Valdemar 06 - [Exile 02] - Exile’s Valor (12 page)

“And once you start selling one vile thing, further vileness comes easier. Especially when the price is good enough.” Keren shook her head. “Well. How would you like me to start?”

“By learning to act a part,” Alberich told her immediately. “The hellion will not always welcome be, where I would ask you to go. Sometimes, the serving wench. Sometimes, the whore.”

Keren snickered at that. “Me! I'd never pass as a whore! Nobody'd look twice at me!”

“You are not old, not raddled with drink, have all your teeth, most of your mind, and no disease,” Alberich said pragmatically, before Ylsa could jump in. “In the quarters where I go, that is enough.”

Keren snorted. “
Most
of my mind! I like that!”

Ylsa laughed. “You're a Herald. You are volunteering to spy in the worst parts of Haven, dear. That's not exactly anything I see sane people queuing up to do.”

Keren made a face. But she didn't argue.

“So. There it is. Can you act a part?” Alberich asked. “Can you act
those
parts?”

Keren scratched one eyebrow thoughtfully. “I'm pretty sure I can, at least, as long as you don't expect me to bed anybody. Not for days and weeks at a time, but then, you aren't going to want that, I suppose.”

“No,” he agreed. “If it must come to days and weeks, another solution sought must be. Not you nor I can be spared our assigned duties. A few hours at most, is what we will need. And no—if the whore you play, it is
my
whore you will be.”

“For a few hours, I can manage anything,” Keren decreed. “I suppose I could even manage pretending to be a lady.”

“I'd pay money to see that!” Ylsa chortled.

“If it is a lady I need, to Talamir I should take myself,” Alberich told them both. “Better to find one within the Court who is a friend—and I assume that he has more than one such already.”

“Probably,” Ylsa agreed, and Keren nodded. “There are highborn Heralds, too—
probably
no one would tell them anything directly, and since everyone would know they were Heralds, they'd be useless as spies, but people do gossip, and gossip alone might be worth something.”

So, there it was. He had agreement, not only from Keren, but from her partner—which basically meant that Ylsa agreed not to interfere. He felt a little of the weight lift from his shoulders. “Well, then, I thank you both.” He stood up, and motioned them both to remain seated. “I shall myself let out. Not soon will this be—nothing have I that needs a female, at the moment.”

“Better to have the gaff in your hand before you try to land the sturgeon,” Keren observed. “Take me with you a time or two when you've not got something on the boil, and I can get used to playing your doxy.”

“I shall,” he promised, and let himself out of their somewhat cramped quarters. They shared a room meant for one—well, it probably wasn't as crowded as it could have been, since both of them tended to keep personal possessions at a minimum and Ylsa was often away. But it felt very claustrophobic to him.

All things considered, he wasn't unhappy about being down in the salle. If he wanted or needed more room, he could just add on, as apparently, generations of Weaponsmasters had done before him. Quarters in the Heralds' Wing were best described as “tight” by his current standards, and he wasn't at all certain he would care to have neighbors on either side of his walls either.

That went very well,
he decided, and knew that it could have turned out a flat failure. Keren might not have been interested—Ylsa might well have objected. And Keren's suggestion of going about in persona when there was nothing particularly that he needed to do was an excellent one. It would establish
her
personae and allow him to correct her, if need be, at a time and place where breaks in the particular persona would not be dangerous. Better to clear all that up before it could be fatal. Prowling the slums when there was nothing in particular he was watching for could be tedious at times; at least with Keren along, it might be less tedious. And having her with him when he changed into one of his varied costumes would also be useful. She could double-check the face paint he wore to cover his scars. The stuff was a damned nuisance; it had to be peeled off when he was done with it, and in hot weather it itched, but it was the only way he could keep from being recognized.

He'd better warn her about the food and drink in The Broken Arms, though, before they entered what passed for its door. There were some things even Keren's famously iron stomach could not digest safely.

Selenay chased the last of her servants out and closed the door to her bedchamber, even though she hadn't the least intention of going to sleep. It had been a long day, and unfortunately, it had also been a very dull one. It had not helped that every moment of it, she had been poignantly aware that just outside the Palace walls, virtually every creature of Court and Collegia—with the possible exceptions of the two scamps who'd broken the salle mirror—was taking the time to have some winter fun in the heavy snow. Even the oldest of codgers was out there, standing by one of the braziers, watching the younger folk skate or stage snowball fights. It made her feel very forlorn.

It had also made her miss her father very much. Sendar had loved the winter; had he still been alive, he'd not only have chased her out to play, he'd have contrived a way to join her. At night, during a full moon, he'd have huge bonfires in the gardens, and serve ice wine to the skaters. He was always the first one to inaugurate a sled run, and, as he said so often, “Royal dignity be damned.”

She bundled up in a fur-lined robe over her nightdress, and took a book to the window seat in her bedroom, though she had no intention of reading it. Instead, she rubbed a clear patch through the frost on a windowpane with her sleeve, and looked out over the gardens.

