Valdemar 06 - [Exile 01] - Exile’s Honor (32 page)

“Not a thing,” she admitted. “It just came up in our discussions. I just let people rattle on, you know; it's the most effective way to learn things.” She paused, and tilted her head to the side. “I don't suppose
you
would be willing to rattle on at me?”

He opened his mouth to say no, then closed it again. It was an interesting thought. “And this would go into the restricted Chronicles?” he asked instead.

“Possibly. Some things should be common knowledge, and by the time anyone
reads
my Chronicles, all of those covert identities you've got now are going to be outdated.”

So
she
knew about what he was doing! Well, he shouldn't have been surprised if she was Elcarth's Second; she'd be reading the restricted Chronicles that
he
was writing. He wondered, knowing that
she
must know about the secret room here, if she'd come down on purpose to waylay him.

She ate two or three bites, reminding him that his own dinner was getting cold. He started in on it; delicious, as always from the Bell's kitchens. Pigeon pie was a delicacy in Karse; the only pigeons there were the larger wood pigeons and calling doves, hard to catch and reserved for those with falcons to take them. Here in the city, though, there were pigeon lofts everywhere, and the common rock doves bred like rabbits. It was rabbit pie that was the ordinary man's fare in Karse, in fact. Rabbit pie, rabbit stew, rabbit half-raw and half-burned on a stick over the fire. . . .

“I grew up on this—” Myste said, gesturing with her fork to her plate. “We had a loft in the back yard. I find I miss the taste at the Collegium.”

“Hmm. It
is
good,” he agreed. “Not common fare where I come from.”

“Well, here—in the city especially—you make up your pies with whatever you have to eat for supper in the morning, and drop them off at your neighborhood bake shop as you go off to work and pick them up when you return, along with your bread. Most people with small apartments or single rooms don't have a bake oven; in fact, especially in the city, most people only have the hearth fire to stew over and not a proper kitchen at all.” Myste didn't seem to want a response; she went back to her dinner, and he followed her example.

“It is much the same in Karse,” he offered, “Save that there is no bake shop, or rather, the baking place is often the inn. And we steam food as often as stew it.” He well remembered the smell of the baking rabbit pies in the kitchen of the inn where his mother worked. They'd come out, and woe betide anyone who touched them, each with a particular mark for the family that had left them, and a star cut into the crust of the inn pies. He'd never gotten a quarter pie like this, hot from the oven. He and his mother had been on the bottom of the hierarchy of servants, and were treated accordingly. First were the customers, of course, then the innkeeper, his wife, and children. Then came the cook and the chief stableman, who got whatever intact portions the innkeeper's family left. Then the cook's helpers, the serving girls, the potboys who served the drink. Then the grooms in the stables and the chambermaids.
Then,
at last, Alberich, his mother, and the wretched little scullery maid and turn-spit boy. Which meant that what
he
got was broken crust, gravy, bits of vegetable. Or anything that was burned, over-baked, or somehow ill-made—too much salt, he recalled
that
pie only too well. But they got
enough
to eat, that was the point; once his mother got that job at the inn, scrubbing the floors, they never went hungry. There was always day-old bread and dripping, the fat and juices that came off the roasts and were collected in a drippings pan underneath. There was always oat porridge, plain though that might be, and pease porridge, the latter being such a staple of the common fare and so often called for that there was always a pot of it in the corner of the hearth. Pease porridge was the cheapest foodstuff available at his inn, and they sold a lot of it; when the pot was about half empty, the cook would start a new lot, so that when the first pot was gone the second was ready to serve. All of the inn's servants could help themselves to a bowl of it at any time, even the scullery maid and the boy that sat in the chimney corner and turned the spit in all weathers. The innkeeper was thrifty, but generous with the food, not like some Alberich encountered over the years, who starved their help as well as working them to exhaustion.

“Ah.” Myste stacked her emptied plates to the side with a sigh of satisfaction; Alberich pushed his beside them. “I don't mean you to begin nattering at me at this moment, Alberich. I just meant that when you feel like it, I'd be glad of your addition to the Chronicles. And I don't mind being a listener if all you want to do is talk. Think out loud, maybe. Or just talk to hear Karsite.”

He smiled slightly. “Knowing your unending curiosity, I thank you for your patience.”

“My curiosity has as much as it needs on a regular basis right now,” Myste replied. “You know, before Elcarth took me on, I was never satisfied. I wanted to know, not so much what was going on, but
why.
That was the thing that drove me mad, sometimes.
Why
had this or that law been made,
why
were your people such persistent enemies,
why
—Well, there are always more questions than answers. Now I'm able to find out my
whys,
more often than not, and more to the point, I'm entitled and encouraged to do so.” She smiled, and her lenses glittered. “Maybe that's why I was Chosen; I can't think of any other reason.”

He laughed. “Is that why you were always such a thorn in my side, as a Trainee? That you could not be told to do a thing without wanting the reason for it?”

She shrugged. “I don't take orders well unless I know why the order is being given. And I'll be the first to admit to you that I'm very lucky and have been unusually favored in that way. Most people can't afford to indulge that particular luxury; they either follow their orders without question, or—well, there are unpleasant consequences for wanting answers.” She rubbed her thumb absently against the little “clerk's callus” on the side of the second finger of her right hand, a callus created by hours of pressure from a pen.

