Ketnar’s office, where she sat, hands clenched in her lap, stomach roiling, head pounding, while he looked through two sets of papers on his desk. They looked, from where she sat, like exam papers. Hers, and someone else’s. He said nothing to her; she might as well not have been there. She swallowed convulsively, not daring to speak.