“No—Amily, I can’t let you do this!” Nikolas protested.
“You mean, you can’t stop me from doing this,” she corrected. “We’ve spoken to the King and the Lord Marshal, and they both agree this is the smartest plan.” She smiled a little, shakily. “Or, as the Lord Marshal put it, ‘There is nothing that ruins a bad person’s day quite as thoroughly as an ambushed ambush.’ ”
“Amily—”
She shook her head. “We may have discussed this only briefly, but it wasn’t difficult to come to that conclusion, Father. They are not aware we know of their plans. That makes this our best chance to catch them off guard. You’ve put both yourself, and Mags, at far greater risk in the past. Yes, you are very highly trained, but Mags is only a Trainee. And I have been thinking about this while we waited for you. The logical time for me to serve as bait for this trap is going to be during the Kirball games. That’s when there will be the most noise and confusion, the best time for them to take advantage of the crowds. They will believe they have the upper hand, when in fact we are the ones in control.”
Now all three of them, Bear, Mags, and her father, stared at her aghast and in disbelief.
Then they all began talking at once.
Mags was frantic. How could he protect her if she was among the spectators and he was on the field? When she’d told him her intention of going ahead and acting as bait, he’d agreed because he planned to be right there to guard her. It wasn’t something he would trust to anyone else. Besides, he knew how Ice and Stone “felt,” and he would know if they got close!
He tried to make himself heard, but after a moment of babbling, he finally shut up and let Bear and the King’s Own rattle on while he thought—hard.
Finally Nikolas and Bear both ran out of objections and left him a chance to put in his own oar.
“Look, Amily,” he said, trying to sound reasoned and logical, “Kirball’s dangerous, aye? I mean, th’ game. Ye’ve seen it. Ye saw Corwin took off wi’ smashed arm.”
Taken by surprise by the apparent change in subject, she nodded.
::Sir,:: he said, wincing a little at the ache in his head that using Mindspeech was giving him at the moment. Dallen was right; using that crystal took an awful lot out of whoever was crazy enough to try it. No wonder there wasn’t a line to use it in front of that room! ::She’s made up ’er mind, an’ ye ain’t gonna talk ’er outa doin’ this. But lemme try an’ show ’er why hers ain’t the best plan.::
Nikolas bit his lip, but he didn’t interrupt.
“Kirball’s dangerous. Ev’body knows thet. Nobuddy’d think nothing if somethin’ happened an’ I ate serious dirt. Like, I go down an’ I don’ git up. But there’d be a big to-do, an’ ye’d not be thinkin’ ’bout bein’ carried off right then, ye’d be askeert an’ tryin’ t’git t’me, an’ th’ crowd’d be millin’ an’ shoutin’ an’ tryin’ t’see an’ ev’body’s attention’d be on me an’ not on you. Ye kin bet they’d figger thet out. Prolly plan t’ do somethin’ t’ make me eat dirt so’s they’d git thet chance t’ grab ye.”
As he saw her eyes grow wide, he drove home the last nail. “An’ iffen they wanted ye all quiet an’ not fightin’ an not thinkin’, while they was seein’ ’bout makin’ me eat dirt, they might think about how t’make it permanent. ’Cause ye ain’t gonna be in no shape t’do nothin’ if ye done passed out or somethin’ an’ I ain’t gonna be comin’ fer ye if I’m dead.”
“If it was me, I’d set it up so I had some way to make her faint,” Bear put in. “I can think of a couple just off the top of my head. No one would be surprised, and if you had people in Healers Green come carry her off, no one would stop them, either.”
Amily was white now, to match her father, and slowly nodded.
“Now... playin’ bait durin’ t’other Kirball games... tha’s not a bad thought,” Mags continued. “Jest not durin’ mine. I kin stick wi’ ye—hellfires, ye know how t’ride Dallen, an’ ’e knows you, ye kin be on ’im, ain’t noplace safer, an’ I don’ think these fellers really unnerstand what a Companion is. I thin’ they thin’ Companions’re jest extree smart horses. Even iffen they got some ideer Companions’re more’n thet, I don’ thin’ they got ary notion jest ’ow special they be.”
::You say the sweetest things,:: Dallen said dryly. ::But I like the idea of her being on me. She will be safest there.::
“Ev’body’ll say, ‘So sweet, lookee there, them two mun be t’gether,’ aye?” He nodded a little. “None on ’em are gonna thin’ ye know howta really ride ’im.” He blew out his breath. “Now, look ye, I know th’ way them fellers minds feel. I’ll know iffen they even get close. An’ I kin give a mind-shout when they be, an’ where they be. Like when I mind-shout th’ ball i’ the game, on’y they be th’ ball.”
For a plan he’d come up with on the fly, it wasn’t bad. It let Amily do what she wanted to do, when she wanted to do it. And it let him be there to stick by her, because no one was going to get her without eliminating him, first.
Nikolas took a deep breath, and some of the color came back into his face. “All right then. Amily, you are right, I have no business telling you that you cannot do something only you can do for this Kingdom—even though I hate the bare thought of it. I’m sure the King and his advisers are still trying to work some way out of this predicament; I will go and tell them what we’ve decided, and they can put together a coherent plan.”
::Should we tell ’im we already did?:: Mags asked Dallen. ::Well, except for th’ part ’bout doin’ it durin’ th’ Kirball game... ::
::No. Let him keep some shreds of his dignity.::
Nikolas got up, still shaking a little, and looked down at the three of them. “I think you are both very brave, and very insane,” he said to Mags and Amily.
“Says the man in the ‘Here I Am, Shoot Me’ uniform,” muttered Bear.
Mags shrugged. “Reckon best way t’keep Amily safe’s t’let ’em think they got high ground when it’s us’s got it.”
“I hope you’re right, Mags,” the King’s Own said, and left.
“It’ll be all right,” Pip said, as Mags fidgeted with his gloves for the twentieth time. “No one, and I mean no one, is going to try to get her where she is right now.”
“I wouldn’t try it,” Gennie agreed. “She’s out in the open, and there’s a stiff wind, so that means these people can’t use some sort of smoke or powder to incapacitate everyone. If they had incredibly powerful Mind-Magic, they’d have used it already. There’re Heralds all around the ring. There’s absolutely no way you could eliminate all those dogs. You might be able to do something to, oh, maybe half of them. And the ones you didn’t—” She shook her head. “They’re boarhounds and deerhounds, sure, but Herald Sorald told them to protect her while she’s there. When Sorald tells an animal to do something, it generally gets the job done.”
Right now, Amily was judging a dog contest. She was, indeed, surrounded by wolfhounds, boarhounds, deerhounds, and bearhounds—not to mention a nice selection of the enormous mastiffs trained from puppyhood to guard children. She was in the middle of a riding ring, set up for horse and hound judging. A Herald with the Gift of Animal Mindspeech had—so Mags understood—made it quite clear that besides behaving themselves and ignoring anything that might be a distraction, the dogs were all required to protect Amily from any threat.