Valdemar 06 - [Exile 01] - Exile’s Honor (24 page)

She followed him into his living quarters; Dethor wasn't there at the moment. One of the Healers was trying a new treatment for his swollen joints, a course of bee venom, for beekeepers swore that the stings of their charges kept the ailment away from them. By now, Dethor's bones were painful enough that he was more than willing to tolerate even the stings of angry bees in hopes of getting some relief.

As a reward for his cooperation, he'd get a massage with hot stones and a treatment for his hands of hot sand afterward, something that
did
give him consistent relief, even if it was only temporary.

Myste took one of the chairs in front of the window; Alberich sat opposite her. “We need to think,” he told her. “We need to find a way to make the things you
can
do into weapons. Running, for instance.” He pondered that for a while. “I'll trade you saying for saying—in the hills in Karse there's a proverb, ‘The hound that chases two hares catches neither.' If you are going to run—we need to contrive a way that you can create more than one thing for your pursuers to go after.”

“Dropping my packs—” she began.

“But what if there is something in your packs that you've been entrusted with?” he countered. “What if it's in the winter, with no Waystations near? If you drop your packs, you won't have what you need to survive. It won't do you much good to escape from bandits only to freeze to death in a blizzard.” He brooded over the idea for a moment, then the answer came to him. “I think we should add a bit of extra equipment specifically for you—packs and belt pouches that you're
meant
to throw away.”

“What?” she asked, “Stuffed with straw or the like?”

He shook his head. “No,
not
that, actually. If you drop worthless decoys, it won't be long before bandits and brigands all
know
that the packs you drop are worthless, and they'll ignore them and go for you again. No, that hare won't run—there will be
just
enough in the decoys to satisfy an ambusher without making it look as if you're an especially juicy target, and to make certain that attackers chase the packs, and not you. And the same for belt pouches; from now on, you'll be carrying at least two small extras, both full of coppers, and if someone attacks you, you'll throw them in opposite directions, one to either side of your line of flight.”

She was happy enough about the planning, but visibly unhappy when he brought her back outside and put her in front of the obstacle course. “Run the course, then run it again,” he told her mercilessly. “And keep running it until I tell you to stop. Running away isn't going to do you any good if you can't actually run any better than Dethor on a bad day.”

And he left her to it, with a faint feeling of having—for once—gotten the better of her. Irritating woman. Not that he didn't
like
her; she not only had the advantage of being one of the few people he could converse easily with in his own tongue, she was an interesting and lively conversationalist. And besides not being afraid of him or intimidated by him, he got the feeling that she respected him in a way that was quite flattering, when she wasn't trying to get the better of him. Why was it that she entered every conversation with the goal of somehow trying to
win?

Well, she could just work some of that out over the hurdles. Meanwhile, he had a class of young archers to put through their paces.

When he told Dethor of his solution to the problem of Myste over dinner, the Weaponsmaster chuckled. “Good solution,” Dethor replied. “A very good solution. But I hope it isn't one we need to use. I'd much rather that the Heraldic Circle can find a position for her that makes the best use of her talents here in the city. Whatever those talents are.”

“At the moment,” Alberich replied, with just a tinge of sourness, having had to find reasons why every single obstacle in the course was one she needed to learn to negotiate, “Arguing and writing. Little enough of anything else, have I seen.”

“Heh. I've seen those little notebooks of hers—” Dethor blinked. “Now, why didn't I think of this before? Herald-Chronicler, of course! Elcarth's doing it now, but we want him for Dean of the Collegium, and we need to start training him in that—” His voice faded off as he got that faraway look in his eyes that meant he was thinking, and probably Mindspeaking with his Companion. Alberich now knew that look very, very well.

And Dethor was right, of course; with all of his own reading of the Chronicles, he could see how being the Herald-Chronicler would easily be a full-time job. It wasn't just the doings of the Heralds that the Chronicler covered, it was
everything;
anything that had any impact on any part of the Kingdom larger than a small village.

:What do you think?:
he asked Kantor.

:That it's probably the reason she was Chosen,:
Kantor replied.
:She gets onto a story like a rat-terrier and won't let go of it until she's shaken it free of all the facts.:

Annoying little dogs, rat-terriers. All yap and idiotic courage—or was that “stubbornness?” Still. Come to think of it, that described Myste rather well. . . . Or, perhaps, she was more like a cat, one of those mouthy ones that wouldn't stop caterwauling, came when you didn't want them, and wouldn't come when you did.

:We're in nasty times. Someone has to be willing to put down nasty facts without editing them,:
Kantor continued.
:And you
like
cats. You like rat-terriers, too.:

He ignored that last.
:Hmm. Nasty facts like my little exercise tonight?:
he replied.

:It ought to be written down somewhere,:
Kantor countered.
:Maybe not for common consumption, but if someone doesn't record
everything,
no matter how unflattering to the Heralds it is, the next generation is going to get the idea that we're all plaster saints. Then when someone has to do something underhanded for a good reason, nobody will be willing to do it. . . . :

He sighed. There was that. And plenty of Chroniclers in the past had created “auxiliary Chronicles” that not everyone was allowed to read, Chronicles that recorded mistakes, blunders, errors in judgment, and jobs undertaken that were somewhat less than the letter of the law, all in unflinching detail. Not the sort of thing one gave the children, of course, but these Chronicles, and not just the standard texts, were what Alberich was studying as history. Just now he was in the middle of the very brief Chronicle of Lavan Firestorm; some of the soul-baring on the part of Herald Pol and King Theran was enough to make the heart ache. He could relate all too easily to the litany of “should haves” and “could haves.”

