Take a Thief (30 page)

:Skif, there will
always
be trouble where you are,:
she replied mischievously.
:We'll just have to try to keep it from getting out of hand!:
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Without a backward glance, she started up the forest trail, going in a few paces from a walk to a trot to an easy lope. It was very strange, riding her, now that he knew what she was. For one thing, she wasn't a horse— he didn't have control over her, and that was the way it was
supposed
to be, not an accident. But as they moved out of the woods and onto roads that had a bit of morning traffic, he began to notice something else.

Now that they weren't charging down the road in a manner threatening to life and limb, people
paid attention
to Cymry, they clearly knew what she was, and they looked at her, and by extension her rider, with
respect.

Or at least they did until they saw his black eye.

But even then, they looked at him with respect only leavened with sympathy. And since they weren't galloping at a headlong pace, but rather moving in and out of the traffic at a respectable, but easy trot, some people actually began to call greetings to him and her.

"New-Chosen, aye, lad?" said a farmer, perched so high on the seat of his wagon that he was eye-to-eye with Skif. And without waiting for an answer, added, "Here, catch!" and tossed him a ripe pear.

Startled, he caught it neatly, and the second one that the same man tossed to him, before Cymry found another opening in the traffic and moved smoothly ahead.

:If you'd cut that up into quarters, I'd like some.:
He was only too pleased to oblige, since he had the feeling that was what the farmer intended anyway. The little eating knife he always kept in his belt was accessible enough, and since he didn't have to use the reins, he didn't have to try and cut the pears up one-handed. She reached around and took each quarter daintily from his hand as he leaned over her neck to hand it to her.

Everywhere he looked, he met smiles and nods. It was a remarkable sensation, not only to be noticed, but to elicit that reaction in total strangers.

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He did feel rather— naked, though. He wasn't at all comfortable with all of this
noticing.

:Don't worry. You'll blend in once you're in your Grays. You'll be just
another Trainee.:

He was getting used to her talking in his head—
Mindspeech,
she called it— and he was starting to get vague pictures and other associations along with the words. When she talked about being "in his Grays," he knew at once that what she meant was the uniform of the Heraldic Trainees, modeled after the Heralds' own uniforms, but gray in color.

:That's so people don't expect you to know what you're doing yet,:
she told him, looking back over her shoulder at him with one eye.
:And by the way,
you don't have to actually talk to me for me to hear and understand you.:
So she knew what he was thinking. That wasn't exactly a comforting thought. A man liked to have a little privacy—

:And when you're a man, I'll give it to you.:

"Hey!" he said, staring at her ears indignantly, and garnering the curious glances of a couple driving a donkey cart next to him.

:Oh, don't be so oversensitive! I won't eavesdrop! You'll just have to learn
not to "shout" all your thoughts.:
Great, now he would have to watch, not only what he did and said, but what he thought…. This Herald business was getting more unpleasant all the time.

:It's not like that, Skif,:
she said coaxingly.
:Really it isn't. I was just
teasing you.:

He found a smile starting, no matter how he tried to fight it down. How could he possibly stay angry with her? How could he even get angry with her? And maybe that was the point.

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He wasn't sure how long it had taken them to get from the park where he'd found her to the Way Station where they stopped, but it took them most of the morning to get back to Haven. The Guards on the walls paid absolutely no attention to him, although they had to have seen him careening down the road yesterday. Cymry didn't volunteer any information as he craned his neck up to look at them, then bestowed a measuring glance at the two on either side of the passage beneath the wall. He wondered what they were thinking, and what they might have said or done yesterday.

They sure didn't try to stop us, anyway.
Not that it was likely that they'd have had much luck— not with only two Guards on the ground and Cymry able to leap a farm wagon without thinking about it. Maybe it was just as well they hadn't tried. He might have ended up with both eyes blackened.

Once they got inside the city walls, though, people stopped paying as much attention to them. Well, that wasn't such a surprise, people saw Heralds coming and going all the time in Haven. On the whole, he felt a bit more comfortable without so many eyes on him.

Their progress took him through some areas he wasn't at all familiar with as they wound their way toward the Palace and the Collegia. He didn't exactly have a lot to do with craftsmen and shopkeepers— his forte was roof walking and the liftin' lay, not taking things from shops. That had always seemed vaguely wrong to him anyway; those people worked hard to make or get their goods, and taking anything from them was taking bread off their tables. Helping himself to the property of those who already had so much they couldn't keep track of it, now, that was one thing— but taking a pair of shoes from a cobbler who'd worked hard to make them just because he took a fancy to them was something else again.

Once they got in among the homes of the wealthy, though, it was a different story. He eyed some of those places, all close-kept behind their shuttered windows, with a knowing gaze. At one point or another he had checked out a great many of them, and he knew some of them very, very well indeed. The owner of
that
one had not one, but two mistresses that his wife knew nothing about— and they didn't know about each other. He treated them all well, though, so to Skif's mind none of them should have 207

Take a Thief

much to complain about. Sometimes he wondered, however, where the man was getting all the money he spent on them….

:He's honest enough, but there are others,:
Cymry put in.
:You see what I
mean by needing your skills?:

He furrowed his brow and concentrated on
thinking
what he wanted to say instead of saying it out loud.
:I suppose—:
he said dubiously.

But they were soon past the second wall, out of the homes of the merely wealthy, and in among the manses of the great. And Skif had to snicker a little as they passed Lord Orthallen's imposing estate. It was the first time he'd come at it from the front, but he couldn't mistake those pale stone walls for any other. How many times had he feasted at m'lord's table, and him all unaware?

