Closer to the Chest (17 page)

“All right, the first thing I'd like to know is how
you
are all feeling about this,” Amily asked. “Both before we spoke to you this morning, and after. And if you have any ideas.”

Mags could tell which of the girls had been talking about
this among themselves long before they'd had the morning revelations. They were mostly sitting together in knots, and exchanged glances, evidently picking one person in each little group to speak for them.

“Relieved, mostly,” said a girl who looked as if she was probably going into full Scarlets soon. “I suppose we've all been talking about this among our particular friends, but the little groups each thought we were being picked on . . .” she flushed. “. . . I regret to say that my lot thought it was someone in the new Trainees with a particularly nasty mind having a rag on us.”

“And we thought it was you!” blurted one of the youngest girls, then clapped her hands over her mouth. “I'm sorry—”

“Don't be,” said the older one, with a toss of her head. “
Obviously
that's what this nasty-minded bastard wanted us all to think, so we'd be at each others' throats. Dean Melita is right. We
really
need to stop thinking of training as a competition. If we do that, we all win it, anyway.”

The three girls from Healers' shrugged, looking wry, and perhaps just a
tiny
bit smug. “We started talking about it as soon as the first letter turned up,” said the youngest of the three. “We made sure the whole Collegium knew about it. There's speculation—”

“Go on,” Amily urged. “I want to hear
everything,
nothing is outside the realm of possibility.”

“Well, Kerl thought it might be a patient, or a former patient, or the relative of someone we couldn't help.” That came from one of the other two. “But it didn't seem as if any of the instructors or the other Healers had gotten anything of the sort, and surely if it was from a patient,
they
would have been getting letters before we were.”

Mags nodded thoughtfully. These youngsters had good heads on their shoulders, and when presented with a problem, had not hesitated in tackling it. “We know now ain't none of the Healers nor Healing instructors got anythin',” he put in.
“So reckon you're prolly right, but we'll still keep that as a possible.”

“Dean Melita is talking to the instructors that got some in our Collegium,” said the first Bardic Trainee who'd spoken. Her dark brows creased suddenly. “I wonder why
she
didn't get any?”

Another of the Bardic Trainees snorted. “That's not hard to guess. Anybody that knows
anything
about the Dean knows she would
never
keep anything like that a secret. And this slimy wretch's plan to make us miserable doesn't work unless we all think we're the only ones being hurt and are suspecting each other.”

The first girl's expression lightened, and she even laughed a little. “Now that's one of the truest things you've ever said. The Dean would have gone storming straight to the King with the letter in hand—”

“The King already knows,” Amily told them. “He's assigned me and Mags to deal with this as our first priority. But remember, outside this group and the Herald Trainees and your teachers, no one is to know. If the Poison Pen thinks his plan isn't working and stops sending letters, we don't know
what
he'll do next, and it might not be pretty.”

They all nodded.

“Now, how are these letters coming to you?” Amily continued. “Dropped through open windows? Left in your books?”

“Nothing so complicated,” said the first Healer Trainee who had spoken. “Each building has three baskets where you can leave notes for other people; one for each Collegium. Once a day servants come around, collect the notes in the baskets, and go about shoving them under our doors. All the Poison Pen letters have been glued shut with paste and a bit of waste paper. People do that all the time, and really, the only thing unusual about them was how poor the paper quality was.”

“So anybody could've just dropped them letters into baskets at any of the Collegia?” Mags asked, and all the heads in
the room nodded.
Well, at least I can talk to the servants that do the collecting, and get them to hold out those letters for me.

“All right then,” Amily said, taking charge of things again. “Mags, if you'll take notes—I'd like all of you to start remembering, if you can, what was in the letters you destroyed.”

With a sigh, Mags got out his notebook. This was going to take a
lot
of whiles.

T
he Heraldic Trainees had, as anticipated, formed a united front after the breakfast meeting. So did the Bardic Trainees. The Healers had always been a close-knit bunch, so aside from every Senior Healer making sure none of the Trainee or junior women were being harassed, nothing much changed.

To Amily's relief, the current crop of female Heraldic Trainees turned out to be remarkably stable; and, in a pleasant change from years gone by,
every single one of them
had come from normal families who were thrilled that their daughter had been Chosen. Of course, sometimes the reason they'd been thrilled was the stipend the Crown paid to a family whose child was Chosen, and sometimes the reason was because it meant that was one less mouth to feed, or one less dower to provide, but at least there were no emotionally damaged girls among this lot. Nothing but girls who had known all their lives that times were hard, the family had to work together, and it was their job to bring more food in than they ate. Which
meant when they had gotten Poison Pen missives, they'd laughed, or snarled, and chucked them in the fire.

Rolan had verified that with their Companions while the girls had been talking. This was a tough-minded bunch.

“Do you want us to keep a watch on the baskets?” one of the middle-range Trainees asked, quite intelligently, during a pause in questions. “Between all of us, I think we could probably do that.”