He nodded, wondering suspiciously if she was hinting at
his
past.

“The more I'm in the courts, the more I realize that,” she continued. “As a clerk, well, I
knew
why I was doing what I was doing. It was obvious. Pointless, perhaps, but obvious.” She glanced up at him, sideways. “You know, you have to be a clerk, I think, before you realize just what a pother people make over nothing. And the sheer amount of ill-will that people seem to think
must
go down on paper, or die. Dear gods!”

“What, letters?” he asked.

“No. People mostly write their own vitriol in letters. We're a literate people, Alberich; that's mandated by the Crown. Just as Karsite children are required to go to the temple for religious instruction, ours are required to get instruction in reading, writing, and figuring. No, I meant legal documents, that's mostly what a clerk handles. At least, my sort of clerk. There are others who do things about money, but I've never had that kind of head for figures. I saw a lot of wills.” She sighed. “A
lot
of wills. And depositions. And the documents involved in lawsuits. Well, since you've been acting as bodyguard to young Selenay,
you've
seen what happens when something gets as far as the courts!”

He nodded again. “But it is important to them.”

“Some people have too much leisure, if that's what's important to them,” she said sourly. “Wrangling over dead granny's best bedcover, as if the fate of the Kingdom depended on it, when all the while down there in the South—”

She couldn't finish; she just sat there, shaking her head.

He thought back about all of the things he had observed while Selenay sat, either in judgment as the principal judge or as an assistant when she was still a Trainee. “I do not understand it either,” he said, then added, with a touch of humor, “but then, I never had so many possessions that
things
took on a great importance to me.”

She burst out laughing at that. “Whereas I have too many, thieving magpie that I am! So I suppose I
should
understand them! Then again, most of my possessions are books, so I still don't understand why people would get into such a state over a few pence or a set of silver.” She looked ever-so-slightly superior.

“And if it was dead granny's library that was in dispute?” he asked shrewdly, to puncture that superiority.

She saw it—and bravely took the blow. “There you have me. Dead in the black.” She laughed. “Oh, look. The rain's starting to slacken up!”

He glanced out the window. She was right; the downpour had turned into something lighter, and the lightning had moved off into the far distance. “It could be just a lull,” he warned, as she made as if to get up.

“Could be, but I'll take my chances. I need to get back up the hill; I'm tutoring a couple of Trainees.” She did get up then, and he found himself wishing she would stay.

He stifled an impulse to catch hold of her hand to prevent her leaving, but she seemed to sense
something,
and turned back toward him.

“I meant that, about nattering at me, Alberich,” she said. “You know, I don't put personal things in the Chronicles. Not unless they're reasons for something happening, and it would have to be a pretty important something. And Alberich?”

“Yes?” Something had passed—was passing—between them. Something he didn't recognize and didn't understand. She stared at him; he sensed her eyes behind those lenses, oddly intent.

“You might try talking to Geri as well. After all, that's what he's there for, isn't it?” She had an oddly wry smile on her face. “Well, all things considered, that's part of his job, I'd think—to be talked at.”

And with that remarkable statement, she was gone.

He sat there for some time, in the half-dark, wondering why this conversation seemed to have—well—a feeling of
importance
about it.

:Perhaps because it's another Herald?:
Kantor asked.

He hadn't ever gotten such an odd feeling from anyone else, not even Talamir.
:No, it's not just that. She's not an Empath, is she?:

:Not so far as I know,;
his Companion replied thoughtfully.
:But she does have one rather odd little Gift. She doesn't have to cast the Truth Spell to know if someone is telling the truth, so long as she's in close proximity to them. It's why she's in the city courts, in fact.:

Interesting. Perhaps that was why she seemed to be able to get the people to
tell
her so much. Perhaps that was why she was so focused on needing to know the why of things. If you always knew that something was true or false, maybe your focus shifted from finding out the truth, to finding out the reasons behind it.

If you knew that something was true, maybe that impelled you to talk to others, as well as listen to them.

:Am I needed up the hill?:
he asked. Kantor would know; the Companions always seemed to be more-or-less in contact with one another.

Kantor's reply was immediate.
:No. And I've no objection to staying here in this nice, dry stable if you have something you need to do. Shall I tell them you're going to be down here a while?:

:Please do.:
Myste might not be the right person to talk to about some of the things that were troubling him, but she was right about one thing. Gerichen
was,
and if he couldn't take counsel with one of Vkandis' own, who could he speak with?
:Tell them—:

He hesitated.
:If anyone wants to know, tell them I'm going to visit a friend.:

The Temple of the Lord of Light in Haven was a small one, situated between a saddlery and a chandler. Alberich thought the chandler a particularly appropriate neighbor, all things considered. Candles—next to the Temple of the Light? He wondered if the chandler knew.

He'd gone back to the secret room and donned the garb of one of his more-respectable personae, in no small part because that persona was possessed of a raincape, an article of clothing that Herald Alberich had forgotten to bring with him this evening. Besides, it wouldn't hurt for Lysander Fleet to be seen here. It was one more layer in the persona.

The duties of a Sunpriest began at sunrise and ended at sunset, but Geri would be accessible for another couple of marks—

Candlemarks,
he reminded himself. He
had
to start thinking in Valdemaran terms, or he would
never
get the hang of this confounded illogical tongue. . . .