Valdemar 06 - [Exile 01] - Exile’s Honor (30 page)

Her secretary snatched it away before she could crumple or tear it to pieces, as she had two others. “Let Crance take care of it,” her father said, without looking up from his own work. “He has your notes, he has what you've written so far, and he should have been doing this in the first place. You don't need to be here, and you're getting hunched shoulders from sitting at a desk. Go do something purely physical.”

When she didn't respond, he looked up at her. “
You
do not need to write every word of your judgments yourself. Crance doesn't have enough work from you as it is. For Haven's sake, you don't need to replace the entire Circle, clerks and all! You've already freed up two Heralds from the city courts so that they can go South, and that is
enough,
Selenay.”

He sounded exasperated, and he probably was. She was trying so hard—and in her head she knew he was right, but in her heart, she kept feeling that she should be trying harder still.

She rubbed one of her tired eyes, and let poor Crance take the offending paper away to his own desk. “It doesn't seem like enough,” she said; she felt forlorn, but she was afraid she sounded sullen. “I feel like anyone who isn't feebleminded or sick, or afflicted somehow, ought to be
there,
not here.”

Her secretary, a young man who was nearly as short-sighted as Herald Myste and afflicted with wheezes when he ventured near anything in bloom, looked at her mournfully. She immediately felt even more guilty for making
him
feel guilty for not being in the fighting.

“My dear—” Her father sighed. “Selenay, you sit in Council with me, you're serving in the city courts, and half the time you don't let Crance do his job. You are doing more than you need to, and probably far more than you should. Get out of here into the sunlight before you forget what it looks like and you turn into a troglodyte.”

She stared at him, blinking. He rose, took her hand, pulled her out of her chair, and shoved her forcibly out the door of the Royal Suite as the two guards at the door tried not to stare.

The door closed behind her, and to her astonishment she heard him slide the lock slide home. “And don't come back until your nose is sunburned!” she heard Sendar say, his voice muffled by the closed door.

For a single moment, she thought about pounding on the closed door, demanding to be let in. . . .

The right-hand guard made a choking noise, and Selenay swiveled just in time to catch him screwing up his face in an attempt to keep from laughing aloud. She knew him very, very well, indeed; he'd played Companion to her Herald too many times to be counted when she was little. In that, he had been more fortunate than most patient fellows who allowed toddlers to bounce on their backs; Companions were expected to have minds of their own, and didn't wear bitted bridles. And they didn't suffer being drummed upon by little heels when they didn't move fast enough. He'd bounced her off a time or two when she exceeded the bounds of the allowable.

She made a face, but didn't comment, because there was great relief in being
ordered
to do what she wanted, but had been too guilty to pursue.

“Beggin' your pardon, your Highness,” the Guard said, composing himself. “But I believe that sounded like an order. I'd obey the King, if I was you.”

He stared straight ahead, but his eyes were twinkling.

She gave a theatrical sigh. “Orders are orders,” she agreed, and with a wink, turned and headed for the nearest exit.

:Caryo, I'm on my way!:
she Mindcalled, feeling just a bit giddy, as if she'd been released from classes for an unexpected half-holiday.
:I'll need—:

megrims by the MindHealers,:
Caryo replied cheerfully.
:Perhaps your father knew that already when he ordered you out. It wouldn't surprise me. You can
both
do with an outing.:

It could well be; there wasn't much that Sendar didn't know. It saved her hunting up her bodyguard and trying to determine whether he could be pried away from duties of his own, of which he seemed to have rather too many. If she'd been ordered away, she wanted to leave Haven altogether. She hadn't been outside the walls in—well, ages. Certainly not since the Wars began. They wouldn't go
far,
not far enough that anyone could rebuke him for leaving the city. Not that he had a choice if he was guarding her, and she would point that out if anyone dared to say anything.

By the time she reached the stables, Alberich was waiting, with both Companions saddled and bridled. As usual, it was impossible to read him, and she had long ago given up trying.

“A destination, you have?” he asked, though it was more statement than question.

“Outside Haven. The Home Farms,” she replied. The so-called “Home Farms” actually belonged to the three Collegia, and supplied the needs of hearth and table. There was a separate farm, the Royal Farm, that took care of the Palace; it wasn't much larger, but it had twice the staff, for the Palace tables required something more sophisticated than the vast quantities of plainer fare devoured by the Trainees. Selenay was in the mood for
simple,
and besides, the Home Farms had the river flowing along beside them, and she had a notion to go fishing. After all, Sendar had told her not to come back until her nose was sunburned, and there was no better way of doing that than “drowning a worm,” as the old gardener who'd taught her used to say.

Alberich just nodded; evidently both Caryo and Kantor were more than ready for an excursion, because off they set at the trot. They took a shortcut across the velvety lawn, briskly heading for the Palace, curving around the New Palace and getting onto the paved drive in front of the Old Palace. This was the side of the Palace that the working Heralds rarely saw, and the Trainees, almost never. The facade of the building was interesting, showing as it did the old “fortress” face of the building, with its doors meant to hold against a battering ram. But it had been softened by a planting of formal cypress trees in enormous tubs, and was fronted by a paved courtyard centered by an octagonal pool and a geometric granite fountain, and Selenay had
no
idea what the material paving the courtyard and drive were. The paving dated from just after King Valdemar's time, when the need for defense had begun to take a secondary place to other Palace functions. It wasn't cobbles or bricks, for there wasn't a sign of seams or joins. It was a solid pale gray, very nearly identical to the color the Trainees wore, from edge to edge, and the feel of it was slightly springy. The entire pavement was surrounded by a wrought-iron fence, tall and formidable, like a row of linked pikes twice the height of a man, with the wide drive of the same substance as the courtyard leading up to it and through a pair of gates that were usually left ajar. Nevertheless, there were Guards stationed here, on either side of it, with little boxes to keep the weather off them when it was truly awful.