Amily hesitated, and looked at Mags. He shrugged. They'd talked about doing just this, after they'd spoken with the Bardic Trainees, and the problem was, if the Poison Pen realized a watch had been put on the baskets, he'd probably just do something else—or find another way of delivering letters.

On the other hand, it would give these youngsters practice in putting a watch on something. “Talk with your teachers, have them show you how to do that,” she said. “Share the duty with the boys; they'll probably be put out if you don't. Don't miss classes or skip anything. I'll talk with the Deans and make sure the baskets are only set out after breakfast and taken away before dinner.” That would eliminate the potential problem of some of them deciding they had to watch overnight.

After that, Mags just continued to take notes as the ones who had been targeted told him what they remembered of their letters, while the girls ate cakes and drank tea, quite as calmly as Amily could ever have wished for. When she shooed them all out, the room felt wonderfully empty again.

“Next time, let's do this in the library,” Mags suggested. “Or maybe some room in the Palace. I finally feel like I kin breathe again.”

She nodded, and placed a couple of cushions and a rug back where they belonged, although the girls had been very good about cleaning up after themselves. They'd even carried away the teapots and baskets of mugs. There wasn't a crumb of cake left, of course.

“So?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Looks like for the Grays he pretty much concentrated on things like
you're not fit t'wear the uniform,
your teachers won't tell you how stupid you are but I will,
an' stuff'n'nonsense like that. Either he didn't go snoopin' on their personal lives, or—huh—if Lord Jorthun is right, an' he's usin' some kind of Farsight, maybe he was afraid Trainees'd somehow pick 'im up.”

“Is that possible?” she wondered aloud.

“Hell if I know. I didn' even know there was people with Gifts outside of the Collegia.” He let out his breath in an annoyed puff.

“Neither did I,” she confessed. “It's just not something that ever came up.” She hesitated a moment. “What do you think the Trainees will do now?”

He managed a faint smile. “Other than watch the message baskets like cats at a mousehole, an' prolly alert the Poison Pen that
that
ain't gonna work? Go back t'normal. That's all of 'em, not just the Grays. All the young'uns wanted t'know was that we was takin' 'em serious, and we're lookin' into it. They see
you
takin' point on this one—an' you're
King's Own.
That lets 'em know we're takin' it very serious.” She looked at him doubtfully, but he gave her more of a genuine smile. “Mebbe the Court thinks of you as somethin' else, but t'these Trainees,
you're
King's Own. They seen more'f you than they ever did of your Pa. They got no doubt of who's King's Own, and neither do their Companions.”

She felt a surge of gratitude to all those serious-faced girls who'd squashed themselves into her sitting room. And along with that gratitude came another unexpected emotion. Confidence. For once she actually
felt
like the King's Own.

“Anything else we can do here?” she asked. He shook his head, and his stomach growled. She chuckled. “Well then, let's get some dinner, before you wither away.”

•   •   •

Days passed, and Mags' assessment of the situation, at least so far as the Trainees were concerned, turned out to be completely accurate. If there was any unease, not one of them showed it. No one came running and demanding answers; no one came tattling on anyone else. A few more Poison Pen letters turned up, this time arriving from outside the Hill with the regular letters and messages, and were handed over without a demur. There were no protestations of innocence, no cries of indignation—well, except the indignation from those who had assigned themselves to watch over the message baskets, when it became clear that the Poison Pen wasn't going to go that route anymore.

Mags continued to lurk around the Court in his guise of Magnus, but other than noting the increasing tension, suspicion, and irritability among the Court ladies, he didn't get much for his pains but a great deal of gossip. At least he was able to assure himself that Hawken had settled into the middle of a group of solid, reliable young fellows, and that the two youngest of Lord Lional's children were engrossed in studies they appeared to find highly rewarding. Loren hadn't even plagued him for that introduction to the Weaponsmaster, and as for Hawken, he didn't seem in any hurry to take Magnus up on his offer to take him to Flora's. So either he and his new friends had already gone down there themselves, which was likely enough, or he had enough to occupy his attention up here on the Hill. In either case, he was still friendly with Magnus, but it was obvious he preferred the company of the lads his own age.

Eh, I'm an old man, making myself ridiculous trying to keep up with the young dogs . . .

For his part, he was very glad that Coot was now in charge of the messengers, and he had a good solid network of his own keeping an eye on things down in Haven. Regular notes, so carefully printed out that Mags had to smile a little in sympathy for the effort it must have cost the lad, came up from
Coot every other day, making sure he was kept apprised of everything the young man and his small army learned, and that all was well with Aunty Minda and the youngest of the gang.

At least there was no more nonsense from any of the other thief-masters. Evidently the second confrontation had convinced them that Harkon was not to be trifled with, and no matter how they felt about the littles that had escaped their clutches, they'd best stick to working with adult thieves if they knew what was good for them.

