Brightly Burning v(-10 Read online

  On the other hand, I'm not dead yet, so maybe I am lucky.

  "You're really quite lucky," the Healer echoed his thoughts, taking his chin in one hand and turning his head to both sides, examining his eyes, then the bruises around his face and head. "From the look of things they tell me, a little more or less to one side or the other, and you'd both have been hit by a main trunk piece and not just a branch."

  "Have I missed anything?" he asked. "Anything important happen? How long have I been unconscious? Is my skull cracked?"

  "Yes, but nothing to worry about, four days, nothing in Collegium or Court, but there was some excitement down in town." The Healer left off prodding at Pol's bruises; apparently he'd taken a solid hit, but his scalp hadn't split open, since his head wasn't bandaged. Or else it did, but they mended it quickly and washed the blood out of my hair. Or the rain did. He didn't have much of a headache either, so the Healers must have put in some serious work on his skull.

  The Healer frowned a bit, though not at Pol. "The Merchants' and Crafts' Guilds had set up a sort of Collegium of their own to educate their brighter children, the ones who weren't falling right into their parents' Guilds. There was a fire there three days ago; four boys were killed, and several burned badly."

  That made him sit right up straight, which did start his head pounding. "Good Lord!" he exclaimed. "How did that happen?"

  "That's the strange thing; nobody seems to know," the Healer replied, pushing him back down in the bed and putting a soothing hand on his forehead that erased the pain. "The boys have a peculiar story about the fire coming from out of nowhere." His frown deepened. "They also have no explanation for being in the building, in an unused classroom, at that time of the late afternoon. Classes were long over, and they should have been home. If they were staying after hours, studying, they should have been in their own classrooms."

  Pol pursed his lips, thoughtfully. "You think they started the fire?" It wouldn't be the first time that adolescents started a fire as a prank or to vandalize and had it get away from them.

  "I think the Guard thinks they did," the Healer replied. "They're questioning all the boys that are fit to talk to. I'm not so sure. I'm treating one of the injured, the youngest of the lot."

  Pol looked inquiring and attentive, and the Healer continued. "The thing that bothers me is that all but one were in the same age group, the same clique. The odd one was a new student, and was in one of the much lower classes. They shouldn't have had anything to do with him, so what was he doing with them at that time of the day?"

  Something had roused the Healer's suspicions, that was certain. "Where's that particular boy?" he asked, sensing that this Healer, at least, wanted someone with authority to get to the bottom of this.

  "Here. He's been unconscious since they were dragged out," the Healer replied, mouth set in a hard line. "Look, Herald Pol, I'm not trying to cause trouble, but I don't like some of the things we've uncovered, or the way those other boys are acting; it seems to me that they want desperately to hide something, and it has to do with that younger boy. It's hard to tell, under the burns, but we think there's a lot of bruising all over him that doesn't look accidental, and it definitely looks as if he's been caned."

  Pol hadn't been around the Court as long as he had without gathering a fair understanding of how "ordinary" children sometimes acted. "You think he's being bullied, knocked around—"

  "I think he was being tortured," the Healer interrupted, icily. "That's what we'd call it in an adult, and I see no reason to call it by a lesser name in children. I've been trying to get the Guard to call in some of the other, younger children of the school to find out what those older boys could have been up to, but they haven't paid any attention to me. They keep saying that the younger children couldn't possibly know anything about it."

  Pol eyed his physician with a lifted eyebrow. "You've had some... personal experience with bullies, I take it?"

  The Healer's mouth twisted into a thin smile as ironic as Pol's own. "I was an incipient Healer—which means empathic and sensitive—in a Holderkin family. What do you think?"

  Pol winced. He had taken one circuit in Holderkin lands; male children were raised to be manly men, autocratic rulers of their children and (multiple) wives, rough, taciturn, and without emotion, as warmhearted as granite. Females were expected to be subservient in all things, bowing to the will of any male older than ten. No child growing up with the Healer's Gifts could survive long in such an environment without becoming the target of attempts to "toughen him up," and "make a proper man of him."

  "Well, the Guard has to listen to a Herald," he replied, deciding—as he was sure the Healer had intended he should—to take a personal interest in this case. After all, Haven was his circuit, in a sense. If the current Heralds assigned to the city hadn't seen the implications that this Healer pointed to, Pol could deal with it. "You'll have to get me fit for duty, though."

  The Healer responded with a tight smile. "No fear of that," he replied. "The Guard has requested to be present when he wakes, to question him."

  "Then I will tell the Guard that I need to be present as well." He paused. "Just what do you think the other boys were doing to him—exactly?"

  The Healer lost his smile. "I think they were roughing him up, then went on to beating him, but were planning on doing something that involved fire—perhaps burning him with coals, or branding him. Something went wrong—perhaps one of them had long sleeves that caught fire—and they reacted in panic. The fire spread, and the ringleaders were killed. That leaves the followers and the victim, and the followers haven't got enough imagination or cohesion as a group to come up with a story to cover themselves. The problem is, if this takes too long, their parents are likely to concoct a story for them."

