So maybe Marchand wasn’t trying to show off his protege, just doing something sensible to keep people from being bored. Maybe.
But if Mags was any judge, probably not. Marchand never did anything unless it had some possibility of making him look good. Finding a young Bard with that much raw talent and ability was going to make him look good. That was what Mags figured, anyway.
Amily loved the whole concert, and afterward Herald Nikolas whisked them all off to a very enjoyable evening at an inn where a troupe of actors was performing short comic plays with performances by acrobats and tumblers in between. Mags suspected that Nikolas was trying to distract Lena; if so, it worked. She was still laughing and chattering with Amily about the funny lines in the plays as they all parted to go to bed.
But as he climbed into bed himself, after throwing all the windows open to the breeze, he was not thinking about the comic plays. Nor was he really thinking about the inevitable confrontation Bear was going to have in the morning, nor how Lena was going to deal with this newest slight on the part of her father. Oh, those things were in the back of his mind, but he had something more personal to occupy his thoughts right now.
::Nikolas’ project—:: he said hesitantly to Dallen. ::I know ye all gossip worse’n bored kitchen help. An’I know Rolan tells ye things sometimes. Whatcha know ’bout it?::
::Some. As you have already guessed, it’s about the assassins.::
Well, that was scarcely a surprise. Although... ::They ain’t exactly assassins,:: he pointed out. ::Fust time, they was just spyin’, near’s we kin tell. Second time, they was after thet book fer their code. ’Kay, they kidnapped Bear when they was pretendin’ t’be envoys an’ stuff, but we figger ’twas t’take care’a the ’un thet went crazy. There wouldn’t’a been no killin’ at all if they’d been able t’get off Palace grounds wi’ ’im. ’Twas on’y bein’ cornered an’ caught made ’em dangerous. They mighta been bullies, but they didn’ really hurt anyone till then.::
::And they might have remained merely kidnappers. Until they had no more use for Bear,:: Dallen responded, a little tartly, as Mags tucked his hands behind his head and stared at the vague shadow of a bat flitting about the ceiling, catching bugs.
::We don’ know thet... :: he protested, then sighed. ::But aye, prolly. Second time though... :: He shuddered at the memory of the ruthless, cold killer whose mind had brushed against his so many times. ::Aye, that ’un, he was somethin’ I’d’a called an assassin.::
And he’d planned to destroy the stable full of Companions as a distraction while he stole back the book he needed to decipher the coded messages of his superiors.
::Well, Nikolas intends to set the two of you up in Haven as a father and son in some shady business or other. I’m not sure what it is; it will be shady enough that you’ll have a lot of contact with criminals, but also so no one will be surprised to see Guardsmen or Constables coming in from time to time.:: Dallen seemed a little perplexed. ::This is not my forte. I cannot imagine what that could be, but I am sure he has something worked out. What he wants to do is find out if there are any more of these people, either that there are some who haven’t left, or new ones. To do that, he has to discover who set them up here in Haven. They knew next to nothing about Valdemar; someone had to give them local help. He wants to find that person—or persons. Once he does, with luck, we might have a better path to discovering what they wanted and where they came from.::
And why one of them thought he recognized me . . .
A trace of that uneasy thought must have crept across to Dallen. ::You do know that this could all have a very, very simple explanation, don’t you?::
He blinked. ::An’ what’d thet be?::
::Mistaken identity. They do say that everyone in the world has a twin somewhere. Perhaps he knew your “twin.”:: Mags sensed Dallen’s mental “shrug.” ::The simplest explanation is generally the correct one.::
::Mebbe... :: But Mags didn’t really believe it. No, there was something more going on there . . .
But worrying at it was not going to solve it right now either. More interesting was that Nikolas was going to set the two of them up together, and that he had openly called him a “partner” in front of the others.
This... this was amazing. Yet, at the same time, it woke old aches. He knew one reason why Nikolas had chosen him for this life—it was because he had no family. If he vanished, there would be no repercussions, as there would be if, say, he were highborn or had other connections that could cause complications. The few people who knew him on sight would not let it slip if they saw him in an unexpected place, or out of uniform—not like someone with a hundred cousins who might bump into him and accost him loudly and publicly. There was no one that he could let things inadvertently slip to who didn’t already know what he was doing.
He had no ties, no loyalties,except to the Heralds, who had saved him from what would have been a very short life of starvation, privation, and pain in the gem mines. He was related to no one in Valdemar, owed no one else anything, and no one owed him. He was the orphan child of two young people who didn’t even speak the language and who had been murdered by bandits. The few things that had been left offered no clues as to their land of origin.
He could not have been more perfect to be trained as a spy if Nikolas had gone out and arranged it all himself.
And that was the ache. Although he made jokes about how he preferred being an orphan, the truth was, when he saw people who were happy in their families—Master Soren and his niece Lydia, Nikolas and Amily—he was raw with envy. Family brought along baggage, but it also gave support of a sort he’d never had . . .
Except for Dallen . . .
Stop whingin’ ’bout what ye cain’t change, he scolded himself. Jest think; yer folks coulda been like Bear’s. Or they coulda hated Heralds.
Oh, his head knew that. But his gut, now... his gut knew what it wanted. Like salt-hunger, meat-hunger, this was family-hunger. In his rare moments of quiet thought, it always came back to him. What had his parents been like? Would they be proud of him now, or horrified by him? Had they been running from something? What? What kind of blood ran in his veins? What would he have been like if he’d had a real family, a mother and a father? Surely he had actual blood relations somewhere... if only he could figure out where they were . . .
Shet it, he told his gut sternly. Mind whut they say. “Be careful what ye ast fer, yer like t’get it, an’ in the wust possible way..”
There was no point in looking for trouble. Trouble was all too inclined to come looking for him.