The moon was just up, shining through the branches of the trees as if it had been trapped there. It was just a half-moon, with a little haze around it, and a faint golden cast to its face. Light from other windows in the Palace made golden rectangles on the surface of the snow beneath, with the occasional shadow passing across them as she watched. She had retired early tonight, but life in the rest of the Palace went on as usual. Even as she watched, she heard a giggle from outside, and a vaguely feminine form bundled up in a cloak and hood ran across the snow, followed by a second, then a third, scudding across the white snow like clouds across the moon. Three of the young ladies of the Court, out for a moonlight frolic? Were they meeting young men, or just having some girl-fun? Slipping out to skate on the frozen ponds by moonlight? Or were they servants, or even Trainees? They couldn't be Heraldic Trainees, for the cloaks had been too dark to be Grays, but they could be Bardic or Healer Trainees. . . .

Perhaps not Healers, who tended to be
very
serious indeed, and not likely to be out for a moonlit frolic in the snow. But Bardic, perhaps. Or even—well, no, probably not three of the common-born female Blues, either, the ones who got into the Collegia on merit. Those young ladies, fewer than the males by far, tended to be even more serious than the Healer Trainees, spending their evenings in study, except for taking the rare night off to go to the Compass Rose. Their positions were hard-won; many of them had come here over parental opposition, and they were not going to hazard what they'd gained by frittering it away.

Selenay sighed, feeling a wistful kinship to that handful of young women. She was in a very similar position, or at least, it seemed that way to her. She, and they, were prisoners to their duty and their responsibilities

Except that they were self-imprisoned; she was bound by blood and rank as well as duty. Surely self-imposed bonds were less galling than ones imposed from the outside.

She sighed again, more deeply, and rested her chin in her hand, and wondered what it would be like to be ordinary.

:That rather depends on what it is that you mean by “ordinary,”:
Caryo replied.
:An ordinary Herald, for instance?:

:I suppose,:
she replied, unable to even think of what her life would be like without Caryo.

:You've had some taste of it, when you accompanied Herald Mirilin down to the City Courts in Haven,:
Caryo reminded her.
:The real difference between you and the other Heralds is that you can never escape being Queen, and they can sometimes escape being Heralds for a candlemark or two.:

:Exactly.:
Selenay was relieved that Caryo hadn't started in on a lecture about how she should be grateful, that there were hundreds of young women in her Kingdom who had gone to bed hungry and would wake up with no better prospect of breakfast than they'd had of supper. That there were young women who had done extremely unpleasant things in order to get a supper, or a bed, and would do the same tomorrow. She knew that; knew that very well, no matter how much Talamir and Alberich tried to shelter her from it. She also knew that there wasn't anything much she could
do
about it with the limited resources at her behest. She knew that children went to bed hungry and cold, or even curled up in a doorway without a bed at all. She was doing what she could about that, with what she had—the mandatory schooling was a help, as were the “Queen's Bread” meals she'd managed to get instituted, so that at least every child had one meal in a day that it could count on. . . .

But never mind that now. She was just grateful that Caryo understood.

She felt her throat close a little, and blinked back the urge to cry—she was tired of weeping, tired of feeling sad and beaten and alone. That was a pretty accurate summing up. And no matter where she looked, it seemed that someone around her was trying to install yet another set of bars.

She wanted some fun again. She wanted to be irresponsible for just a little while. She wanted to tell the Council, the courtiers, the petitioners, to just
wait
for a candlemark or two while she went skating and sledding.

It felt almost as if she was being punished, and not only had she done nothing to deserve being punished, she'd done everything she was
supposed
to be doing!

She didn't remember her father being so hedged about—

She blinked, and ran through that thought again.

But the Councilors would be furious. There were so many things they wanted her to attend to, it often seemed that they even begrudged her the time she took to eat and sleep.

:Exactly so,:
Caryo agreed calmly.
:It would be one thing entirely if you neglected your duties to spend all of your time in pleasure and games. But since the moment the Crown was put on your head, the most you've stolen was a candlemark or two at bedtime to read.:

:But how do I—:
she began, then stopped, thinking back to her father. All right; Sendar'd had the authority to simply stop everything and say, “I'm going out for such-and-such.” She didn't. So—

:Better still, decree it, in such a way that it becomes a duty—in their eyes—to take some pleasure.:
And as she tried to work out how she could decree a few candlemarks off to go skating, Caryo added helpfully,
:There is a cold spell—a very cold spell—on the way. It's already frozen the verges of Evendim out to almost a furlong from the shore. It'll freeze the Terilee solid, and it should last for a fortnight at the least.:

She blinked. She could barely remember the last time the Terilee had frozen solid. And when it had—

:I declare an Ice Festival?:
she hazarded.

:Announce there will be one if the Terilee freezes, and make the announcement public,:
Caryo agreed.
:Your Councilors will be so certain it won't that they'll just smile and ignore the decree. Then, when it does, it'll be all over the city, and they won't be able to cancel it.:

:Leave that to the merchants, for the most part,:
Caryo said wisely.
:Once you make the decree, they'll do exactly what they do for a Midwinter Fair, except that they'll prepare to set the booths and tents up on the ice. And you know, merchants being merchants, if you don't decree a Festival, they'll do this anyway. At least by making a royal occasion out of it, you can set a time limit on it. All you need to do is send someone to rummage through the attics for some prizes for skating contests and other competitions, and arrange for a Royal Pavilion out there with some provisions and cooks for the highborn. And talk to the Deans. Perhaps the young Bardic Trainees could perform gratis? Certainly there should be at least one day off from classes.: