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Mags blinked, then turned to Bear. “An’ you said I was bein’ all poltical-connivin’ an’ manipulational!”

“Oh, hush. And that’s not a word.” Bear kissed Lena’s hand, and she blushed. “That was fearfully clever! It could have been anyone who left that on the desk! It’s not like Marchand hasn’t irritated a lot of people around here.”

“I’m half tempted to tell Bard Lita it was me,” Amily said thoughtfully. “But she won’t ask. All she needs is the evidence, it speaks for itself.”

“Tha’s a fact,” Mags agreed. “But... ye had that other prollem... didn’ ye?”

This time it wasn’t a blush that reddened Lena’s cheeks, it was a painful flush. “All I ever heard was the rumor,” she said. “No one would ever tell me directly they’d heard him say that. And... now that I know what I know about his composition . . .”

“Look,” Bear interrupted, “let me just ask this outright. Do you want him to be your pa? Cause I’ll tell you right now, if my pa claimed I wasn’t his, I’d send the old blowhard a smoked ham and a thank you letter!”

“Bear!” Lena exclaimed, shocked, as Mags and Amily laughed.

“Well, look, what’s he done for me? Nothing but give me gray hair before my time! Look!” Bear pulled a lock of very dark hair away from his head. “See? And what’s Marchand done for you? He didn’t even get you into Bardic! Your grandpa did that!”

Lena wavered. “That’s true—but it’s not me that I’m worried about. Mama would... if the rumor got home, Mama would never dare go out in public again. It would be horrible for her. Everyone would be trying to figure out who my real father was. Grandpapa would be mortified, and he’d blame Mama . . .” Tears sprang up in her eyes at the mere thought.

Bear hastily put his arm around her. “Hey, there, it hasn’t happened yet. It’s just been a couple of whispers. Your friends are pretty good at squashing ’em. Lord Wess has been real good at that. He says he just looks down his nose and drawls that—no, wait, let me see if I can do this right.”

Bear took his arm from around Lena and stood up. He slouched indolently against the wall and looked down his nose at all of them “My dear old creature, of course Marchand would say something like that. The fellow cannot bear the idea of anyone having more talent and adulation that he does when it’s a stranger; can you imagine what he’s thinking about being eclipsed by his own offspring? And a girl at that? He’s already done what he can to keep her out of the public eye, but that won’t hold for much longer. He’s probably writhing in agony on his pillow at night at the mere thought that the words ‘The great Bard Marchand’ would be applied to anyone but him. Since he can’t do anything about the poor girl’s brilliance, he probably decided to see if he couldn’t separate her from the name, and damn the consequences.”

Bear gave one of those odd laughs that Wess did... a sort of wheezing snigger. “Of course, the man is so wrapped up in his own consequence that he hasn’t thought things through very well. Because if Lena wasn’t his, then for all of his claims about how irresistible he is to women and how clever he is, his own wife found him quite inferior to someone else altogether, and he’s been played the fool! It’s something right out of one of those tavern songs where a woman bids goodbye to her husband at the front door and brings the lover in the back, and when the husband asks about strange boots under the bed, she tells him something ridiculous.”

Bear wheezed again. “Just wait. As soon as it dawns on him that he’s set himself up to look like the doddering old man in a farce, he’ll deny ever having said that.”

Mags applauded slowly as Bear bowed and sat down—both for the performance and for Lord Wess’s cleverness.

“I imagine that got around pretty quick to Marchand, because according to Lord Wess he hasn’t let out a peep about you not being his since,” Bear continued. “Backed himself into a bad corner with that one.”

Lena nodded slowly. “I just—I—” She let out her breath in a huge sigh of mingled frustration and unhappiness. “I think about him using all those other Bardic Trainees, and I just want to—I don’t know. But he is immensely talented. He’s also immensely self-absorbed. For so long, all I wanted was for him to take notice and be proud of me and now... now I just don’t really know what I want . . .”

“You’ll figure it out,” Bear said with confidence. “You can do anything you put your mind to. I’ve seen it.”

“Not everything . . .” She shook her head. “But... Amily, Mags, are you safe now? Is it over?”

“Gotta be,” Mags said. “They’d be insane t’ try t’ get Amily after thet. Completely bonkers. Oh, I don’ thin’ they’re gone, they took on th’ job uv doin’ fer th’ Karsites what th’ Karsites ain’t been able t’do wi’ armies. Ev’thin’ I read offen ’em tells me once they git a job, they stick on’t till thet job’s done, ’less they kin figger out how t’break t’contract. But they gotta be smart ’nough to know that snatchin’ Amily ain’t gonna git ’em what they wants.” He tried to imagine himself into Stone or Ice’s head and failed utterly. “I dunno what they’re gonna do next. They ain’t like thet crazy one, nor th’ feller what tried t’burn t’stable. They... think. Tha’s all they do, actually. They be thinkin’, calculatin’, alla time. They gotta be thinkin’ what they kin do, an’ I cain’t reckon like they kin.”

“Well, good. Does this mean you’re going to go back down into Haven to spy with Nikolas?” The light from the lone candle that was all Mags was willing to have for light in this heat flickered across her face.

“Dunno. Well, I know Nikolas’ keepin’ the shop goin’, ’tis one uv ’is main ways t’get ’is own spyin’ done. But I dunno iffen I’m gonna go back down there soon. Things are kinda all of a muddle right now.” He frowned. “We still don’ know who t’other two plants are up ’ere on th’ Hill. We gotta figger thet out quick, an’ I don’ think makin’ ev’body take a fealty oath unner Truth Spell’s the best ideer for fndin’ out.”

“Someone’s suggesting that?” Bear said, surprised.

“ ’Course. It’s purt well guaranteed thet if there’s a right bad idea, some’un on t’ Council is gonna suggest it.” Mags grimaced. Interacting with the Court and the Council was one part of being the King’s Own that he was just as glad he didn’t have to do. He might well envy Nikolas the attendance at those fabulous High Feasts he had heard about, and wish he could see some of the fabled entertainments—but dealing with anyone highborn except those he knew were his friends and allies?

No. At least, not for a lot of years.

“Mags... I’m not so sure about that,” Amily said into the silence. “You said yourself, these aren’t the sort of people that give up, and the one thing they know they can use to get to Papa is me . . .”

He frowned a little with irritation, but frowned more when Bear gave an exaggerated sigh. “Amily, that doesn’t make any sense,” Bear began, and Amily got a stubbon look on her face and started to talk over him in a higher and slighty whiny voice. And the more she talked, the more he began to feel . . .

Well, he wasn’t sure what he felt. Very irritated, as she started out from the reasonable assumption that Ice and Stone were frighteningly clever, appallingly inventive, and terrifyingly well trained, and spun that into a wild fantasy of strange, unstoppable killers with one foot in the spirit world who had, like some weird Pelagirs creature, gotten her “scent” and would not rest until they carried her off. Her tone grated on him and set up a headache just behind his cheekbones. He began to harbor the exceedingly uncharitable notion that—well, although she had not liked all the restrictions, she had liked being the center of attention and the praise she’d gotten for being willing to play bait—and now that attention was going to be taken away, and she didn’t want that to happen. The attention she would get for having her leg worked on was passive... and it was centered on a defect. The attention she had gotten for being essential to laying the trap was active and centered on her bravery. Oh, he could see that all too well.