Intrigues v(cc-2

  Intrigues

  ( Valdemar (12): Collegium Chronicles - 2 )

  Mercedes Lackey

  Intrigues

  The Collegium Chronicles, Book 2

  For Betsy Wollheim and Russ Galen.

  Chapter 1

  MAGS slapped the palm of his hand against the blue-painted wood of the stable door, and it banged open, whacking into the frame as Mags hurried through it. The noise echoed through the stable, startling the Companions that were huddled together in the aisle nearest the door into backing up a pace or two. Brick walls didn’t do much to deaden sound. The chill wind that followed him through chased down his neck as the last icy grasp of winter clawed at him. Behind him, a few stubborn patches of granular snow lingered at the bases of trees and under bushes, but most of the ground was bare, which was a welcome relief after a winter season that seemed as if it would never end. The huge blizzard that had virtually closed down Haven, Palace and all, had been followed by snowfall after snowfall until Mags began to wonder if spring was ever coming.

  Then, finally, the snow stopped, and began to melt. And now the weather was changing, but winter was definitely not going quietly. Occasionally a frigid wind showed that it wasn’t quite done yet.

  Mags pushed the door closed, leaning into it as the wind whistled around the edges, before the spring latch dropped into place with a snick. He took a long deep breath of the comforting smell of the Companions’ stable; clean straw, clean “horse,” a hint of damp wool, another hint of woodsmoke. If “home” had a scent, this was it.

  All of the pristine white “horses” in the building looked in his direction for a moment before going back to whatever it was they had been doing. For a moment, Mags was the focus of a sea of blue eyes.

  The largest stallion in the building, who had presumably been chatting with two other Companions in the middle of the aisle between the stalls, gave him a long look down his aristocratic nose that Mags read as disapproving.

  Bad manners to interrupt. Just Not Done. Besides, You Let The Cold Wind In. Also Not Done. Hmph. It wasn’t in Mindspeech, but it might just as well have been. The stallion’s ears were slightly laid back and he swished his tail in irritation.

  “Sorry, Rolan,” Mags said quickly, ducking his head as the King’s Own Companion continued to give him the Stern Look of the Elder. He strolled under the watchful gaze down to the end stall near the door to his own small room and came face to face with his own Companion, Dallen. Horses—or Companions—couldn’t grin, but he sensed more than a little amusement from his bondmate.

  :Don’t worry about Rolan; he likes to think that he stands in one place and the universe revolves around him,: Dallen said. Dallen’s blue eyes shone with amusement, and while one ear twitched in Mags’ direction, the other pointed back toward Rolan.

  A snort from the other side of the stable told Mags that Dallen hadn’t bothered to keep that little comment “quiet.” Rather than Mindspeaking directly to Mags, Dallen had communicated it openly so that every Companion in the stable could hear it. Mags grinned. There were times when Dallen’s cheekiness didn’t just border on impudence, it jumped right into the middle of impudence and splashed it all around.

  :Rolan’s just being prickly. People have been banging through that door all day; and of course they let the freezing cold draft in every single time it starts to get a little warmer.: Dallen reached over his shoulder and tugged his blue-and-white blanket a little higher on his shoulders with his teeth. :This is why I am sporting my natty little rug, here. Of course some people don’t want to wear their blankets because they can’t show off their muscles, so when a draft roars in, they are the first to complain.:

  There were whickers from all over the stable at that one. And another, louder snort. Mags smothered a giggle with both hands.

  :THANK YOU FOR YOUR AMUSING OBSERVATIONS, DALLEN, : came a very loud, ringing mind-voice, one that was probably heard all the way down to the edge of Haven. :I’LL BE SURE TO RECOMMEND YOU FOR COURT JESTER.:

  Now there were whickers from virtually every stall. Including from Dallan, who had no problem poking fun at himself. Dallen tossed his head and somehow managed for just a moment to cross his ankles and his eyes, inducing more giggles from Mags.

