Closer to the Chest Read online

  “So the short answer’s no, we ain’t spendin’ too much time on ’em.” He grinned. “A little prevention’s gonna save us a whole lotta cure, I reckon.”

  “Me too,” she said. “Now I think we can afford to spend some time on us.”

  • • •

  Amily was in Lady Dia’s kennel—a two-story building easily as big as the stable, that held her beloved dogs. No smell of urine or droppings here; Dia had two servants assigned to the kennel so that nothing was allowed to remain longer than a candlemark, and generally not even that. Whelping and nesting boxes were kept full of fresh straw and the floor of each pen had a thick layer of sawdust. The place was as immaculate as the Companions’ stable.

  No one who only knew the elegant, fashionable, poised, and polished Lady Dia would ever have recognized the woman down on her knees in the straw, surrounded by a tumble of enormous puppies. Dia was wearing a pair of stained and maltreated leather trews, tucked into a pair of scuffed and patched boots, and a canvas smock that looked as if she had stolen it off the back of a ploughman, and her hair was up on the top of her head in a loose and messy knot.

  The “Lady Dia” that the Court knew was a stunningly beautiful woman, with masses of dark hair, huge, melting brown eyes, the only person with a truly “heart-shaped” face Amily had ever known until she had seen Helane, and one who was never seen without every hair in place, eyes subtlety shadowed, cheeks charmingly blushed.

  This Dia looked like one of her lesser servants—at least, until you got a glimpse of her face, which was still stunning, even without enhancement.

  Although Dia was known in Court circles mostly for her “muff dogs,” well-mannered and placid little lapdogs trained to remain obediently wherever their owners wanted them, such as in a muff to warm hands, or under skirts to warm feet, these puppies were the size of four adult muff-dogs put together. These were some of Dia’s prized mastiffs, loyal, brave, and steady. And, when grown, they were big enough for a small child to ride. That made them formidable opponents that even an armed and armored man would hesitate to engage.

  “How can you tell which ones will make the best protectors?” Amily asked, curiously.

  “I have Nils test them for me. He’s one of my trainers, but until he tests them, they won’t have seen him before,” Dia said, giving all the pups a quick rub or tussle before standing up and closing the door on the kennel. “That’s critical; the tester has to have no preconceptions, and the pups have to react to a total stranger. He’s tested this lot already. We have a system worked out, so I know the one with the blue collar there will be good for someone who has never seen a mastiff before, the ones with the green and red collars will need someone experienced but will make excellent protection dogs, the one with the yellow collar is shyer than the others, and would actually do well to guard Seth Maren’s old mother once he’s trained, and that one with the black collar is a loner, and would do just fine as a cattle guardian, with minimal human interaction.”

  Amily blinked. “Goodness. I didn’t know you could tell that much, so young.”

  Dia rubbed her hands on the seat of her trews. “Oh, you’d be surprised. But you didn’t come here to hear about puppies, and there’s something I needed to tell you about anyway. Let’s go up to the bower and we can talk while Miana helps me dress.”

  They walked out of the kennel and through an enclosed walkway that led them into a private entrance to the manor. The enormous manor house owned by Lord Jorthun, Lady Dia’s husband, was nearly the size of the Palace, and probably had been one of the first manors built on the Hill. Of course it hadn’t been this size when it had first been built, but neither had the Palace. Both had been torn down, rebuilt, and added to over the centuries. Lord Jorthun’s family went all the way back to the Founding, in fact, although you would never know it to speak to him, since he never made any reference to that fact, but his family was just as old as the King’s.

  They took back stairs normally used by the servants to get to Lady Dia’s rooms without accidentally bumping into someone who might take Dia for a particularly grubby lackey. Like most of the passages reserved for servants who, unlike Dia, had masters that would rather not have their underlings intrude on their awareness unless they were summoned, these stairs were steep, narrow, dark, and unornamented.

  “Remind me to have those stairs lit,” Dia grumbled a little. “I don’t want anyone breaking her neck because she can’t see where she’s putting her feet.”

