Valdemar 06 - [Exile 02] - Exile’s Valor

Table of Contents

 

The man certainly
had
been paying people to try to foment discontent against the Queen—quite a few of them, in fact, but with, by his own admission, limited success. And he had been doing so on the orders, and with the money, of someone else.

The only problem was, he didn't know this “someone else.” He had never even seen the man's face.

Myste had not even needed to cast the Truth Spell to force the truth out of the man; her own innate Truth-sensing Gift had told her he was telling them everything he knew. He himself had a grudge against the Crown in general, and Selenay in particular, for when she had served her internship in the City Courts of law with Herald Mirilin, she had made a ruling against him. So there was his personal motive—

Only one thing was absolutely certain; the trail came to a dead end now. It was unlikely that the man would ever be contacted again, for someone astute enough to find him in the first place would certainly be sharp enough to discover he had been arrested and know not to use him again.

“Now what will you do?” Myste asked, as they neared the Collegium.

“Keep looking,” Alberich said, and shrugged.

There seemed nothing more he could say. Or do.

NOVELS BY
MERCEDES LACKEY

available from DAW Books:

 

THE HERALDS OF VALDEMAR
ARROWS OF THE QUEEN
ARROW'S FLIGHT
ARROW'S FALL

 

 

THE LAST HERALD-MAGE
MAGIC'S PAWN
MAGIC'S PROMISE
MAGIC'S PRICE

 

THE MAGE WINDS
WINDS OF FATE
WINDS OF CHANGE
WINDS OF FURY

 

THE MAGE STORMS
STORM WARNING
STORM RISING
STORM BREAKING

 

 

KEROWYN'S TALE
BY THE SWORD

 

 

VOWS AND HONOR
THE OATHBOUND
OATHBREAKERS
OATHBLOOD

 

BRIGHTLY BURNING
TAKE A THIEF
EXILE'S HONOR
EXILE'S VALOR

 

VALDEMAR ANTHOLOGIES:
SWORD OF ICE
SUN IN GLORY

 

Written with
LARRY DIXON
:

 

THE MAGE WARS
THE BLACK GRYPHON
THE WHITE GRYPHON
THE SILVER GRYPHON

 

 

DARIAN'S TALE
OWLFLIGHT
OWLSIGHT
OWLKNIGHT

 

 

JOUST
ALTA
SANCTUARY*

 

THE BLACK SWAN

 

THE ELEMENTAL MASTERS
THE SERPENT'S SHADOW
THE GATES OF SLEEP
PHOENIX AND ASHES

 

 

 

THE VALDEMAR COMPANION
Edited by John Helfers and
Denise Little

Copyright © 2003 by Mercedes R. Lackey.

All rights reserved.

 

 

Time Line by Pat Tobin

 

DAW Books Collectors No. 1271.

 

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

All characters in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

 

 

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First Printing, October 2004

DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED
U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES
—MARCA REGISTRADA.
HECHO EN U.S.A.

 

S.A.

eISBN : 978-1-101-11863-4

Dedicated to the members of the NYFD, lost 9/11/01

 

Engine 1:
Andrew Desperito; Michael Weinberg

Engine 4:
Calixto Anaya Jr.; James Riches; Thomas Schoales; Paul Tegtmeier

Engine 5:
Manuel Delvalle

Engine 6:
Paul Beyer; Thomas Holohan; William Johnston

Engine 8:
Robert Parro

Engine 10:
Gregg Atlas; Jeffrey Olsen; Paul Pansini

Engine 21:
William Burke, Jr.

Engine 22:
Thomas Castoria; Michael Elferis; Vincent Kane; Martin McWilliams

Engine 23:
Robert McPadden; James Pappageorge; Hector Tirado, Jr.; Mark Whitford

Engine 26:
Thomas Farino; Dana Hannon

Engine 33:
Kevin Pfeifer; David Arce; Michael Boyle; Robert Evans; Robert King, Jr.; Keithroy Maynard

Engine 37:
John Giordano

Engine 40:
John Ginley; Kevin Bracken; Michael Dauria; Bruce Gary; Michael Lynch; Steve Mercado

Engine 50:
Robert Spear, Jr.

Engine 54:
Paul Gill; Jose Guadalupe; Leonard Ragaglia; Christopher Santora

Engine 55:
Peter Freund; Robert Lane; Christopher Mozzillo; Stephen Russell

Engine 58:
Robert Nagel

Engine 74:
Ruben Correa

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Paul Martini; Greg Buck; Christopher Pickford; John Schardt

Engine 205:
Robert Wallace

Engine 207:
Karl Joseph: Shawn Powell; Kevin Reilly

Engine 214:
Carl Bedigian; John Florio; Michael Roberts; Kenneth Watson

Engine 216:
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Engine 217:
Kenneth Phelan; Steven Coakley; Philip T. Hayes (Retired); Neil Leavy

Engine 219:
John Chipura

Engine 226:
David DeRubbio; Brian McAleese; Stanley Smagala, Jr.

Engine 230:
Brian Ahearn; Frank Bonomo; Michael Carlo; Jeffrey Stark; Eugene Whelan; Edward White

Engine 235:
Steven Bates; Nicholas Chiofalo; Francis Esposito; Lee Fehling; Lawrence Veling

Engine 238:
Glenn Wilkinson

Engine 279:
Ronnie Henderson; Michael Ragusa; Anthony Rodriguez

Engine 285:
Raymond York

Engine 320:
James J. Corrigan (Retired)

by Mercedes Lackey

Sequence of events by
Valdemar
reckoning

M
UTED light, richly colored, poured gold and sapphire into the sparsely furnished sitting room in Herald Alberich's private quarters behind the training salle.

Now that the colored window was installed, and the protective blanket taken off, it made that little room look entirely different. Alberich hardly recognized it.

The four Journeymen glass workers who had helped their Master install the piece were gone now, leaving Alberich alone with the artist himself.

Both of them gazed on the finished product in silence, while behind them a warm fire crackled on the hearth. It was a staggeringly beautiful piece of stained-glass work; in fact, Alberich thought, it would not be exaggerating to say it was a masterpiece. Not that he had expected less than a fine piece from the Master of the Glassworkers Guild, but this was over and above those expectations.

The artisan responsible for its creation stepped forward and gave the top right-hand corner a final polish with a soft cloth, removing some smudge not visible to ordinary eyes. He flicked off an equally invisible dust mote as well, and stepped back to view the expanse of blues and golds with a critical eye. A man gone gray in his profession, he was tall, but not powerful, with wiry, knotty muscles rather than bulging ones. His expression was unreadable, a square-jawed, hook-nosed fellow whose face might have been stone rather than flesh.