Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar (33 page)

Such as Kailyon.

Kailyon had come to Haven as a child barely five years of age, gaunt and big-eyed and carried across a Herald’s saddle, brought to Haven along with news of sickness and a failed well. His earliest memories were of blue leather and silver bells, and of the world as it looked from the height of a Companion’s saddle, and the years after that were happy ones spent growing up in the household of one of the Collegium’s grooms. It was no surprise to anyone that he would seek to serve among those who had loved him and cared for him. And so he had, through King Sendar’s reign and into Queen Selenay’s, and if he was fortunate, he would continue to serve for many years yet.

Like most of the servants at the Collegium, Kailyon was an invisible presence to the Trainees. Some of them had grown up in houses filled with servants. Others had
been
servants, or been destined to be servants, before they had come here. It didn’t matter, since once they donned their Grays, all were equal within these walls. Though many of his fellow servants often grumbled—and loudly—about how completely they were ignored by the students (“They treat us as if we were furniture!” was a complaint he often heard), Kailyon never thought so. The business of turning a citizen of Valdemar into a Herald was a demanding task, and it left the young students little time to focus on anything else, and if they did not (for the most part) precisely
notice
the servants who made sure that their lives were comfortable and well organized, neither did any of them—from highest-born noble to orphan child of the streets—ever
abuse
the Collegium servants. That would be grounds for correction swift and stern, from teachers, senior students, and their Companions alike.

As for a greater recognition, well, over the years, some of those who had begun simply as anonymous bodies in Trainee Gray ricocheting in-and-out of Kailyon’s orbit (for if he and his fellow servants were anonymous to them, well, the young Trainees were just as anonymous to the Collegium servants, really) had gone on to become friends, and Kailyon had followed the news of their lives as they exchanged Trainee’s Grays for Herald’s Whites, had greeted them with pleasure when they sought him out upon their returns to Haven—for the Collegium was home to the Heralds as well as school for the Trainees—and on a few sad occasions had heard it whispered that someone’s Companion had returned—alone—to seek rest and healing within the Grove, and hearing the name of the Companion, knew that he had lost a friend.

In his youth (decades gone now) Kailyon had fetched and carried heavy loads, rebuilt toppled walls, and dealt with every matter that a strong back and a strong arm could serve. If those feats were beyond his grasp now, he was not
quite
useless (as he had told Master Seneschal not two years past), nor was he ready for his pipe and his pension and his mug of beer in one of the rest houses that the Collegium kept for those of its servants who had no families to go to. Not yet. Dust fell as surely as rain, and boots left scuff marks, and woodwork needed polishing, and that was work a man could do and be proud of the doing. If it was not so fine and grand as serving as a groom in the Companion’s stables, nor a thing where the absence of his labor would be noted instantly (as it would did he toil in kitchen or the pantry), it was still honest, necessary work, and Kailyon had lived and worked among Heralds long enough to know that there was no need to be noticed or praised or thanked for doing what needed to be done.

It wasn’t arduous work by any means. A wing of classrooms to keep clean, and the Library as well, and while the Library was a full night’s task that couldn’t fairly be started until after the students were out of it, old bones kept late hours, and Kailyon did not mind laboring through the long, quiet hours when others were abed. Truth be told, he liked the solitude, the time to spend with his own thoughts. Each new Trainee who came to the Heralds’ Collegium was both a puzzle for the present and a promise to the future. Some of them were children barely older than Kailyon had been when he had come, some of them were verging on adulthood. All uncertain, in one way or another, about what the future might hold and what their place in it would be. Over the years, he’d seen so many of them—from skittish, wide-eyed arrivals to equally skittish, young Heralds departing on their first Circuits—and they all had one thing in common: the fierce determination to be
worthy
of the trust being placed in them.

