Arrows of the Queen (24 page)

 

Meals themselves were high points of the day. She had a permanent seat now at the second table, sandwiched between Sherrill and Jeri, across from Skif, Griffon, and Keren. To the eternal amusement of the girls and their teacher, both Griffon and Skif insisted on cosseting her, Griffon with the air of a big brother, Skif's intentions obviously otherwise although he attempted to counterfeit Griffon's. Griffon wasn't fooled by Skif in the least.

“Watch yourself, you—” he growled under his breath. “You treat my Talia right, or I'll feed you to the river with your best clothes on!”

Sherrill and the others overheard this “subtle” threat, and their faces puckered with the effort not to laugh.

Skif retaliated by picking Griffon's pockets bare even of lint without the larger boy even being aware of the fact.

“More greens, brother?” he asked innocently, passing Griffon a plate containing his possessions.

Talia had to be saved from choking to death as she attempted to keep from giggling at the dumbfounded look on Griffon's face.

 

That night Talia was on the receiving end of unmerciful teasing when they all got their baths at the end of the day.

“Oh, Talia—” Jeri piled her hair on the top of her head and simpered at her in imitation of Skif. “Would you like a—mushroom? Take two! Take a hundred!”

“Oh, thank you, no, dear,
dear
Skif—” Sherrill batted her eyelashes coyly at “Skif.” “I'd much rather have a—pickle.”

“I'll just bet you would, wouldn't you?” “Skif” replied, with a leer.

About this time the real Talia was torn between hilarity and outraged embarrassment. “I don't know where you get your filthy minds—” she said, attacking both of them with a bar of soap and a sponge, “But they plainly need a good scrubbing!”

The episode degenerated at that point into a ducking and splashing match that soaked every towel in the room and brought down the wrath of the Housekeeper on all three of them.

 

“Hist!” someone hissed at Talia from behind the bushes next to the entrance to the gardens. She jumped, remembering all too well the misery of the months previous—then relaxed as she realized the whisperer was Skif.

“What on earth are you doing in there?” she asked, getting down on hands and knees, and seeing him in a kind of tunnel between two planted rows of hedges.

“What I told you I'd do—spying on the Brat. There's something I want to show you. Squeeze on in here and follow me!”

She looked at him a bit doubtfully, then saw that he was completely serious, and did as he asked. They crawled through the prickly tunnel for some time before Skif stopped and Talia all but bumped into him. He signed at her to be quiet, and parted the twigs on one side, just enough for both of them to peer through.

Elspeth and her two nurses, Hulda and Melidy, were no more than a few feet away. They had no problem listening in on their conversation.

“Oh, no, dear,” Hulda was saying gently. “It's quite out of the question. Your rank is
much
too high for you to be associating with Lord Delphor's children. You
are
the Heir to the Throne, after all.”

Talia bit her lip angrily as Elspeth's face fell. Old Melidy seemed to wake up a little from her half-doze. Her wrinkled face was creased with a faint frown as she seemed to be struggling to remember something.

“Hulda, that . . .” she began slowly, “ . . . that just doesn't seem
right
somehow....”

“What doesn't seem right, dear?” Hulda asked with artificial sweetness.

“Elspeth isn't . . . she can't. . . .”

“Be expected to know these things, I know. Now don't you worry about a thing. Just drink your medicine like a dear love, and I'll take care of everything.” Hulda poured a tiny glass of something red and sticky-looking and all but forced it into Melidy's hand. The old woman gave up the struggle for thought and obediently drank it down. Not long afterward she fell asleep again.

Skif motioned that they should leave, and they backed out of the hedgerow on all fours.

“That's what I wanted you to see,” he said, as they exited the hedge in a distant part of the garden. “Hold still, you've got twigs in your hair.” He began picking them out carefully.

“So've you. And leaves. She must be drugging Melidy, and keeping her drugged. Witch! But how did the old woman get into a state where she
allowed
herself to be drugged in the first place?”

“You've got me;
I
can't hazard a guess. Ask Jadus, maybe he knows. Want me to keep watching?”

“If you don't mind. I want to know if she's doing this on her own or at someone else's direction. And I want to know what else she's telling the child.”

“Oh, I don't mind; this is fun! It's like being back on the streets again, except that now I'm not in danger of losing a hand or being hungry all the time,” he grinned.

“Oh, Skif—” she stopped, unsure of what to say next. Then, greatly daring, she leaned forward on an impulse and kissed his cheek lightly, blushed, and scampered away.

Skif stared after her in surprise, one hand raised to touch the spot she'd kissed.

Jadus didn't know anything about the state of Melidy's health, but he directed her to one of the Healers who would.

“Melidy
was
ill about two years ago,” she said thoughtfully. “Do you know what a ‘brainstorm' is?”

“Isn't that where an old person suddenly can't move or talk—maybe even falls unconscious for a long time—and then gets better, slowly?”

The Healer nodded. “That's what happened to Melidy. She
seemed
to have recovered completely, at least to me. I might have been wrong, though. Lady knows we aren't infallible.”

“Maybe you weren't wrong—or maybe she was affected in some way that you wouldn't have noticed,” Talia replied, sounding much more adult than she appeared, and making the Healer's eyes widen in surprise. “Keldar's mother had a brainstorm after she brought her to live at our Hold. She seemed completely all right—except that you had to be very careful what you said to her because she'd believe
anything
you told her, no matter how absurd it was. That might have been what happened to Melidy.”