Well, if Trainee Myste—who was certainly being allowed to read and study the unexpurgated versions of the Chronicles—was able to combine the qualities of detachment and tough-mindedness that the job required, especially
now,
well done to her. Elcarth probably wasn't; he was too tenderhearted to be unflattering to people he liked, even when it wasn't possible to get to the truth without being unflattering.

Mind, only a handful of people would know
that
for certain within Myste's or Elcarth's lifetime, because the Chronicles weren't written for the present generations, they were written for the future, and very few Heralds other than the King and the King's Own were allowed to see what their current Chronicler wrote. And then it was in terms of editing by similarly tough-minded Heralds, and only to ensure accuracy.

As he knew very well, the Chronicles could be extremely caustic at times, and no one really wanted to see himself, his presumed or even actual motivations, and his failures, stripped bare and put down in uncompromising writing.

In his opinion, a young person didn't have the perspective nor the experience to write what needed to be written. So there, again, Myste was fully qualified. Appointing her as Chronicler Second would solve the problem of what to do with her very neatly indeed.

Dethor abruptly came back to himself. “I believe that will work,” he said, as if Alberich had been privy to whatever thoughts were going on in his mind. “You're going out in the city tonight?”

“No other choice, have I,” Alberich replied with a shrug. “Much result, I do not expect, but sow silver I must, a harvest of villainy to reap.”

In this, at least, he was able to aid Valdemar with a clear conscience. In disguise, one of half a dozen personae he had concocted and established, he prowled the less-savory quarters of Haven, looking for trouble. “Trouble” came in various guises, but money usually lured it out of hiding. The money wasn't bribes—Alberich was more subtle than that. Sometimes he posed as someone looking for a particular sort of creature to hire, sometimes as a bully-boy looking for work himself. Sometimes he bought information, and sometimes sold it. In all cases, there was nothing to connect the less-than-honest characters he portrayed in the seedy drinking houses and alleyways with Herald Alberich, the Weaponsmaster's Second. There was some benefit in having a scarred and scowling countenance that looked the very acme of villainy. If there wasn't a woman born who'd give him a second look, no one looked askance at him in a low-class bar either.

And fortunately, there were enough foreigners in Haven that his accent caused only a little comment, and no one recognized it as Karsite. Most accepted his story that he came from Ruvan, Brendan, or Jkatha. All three were so far away he might just as well have told the inquisitive that he was from the moon. Virtually anything he claimed would be believed. The only people who
might
know better would be true Guild Mercenaries, and so far he'd never seen one of those in Haven. They weren't needed here; Valdemar fielded its own standing army of full-time soldiers, called the Guard, and always had. Even Guild Mercenaries didn't bother to go where there was no need of them.

“Well, you be careful out there tonight,” Dethor said, putting down his empty tankard. Alberich automatically refilled it for him from the pitcher on the table between them and raised an eyebrow. Dethor wasn't known for having the Gift of ForeSight, but one never knew. “A reason for the warning, you have?” he asked carefully.

But Dethor only shook his head. “Not really. It's just that it's been quiet, and it's usually quiet just before there's a lot of trouble.”

“And trouble then comes in threes,” Alberich agreed gloomily. “
And
a full moon there is tonight. I shall walk carefully.”

“Full moon.” Dethor groaned. “You're going to get into a brawl tonight, aren't you?”

Alberich felt his muscles tighten with automatic anticipation. He suppressed his reaction as much as he could. Dethor was very good at reading body language.

“Probably.” Alberich shrugged with an indifference he didn't entirely feel. A bar fight would at least give him something on which to take out his frustration. He always slept better after being able to pound some villain's face into the floor. The wretches that tried to pick on
him
were at least as bad as he pretended to be. The only reason they were at the tavern instead of jail was that they hadn't been caught at anything lately, and they well deserved whatever punishment Vkandis decreed they meet at the hands of His transplanted worshiper.

:Oh, very nice reasoning,:
Kantor said, with more than a touch of sarcasm.

“Try not to give the Healers any more work, will you?” Dethor requested with resignation. “They had a few words for me the last time you needed patching up, and since I couldn't tell them
why
you'd gotten cut up, they assumed I'd been working you and Kimel with live steel and you'd gotten the worst of it. So, of course, it was
my
fault.”

“That, I can promise,” Alberich replied, gathering up all the supper dishes and placing them in the empty basket. “For that the wretches whose bones I break, seeking a Healer would not be, ever. Too fearful would they be, that in seeking Healing, it would be justice they found.” With a salute to Dethor, he left the rest unsaid, and headed for the door. He couldn't help it; there were frustrations in him that were crying out for release. He wouldn't
look
for a fight, but if one came to him—

He sensed Kantor's sigh.

He left the basket just outside the door to their quarters for a servant to collect, and went out into the flooding light of the full moon to saddle Kantor. His Companion was waiting for him at the special stable only the Companions used.

Just inside the door was the tack room, but Kantor's gear was all stowed on racks near his stall, just as it was for every Companion who resided primarily at the Collegium. On a warm summer night like this one, all the half-doors on the stalls were open to the night air, and with all of the moonlight pouring in, the lanterns weren't needed at all.