  :Until this weather breaks, when I don’t need to be out with you I’m staying right here in my stall hugging the hay—it shields me a little from the blast of cold air each time someone comes in,: Dallen continued complacently, as King’s Own Companion Rolan went back to whatever important thing he had been discussing. :But I am well known as a lazy lout.:

  “Not lazy,” Mags replied, getting a brush to get whatever invisible bits of dirt and hay might be caught up in his Companion’s shining mane and tail. “Just practical. If I didn’ have to go back and forth t’ classes, I’d hole up in m’ room an’ not move till it got true-warm.” He sighed a little. “Been so long since I seen a warm sun, I’m beginnin’ t’ disbelieve in it! Don’ wonder that Rolan’s tetchy.”

  Dallen nodded vigorously. :Oh I heartily agree with you. All those days of dark cloud and endless snow made people depressed and edgy, and now I think maybe some of us are losing our patience as well. It’s hard to be cooped up in here, knowing that Spring is taking its time in getting here properly.: The stallion stretched, arcing his neck so that Mags could get at all the itchy spots with the brush as he did so. :I’m not the only one wanting a nice walk out on a lazy hot day with the sun blazing down. Too bad that won’t happen for at least a couple of moons yet. And when I think about how it feels to have a good roll in long grass, and a gallop on a warm summer night—bah, I start to feel out of sorts too. Especially when I think about those gallops on summer nights, because I do look so splendid by moonlight!:

  Mags had to smile at that, and his mood lifted. He leaned into Dallen’s neck and continued to brush, letting the motion soothe them both. It had been another slightly edgy day for him, and maybe Dallen was right about people being out of sorts because they were cooped up. He couldn’t understand why—well, he couldn’t until he thought about it from the point of view of the other Trainees. Most of them thought being “forced” to stay warm and indoors was a trial, and not a hitherto unimaginable luxury... actually he was probably the only one who felt that every day was spent in luxury.

  Eh, not quite. There’s a couple from sheep-country. An’ a couple farmers. An’ that gal whose da is a blacksmith . . .

  Still, he was the only Trainee who came from what—to the others—was unimaginable poverty. The vast majority of the Trainees came from the highborn families, or at the very least, the prosperous. Even the poorest shepherd was appalled when he heard about the conditions Mags and the other younglings with him had endured.

  People were always complaining about something—the food, the work, the beds, the uniforms didn’t fit, their rooms were too hot or too cold, or so-and-so was too hard a teacher. Sometimes he wondered if they just made things up to complain about.

  Whereas... he was grateful to wake up in any kind of bed at all. Doubly grateful that it was a warm bed in a warm room, a clean warm bed on top of all of that.

  For most of his life, his bed had been filthy straw in a hole under the barn floor, and a blanket more holes than cloth, a bed he shared with a dozen other slave-children. It had never been warm, even in the heat of summer. It had never been clean.

  He had never been clean, not even when they were all given the rare good meal and apparent good treatment on the occasion of a show visit to satisfy those who were supposed to ensure their well-being. Baths? Never heard of them. The only time dirt got washed off was by accident, as he worked the sluices, washing the gravel from the mine for tiny bits of gemstone.

  Having a warm, soft bed—that was obviou
s, of course anyone would like that. But following his rescue and subsequent “civilizing,” he had quickly discovered he liked being clean. And after that first bath it had just gotten better, although initially the experience had terrified him.

  To put on clean clothing that wasn’t rags, eat good food that filled you up—it was, by the standards he had grown up with, the stuff of which dreams were made. No, not even dreams. When he’d been a slave, he hadn’t even known that such things were possible, so how could he have dreamed about them?

  Dallen was the reason all this had happened to him. Dallen had Chosen him, Dallen had come for him, and when the Companion couldn’t get him away from the man that had kept him and the others in terrible slavery, Dallen had fetched help in the form of another Herald—Jakyr.

  Of course, at the time, Mags had been as terrified of the Herald as he was of his master, though in a way that had been good, because his fear had kept him too paralyzed to move or run until Dallen got him sorted out.

