Closer to the Chest (16 page)

Lord Jorthun passed his hand over his face. “You may take it from me, that will not last. I shall have to think of some way to prepare for this.”

Dia pursed her lips. “My girls are telling me that not everyone is upset. Some of them are taking the letters as a sort of badge of triumph—they not only succeeded in their mischief, but they've made people take notice.” She shook her head. “I can't say I understand that sort of thinking, but there it is.”

“Ugh.” Amily made a face. “That's just . . . bullying of another sort. Passive bullying.”

“Indeed it is,” Lord Jorthun said, and leaned over with his arms resting on his knees. “And since you bring up bullying, that is
precisely
what I am concerned about. Not about the way that some of these ladies bully one another, but something else entirely.”

Mags scanned Steveral's face, and to his relief, saw that his mentor was taking this situation very seriously indeed. In the back of his mind, he'd been afraid that Lord Jorthun, with his decades in the service of gathering intelligence for his King, would consider all this a tempest in a teapot.

But it seemed he thought the situation was even more urgent than Mags did.

“The problem we have is these letters are only the ones we've seen,” he pointed out. “The ones we haven't seen are likely to be the real poison. They've been sent to women and girls who are much more vulnerable and thus more likely to hide that they've been the recipients of so much vitriol. Like Violetta—”

Now he took another letter out of his document case, and handed it to Amily. She scanned it quickly, and went pale, then handed it to Mags.

And there, as if the letter writer had actually been present in the room, was every detail of Violetta's seduction by the late and unlamented Brand, the son of the equally late and unlamented Lord Kaltar.
“I know everything, not just this, you filthy slut,”
the letter finished.
“You seduced him, then had him killed. Aren't you ashamed to show your face? You should be locked up for the safety of every man in the Court, you shameless slut.”

Mags bit off an oath.

“How is this even possible?” he asked angrily. “No one knows what happened but Violetta, Amily, an' me!”

“It could be pure speculation, but it's startlingly accurate speculation, judging by the way you two reacted,” Lord Jorthun replied. “Or . . . and this is what concerns me a great deal . . . it could be the result of someone with the Gift of Farsight. The kind that allows someone to look into the past.”

Mags gaped at him. “You surely don' mean a Herald—”

“That's exactly what I
don't
mean,” Steveral said dryly. “What, did you think that Gifts were exclusive to Heralds? Not
a bit of it. Quite a few religions not only have people with Gifts, they seek them out. There are others who practice using their Gifts in other ways. Such things are not
common,
but really, my dear boy, the temperament to become a Herald is much, much rarer than Gifts are.”

“You mean you've found folks hurtin' others with Gifts?” Mags could scarcely contain his outrage. The very idea revolted him.

But Lord Jorthun just shrugged. “Gifts are uncommon; many of them are probably undiscovered by the holders of them all their lives. Generally, when we discover people with Gifts who are misusing them, they are brought before a Healer with Mind-healing, and the thing is shut down so they can't use it again.”

Amily nodded, as if this was already known to her, but Mags blinked in surprise and no little shock. “You kin
do
that?”

“We can,” said Lord Jorthun. “But that's only if it's being used for mischief. If someone can turn his hand to making an honest living of a Gift, or help out his neighbors, there's no reason to interfere with that.” He pulled at his chin a little in thought. “Oddly enough, Mindspeech has never turned up as a ‘wild Gift.'”

“That'd be because it'd prolly drive the person that had it insane without they got a Companion to help 'em and Herald's Collegium to teach 'em to shield,” Mags said, after a moment of thought. “I know I would've gone balmy if I hadn't.”

“Very likely—and we're getting a bit far afield. Back to the subject. I knew as soon as I read the letter to Violetta that a great deal of what this Poison Pen is writing about could have been learned by someone with a Farseeing Gift of the sort that allows one to look into the past, as well as the present. And this is terrible, especially for the ladies concerned, but this is not what has me worried at the moment.”