They passed Lord Orthallen's home, passed others that Skif had not dared approach, so guarded around were they by the owner's own retainers. And finally there was nothing on his right but the final wall, blank and forbidding, that marked the Palace itself.

His apprehension returned, and he unconsciously hunched his head down, trying to appear inconspicuous, even though there was no one to see him.

No— there was someone.

The next turning brought them within sight of a single Guardsman in dark blue, who manned a small gate. Cymry trotted up to him quite as if she passed in and out of that gate all the time, and the man nodded as if he recognized her.

"This would be Cymry," he said aloud, casting a jaundiced eye up at Skif, who shrank within himself. "They're expecting you," he continued, opening the gate for them to pass through, although he didn't say who
they
were.

Cymry walked through, all dignity, and began to climb the graveled road that led toward an entire complex of buildings. Skif tensed.
Now I'm in for
it,
he thought, and felt his heart drop down into his boots.

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14

He sat in Cymry's saddle like a sack of grain, and waited for doom to fall on him. She had taken him up the path, through what looked like a heavily-wooded park, past one enormous wing of a building so huge it
had
to be the Palace. Eventually they came to a long wooden building beside the river in the middle of a huge fenced field— he'd have called it a stable, except that there weren't any doors on the stalls….

Then again, if this was where Companions stayed, there wouldn't be any need for doors on the stalls, would there?

It had a pounded-dirt floor covered ankle-deep in clean straw, and there was a second door on the opposite side, also open. These gave the only light. Cymry walked inside, quite at home.

The building was oddly deserted except—

Except—

For three people who were very clearly waiting for him just inside the door. One was an odd, birdlike man, slight and trim, hardly taller than Skif, with a cap of dark gray hair and an intelligent, though worried, expression. The second was taller, with a fairly friendly face which at the moment also bore a distinctly worried expression. Both of them wore the white uniform only a Herald was allowed to wear.

His "welcoming committee," evidently.

He couldn't see the third one very well, since he was standing carefully back in the shadows. The third person wasn't wearing the white uniform though; his clothing was dark enough to blend in with the shadows.

Could be sommut from the Guard
, he thought gloomily.
Gonna haul me
off t' gaol soon's the other two get done with me.

:He's not, and you're not going to gaol,:
said Cymry. But that was all she said. He couldn't find it in himself to feel less than uneasy about the shadowy lurker.

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Take a Thief

She stopped a few paces away from the two men, and Skif gingerly dismounted, turning to face them with his hands clasped behind his back.

A moment later, he dropped his eyes. Whatever was coming, he didn't want to meet their faces and see their disgust.

"So," said the smaller one, "you seem to be the young person that Companion Cymry has Chosen."

"Yessir," Skif replied, gazing at his ill-shod toes.

"And we're given to understand that you— ah— your profession— you—"

The man fumbled for words, and Skif decided to get the agony over with all at once.

" 'M a thief, sir," he said, half defiantly. "Tha's what I do." He thought about adding any number of qualifying statements— that it had been a better choice than working for his uncle, that no one had offered him any
other
sort of employment and he had to eat; even that if Bazie hadn't been around to take him in and train him, he'd probably be dead now and not Chosen. But he kept all of those things to himself. For some reason, the clever retorts he had didn't seem all that clever at the moment.

The shorter man sighed. "I suppose you're expecting me to give you an ineffective and stuffy lecture about how you are supposed to be a new person and you can't go on doing that sort of thing anymore now that you're a Trainee."

Skif stopped looking at his toes and instead glanced up, startled, at the speaker. "Uh— you're not?"

"
You
are not stupid," the man said, and smiled faintly, though his tone sounded weary. "If you've already played over that particular lecture in your mind, then I will skip it and get to the point. I am Dean Elcarth. I am in charge of Herald's Collegium. The moment you entered the gate here, so far as we are concerned, whatever you were or did before you arrived here became irrelevant. You were Chosen. The Companions don't make mistakes. There must be the makings of a Herald in you. Therefore you are welcome. But when you get in trouble, and you will, because sooner or 210

Take a Thief

later at least half of our Trainees get in trouble, please remember that what you do reflects on the rest of us as well, and Heralds are not universally beloved among a certain faction of the highborn. The others will give you the details as they see fit, but the sum of what I have to say is that you are
supposed
to be part of a solution, not part of a problem, and I hope we can show you why in such a way that you actually feel that in your deepest heart."

During this rather remarkable speech, Skif had felt his jaw sagging slowly.

It was
not
what he had expected to hear. His shock must have been written clearly on his face, because the Dean smiled a little again. "This is Herald Teren," he continued, gesturing to the other man, who although friendlier, was looking distinctly worried. "He is, technically, in charge of you, since he is in charge of all of the newly Chosen. You'll be getting your first lessons from him, and he will show you to your new quarters and help get you set up. Under normal circumstances, he would have picked out a mentor for you among the older students— but these are not normal circumstances. So although one of the older students will be assigned as a mentor, in actuality you will have a very different, though altogether
unofficial
mentor."

"That," said a grating voice that put chills up Skif's back, "myself would be."

He knew that voice, and that accent— though when he'd heard it before, it hadn't been nearly so thick.

And when the third figure stepped out of the shadows, arms folded over his chest, scar-seamed face smiling sardonically, he stepped back a pace without thinking about it. Skif had never seen the hair before— stark black with thick streaks of white running through it— because it had been hidden under a hood or a hat. But there was no mistaking that satur-nine face or those cold, agate-gray eyes. This was the sell-sword who'd spoken with (and spied on?) Jass, who had threatened Skif in the cemetery.

"You!"
he blurted.

"This is Herald Alberich, the Collegium Weaponsmaster," said the Dean,

"And I will leave you with him and Teren."