  Then, oh how his life had changed!

  Becoming a Trainee had changed his life so dramatically that he sometimes thought he had become an entirely different person.

  Take the food. No more thin cabbage soup and bread that was mostly chaff, or even sawdust. No more digging into garbage pits and the pig-slop for food that was too spoiled for the people living in the “big house.” As a mine-slavey, his highest ambition had been to hit a richer vein of “sparklies” to earn himself one more tiny piece of bread than anyone else had.

  And the living conditions. No more sleeping in a pit on rotting straw in a heap of other dirty children. Or trying to keep warm with only a thin blanket and the body heat of the rest. Or wrapping his feet in straw and rags because you hadn’t ever put a pair of shoes on your feet. No more chilblains. The Trainees here, at least so far, didn’t even know what a chilblain was!

  And no more spending virtually every waking hour on his belly in a mine shaft, chipping out gemstones by hand, penalized by having some of his food withheld when the “take” wasn’t good enough—as if he had any control over what the rock yielded to him!

  That was the biggest change of all, at least, on the inside of him. Now he was using his head for thinking and learning all the time. His world had gone from the confines of the mine and yard to—well—a whole world. His days were spent doing things that were difficult but rewarding, and there was no punishment meted out if he wasn’t good at them. Instead of punishment, he got help.

  Unbelievable.

  No, the others had no idea how good they had things here.

  And to be honest, he didn’t want them to know, the way he knew. No one should have to live like that.

  But the differences between his life and theirs still made the adjustment hard for him in ways he suspected no one really understood. He didn’t even understand it, except that he was always in a state of vague discomfort except when he was alone with Dallen. He felt like a kitten being raised by chickens. It was obvious that no one here reacted the way he did to things, and everyone here knew from their own experience how people were supposed to treat each other.

  He hadn’t been raised like a human being, he’d been raised like—no, worse than—an animal. He knew how to read and write, because it was the law, and the owners of the mine he’d worked at grudgingly made sure the children learned that much, but he didn’t really know how to conduct himself among people who had what he now knew were “normal” lives.

  He stumbled and fell in so many situations that required an understanding of how people were supposed to be. That got him in trouble—or at least, garnered him odd looks—so many times in a day that he didn’t bother to keep track. He was never quite sure of exactly what it was he had done or said when he violated some code or guideline for behavior that others just took for granted. At least, not until after the fact when Dallen would explain it to him.

  And no matter what he did, how much he learned about behaving like other people did, simply because he was so grateful for the smallest of things—and so completely unused to them—he often had the feeling he was never going to fit in.

  He’d been a Trainee for months now, and he still felt as if he was running in a race in which he would never catch up. That no matter how hard he tried, everyone else was always going to be smarter, faster, stronger than he ever would be. It went without saying that everyone, from the lowest servant to the highest in the land, was used to simply having more things than he did. The most that one of the mine children could claim was a ragged scrap of a blanket, and then only if someone bigger didn’t take it. The idea that he actually owned things was sometimes preposterous to him. Under it all was a fear he could never quite shake, that someone would find him out and it would all be taken away from him. That fear had faded over the months, but it was still there, an undercurrent to everything.

  :You know, all I can do is to keep telling you is that you do belong here, I Chose correctly, and no one is ever going to send you away,: Dallen said, breathing warm hay-scented breath into his hair affectionately. :Eventually I’ll wear all that away, like water wearing away a rock.:

  Mags sighed, and patted Dallen’s neck. Even Dallen didn’t quite understand it. He couldn’t help it. This was the way he had lived forever and ever, and... maybe the rock was just too hard to wear away.

  And then there was... well, his position here. Most of the people around him, his fellow Trainees in particular, were used to a lot of deference from those of lesser rank, and of course, most folk outside the Collegium were of lesser rank. They were self-assured, they expected that people would speak to them respectfully. He was in the habit of expecting as many blows as words, and no one, ever, had spoken to him with respect until he had put on Grays.

