C. J. Cherryh - Fortress 05 (5 page)

“Well, what if we went down to the stable tomorrow and dropped a whole sack of apples?”

Sometimes Otter’s schemes were as troubling as his questions.

But he also came up with intrigues Aewyn never would have thought of. “Us high folk daren’t get caught doing it. The priests would be very put out. But if we paid the grooms to go get a batch of nice big apples and carrots and such and strew it all through the stalls, nobody would care.”

It was a plot hatching, a plot that required all sorts of delicious connivance. Otter’s ways had never gotten them caught, particularly when he had Paisi’s advice. For a country lad, Otter was very good at figuring out the byways and back ways of the palace—besides their careful mapping. But this was something that, besides theft, required diplomacy, and arrangements, and picking the right people to carry it out, those who would keep a secret.

He knew just the ones.

And, he thought, if they were very clever, there was the big kitchen apple barrel, there were always old flour sacks in the kitchen, and if they sneaked quite skillfully, they needn’t spend a penny of his market money, or have to trust the stable lads to do the buying.

ii

A LITTLE PLAN, WITH AEWYN, ALWAYS ENDED UP FAR

BIGGER THAN IT STARTED. Otter was not thoroughly happy: he would rather have put his hand in fire than have to attend Quinalt services, though he had to respect the king’s faith, and he could see that there were advantages to his mother’s son not sitting in his rooms while Guelenfolk were praying and fasting and being pious.

But that inconvenience palled in the face of the adventure Aewyn proposed: he was very glad to think they would be feeding the horses—his own among them—and that Aewyn agreed with him.

His own stomach was full of good food. He trusted his half brother Aewyn, who, despite his grand notions, never had led them wrong.

And his father—in private, he dared think of the king as his father—had made provision for his going to the Quinalt Festival in public with the family. That was at once scary and exciting. He had not been in public with his brother before.

He walked back to his room, a track that led down the hall, across the landing of the great stairs, and farther down the hall four doors, just as the servants were putting out the east wing candles—all but the single candle in each hall sconce, which would burn for safety and for convenience of anyone whose night candle had gone out. The west wing, where Aewyn’s room lay next the king’s and the queen’s chambers, still burned bright with multiple candles, and the sounds of revelry still came up the stairs from the corridor below, where a veritable forest of candles burned bright and numerous. By comparison, with the dimming of the candles in the east wing, the way to his own door began to feel like deepest night, and the sleet rattling at the high windows of the grand stairway at the landing predicted the revelers below might wade knee deep to their lordly houses before morning.

It was a lonely hour, and he had no bodyguard to walk with him: his father had appointed him none, though the captain of his father’s guard had given him the name of the sergeant of the upper hall night guard and orders to go to him if he ever felt uneasy.

Aewyn’s bodyguard, likewise, would have walked him home on such late visits, but he never availed himself of what Aewyn had ceased to offer—he could not imagine Guelen guardsmen, the Prince’s Guard more to the point, armored and carrying weapons, walking him down the hall to his room. He had no enemies that he knew, nor any great notoriety, so far as he knew; there were no bogles on the short way, only disconcerting echoes and a fluttering activity of shadows in the dim light, all of which were due to drafts—there was a well-reported and much-deplored draft in the upper hall when certain doors downstairs were open, but he had no idea which ones those were. He was reasonably sure the shadows were the wind fluttering the last candles, and nothing due to haunts—the Guelesfort had nothing of the reputation of the Zeide, down in Amefel.

He was a guest in his father’s house and had no desire to disturb the household, or make demands, or take his welcome for granted.

He was Otter, was all, on a visit that would last only as long as he amused his brother, and he would go back to Amefel, probably before too much longer—as soon as he had assured his father he was a quiet soul and without great expectations. He had used to dream of being swept up by his royal father on one of his visits and made a prince, well, at least a landed lord—had not his father provided him an education, and put him under the personal care of Lord Crissand?—but a surer knowledge of the world beyond Gran’s farm had begun to tell him that was not at all likely, and that the reason he was under Lord Crissand’s care had more to do with Lord Crissand’s having his mother in prison.

Going to Festival with the family, now: that was a surprise to him. He had not been sure he would be this long in Guelemara.

He found his own door and whisked inside as if ghosts were on his heels—always, these snug, painted doors chased a little breeze inside, and the doors, easy on their polished hinges, felt snappish and scarily sharp in their closing, fierce things that would love a taste of peasant skin.

