Mags was baffled by the request, but Dallen obviously had a reason for it, so he did as he was asked.
The common room was full, but not so crowded he couldn’t get next to the fire. He glanced into it. It looked like a fireplace. But Dallen, looking through his eyes, obviously saw something else, something he had been hoping for.
:Aha! The ashes haven’t been collected. Good. Come on out. We’re going to pay a quick visit to a soapmaker.:
Now Mags was even more baffled, but from the “feel” of Chamjey, the person he was waiting for had not yet arrived, so there was no reason to balk at Dallen’s orders.
:Why a soapmaker?:
he asked, getting himself up into the saddle again.
:Because soapmakers need ashes, and inns produce a lot of ash they don’t need. Most households save their ashes—they make their own soap, they use the ash on their back gardens, or they use it to polish metal, like silver and brass, with. Inns don’t. So soapmakers go around to collect it. Here we are.:
Dallen stopped at the front of a little shop that had a workshop in the back.
:Go in and ask which soapmaker has the concession for the ashes at The Splendid Table. Be friendly and casual.:
Mags walked into the shop, which was a little like walking into a wall of scent. There was a counter just inside the door; behind the counter were shelves full of soap cut neatly into wrapped bars, or stacked in great multicolored chunks.
The pretty young blond girl about his age behind the counter, dressed in a light blue gown with an embroidered apron, stared wide-eyed at him. She knew what a Companion was, of course; every child old enough to walk in Haven knew what a Companion was. But it wasn’t often that you saw someone not in Whites or Grays riding one.
“Evenin’ missus,” Mags said, “Wunner if ye kin tell me who has concession fer the ashes from Splendid Table?”
“Oh!” The girl got two very pink spots in her cheeks, and her voice went up in a squeak. “That would be us—is something wrong?” Without waiting for an answer, she darted through a curtain into the back of the shop, and returned with a woman that was an older version of herself in tow.
“I’m Mella Amise, Herald,” the woman said, wiping her hand carefully on her apron before offering it to him. “You wanted to know about the ash concession?”
“Trainee, missus,” said Mags, clasping her hand briefly, but firmly. “And aye—”
:Ask her if she’s due to collect.:
“Are ye due to collect?” he repeated.
“Overdue by a day or two,” the woman said with a sigh. “I’ve been right busy sending our boy out with deliveries.”
:Ask her if you can.:
But before Mags could repeat what Dallen had told him to say, the woman cocked her head at him with a shrewd look in her eye. “Reckon you want an excuse to be in there?” she offered.
He hesitated. She looked out the door, straight at Dallen.
“This isn’t some prank is it?” she asked Dallen directly.
Dallen shook his head vigorously, and gave her a long and penetrating look.
“Something he’s doing—he needs to be in the inn—” She stopped. “Something . . . a Herald knows about this?”
Dallen nodded just as hard.
She seemed satisfied. “I won’t ask Herald business, and I’m more than willing to help.” She eyed Mags a moment. “Aye, those clothes will do; I expect that’s why you’re in them and not proper Grays. Tellie, go get the ash-collector kit.”
The girl went behind the curtain again, and returned with a dusty, heavy canvas apron, a covered bucket, a dustpan and a small hand-broom. The woman helped Mags don the apron. “Now, it’s easy enough. Tellie will have the barrow out front for you. Just sweep the ashes into the pan, dump them into the bucket, when it’s full, take it downstairs to where you’ve left the barrow and dump the bucket in the barrow. No one will look twice at you. When you’ve got what you came for, just come straight back; the boy can do the rest of the job tomorrow.”
Mags nodded, feeling a little astonished that this was going so smoothly.
:She’s a law-abiding citizen of Haven, you silly boy. My presence and my confirmation tells her you have the authority to ask what you want from her for help.:
Dallen’s mind-voice was amused.
:My presence and the fact that I told her a Herald knows about this also assures her that what you want won’t be anything wrong, because I would kick you into the next city if you did abuse your authority.:
“All right then, off you go. You look like you’re no stranger to hard work, so you should be able to pass as one of my boys.” She made little shooing motions with her hands. “Your Companion can stay here if you like.”
“That’d be good, missus, thankee,” Mags managed to say. Dallen whickered. He carried the implements outside and there, as promised, a hand-barrow was waiting, but not one like he had ever seen before. This one, just like the bucket, had a cover. In fact, it looked less like a barrow and more like a crude chest with barrow handles and a wheel in front. He put his burden down inside, picked up the handles, and returned to the inn.
He was intercepted by one of the grooms, who sent him around to a side door where he could leave the barrow. He made certain of Chamjey’s location and headed inside. He hoped that the meeting hadn’t gone on too long. He hoped he could find a place where he could hear it!
Luck was still with him. He found a vacant room that shared the same chimney with the one Chamjey was in almost immediately; it was one of a long line of what looked to be private parlors. Getting down on his hands and knees, he removed the screen, the fire-dogs, the andirons, and the rest, and slowly began sweeping, listening as hard as he could.
The chimney proved to be an excellent carrier of sound, and Mags spared a moment to be grateful to Dallen for thinking of this.
“. . . and it gets better for us. That last late blizzard did for about half the lambs; it caught the shepherds right in the middle of lambing season,” someone was saying. “We haven’t even gotten into the rains, and those always take a toll as well. Right now all the herders are thinking about is to wonder how they’re going to survive without lamb to sell for meat until shearing time comes. And then, what with that wet-lung plague this past fall, they’ve all lost about ten percent of the adult flocks and the fleeces are going to be a bit dodgy this year, since a sick sheep makes a weak fleece. So they’ve been jumping at the chance to sell their wool as a future-speculation, while it’s still on the sheep’s back, and to sell lambs still trotting about and bleating.” There was glee in the man’s voice. “Buying up the fleece and lambs before they’re harvested, so to speak, is brilliant, Chamjey. The herders think we are risking our money, paying for lambs that might die and fleece that is going to be poor. They don’t know how widespread the problem is, and that we’ve rounded up the whole market and put it in our pocket. We’ll be the ones setting the prices, no matter what.”