“Which is?” Amily asked, although Mags had a good idea
of what he thought Lord Jorthun was going to say. That there was going to be an eruption of rage and vitriol in the middle of something important that would leave alliances in shards and send the Court a hundred feuds instead of just one.

“The point is, right now the Poison Pen is only using his knowledge and power to torment and shame. And yes, it is a terrible thing, and these poor women and girls certainly do not deserve any of this—and it is almost certainly going to cause an emotional lightning strike, probably in the middle of some crowded Court function, that is likely to leave everyone dazed and shocked. But the Poison Pen's fixation on the sins of women is working to our advantage.”

“I can't see how—” Mags replied, doubting Lord Jorthun's intelligence for the first time, ever.

“Because as long as the Poison Pen is concerned with the morals of others, he's
not
turning that Gift to look for State Secrets.” Jorthun sat back in his chair, and nodded at Mags' thunderstruck reaction. “So now you see why I am concerned. Deathly concerned. We need to ferret this creature out now, not just for the sake of those he's tormenting, but for the sake of the entire Kingdom.”

“No pressure,” Mags muttered under his breath. If there was a way to discover when someone was using a Gift other than Mindspeech,
he
certainly didn't know what it was.

“Is Violetta all right?” Amily asked. “Yes, I realize that the Poison Pen
could
do damage later, but I'm concerned with what he's doing
now!”

“She was very shaken, but she had the wit to bring the letter straight to me. Her parents are back on their estate, and it's unlikely the Poison Pen will send anything there. He wants reactions he can see, here and now, and the one thing I've been told about Farsight is that it is
limited.
You have to actually know either the
place
you are trying to see, or the
people
you are trying to see,” Jorthun replied, and waved at the pile of papers on the table, as Mags emptied his wine goblet. Right
now, he felt strongly in need of it. “These letters didn't start to appear until after your wedding, and Violetta's parents were long gone by then.”

“We sent her away to one of Jorthun's estates for a little rest in the country,” Dia added. “And we're making sure she gets no letters or messages that have not been screened by our Seneschal there first. But Amily, like you, I am concerned for other vulnerable girls. I want this
stopped,
before someone is really hurt.”

“What 'bout the Collegia?” Mags said out loud, as the thought came to him. The others all turned to look at him curiously. “If it's got down into Haven—and it has—no reason t'think it ain't got into the Collegia, too.”

“It will be far easier to get the Trainees to cooperate than the girls of the Court,” Amily pointed out. “They trust Heralds, and they'll trust we're going to do our damnedest to get to the bottom of this. Mags and I will tackle the Collegia.”

“I'll continue having the Handmaidens work—and perhaps they can get some of these girls to confide in them,” Dia said thoughtfully. “That
was
part of the purpose of forming the group after all, to have someone in place trustworthy enough that the highborn women of the Court would take them as confidants.”

“And I will see where my investigative skills will lead me,” Jorthun concluded. “One never knows what odd things lurk in peoples' backgrounds. If we are very, very fortunate, I will uncover a link that ties all these letters together, and we'll have our culprit. Rest assured, Mags, I'm going to make this my priority. Now—would you like some more of this excellent wine?”

•   •   •

Herald Caelen, Bard Lita, and the Dean of Healer's Collegium, Healer Devin, sat in the silence of Mags' sitting room and passed the unpleasant letters from hand to hand.

Devin, new to the position of Dean, looked shocked. He was only middle-aged, but the expression on his face made him look older, as if he had somehow been personally betrayed.

Lita looked angry; she was clearly doing her best not to throw the letters on the table, and if glares could convey heat, she'd have set the papers, and the table, on fire.

Mild-mannered Caelen merely looked disgusted. Then again, Heralds did tend to see people at their worst as well as their best, so perhaps he was not surprised.