Alberich led her past them, his back absolutely straight, his seat so easy that there was no doubt in anyone who knew cavalry that it was in the cavalry where he'd learned to ride. For their part, the Guards did not seem to pay any attention to them, staring straight ahead. She knew better, though. They weren't there as ornaments.

The drive went toward the tall proper-walls, that surrounded the entire complex, velvety grass on either side of it, but no plantings other than a row of cypresses right up against the wall itself, the same sort of cypresses that were inside the fence. And there were yet more of them, planted in boxes arranged with mathematical precision on either side of the drive. The cypresses softened the look of the stone wall, and probably helped give the guards up there a little protection from the wind in winter, and shade in summer.

There were more Guards on the wall and on either side of the passage that led through it, both inside and out. This was still defensive; there were portcullises on both ends, and a rather nasty murder-hole in the middle, through which all sorts of unpleasant liquids could be poured down upon a would-be invader. Not so incidentally, the murder-hole had made a good place for a young Princess to drop petals and peas down on unsuspecting visitors, with extra points awarded for the pea that landed squarely in the middle of a fashionable hat without the wearer noticing.

There was no one up there to drop peas upon them now, and they trotted through the cool shadow and out into the sunlight and down into the city.

Nearest to the Palace, predictably enough, were the enormous mansions of the highborn, each a smaller palace in itself. The farther one got from the Palace, the less expensive (and more crowded) the buildings, until by the time they passed out of the final set of gates and walls—for the city had outgrown its walls several times, and a new set had been built around the new construction that had spilled over on the other side—the final set on
this
road were a mix of shops with apartments above, stables for hire-horses, and inns and taverns. The road was not, however, a straight line to the final city gate; there were no straight lines to the complex within Haven. Everything had been laid out like a maze, so that if the city ever did come under attack, the defense could be fought street-by-street.

Before the Wars, that very notion had seemed laughable. Not anymore. Though it would probably take having the Tedrels appear at the gates before the citizens of Haven believed that.

Out yet another set of gates with yet another set of Guards they went, following the river which ran under the walls at this point. Here, the transition went abruptly from the urban to the rural, for this was where all market gardens that supplied the city with fresh eggs and vegetables were located. While the urban had edged out past the final walls outside other gates, here it had not, for the profit to be derived from such well-watered and fertile property was not to be trifled with. And here, in the midst of market gardens, suddenly loomed a true
farm,
the Home Farms, so named in the plural because they
had
been several smaller farms at one time. All of the buildings from each of these separate farms had been thriftily disassembled and reassembled in a central location; all of the cottages joined into one big building where the farm workers lived, all of the barns ranged around a single yard and each allocated to
one
form of livestock. Even the henhouses had been moved, and were lined up in a neat little row, free-ranging chickens efficiently pecking up every bit of stray grain in nearly every weather, and cleaning up insects in summer.

Here the river curved away from the main road, and the lane leading to the Home Farm's buildings ran alongside it. Behind the Home Farms, also watered directly by the river and situated on this lane, was the Royal Farm—but that wasn't Selenay's destination. The Royal Farm was a show-place of its kind, the chickens segregated by meat-birds and layers, kept separate to keep their breeds pure. Everything on the Royal Farm was a purebred, from the chickens to the plowhorses; every building was spotless and immaculate. The hothouses were there, for forcing flowers, fruit, and vegetables out of season. Pens of gamebirds were there and exotic food plants too difficult to grow in quantity. Ponds of delicately-nurtured fish for the Royal table, even.

Too formal for Selenay today.

The lane was clear, with not so much as a turtle on it, and both Companions broke into a canter that took them all the way to the farmhouse. Selenay found herself grinning as they pulled up with a flourish in the yard in front of the building, and even Alberich looked a little less mordant. The farm manager, an ancient fellow indeed, hobbled out to determine what they wanted, and when Selenay explained her wish to fish for the benefit of the Collegium tables, was happy to direct them to a shed where the fishing tackle lay.

“Eels,” Selenay muttered to herself, selecting the appropriate tackle, knowing very well that the Collegium cooks made a fine eel pie. She looked askance at Alberich, who was examining the poles dubiously.

“You
do
know how to fish, don't you?” she asked.

He turned solemn eyes on her. “No.”

:Doesn't mince words, does he?:
Caryo chuckled.

“Then it's time you learned,” Selenay told him ruthlessly, and with a touch of glee. “It's a standard skill all Heralds are supposed to know. You might have to find your own food in the wilderness, after all.”

“And I, in wilderness will be allowed? Not likely, that.” He sighed with resignation. Or disgust. Or both, perhaps. She didn't care. He might as well learn to fish; it wouldn't do him harm, and it might do him good.

She spent the next candlemark or so in a position every Trainee ever schooled by the Weaponsmaster's Second would probably have given his last hope of the Havens for. Schooling the infamous Alberich, playing stern and implacable tutor to the Great Stone Heart himself! And it was highly entertaining as well.

She presented Alberich with his pole, and had to show him how to bait the hook—and the formidable Alberich proved to be very reluctant to touch the bait!

“Now don't be so squeamish,” she ordered, pulling a worm out of the earth of the bait pail and handing it to him. “I've shown you what to do, it's not that difficult.”

He took the worm in his thumb and forefinger, and held it stiffly in front of him. “Must I?” he asked in a strangled voice.

She suppressed her mirth, and instead fixed him with the same sort of gimlet-eyed stare
he
gave reluctant Trainees. She didn't even need to say anything.

He barely skinned the worm onto the hook, and she
knew
it wouldn't stay. Sure enough, the third time he pulled the hook up out of the water to check on it, the worm was gone.