  They emerged into the first of an opulent set of rooms, blinking a little as the light struck their dark-accustomed eyes. The huge suite of rooms reserved for the wife of the ruling lord that Dia referred to as “the bower” had, in fact, always been called that. It was the size of many townhouses, had its own guest rooms and servants’ rooms and even a small pantry and a rudimentary kitchen, should her ladyship suddenly turn hungry and demand a snack at an inconvenient hour. The bedroom was palatial—the bed was big enough to fit a family, curtained and canopied in green embroidered hangings that matched the curtains, piled with pillows, decked with a featherbed and green velvet-covered comforter. It looked like something fit for a forest goddess to sleep in.

  “But I rarely sleep here unless I’m sick and I don’t want to infect Steveral,” Dia had confessed to Amily when she’d first married Jorthun. “The servants are appalled. Apparently sleeping in the same bed with one’s husband is only for those who can’t afford a second bed.”

  For the rest, there was relatively little furniture: a dressing-table, a stool, and a couch. The walls were lined with richly carved wardrobes, since, essentially, Dia used this room as a dressing-room and for storage for her gowns.

  Once in the mostly unused bedroom where Miana was waiting, Dia unceremoniously began stripping to the skin with Miana helping. “I’ll get to your young lady in a moment,” Dia said, as Miana took the “working clothing” away to be dealt with; presumably washed or otherwise cleaned, since Miana had very firm notions on how her mistress’s clothing should be maintained. Meanwhile, Dia slipped into linen bloomers and a chemise of cloth of so fine a weave it practically floated. “We’ve had the devil of a time collecting the evidence or getting anyone to admit they’ve been victimized, but there is an anonymous letter writer of a truly vile nature up here on the Hill. Steveral calls him a ‘Poison Pen,’ which is appropriate enough, considering how poisonous the letters he writes are. And I say ‘he’, although it could be a woman.”

  Amily sucked in her breath quickly. Does that mean I’m not the only one—? “What exactly are we talking about here?” she asked carefully.

  Miana came back in with another chemise draped over her arm. Dia kept right on talking. “Anonymous letters, really vicious ones, and as far as I have been able to learn, all aimed at women. They’re all on cheap, rough paper, and they’re all very carefully printed by hand in a way that makes it impossible to recognize anyone’s handwriting.” This second chemise, this one with a froth of lace at the neck and wrists, went on over the first. “They run the gamut from insults and barbs aimed at a woman’s appearance and age, to very pointed allusions to affairs being carried on, to direct attacks on her virtue, competence or intelligence. Honestly, it seems as if anything and everything is fair game for an attack, and those attacks are utterly ferocious, almost as if the letter writer had a personal vendetta against the victim.”

  Miana brought one of Dia’s elaborately embroidered gowns out for approval, one of a deep wine-red with gold-colored braided trim, and on getting a nod, helped her mistress into it. “I’m not surprised no one has said anything about these letters, Herald Amily,” the handmaid said, as Dia’s head vanished under the folds of the gown. “I’ve seen the letters her ladyship has managed to collect, and I wouldn’t want anyone to read what’s in them, if they’d been addressed to me. And . . .” she hesitated a moment. “Well, I’m no Mind-healer obviously, but it seems to me that whoever is writ
ing them is just not . . . sane.”

  “How are they being delivered?” Amily asked. “Is there any way we could set an ambush for him?”

  “I don’t think so,” Dia replied, her head emerging from neck-opening of the gown. “They’ve arrived all manner of ways. Shoved under doors, tossed in open windows, found in a bouquet, left in a book, given to pages along with other messages and letters—trying to find the one who is delivering them is like trying to catch a ghost. And I agree with Miana. Whoever is writing these things is definitely not sane—and not sane in a really malevolent, stomach-churning way.”

  “But there’s nothing to them, surely,” Amily protested, as Miana began tightening laces, pulling on and tying false sleeves, and pulling the sleeves of the second chemise into attractive little puffs in all the right places.