“M’lord?” Paisi was waiting up for him—Paisi, Gran’s true grandson, as happened, Gran’s proper heir, a grown man—while he himself was Gran’s ward, a guest even under the roof he called home. Paisi had never settled easily into what he called “lordly doin’s,” and avoided locals—so it was a lonely watch Paisi had assumed, and not uncommon for Otter to find Paisi sitting exactly this way at the fireside, having had his supper alone. It was not to his will that Paisi regularly stayed behind in quarters when he was with Aewyn, but that was what Paisi chose. Paisi oversaw the servants who made free of every door in the Guelesfort—“so’s to see what fancy servants do,” was Paisi’s way of putting it, in his choice to stay much about their rooms. But Paisi, who had been a thief when he was a boy, had his own suspicions of anyone opening drawers—even with the best of excuses and bearing clean linens when they did it.

Paisi was a small wiry man with dark hair and dark eyes, like most Amefin-born—clean-shaven, like most from the west and north. His hands were callused and his face was tanned dark from work in the sun. The habit of good humor was etched around his eyes, lines which the fire smoothed to a look of youth. Country-bred might be an insult in this grand house; but that was Paisi, through and through; and wherever Paisi was, was safe and comfortable, in Otter’s thinking, a little bit of Gran’s house that stayed constantly near him in this strange place.

Paisi rose as Otter unfastened his cloak, and Paisi took it from him, snatching it deftly away, though Otter perfectly well knew for himself where the peg was. Paisi hung his cloak up by the guards’

room, just off the little entry hall, and Otter, ignoring both hearthside chairs, sank down on the warm, smooth, polished stones: nothing escaped the relentless polishing in the Guelesfort.

Paisi sat down by him, cross-legged, picked up the poker, and began to settle the fire down for the night.

“Did you have supper?” Otter asked him, to be sure the servants had come and done their jobs. He was prepared to go down and raid the kitchen with Paisi, well fed as he was: Aewyn’s supper invitation had been unexpected. “I didn’t think I’d be so long.”

“Oh, when ’Is ’Ighness called ye in to supper, I went straight down to kitchen on me own, bein’ a canny fellow.”

A frown. “You’re entitled to call the servants to bring it, you know.”

“Oh, but ’Is Majesty’s banquet’s all spread out down below, and staff gettin’ all the dishes that come back, ain’t they? So the pickin’s is better if I go down meself—I ain’t lived in a great house for nothin’. I’d ha’ brought some tarts up when I come back, but didn’t seem likely there was short commons in ’Is ’Ighness’s rooms, neither, was there?”

“I couldn’t eat another bite,” Otter said, which was the truth—though he and Aewyn had, regrettably, seen no tarts at all: he was a little envious, for the tarts. “We laid plots to feed the horses.”

“For Fast Day, was ye meanin’?”’

“Aewyn told me about it. Paisi, we intend to steal a sack of apples from the kitchen.”

“Now, ye ain’t pilferin’ any apples, lad. If you’re bent on annoyin’

the priests, leave pilferage to one who knows how to slip about.”

“I think His Highness insists to do it himself.”

“An’ the kitchen barrel is in the storeroom, an’ there’s a lock on all. You got to get down there after supper, is what, if you’re going to get in. And then you got to know when the baker’ll be in, and ’e’ll be in and out of that room in the night, to start the dough for mornin’ bakin’. I know when.”

“You could get in trouble.”

“I might if I was caught. Which I won’t be.” Paisi wriggled his fingers, a ripple in the firelight. “An’ who’s sayin’ this is a good idea, now?”

“His Highness says they always do it. Well, the grooms always do it, spread grain here and there so the horses don’t go hungry. We just thought apples would be good for holiday.”

“So how many sacks is this to be? There’s twenty-some horses up

’ere.”

“I don’t know. At least a good big one. His Highness says there are always flour sacks in the kitchens.”

“Oh, so this is a proper plan, is it, wi’ sacks an’ all. An’ ye’ll be tellin’ the stableboy what, when ye come in with these ’ere sacks?”

“See, you should have come with me.”

“Well, I didn’t know ye’d be plottin’ theft and knavery with ’Is

’Ighness. Filch ye a couple coin, that I can do, an’ we got a few o’

Gran’s, which is far easier, then I go down an’ get your sack of apples in town, none the wiser, wi’out stirrin’ up the whole hill an’

gettin’ the Prince in trouble. You just let me tend to it.”

