“Like what?” he asked, unthinking.
“A dockside whore,” she replied, with cheerful bluntness, and it was his turn to flush. “She said she didn’t want to take it to the Collegium seamstresses, because it was supposed to be a secret, and then tried to backtrack. Well, needless to say, I got the whole story out of her.”
“So you know?” he asked, feeling a little guilty that he hadn’t told her before this, seeing that he’d been thinking about asking for her help anyway.
“Hmm. I guessed, before this. Too many evenings when you weren’t here in the Complex, too many times when you knew things you shouldn’t have about parts of Haven you weren’t supposed to have ever visited,” she said thoughtfully. “I mean, I can put two and two together—and unlike some of our colleagues with some rather lofty ideas about Heraldic duties and honor, I know a bit about the practicalities of life. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that if I can help, without getting in the way, I’d like to. Keren might fit in some of the wilder parts of Haven, but I know the craftsmen’s districts inside and out.”
That stopped him cold. It hadn’t occurred to him that Myste might want to volunteer. Or that she would actually have some inside knowledge that he didn’t. He’d thought he would have to persuade her, then train her.
“It’s not as if I’d have to act a part, like Keren,” she continued. “I’d just have to be what I was before I was Chosen. An accountant, a clerk, ordinary. Believe me, people like me are just invisible as long as we keep our mouths shut. No one thinks anything about having us around. We’re a kind of servant, and no one ever pays any attention to the servants.”
He didn’t know how true the latter statement was, but the former was true enough. “There could be danger in this,” he warned.
She raised an eyebrow. “You might not think it, but there’s danger in being an independent clerk. You don’t always know just who is hiring you, or for what—or at least, not until they ask you to run two sets of books, or you get a look at papers you weren’t supposed to see. That never happened to me, personally, but I know those it did happen to. And there’s stories about people turning up missing after taking certain jobs.” She chuckled weakly. “Well, that’s probably what most of the people who knew me think is what happened to me. I know for a fact that none of them realize I was Chosen.”
Well, she was on that last battlefield for the Tedrel Wars, and she’d volunteered for that, too. She’d faced danger there, certainly enough. “I might then ask you for help,” he said carefully.
“Ask, and you’ll have it,” she said. And then seemed at a loss for anything else to say.
But he didn’t want her to leave. They sat in awkward silence for a long time. And when the silence was broken, they both broke it at once.
“Can you tell me—”
“What of interest have you—”
They both broke off, flushing. Alberich was just a little angry—at himself. Surely he was more than old enough to have a simple conversation with an interesting woman without blushing like a boy! Particularly this one, that he had shouted at, cursed at, and forced to learn things she adamantly did not want to learn!
“You first,” she said, gesturing.
He paused. What did he want to say? It suddenly occurred to him that there was a lot he didn’t know about her. He might as well start with that.
“So. What was Myste, the clerk, like?” he asked. “What was her life?”
She laughed. “Boring. But—” Her eyes grew thoughtful behind those thick lenses. “But you don’t know much of anything about the ordinary person in Valdemar, of the middling classes, do you? I know a lot about all of that, in Haven, in particular. So even if I’d be bored by it—”
“Please,” he said, with a slow smile. “Tell me.”
And so, she did. And being Myste, she got as much about Alberich of Karse out of him, as he did about Myste of Haven.
It was, on the whole, an equitable exchange. And perhaps, best of all, it was one that would take some time in telling.
8
The Ice Festival had taken place a fortnight after Midwinter. Now, another fortnight later, the deep cold finally broke with a gray day, vastly warmer than the ones that had brought the Ice Festival, and with a dampness to the air that warned of snow. By a candlemark after sunrise, the snow had begun, and it fell, thick and soft, all day and into the night. Alberich, for one, was very happy to see it, for it meant that all the frozen ponds were covered over, and at least until the would-be athletes shoveled them clear again, there would be no more ice melees.
Or, as the Trainees had decided to call it, Hurlee. Yes, they had given it a name. They had agreed on that much, and more. It had taken on a life of its own.
He had, unwittingly, created a monster. Yet at the same time, it was a very useful monster. If, at times, it seemed that the vast majority of the free time of both Trainees and young courtiers was taken up with creating rules and scoring for this combative game, and arguing over both endlessly, at least they were learning about teamwork, cooperation in combat, and negotiation. If they seemed obsessed, at least, as several teachers said with a sigh, there were worse things to get obsessed about, and the slightest hint that falling marks would occasion being forbidden to play or even discuss the game often worked miracles.
Still, it seemed that there was nowhere in Court or Collegia that one could go to escape the wretched game. Even some of the younger Guards had started to take it up. For all Alberich knew, it was spreading down into Haven by now, and many older members of the Court, decidedly unamused by the racketing teams of youngsters surging here and there and practicing on every open bit of ice, or even creating unauthorized bits of ice to practice on, often gave Alberich unfriendly glares when he saw them.
The cushion had been replaced by first a child’s beanbag, then a tough leather ball filled with heavy buckwheat in its husks, of the sort that jugglers practiced with. The staves now had small scoops on one end. The holes in the snow were now nets, and the teams had been stabilized at five members each, one of which was supposed to guard his team’s net.
Combat with the staves was still very much allowed; Alberich had the feeling that no few little feuds were being worked out during the games. Half-helms of padded leather and elbow, kidney, and kneepads had been agreed upon. Skates were not allowed, on order of the Healers, who didn’t want to deal with the results. Other additions were being argued about, or rather, forcefully argued for by Healer’s Collegium, which did not want an influx of Trainees and other youngsters with missing teeth or broken jawbones. At this point, Alberich had washed his hands of the entire project and disclaimed any involvement with it. Like the other instructors, he had declared that inattention and falling marks would be grounds for being forbidden to play.
He was rather desperately hoping that a thaw would put an end to it, and depressingly afraid that, given the new changes in it, they would be able to play without ice.
At least, by this point, it was very clear that no more than half of the Heraldic Trainees, and substantially, very substantially less than a quarter of the Healers’ and Bardic Trainees, were going to actually be playing this game. The rest lacked the coordination and, after the initial excitement was over, the inclination. That did not, however, mean that the rest weren’t interested. Oh, no. They were still just as mad about watching it as the rest were about playing it.