  “Unfortunately, all the ones I’ve been able to check on have been frighteningly accurate,” Dia replied soberly. “So accurate that whoever is writing them has to have an information network just as good as my Handmaidens, because what I can verify is a perfect match for things I already knew. And that’s another thing that has me worried. Usually this sort of vicious attack that is exclusively on women is perpetrated by a man—but what if it’s one of the Handmaidens? What if we picked horribly, horribly wrong in one case?”

  “Well . . . I don’t know about that, but I can add to what you know. I’ve gotten at least one letter from the same source, and maybe more,” Amily confessed, as Dia sat on a stool and Miana began brushing out her hair, in preparation for turning it into a work of art. “I had thought that this was just random, anonymous cranks, but the last letter I got sounds exactly like the ones you’ve described.”

  “You?” Both Miana and Dia gave her a dumbfounded look. “What on earth could a Poison Pen have to say about you?” Dia added.

  “That I can’t do my job properly, and that I should go kill myself so my father can get Rolan back and go back to being King’s Own,” she replied, and saying the words out loud made them hurt all over again, but she firmed her chin and stiffened her spine and refused to let the hurt show.

  Dia winced. “That’s a low blow,” she said. “But that does tell me that people outside the Court are getting them too—and where there’s one, there’s likely more than one. We’re going to have to start looking at the Collegia for victims, too, both the teachers and the Trainees, and maybe even some of the Heralds who aren’t teachers.” She turned to Miana. “I think we need to speak to all the Handmaidens and become more active in collecting these things.”

  “And I think I should see if the Poison Pen is sending them to people outside the Court other than me,” Amily told her friends. “Technically, after all, I am part of the Court.”

  “Hmm—” Dia said suddenly, getting a thoughtful look on her face. “I haven’t gotten one. Have I?” She craned her head around to look at Miana, who shook her head.

  “While we would probably protect you from actually seeing something that nasty, we would definitely have let you and his lordship know,” Miana said firmly. “And if there had been more than one, well, then we would have kept them and shown them to his lordship.”

  “And since the letters have continued and no one is dead, I think it is safe to assume I have not gotten one. Steveral would have left no stone unturned to find the bastard sending them, and . . . well, let’s just say there would probably have been a body found floating in the river. And that is interesting. We should find out if only those who live at the Palace and not in their own homes are the recipients of these charming missives.” Now she raised an eyebrow at Amily, who nodded.

  “Mags can do that,” she affirmed. “Or Father. Or both.”

  They all fell silent while Miana finished putting Dia’s hair into two elaborate, decorated braids, then wove the braids into a kind of crown over the top of her head. “I know it’s just a nuisance right now,” Dia finally said aloud. “But . . . I don’t like the idea of someone with that filthy a mind running about loose among us. If that makes sense.”

  Amily nodded. “Those are words intended to hurt. Not just sting, but to wound, and wound deeply. That speaks of someone with a vendetta, and you never know who someone with a vendetta is going to pick on next.”

  “Especially if it’s a woman,” Dia added glumly.

  Amily knew exactly what Dia meant by that. It’s difficult enough to be taken seriously as a woman, but if this Poison Pen is female, her mere existence will just give more ammunition to men who say women are petty, vindictive, emotional, and can’t be trusted to make the smallest decision.

  “In that case, I’d better get back to the Palace, tell Father and maybe Mags about this, and get things underway,” Amily said at last. “Oh, about Helane—”

  “Sorted,” said Dia, with a touch of relief. Probably her relief was that here, at least, she had something that was not in the least nebulous, and that she had well in hand. “I’ve arranged for Fayleen Asterhass to attend the ladies of the family for such things that the Palace servants can’t handle, allowing them to send their own maidservants back to deal with matters at that manor they’ve acquired. If the beauteous Helane is a troublemaker in disguise, we’ll know it soon enough for us to put a stop to it one way or another. Worst comes to worst, Kyril can tell his good friend Lional that his oldest daughter is not . . . quite . . . ready for the Court, and have her sent home. And if she’s not a troublemaker, she’s got a confidant in Fayleen that she can trust to steer her through the rough waters of the Court.”