And if it was
, she thought grimly,
she'd have been easy prey for Hulda
.

“As for that medicine you saw Hulda giving her, I never prescribed anything like that for her, but it might be a folk remedy, or one of the other Healers might have ordered it for her. I can check if you'd like. . . .”

Talia belatedly realized that this might not be a wise idea. She didn't want Hulda alerted if the woman
was
up to something—and she didn't want her embarrassed if she wasn't.

“No, that's all right, thank you. It probably is just a folk remedy. In fact, now that I think of it, it looked a lot like a syrup Keldar used to give her mother for aching joints.”

The Healer smiled, with obvious relief. “Melidy does have arthritis, and unfortunately there isn't much we can do for her other than try and ease the pain. The potion might very well be one of ours. I'm glad the other nurse seems to be taking care of her, then. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No—thank you,” Talia replied. “You've answered everything I needed to ask.”

But
, she thought as she walked slowly back to her room,
you raised a lot more questions than you answered
.

“If only I could go back in time....”

“If only you could
what?
” Skif asked, looking up from the book he'd been studying. Talia was perched in his open window, staring out at the moonlit trees, her own mind plainly not on study.

“I said, ‘if only I could go back in time,' ” she repeated. “I'd give half an arm to know if there was anyone besides Elspeth's father involved in bringing Hulda here—especially since she arrived after he was dead. But the only way I could find that out is to go back in time.”

“Not—quite—”

Skif's expression was speculative, and Talia waited for him to finish the thought.

“There's the immigration records—everything about anyone who comes in from outKingdom is in them. If Hulda had any other sponsors, they'd be in there. And it seems to me there's something in the laws about immigrants having to have three sponsors to live here permanently. One would have been the Prince, and one Selenay—but the third might prove very interesting....”

“Where are these records kept? Can anybody get at them?” Talia's voice was full of eagerness.

“They're kept right here at the palace, in the Provost-Marshal's office. Keeping those records is one of his duties. But as for getting at them—” Skif made a face “—we can't, not openly. Well,
you
could, but you'd have to invoke authority as Queen's Own, and Hulda would be sure to hear of it.”

“Not a good idea,” Talia agreed. “So we can't get at them openly—but?”

“But I could get at them. It's no big deal, just—”

“Just that The Book is there, too,” Talia finished for him. “Well, you haven't had any misdemeanors down in The Book for nearly a year, have you?”

“Hell, no! You've been keeping me too busy!” he grinned, then the grin faded. “Still, if I got caught, they'd figure I was in there to alter The Book. Orthallen doesn't like me at all; I'm like a burr under his saddle. I don't grant him proper respect, I don't act like a sober Heraldic Trainee. He'd love the chance to really slap me down.” He looked at Talia's troubled face, then his grin revived. “Oh, hell, what can he do to me, anyway? Confine me to the Collegium grounds? I haven't been off 'em since I met you, almost! I'll do it, by the gods!”

 

There was something wrong—there was something very wrong. Skif wasn't late—not yet—but Talia suddenly had the feeling that he was in a lot of trouble, and more than he could handle. And tonight was the night he was supposed to be getting into those immigration records....

Although she had no clear idea of what she was going to do, Talia found herself running through the halls of the Collegium—then the halls of the Palace itself. It was only when she neared Selenay's quarters that she paused her headlong flight, waited until she had her breath back, and then approached the door of the Queen's private chambers shyly. The guard there knew her well; he winked at her, and entered the door to announce her. She could hear the vague murmur of voices, then he opened the door again and waved her inside.

She drew in a trembling breath and prayed that
something
would guide her, and went in. The door closed quietly behind her.

Selenay was sitting at the worktable, flushed and disturbed-looking. Elcarth, Keren, and the Seneschal's Herald, Kyril, were standing like a screen between Talia and something behind them. Standing between Selenay and the Heralds was Lord Orthallen. Talia's heart sank. It
was
Skif, then. She had to save him. He'd been caught, and it must have been much worse than he thought. But how was she going to be able to get him off?

“Majesty—” she heard herself saying, “—I—I've got something to confess.”

Selenay looked confused, and Talia continued, “I—I asked Skif to do something for me. It wasn't—quite—legal.”

As Selenay waited, Talia continued in a rush, “I wanted him to get the Holderkin records for me.”

“The Holderkin records?” Selenay repeated, puzzled. “But why?”

Talia had no notion where these ideas were coming from, but apparently they were good ones. She
hated
the notion of lying, but she daren't tell the truth, either. “I—I wanted to make sure I wasn't in them anymore.” To her own surprise, she felt hot, angry tears starting to make her eyes smart. “They didn't want me—well, I don't want them, not any of them, not ever! Skif told me Sensholding could claim Privilege Tax when I earn my Whites, and I don't want them to have it!”

Now she was really crying with anger, flushed, and believing every word she'd told them herself. Selenay was smiling a smile bright with relief; Elcarth looked bemused, Keren vindicated, Kyril slightly amused, and Orthallen—Talia was startled by his expression. Orthallen looked for one brief instant like a man who has been cheated out of something he thought surely in his grasp. Then he resumed his normal expression—a cool, impassive mask, and try as she might, Talia couldn't get past it.

“You see, Orthallen, I told you there'd be a simple explanation,” Elcarth was saying then, as the Heralds moved apart, and Talia could see who it was that they had been screening from her view. She wasn't surprised to see Skif, white and tense, sitting in a chair as if he'd been glued there.