  The Trainees were used to treating each other with a casualness that came hard to him, while he had to battle to keep from giving them the same deference the servants gave them. That, of course, was viewed as “sucking up.”

  And last of all, he truly admired the Heralds, and many of the older Trainees. He really wanted them to know that. They had earned his admiration. Hellfires, the Heralds had saved him and all the younglings at that mine! Life was short there at the best of times... at the worst, well “accidents” had happened to the youngsters who got the least little bit rebellious. There were always more unwanted orphans to replace them.

  Manners, deference, knowing how to act around other people, all these things were absolutely alien to your thinking when you had grown up fighting over kitchen scraps, and sucking up was a way to keep from getting beaten. There had been plenty of times at the mine when he would happily have done almost any degrading thing in order to get just a little more food, or a blanket that was a tiny bit larger. Anything. So how could he relate to people who thought he was trying to curry favor when he was only thinking how much he appreciated being here?

  But there was one thing he could always count on. Somehow Dallen always managed to make him feel better, no matter what happened, no matter what faux pas he managed to commit.

  And the moments when he was sure he would never, ever go into Whites were getting fewer. Most of the time he thought he was actually getting close to acting like everyone else, even if he didn’t actually feel like everyone else.

  :Just keep on acting. Pretend long enough that you belong, and eventually even you will believe it.: Dallan nudged him with his nose. :You might also think about that spot right under my chin... :

  He grinned a little, and gently ran the bristles of the brush along his Companion’s chin. Having Dallen as a comforting and persistent presence in the back of his mind kept him steady. It was only when the invisible pressure got too much that he needed to physically come to Dallen for relief.

  Just now, the trigger that had sent him here had been a brush of a resentful thought that he was somehow trying to become the teacher’s pet, when in fact all he was doing was trying to stay even with everyone else in class. He couldn’t help it. He was grateful to the tea
cher for taking the extra time to explain. Why was saying so wrong?

  “You allus make me feel good,” he murmured to Dallen’s shoulder. “I dunno why you don’ get tired of me.”

  :I’ll forgive you if you actually hand over that apple pie that you promised,: said Dallen, nosing at Mags’ pocket urgently. :You know pocket pies are far and away best when still warm, and you said you’d bring an extra from lunch.:

  Happy to have something to take him away from thoughts that were always uncomfortable, Mags reached into his pocket and pulled out the two small rectangular pastries—a special treat for the colder day from the kitchen staff. They were a handy way to take the dessert out of the dining hall and eat it later, they kept your hands warm, and the students always appreciated them. It took a little more effort to make the individual pies, but then again, the dining hall tended to clear that much faster if the food was taken out. That meant the dishes could be worked on faster, tables wiped, floor mopped and the whole job done that much sooner. Everyone benefited.

  The door banged open again, showing that Mags wasn’t the only Gray-wearer that had thought to take the chance of a few stolen moments with his or her Companion. Possibly with an extra pie to share as well. Companions did have a sweet tooth. He didn’t bother to see who it was; if they wanted to talk to him they’d already know he was here. And if they wanted privacy he wasn’t going to invade it.

  Mags watched the pie vanish as Dallen practically inhaled it.

  “I got no idea why you like ’em so much,” he said, “considerin’ that you couldn’t possibly taste it. I’d be surprised if it e’en touched yer tongue.”

  Mags took a bite out of his own pie. It was delicious; it tasted as if the apples had been picked today, which was remarkable, considering it was probably made from dried apples from last year. The head cook did pride himself on making food for well over a hundred people still taste as though it was made for a small family meal. He almost always succeeded. Luncheon today, for instance... Mags licked his lips, thinking about it. Thick bean soup with bacon in it, winter greens cooked with ham hocks, lots of bread so fresh from the oven it burned your hands a little as you cut open the rolls and spread them with butter. “Good plain food and plenty of it is what these younglings need,” was what he’d overheard the man saying. “And if the highborn are too good for it, they can go and eat elsewhere.” Well, if this was “good, plain food,” he really didn’t want to eat with the highborn. His head would probably explode.