  Now it was Amily’s turn to sigh with relief. “I don’t want a repetition of the Violetta Affair,” she said, as she rose.

  “No more do I, my dearest friend,” Dia replied fervently, holding her face up for Miana to apply darkening powder to her eyelids. “No more do I.”

  • • •

  Mags lounged casually against a tree trunk in the Knot Garden, and felt eyes upon him.

  Now, since he was being Magnus, and not Harkon, this did not alarm him much. He had just seen to it that young Hawken had gotten an introduction to a group of young courtiers who were not as feckless as his first lot of acquaintances. Since these new acquaintances were a bit better off than that first lot, they were not going to be inclined to cultivate him as a ready source of money.

  Mags was keeping an eye on the lot of well-dressed, athletic young men milling about a statue of a girl holding a bird in her hands. Animated conversation, which involved a lot of gesturing, and a bit of laughter reached him at his out-of-the-way perch. Things were going very well on that head; the new friends were organizing a ride out into the countryside, which evidently suited Hawken right down to the bone. Mags already knew that he had a horse, and a good one, currently stabled at the manor not all that far away, and by the look of him, Mags figured he was probably a cracking good rider. The old friends did not have horses, which excluded them from this excursion, which pleased Mags very much. It looked as if separating him from those who might have gotten him into trouble was going to be painless, even effortless.

  As for the promised expedition to Flora’s . . . Nikolas himself had let him know this morning that Lord Semel had laughed knowingly when Nikolas had made several hints that his eldest son might find “adventures” down in Haven. “And good for him when he does,” had been the reply. “Better a transaction where everyone knows the rules of the game than getting into trouble with the greedy, or worse, the innocent.”

  So that was sorted.

  The only question was . . . why was someone staring a hole in his back? And who was it?

  :Why don’t you turn around and find out?: Dallen asked.

  :Because, horse, I don’t want whoever it is to know that I know he’s staring at me. And yes, I know, I could use Mindspeech to find out, but I’d rather flush him the old-fashioned way, by making him approach—:

  His thought was interrupted by someone clearing his
throat at his elbow. Since the sound was a boyish soprano, Mags already had a good idea who it might be before he turned around.

  “Heyla, youngling,” he said lazily, as he eyed young Loren, who was looking up at him. Which was an unusual enough circumstance, since Mags was short by the standards of most of the young men of the Court. “Is there something you wish to say to me?”

  Loren looked like a much younger, much shorter version of the handsome Hawken. So far the family resemblance among all of Lord Semel’s offspring was uncanny.

  “You’re Magnus, right?” Loren asked. At Mags’ nod, he jutted out his chin as if he expected to be told to go away at any moment. “You wrote that letter for my sister to my parents, right? About classes with the Collegia?”

  “I did, indeed,” Mags confirmed. “Were you interested in joining the classes as well?”

  “No!” Loren blurted, then flushed, and amended. “Well, yes, maybe, but . . . that’s not why I wanted to talk to you. Do you know a way of getting lessons with the Weaponsmaster?”

  So that’s the way the wind blows! Well, let’s see if I can’t bribe him to get him into a place where one or more of the Trainees can befriend him.

  “If I do,” Mags said, slowly, “Will you also attend classes? I can absolutely guarantee that they will be infinitely more interesting than anything your tutor was teaching you.”

  Loren sighed heavily. “If I have to—” he said reluctantly.

  “You have to,” Mags told him. “You can’t just idle around the Court you know, like one of those empty-headed asses with nothing more to talk about than horses and cards.” He nodded slightly at Hawken’s group of old friends, who were making a nuisance of themselves over some of the young women who were clustered in a defensive group under a tree that had a ring-seat about its trunk, pretending to embroider. The ladies in question were very well aware that these fellows were second-rate at best, and were trying to ignore their not-terribly-clever overtures.