"Hmm. And if the young one has influential parents?" The Captain now looked more interested than he had before. "Wouldn't that preclude any finger-pointing?"
"Please. Four boys, presumably with equally influential parents, are dead, and more are injured. I should think that under the circumstances the Schoolmaster would be grateful to have one boy he could blame." Pol raised an eyebrow and the Captain nodded, once, slowly.
The Captain drummed his fingers on the desk for a little while, thinking. Pol waited, quite ready to sit there all afternoon if need be. But the Guardsman was not the sort of man to take very long in making up his mind. "All right. Can you take over the incident entirely?"
Pol nodded in agreement; that was what he had hoped the Captain would ask. Best that the Guard not get involved unless he needed them. It was beginning to sound as if this might involve stepping on some political toes.
With a faint hint of relief on his features, the Captain took a couple of papers out of a cubbyhole at his left and quickly scribbled something on them. He shoved them across the desk to Pol, who picked them up. The topmost was the initial report, with a note appended to the effect that Herald Pol was taking over the investigation.
"Thank you very much," Pol said, gathering up the papers and standing up. "I hope I can get to the bottom of this for us all."
The Captain smiled back and reached over the desk to shake Pol's hand. "The last thing I'm going to fight is to have a Herald come in and take over a case like this one," he replied. "I wish you Heralds would come in and help out like this more often!"
Pol laughed. "I'll mention that around," he promised, and left with the papers.
One of them proved to be just what he wanted most; a list of the pupils of the Guild School, their parents, and their addresses, what Forms they were in, and what classes within the Forms.
He searched until he found the class that the youngest boy—who he now knew was named Lavan Chitward—was in. That was where he would start. Stowing the papers in a pouch he slung over his shoulder, he stopped long enough at his room for his woolen cloak. It was cold out there, through the weather wise predicted the usual false summer around Sovvan.
Classes had been canceled for a week, so Pol knew that the children he wanted to talk to should be at home. :Ready for that trip into the city?: he called to Satiran, swinging his cloak over his shoulders.
:Already saddled,: was the prompt reply. :And waiting for you at the gate.: With that came the mental picture, and Pol nodded his approval. Satiran had asked for and gotten the full formal rig-out, with barding, bridle bells, and all. The more impressive they looked, the less it was likely they would have to argue with possibly nervous parents.
He pulled on white doeskin gloves and held his cloak shut against a blast of chill wind as he left the barracks, walking briskly to the Herald's Gate in the wall that encircled the Palace-Guard-Collegia complex. He saw Satiran as soon as he got out of the sculpted trees of one of the formal gardens, a tiny, toylike white horse against the gray stone wall.
He picked up his pace and shortly caught the chime of Satiran's bells as the Companion shifted his weight from hoof to hoof to keep from stiffening in the chill.
"Business in town, Herald?" asked the Gate Guard. "Or just pleasure?"
"It's never 'just' pleasure, I assure you," Pol replied. "But, yes, I'm in charge of investigating that fire a few days ago. I'm Herald Pol, assigned to the Collegium." It wouldn't hurt to have word spread; if any of the Guard had heard anything, they'd know who to come to with it.
"Yes, sir, I understand." The Guard saluted, and opened the Gate for them; Pol mounted, and he and Satiran went out into the city with every step marked by the chiming of bells.
Streets in Haven were built in a mazelike spiral configuration, a leftover from the days when the city itself might expect enemy attack. The establishments closest to the Palace walls were the homes of the highborn, enormous manses with extensive gardens and galleries. Some were as old as the Palace itself, and had been rebuilt, added onto, or remodeled at least as many times as the Palace, with mixed results. Most of these were the property of some of the oldest families in Valdemar, with a rotating population that depended on what branch of the family wished to come to Court, who was superfluous on the home estate, who was serving as a representative, not only of the family, but of the district, and who wanted to get something accomplished that could only be attained at Court. A few were as rundown and imperiled by lean times as the families themselves. Two had, in Pol's time as a Herald, been acquired by new families and either extensively repaired or torn down altogether to make way for a new Great House in the most modern style.
A full circuit of the city brought him to the next level, where the homes owned or leased by lesser families were located. The houses here were half the size of those of the greater families, the gardens—Well, there were no "gardens" attached to each house; there was a single pleasure garden for each, a small herb garden for the kitchen, and a courtyard just past the gates. There were, or so Pol had been told, even a few very wealthy private citizens living here with no inherited titles whatsoever to their names.
Round another circuit, and he was in the district of the wealthiest; merchants mostly, with a sprinkling of those who had inherited wealth and built it higher, and one or two adventurers who had discovered wealth or wedded it. This, however, was not where he was going. The offspring of these folk were either educated privately, by tutors, or if the child was exceptional, by the Collegia and the Master Artificers.
One more round brought him to the moderately wealthy; those who had attained Mastery in their Guilds and had their own flourishing trade or kept a workshop full of Journeymen and Apprentices. This was where he would find his first subjects; Owyn Kittlekine and his parents.
Finding their home was a simple matter of asking two or three of the servants being blown along the street by the harsh wind, off on errands. Master Kittlekine was a Leatherworker, as the gate of his house, with its sign of the stretched hide worked into the wood in bronze, proudly proclaimed. Pol rode straight up to the gate and knocked on it with the butt of his purely ornamental riding crop, without dismounting. Someone peeked through a peephole to one side of the gate, and an unnerved servant opened it hastily.
"M-m-master Herald, sir, there was no word, nothing—" the servant stammered.
"I know," Pol said, simply, with gravity, but without too much of a stern demeanor. "I wish to speak with Owyn."
"Owyn?" the servant squeaked. "But—but—but—the Master is not at home, and the Mistress is making calls—"
"It is very cold," Pol interrupted, "and this is a matter of some urgency. It is Owyn with whom I wish to speak, and not the Master or Mistress of the house."
The servant evidently decided that the wishes of a Herald overruled whatever orders he'd been given, and escorted Pol into the best parlor of the house while Satiran was taken into the hothouse that the Kittlekines had in place of a garden. There, he would at least be warm. In the parlor, with a good-sized fire to thaw him, Pol waited for someone to bring Owyn to him.
There were whisperings and the scuffling of feet behind him; word of a Herald in the house must have spread quickly. Pol pretended to be oblivious.