When they had finished with the stack of letters, Caelen shoved them all into the document case. “Now you know why I figgered it would be better we meet here,” Mags said. “I wanted ye all t'see 'em at once, and here ye kin say anything ye want.” All three nodded. “What we'd like, is fer all of you to gather up the girls of yer Collegia, and put it to 'em, and see if they've been gettin' letters like this too. Teachers, too.”

“I think they probably have,” Lita replied, still livid. “It would account for some odd behavior on the part of some of my more promising Trainees.” She glared at the stack of letters on the table, and Mags again almost expected them to burst into flames under the heat of her stare. Then she looked at the other two Deans. “I think we can all manage, not just to talk to our girls, we can get any of them who've gotten letters to talk to you. Would you rather speak to them singly, or in a group?”

“Whichever you think would make them the most forthcoming with us,” Amily told them, after a glance at Mags. “I wonder if it wouldn't be easier for them in a group. Aren't they used to supporting each other?”

“In Healers' and Heralds' certainly,” Caelen put in. “But Lita—”

“I've been making a point of cutting down on the emphasis on competition and emphasizing community instead,” Lita replied. “We all saw what competition fostered. We ended up
with morons who thought nothing of stealing the work of talented youngsters who didn't know any better.”

They all nodded. No need to go into that again. The disgrace of Lena's father the
former
Master Bard Marchand—he'd had his title and membership in the Bardic Circle stripped from him—was something everyone remembered.

“Well then, talk to 'em, then bring 'em here,” Mags told the three Deans. “We'll make it all cozy like. We got our whole day cleared t'morrow, we kin get the next day, too, an' we're havin' tea an' cakes brought in.”

“What's the best way to handle this, do you think?” Caelen asked the other two. “The boys will be curious about why only the girls are being taken off to be talked to.”

Lita leaned back in her chair, and drummed her fingers on the arm of it. “Is there any reason to keep any of this a secret from them?” she asked the other two. Some of her hair had come loose from the knot she'd bundled it into; Mags noticed that there were a couple of new white hairs in it.
This's likely to give her a few more.

“I can't actually think of a reason,” Caelen said, at last.

“Nor I. In fact, I think keeping this a secret from them is going to ultimately be futile, and counterproductive,” Devin said, sounding and looking much more sure of himself than before. “After all, this—Poison Pen, as you called him—his goal seems to be to divide people. If we make our Trainees in the three Collegia united, then there will be nothing he can do that will harm any of them.”

“That is a
very
good point.” Amily nodded, looking, if not happy, then less unhappy than she had been. “Well then; let's tell them what has happened at breakfast.”

Caelen chuckled a little. “Good idea. No one skips breakfast. We'll just let people come in and not let anyone out until we're sure we have everyone. We'll be able to tell the teachers at the same time.”

“There is a great deal to be said for
not
keeping secrets, at least among our Trainees,” Devin observed serenely.

Lita snorted. “Yes,” she observed dryly. “Because secrets don't stay secrets among the Trainees for long.”

•   •   •

The only “casualties” among the Trainees were two very young Bardic students who had burst into tears when they realized they were not alone in being sent those hideous letters. Interestingly, there were only three girls in Healers' who had been so graced, perhaps because the Poison Pen considered Healing to be “womanly enough.”
All
of the girls in Bardic had gotten at least one, and often more than one. And so had the girls in Heralds'.

After a swift consultation, a general holiday was declared; the boys were to do what they wished, the girls were asked to go fetch any letters they still had from their rooms. Amily and Mags would host the three girls from Healers and all the girls from Bardic in the morning, and the ones from Heralds' in the afternoon.

The sitting room was rather full, but the girls had no problem disposing themselves around the room, going so far as to fetch rugs and pillows from their own rooms to sit on. Every bit of flat space held a girl by the time they were done, and two senior girls from Bardic took it on themselves to distribute the tea and cakes. When everyone had settled, and the fresh lot of letters was in Mags' hands, he nodded to Amily. He had the distinct feeling that the girls would respond better to questions from her than from him.