As soon as he opened the door to the next room on his cleaning schedule this night, he saw the glow of the lantern at the back of the room (heard the faint mortified squeak and the rustle of papers, too) and knew he wasn’t alone. No point to asking, “Who’s there?” as if he were a panicky grandmam hearing imaginary housebreakers in the night. If nothing else, the Companions would stop someone who shouldn’t be here before they even got onto the grounds, and though these days, the younger servants entertained themselves by scaring themselves sick with tales about what the Mages
might
do if one had a mind to, what Kailyon was pretty sure of was that what the Mages
did
do was make the Collegium safer. So he merely took his large lantern off the cart and hung it up on the hook by the door and opened its doors.

If it were merely a regular lantern, holding a candle or burning oil, it would hardly be enough to light his work. But it held, instead, a spell of Mage-light, and so when it was opened, it cast a glow bright enough for him to work by. Certainly it cast enough light for him to see who was here that oughtn’t be.

It was just as he’d figured. Sharp-boned and big-eyed, and here long enough to have Grays that had been made for her, but not long enough to have gotten herself to the point where she wouldn’t stare round-eyed at a lantern full of Mage-light.

There was silence for the space of several heartbeats while the child stared at him as if he were seventy Karsite demons in one skin. She knew full well she oughtn’t be here, and up to no more mischief than seeking out a quiet place to study, if that inkwell and pile of papers was any indication.

“It will be a nice change to have company,” Kailyon said mildly, and set to his work as if she weren’t there.

“I didn’t think anyone would be in here,” she said after a little while, and Kailyon grunted. “Place doesn’t clean itself, you know.”

“No, I ... I guess I never thought about it,” the girl said, sounding surprised and just a little put out. “We keep our rooms clean, and we do some of the clean-up in the Refectory and the Salle, and I never thought about the classrooms. My name is Aellele. My family has a farm near Sweetgrass Creek—oh, I know you won’t ever have heard of it ...”

“But you’re a long way from home, and you’ve been away from home for a long time, and you’re wondering if you’ll ever get to go back home again,” Kailyon said. Aellele looked at him in surprise, and he smiled. “The Sweetgrass Valley is north of here, isn’t it?”

She began to tell him about the farm—he’d heard many such tales over the years, from many homesick young Trainees—and broke off in the middle of her tale to offer to help him in his chores. Kailyon saw no reason to object—it stood to reason that a farm girl knew a little something about dusting and cleaning—and soon Aellele had her own dust rag and was working along beside him.

Kailyon had never been one to chatter, but he had the knack of listening without making it seem to the one who spoke that it was any great burden for him to do so. And in truth it was not, for Kailyon had not only spent his entire life in Haven but had spent most of it within the grounds of the Collegium itself. If the wider world was to come to him at all, it must come through the stories and voices of those who spoke with him. And so he listened willingly to Aellele as she told of the life that she’d left and the life that she’d found, and if what she had to say was almost entirely composed of things he had heard many times before, well, it was new to her, and he gave her the respect of offering her words his full attention. Besides, there was one thing here that he did not yet know, and that was the reason she had chosen to transgress the Collegium’s rules to the extent of placing herself where he had found her, for if the majority of the Trainees were anonymous to the servants, the scapegraces and troublemakers were not, and Kailyon knew already that Aellele was not one of these.

When they finished that classroom, they went on to the next, and went on working side by side. Aellele’s flow of words slowed, then stopped. “Master Kailyon, you have been here a very long time,” she said, after a long silence. “Do you know ... what happens to someone—if they’re Chosen and just can’t learn to be a proper Herald?”

The last words came out in a rush, and it was such an utterly foolish question that if long years hadn’t granted him wisdom (or at least prudence), Kailyon would have laughed out loud. If the child had given the question half a minute’s thought, she would realize that what she was asking wasn’t a question about Herald-trainees, but about
Companions
. Who chose those who wore Trainee Grey in the first place but the Companions? And how could anyone imagine that the Companions could ever Choose someone who couldn’t learn to become a proper Herald of Valdemar? (Although—Kailyon did grant—it might take years and tears to do the job up right, it was also true that the Companions never chose someone who couldn’t be turned out as a Herald ... eventually.)

But Aellele was far too young (and much too worried) to think things out logically, and to the young, their small sins often loomed as large and black as any villainy out of myth.

