“This is Mags, Kiril,” said Nikolas, continuing to propel Mags into the room, since Mags’ own legs seemed to have lost the ability to take steps forward on their own.
The man turned, and Mags blinked and did his best not to gawk. He knew this man. This was the Herald he had encountered three days ago at the stable. No wonder he had looked familiar! That profile was on at least half of the coins that Mags had handled since he arrived here.
The King grinned at Mags. “You were right. Dallen did try to take my fingers.”
:Did not.:
“Um,” said Mags, intelligently.
Nikolas got him seated across from the King by the simple expedient of positioning him in front of a chair and pushing down on his shoulders. He plopped down gracelessly then leapt to his feet and started to kneel.
Nikolas grabbed the back of his collar and hauled him back into the chair.
The King was laughing so hard he was bent over.
“Mags, Mags, please,” he choked out around laughter. “No kneeling, no bowing, just the two of us having a conversation.”
Mags gulped and sat gingerly on the edge of the chair. “Yessir, yer Majesty Highness sir,” he gabbled.
“Calm down,” said the King, making soothing motions with his hands. “Now, I want you to put your mind back to this afternoon when you first found where Chamjey was going. What did you do?”
“Tried t’ figger out how t’ get where I could hear ’im, yer Greatness,” Mags said. “Dallen, he said t’ get inside an’ lookit th’fireplace. Twas fulla ash. Dallen, he tookit us t’ the nearest soapmaker t’ find out who got th’ ash from thet Inn. Happen it was that soapmaker. Dallen said, ask if they’d collected. She said no. Dallen said, askit if I could. She—” He stopped and thought for a moment. “She askit me an’ Dallen if this was prankin’, we said no, t’ wasn’t. She askit Dallen if there was a Herald knew what we was about, an’ Dallen, he nodded aye. So’s she give me th’ apron an’ all an’ tol’ me how t’ collect an’ I went back t’ Inn.”
Nikolas and the King exchanged a significant glance. “They’re starting to ask Companions questions,” the King said.
“That’s no bad thing,” Nikolas replied. “Intelligent questions, not just ‘hey boy, want an apple?’ ”
“Then what?” the King asked.
Mags closed his eyes, the better to remember, and slowly recited everything that he had heard, with Dallen prompting him. When he was done, he opened his eyes to see the King nodding thoughtfully.
“We’ve got a quandary,” Nikolas said to the King, and Mags suddenly felt as if he was not even there, the two of them were concentrating so hard on each other.
The King nodded. “Two, actually. What Chamjey is doing is not technically illegal. Just immoral, but we don’t regulate morals—or at least, not that sort of morality . . .”
“It... ain’t ethical, your Majestic,” Mags put in timidly. “Don’t we got laws ’bout ethics?”
Two pairs of eyes suddenly made him the target of the same intense stare, and Mags felt utterly unnerved.
“We do,” the King said, finally. “And members of the Council swear an oath when they accept a seat on it that they will behave with the interests of the Kingdom as a whole superseding their own. At the very least, Chamjey has violated that oath.”
Nikolas drummed his fingers on the wooden arm of his chair as the fire crackled in the fireplace. “Chamjey is shrewd. And we don’t have any actual proof of all of this. We have one Trainee who listened in on a conversation, but could not actually see the speakers.”
“Ah! But we can get corroborating evidence!” the King replied after a moment. “We can canvass the herders, find out who invested in their wool and meat-sheep, and follow those leads up the line. It will take time—”
“Soon’s ye get t’ the fust guilty man, he’ll get all nervous-like,” said Mags, thinking of how that sort of thing had gone back at the mine. “Th’ other feller, he said they went through lotsa people t’ do this, but an’ ye get the fust feller t’ talk, it’ll go up chain pretty quick, I bet.”
They both nodded, and the King sighed. “I wanted to get this settled quickly, but I suppose I shall have to resign myself to getting it settled thoroughly.” He stood up. “Mags, I’m getting some tutors arranged for you Trainees. There are a number of intelligent young people in Haven that are being interviewed, fine scholars, but poor, who would certainly benefit from this idea. In fact, the only reason we haven’t got some tutors yet is because we are making sure that they are good at teaching.”
Mags felt his eyes widening. “Twas a good idear then?” he said.
“Very much so. And I am looking forward to seeing you and Dallen trying for a Kirball team. I’d like to see if Dallen can run with the same eagerness that he eats pocket pies.” The King’s face split with a grin.
:Hey!:
Mags smothered a laugh.
“Now, I’ve taken up enough of your time . . .” the King hesitated.
Mags supplied what he thought the King was looking for. “Eh? I wuz never here, never talked t’ yer Royalness ’bout nothin’, an’ I don’ know nothin’ ’bout sheepses and wool. Herald Nikolas, he jest wanted t’ ast me ’bout what Bard Marchand said, ’xactly, when he sent me on that there errand he shouldn’t of.”
The King nodded. “Exactly so. Good night, Mags. It was good to meet you formally, so to speak.”
Mags got to his feet, managing to control his knees, which still felt a bit weak, bowed, and let himself out. As he left, he sensed that the King and the King’s Own had only begun an evening of intense conversation and decision-making.
He was very, very glad that he was never going to be in Nikolas’s shoes.
:And between you and me, I am just as glad not to be Rolan. Now come on back and let’s talk about this Kirball business. I’ve made some inquiries.:
Bear and Lena seemed to have forgotten the project that had taken them all into the Guard Archives this past winter—but Mags had not. Although his opportunities to go back and search had gotten a lot rarer, he still presented himself at the door of the Archives from time to time for a candlemark or two of research.
And the next day gave him one of those rare opportunities, as he finished an exam unexpectedly early and was dismissed with a smile. He headed for the Guard Archives at a trot, feeling as if he was getting very close to what he was looking for. The last time he had been through the reports, there had been mention of an unusually large bandit group, one that the Guard felt probably had a substantial encampment. “It would not be difficult here,” the Guard Captain had written. “There are many caves and abandoned mines, and it would be possible to hide as many as fifty or sixty fighting men and their hangers-on in some of them. The raids we are seeing are growing bolder and more pernicious, and suggest that these miscreants have organized under a clever leader.”
That sounded like what he was looking for, and Mags had already had enough disappointments that by now he was well over the dread of finding out who his parents had been. He just wanted some answers, any kind of answers.
Besides, if anything had shown him lately that just because your parents were something, it didn’t follow that you were the same, it would have been encountering Bard Marchand. There could not possibly be a person less arrogant and self-assured than poor Lena, and there could not be a person more arrogant and self-centered than her father. So if his parents had been bandits—well—
So what.
Maybe he would at least find out why they had become bandits. Lena had spun all sorts of fanciful tales for him. His mother had fallen in love with one of them who was noble at heart, and had followed him to the encampment. His mother had been a captive who had lost her heart to one of the bandits. His mother had been an unwilling captive. His mother had been the bandit, and his father a poor shepherd she had seduced. He thought it was a lot simpler than that. Likely that his parents had been—something—shepherds, farmers, even traders—and had a bad run of luck. Turned to robbing and fell in with the bigger group. It was a common enough story, and he was living proof that you’d do almost anything when you were starving.