“And you made sure nothing can be traced back to us?” Chamjey asked anxiously.
“Not a chance,” the man assured him. “I’ve used so many intermediaries sometimes it makes my head spin. By the end of the fortnight, we’ll have completely wrapped up this year’s mutton, lamb and wool market, and we’ll be able to demand whatever we want.”
“Brilliant,” said Chamjey with deep satisfaction. “I’ll see about imported wool. I think I can get a high tariff put on it, in the name of protecting our shepherds from cheap outside wool. There’s just not that much imported right now that I think anyone will even blink.”
As he swept up every single mote of ash, Mags was just—astonished. Somehow Chamjey—or perhaps, this unknown person—had discovered the misfortune that had befallen, not just a few flocks, but evidently the flocks across—what? Most of Valdemar? And now he was somehow going to make a lot of profit off it?
:
I think we’ve heard enough,:
Dallen said.
:I’ve already relayed all this to Rolan. Let’s return this stuff to the soapmaker and get back up the hill.:
Chamjey and the other person were deep in a conversation about wool, which Mags didn’t think was going to interest Nikolas.
:Right. Sooner I get out, less chance I get caught.:
He put the fire things back where they belonged—because not doing so would look very suspicious, and because he didn’t want to make any extra work for the inn servants—and took his bucket of ashes outside. Once there he got his barrow and headed back.
The soapmaker greeted him with a nod, as if she had expected he would not take long. She took back her apron, and thrust it at a rather grimy boy who took it cheerfully enough. When the boy was gone, taking the barrow back to the inn, presumably, she turned to Mags.
“I hope you got what you were looking for, Trainee,” she said. “And I’m glad we could help you.”
“So’m I, missus,” he replied with a little bow of thanks. “Ye saved me a mort’ o’trouble.”
“Well good.” Then she grinned. “And you might think of sending here if you need soap.”
He dusted himself off with the help of the girl, who brushed him down with a broom with a bit too much enthusiasm, and went to get Dallen out of their yard. Dallen was looking altogether pleased with himself, and Mags felt he had every reason to be.
“So what’s Nikolas say?” he asked, as they made their way up the hill.
:Well, the long and the short of it is—you know that example Lydia gave you? It was uncannily spot-on. While we were aware that the blizzards were causing some hardship, and we knew there was a plague of something that was affecting the flocks in the south, we didn’t know just how bad both were. Somehow, Chamjey found out, and rather than alerting the Crown via the Council, he decided that he was going to secure all the available wool and meat for this year to himself, so that he can command whatever price he wants.:
Dallen, strangely, was not angry. He was not even annoyed.
Perhaps because Chamjey had been found out . . .
“Would that matter all that much?” Mags wondered aloud.
:For the meat and leather probably not. One could use goat, cow—even wild animals for meat and leather. But the wool is a life-and-death matter for the spinners, dyers and weavers. Soren is going to be purple over this.:
“Well, we proved we kin do what Nikolas asks us to, eh?” he replied, still not sure why this mattered all that much, but believing that it was that important to Nikolas and Master Soren.
:More than that, Rolan and Nikolas really didn’t think Chamjey was up to anything more than a minor peccadillo—oh, it would be worthy of getting him to resign from the Council in embarrassment, but nothing more. Instead we caught him in a major scandal.:
Now Dallen sounded pleased again.
:This is good, this is very good. The only thing that would have been better would have been if you had recognized who it was that was meeting with him.:
“Oh—hellfires. Should we go back?” Mags swung around in the saddle to look back down the road.
:No need. This is important enough that they are about to be intercepted. We’ll find out soon enough who it is.:
4
M
AGS made it back to the Collegium in time to make his last two classes—or rather, one class and one exercise. Sadly, the class was the languages one. Happily, the exercise was riding. He didn’t even have to think about riding anymore, and even though the wind was strong and bitter enough to cut right through his clothing, he and Dallen just romped over the entire course, staying warm enough through pure exertion.
Riding just felt right, in a heart-deep way. He knew what Dallen was going to do before the Companion actually did it. Dallen knew what he wanted the moment he decided on a direction. The two of them were physically melded so close together that they might just have been a single entity.
It was glorious. Even though they made a few mistakes—missing two jumps by knocking down the bars, and having to go around a scramble, losing time—it was still glorious. If this had been all they had to do, life would have been perfect.
Of course, it wasn’t. But at least for that slice of time, it was as close to perfect as Mags could get, or had ever gotten.
He washed up at the Collegium, where there was all the hot water he could want, and tubs for soaking in when he had the time. The washing facilities at the stable were about the same as at the mine, the only difference being that the water came from a pump rather than the stream or the sluice. Once clean and feeling more civilized, he then went in to supper. Bear was there, but not Lena, who was still not talking to her friends.
:It’s only been three days,:
Dallen reminded him.
“Three days is a long time to sulk,” he said out loud, and Bear looked at him oddly.
“Lena?” he said finally.
Mags flushed. “Aye. Sorry. Talkin’ t’ Dallen.”
Bear shoved a bit of meat pie into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “She wants to impress her da,” he said, after swallowing. “I mean, really impress him. Make him sit up and take notice. Been working at that all year. Hardly ever does anything but work on being a Bard. And then he shows up and doesn’t even know who she is, which, when she’s thinking he’s at least seeing the reports on her and maybe seeing she’s living up to him—”