“No! Coin’s not apples. You can get in so much trouble…”

“Apples an’ coin is the same to the law, an’ coin o’ th’ realm’s a sight lighter an’ easier to hide. If you’re goin’ to thieve, lad, ye got to be light. Besides, if ye bribe the stableboy, ’e won’t remember a thing when they find the flour sack.”

“Well, you’d have to get the whole sack of apples up past the Guelesfort gate. That’s where you’d get caught.”

“Wi’ what? A sack of apples I paid for wi’ good coin? I’m bringin’ it upstairs t’ m’lord.”

“For Fast Day?”

“Ah, that is a point.”

“And neither you nor I has money. We shouldn’t spend Gran’s.”

“An’ Gran’ll skin us both for fools for good an’ all for even thinkin’

it, an’ me for lettin’ ye risk your neck! Whoever come up wi’ this wild notion in the first place?”

“Maybe I did,” Otter admitted. “I don’t know.”

“Well, how can ye not know?”

“It was mostly both of us. Prince Aewyn said they don’t feed the horses on Fast Day, or well, they do, but they don’t, and he said they scatter grain around and let them into the stalls where it is.

But it just seemed right to give them a real treat. We already have coin. Or Prince Aewyn does. He gets pennies for market day. We could just tell the grooms to go buy apples because they’re the ones to do it.”

Paisi made a rude face, not letting him get further. “An’ who knows if the grooms takes ’alf your coin an’ spends it in the tavern, neither? I don’t trust them lads, especially not that shifty fellow who’s the stablemaster’s get. Ye give ’im a bribe, so’s he knows it’s his, an’ ’e don’t have to get all stirred up and sweaty to pilfer it, so’s he can lie wi’ a pure, clear face when authority comes askin’.”

He was sure that, where it regarded thievery, Paisi was the one to ask. He and Paisi had shared little mischiefs at home in Amefel, minor misdeeds, like filching windfall apples during harvest from an unwatched orchard, and Paisi had taught him how to lie low and cover his tracks. But here, Paisi was right, it was priests, and law, and very skilled guards stalking up and down the halls; and whether it was because they were in the strange and Guelen west, or because it was priests lying about being cruel and calling it good deeds, he had no idea of the ground he stood on in Guelenish lands.

He had come to the Guelesfort, it had turned out, because Prince Aewyn wanted him to come and not because, as he had always hoped would happen, his father had had the idea. So he was not the king’s guest. He was here on Aewyn’s whim, and they liked each other, but it was a question how far Aewyn would stand up for him if something went wrong. Here in the Guelesfort the penalty wasn’t just paying extra chores to Gran and delivering simples to the offended orchard owner. It was the priests, the law, and the Guelen Guard, and Paisi, who wasn’t the king’s son, and had no protection, wanted to get between him and the law.

“I just felt badly about my horse,” he said, the only moral sense he could come up with. “He loves his grain. Gran wouldn’t hold with these priests, would she?”

“Nor would she hold wi’ you stealin’,” Paisi said. “Gran’d box my ears for lettin’ you find your way into mischief, here in the king’s own house, an’ the Prince with ye, good gods! Ye’re here to find your fortune wi’ your father, is what.”

“I’m not, really. It wasn’t my father who wanted me here.”

“Well, same as. An’ finding your fortune ain’t likely if the guards catch you an’ the Prince filchin’ apples.”

“So what’s right? The Prince won’t like it if I back off now. And Aewyn wouldn’t get into trouble if he was caught. I know it’s right what you say about the kitchen, and the locks, and all, but he won’t get caught. They won’t dare catch him, the same as they pretend to starve the horses, won’t they?”

“Let me tell you about priests an’ morality, little brother. They’re apt to be more upset if them apples is in the Prince’s hands after sunrise, because he’s the prince, havin’ food when he ain’t supposed to, never mind it’s horse-feed. Stealin’, that’s not the matter. The
food
is. That’s priests for you.”

“But—”

“You hear me, you hear me on this, lad. There was a time the pious priests—they was Bryalt ones, in this case—was preaching in the square about charity, an’ the holiday penny, and feedin’ the poor, an’ all. An’ we was starvin’, Gran and me, an’ it sounded like a miracle. We was desperate. I was, oh, about nine. An’ hearin’ that about charity, an’ believin’ what I heard, I went to the shrine to get the ’oliday gift they promised. And do you know, them rascal priests wouldn’t give me the penny for a loaf o’ bread, because I wasn’t goin’ to swear again’ wizards, when the whole reason we was starvin’ was that Gran couldn’t sell her cures on account of the town marshal put out some damned edict about wizards an’