“Well,” he said, affecting to consider, “I suppose that would depend on why it was they couldn’t be a Herald.”

And now the truth of the matter came tumbling out—a litany of childish wrongdoing and temper fits (he’d done as much—and worse—at her age, but he hadn’t been looking toward an awful and glorious future as a Herald). And of course Aellele had the manners to try to keep her fretting to herself, and of course her Companion knew about it, and of course he (and everyone else who saw her worrying, and people
would
have seen it because the teachers and the older students and everyone whose business it was to care for the young Herald-trainees were neither fools nor brutes) would have told her not to worry, that there would be time later to worry, if worrying needed to be done. And she would have paid as little attention to all their well-meant advice as the weather paid to Mistress Laundress when she wanted to dry linens and it wanted to rain.

“—and a Herald has to be
nice
all the time—when they’re riding Circuit—and I can’t be—I know I can’t—not if I live to be a thousand years old—and
oh!
what will happen then? I don’t know!”

“Hm,” Kailyon said. He sat down on a bench—as talking was more work than thinking—and gestured for her to sit beside him. “Well. Here’s how I see it. And of course you needn’t pay any heed to me. I’m not one of your instructors. Not a Herald neither. Just an old man who polishes wood and mops floors. But I’ve seen a good few Heralds come and go.”

Aellele seated herself beside him and composed herself to listen, her face grave and solemn.

“Of course you mustn’t do something to shame the Crown or your Companion while you wear the Whites. Everyone will tell you that. They’ll be telling you that for some years yet. And some Heralds ride Circuit and some don’t, you know. Every Herald goes to work they’re best suited to. Still, you aren’t wrong. If you put on the Whites, there’ll come a time when you’re asked to give a judgment. I don’t brag to say I’ve known a Herald or two in my time, though, and not one of them has ever worried one tick about being
nice
, and every single one of them has worried about being
right
.”

Aellele regarded him with doubtful hope. “Everyone else seems to think that all we have to do is study everything in our books and—and—and—learn to ride and use a sword and a bow!”

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” Kailyon said. “Maybe they’ve got as many doubts as you do. Maybe they
do
think it’s just that easy—now. Those as think they know everything already are always the hardest to teach. They’ve got the most to learn, and it’s hard as hard to make them let go of what they think they know. You, now, you already know you’ve got a hard road to ride. So you’ll work just as hard as you need to in order to get yourself to the end of it. I’m no farmer, but a friend once told me there wasn’t any point to planning the harvest at plowing time.”

To Kailyon’s pleasure, Aellele actually giggled, then stopped and regarded him solemnly. “A lot can happen between planting and harvest,” she agreed.

Kailyon nodded, as much to himself as to her. He thought she had the look of someone who might be ready to hear what everyone had been telling her now, instead of just listening to it. “And now, I’ve a bit more dust to make away with, and it’s more than time for you to be in your bed, young Aellele.”

Aellele stood, and regarded him hesitantly. “You ... You wouldn’t mind if—if I came back and talked to you again some time, would you?”

“Just as you please,” Kailyon said, pushing himself to his feet with a faint grunt of effort. “And now, off with you.”

He watched as the young Trainee gathered her pen-case and papers and lantern from his cart and went skipping off in the direction of her dorm. So very young! But he knew that to him it would seem like sennights instead of years before he saw her riding out in Herald’s Whites. “Better too much doubt than too much confidence,” Kailyon quoted to himself. It was a proverb Aellele would not hear from her instructors for some time yet, and by the time she did, Kailyon suspected she would already have learned the lesson herself.

 

Aellele scurried back toward her room. For the first time since she’d been certain that she
had
it, her Gift was actually more of a comfort than an annoyance (and a rebuke, shaming her because even knowing how people felt couldn’t make her be nice to them). Because she’d been able to tell that Kailyon hadn’t been saying all those things he’d said just to make her feel better, or because he had to, or even just to make her
go away
, but because he thought they were true and were worth saying.