Mags managed to get down into Haven long enough to contact Teo and ask him to keep his ear to the ground for any rumors about the Order of Betane of the Axe and let the men at the pawn shop know immediately if he heard anything. In his own person, he paid a visit to the Prioress, but all she could tell him was that there had neither been more letters nor more outrages.

“But perhaps that has as much to do with our vigilance as anything else,” she had added, a little grimly.

And so matters stood, as true summer cast its own influence over the city and the Hill. Increasingly warm days either made tempers so much shorter he expected every day for a fight to break out among the women fanning themselves, or induced such languor that even speaking a cross word seemed too much of an effort.

Mags hoped for more of the latter . . . but feared the former.

•   •   •

“Fire! FIRE!”

The shouts and the sounds of the Collegium bells being rung in alarm jolted Mags out of an uneasy sleep. He leapt to his feet—it was easy enough, neither he nor Amily had been able to bear so much as a sheet on them, and he was wearing the thinnest sort of excuse for sleeping trews. He made sure
the drawstring was tight, and ran for the open door to the bedroom. As he sprinted through it into the sitting room he could see the reflection of flames in the glass of the greenhouse beyond. He paused just long enough to thrust his feet into a pair of the ankle-length boots that were all that were comfortable in the heat, and ran outside.

Something was going up like an uncontrolled torch out there!

To his immense relief, it was immediately obvious that the fire was a small one, and confined to an area of the garden. But his relief soon gave way to dismay when he realized that the thing that was on fire was vaguely human-shaped.

What the hell . . . tell me it ain't . . .

:It's not alive, Mags,:
Dallen said immediately.
:It never was alive. It's some sort of . . . object.:

By the time he got to the source, the gardeners were already there, throwing buckets of water on what proved to be an effigy. It was human-shaped, indeed. And wearing a crude gown.

Mags cursed under his breath.

“Blast an' damn these young'uns!” the head Gardener snarled as he ran up to the group, lantern in hand—a lantern that was needed now that the fire was out. “Ain't they make enough work for us'n wi'out settin' fires t'poppets i'middle o' night?”

Now that he was able to see, Mags stepped forward to examine the thing. “'Ere now!” the Head Gardener objected. “Leave thet be! Happen summon oughta see 'bout it—”

“It's all right, Siman, I'm Herald Mags, and I'm the proper person to be seeing about it,” Mags replied, being especially careful about his accent and speech, since he certainly wasn't wearing Whites. But a cultured accent, and the fact he knew the gardener's name should be enough to establish his credentials.

“Oh! Beggin' yer pardon, Herald,” Siman said, immediately contrite. “What kin we do fer ye?”

“Uproot this wretched thing and help me get it back to my
rooms before anyone else comes nosing about,” Mags replied. “I don't think
too
many people heard the call of ‘fire,' and I'd just as soon we didn't have a festival out here.”

It took only one man to pull up the stake the effigy was tied to; it appeared that it had been planted in a newly turned and planted bed, and Siman was very put out about the damage to the tender plants. Mags left him and the other gardeners to do whatever they were going to do about the garden plot and directed his erstwhile assistant to help him get the effigy into the greenhouse.
Absolutely no point in checking that flowerbed for footprints,
he thought with annoyance.
It's been trampled all over by too many people at this point.
And there was no point in examining people for dirty shoes. Once
off
the flowerbed, the perpetrator of this “prank” would merely have to wipe his or her feet on the turfed paths, and there would go any evidence. And, of course, the turf would show no further footprints.

Amily waited until the gardener had left before coming out to the greenhouse with another lantern, barefoot, with her hair loose around her shoulders. “That was the fire?” she asked, as he bent over the half-burned effigy.

“Yes, and I don't think it's a Trainee prank,” he replied, examining what was left of the thing. It was definitely supposed to be female; it had long hair made of yarn, big, pillowy breasts, and a tightly cinched-in waist. He thought there had probably been a face painted on it, but that part of the effigy was too badly burned to be sure in this light. It had been clad in a rudimentary sort of gown made of what appeared to be old bedsheets, but it had an improvised corselet made of some old black material tied tightly around the waist area to emphasize the size of the “breasts,” so he doubted the fact that the gown was white signified anything. It was far more likely that the thing had been made of whatever came to hand.

“I can't see much in this light,” he finally said. “We'll look at it again in the daytime.”

Amily nodded, and led the way back into their bedroom.

“Is it—” she asked hesitantly, as he kicked off his half-boots and lay back down on the bed, wearily.

“Very likely,” he replied, as she put the lamp out and settled in beside him. “The Trainees know better than to pull a trick like this right now, and there's no one in the Court who I think would be likely to think of it.”

“There's no one in the Court who'd be willing to get up in the middle of the night in this heat just to engineer anything of the sort,” she responded dryly. “And why would they? If it had been meant to represent someone, something about it would have been immediately unmistakable, and there's no one
I
know in the Court who's angry enough at women in general to go to all that effort.”