  Pol nodded. "Right. I'll be asking the younger children about that. Meanwhile—" he gestured to his head. "Fix this, please, and I'll get to it when you judge me fit for duty."

  *

  THERE'S nothing like a Healer with private motivation, he thought a day and a half later, as he pulled out a seldom-used formal uniform from his wardrobe. It's amazing what can be done when your Healer really wants you on your feet.

  :Is that why you never have so much as a sniffle?: Satiran teased. The Companion, so Pol had been told, had fretted so much during his period of unconsciousness that he'd lost a fair amount of weight. Now that Pol was awake and recovered, he was making up for that by stuffing himself, and no one begrudged him, least of all his Herald.

  :Of course, but that's also self-interest,: Pol replied with a chuckle. :Ilea doesn't want to catch anything from me, after all: He changed trews and shirt, and began lacing up the white, blue-and-silver-trimmed doeskin tunic. :Think you can be ready to go into Haven when I get done talking to the Guard in charge of this case?:

  :I would be ready even if I wasn't ready,: Satiran replied instantly. :I do agree with that Healer of yours; something very rotten has been going on in that school, if bullies thought they could torment a victim inside the building and didn't worry about getting caught:

  Pol nodded, as he made his way to the Guard barracks. That was another point that no one else had considered. Perhaps some might have dismissed it as irrelevant, but it bothered him. Taken with everything else, this school needed looking into. Just who, exactly, was in charge?

  The Guard in Haven that stood sentry on the Palace and Collegia and patrolled the city itself had their barracks on the Palace grounds, connected to the Palace by a private entrance that only a few that were not of the Guard ever used. A clerk-Guardsman in the uniform of midnight-blue and silver on duty at a desk inside the main entrance directed him to the Captain in charge of city patrols and investigations.

  The Captain was not anyone that Pol had worked with before, but Pol wasn't worried; people who were inflexible and difficult to reason with didn't last long posted to Haven. The King himself saw to that.

  The Captain was in his own tiny office, hardly more than a cubicle
crowded with records, and was hard at work on some other paperwork when Pol tapped on his door and entered his workspace. The Captain waved him to the only other seat in the room, absently scribbling down a few more lines.

  Pol took a stack of documents off the chair and sat down. With a sigh of relief, the Captain signed and sealed the paper he was working on, and shoved it into a box with a dozen others like it. He was about the same age as Pol, and just as fit and trim as any active Herald, with a few streaks of gray in his thick, wavy brown hair, and intensely curious hazel eyes.

  "What can I do for you, Herald—?" he asked.

  "Pol. I'm going to be doing some investigation on that fire at the Merchants' School," he said—or rather, stated.

  The Captain tilted his head to the side. "I would have thought that was fairly simple. An unruly lot of adolescent troublemakers started a fire and it got away from them. That's what the Schoolmaster thinks."

  But Pol shook his head. "The Healers found marks of a beating and a caning on that boy who's still unconscious, and he was several years younger than all of the others. The rest were the same age, and very much larger and stronger than he is. They don't have a satisfactory explanation for why they were in that room, nor why they were there after hours, nor why they were with a boy they should have had no contact with. Taken with this Schoolmaster's story, I think there's a great deal that needs looking into, not only in the incident itself, but in the school."

  "What if the Schoolmaster himself caned the boy as punishment?" the Captain countered.

  "Wouldn't he have mentioned it?" Pol replied. "Wouldn't he have pointed to that specific boy as a troublemaker? I should think that would be the first thing he would have said; it would have given a logical place for the investigation to start, and a logical perpetrator."

  "Hmm. And if the young one has influential parents?" The Captain now looked more interested than he had before. "Wouldn't that preclude any finger-pointing?"

  "Please. Four boys, presumably with equally influential parents, are dead, and more are injured. I should think that under the circumstances the Schoolmaster would be grateful to have one boy he could blame." Pol raised an eyebrow and the Captain nodded, once, slowly.

  The Captain drummed his fingers on the desk for a little while, thinking. Pol waited, quite ready to sit there all afternoon if need be. But the Guardsman was not the sort of man to take very long in making up his mind. "All right. Can you take over the incident entirely?"

  Pol nodded in agreement; that was what he had hoped the Captain would ask. Best that the Guard not get involved unless he needed them. It was beginning to sound as if this might involve stepping on some political toes.

  With a faint hint of relief on his features, the Captain took a couple of papers out of a cubbyhole at his left and quickly scribbled something on them. He shoved them across the desk to Pol, who picked them up. The topmost was the initial report, with a note appended to the effect that Herald Pol was taking over the investigation.

  "Thank you very much," Pol said, gathering up the papers and standing up. "I hope I can get to the bottom of this for us all."

  The Captain smiled back and reached over the desk to shake Pol's hand. "The last thing I'm going to fight is to have a Herald come in and take over a case like this one," he replied. "I wish you Heralds would come in and help out like this more often!"

  Pol laughed. "I'll mention that around," he promised, and left with the papers.

  One of them proved to be just what he wanted most; a list of the pupils of the Guild School, their parents, and their addresses, what Forms they were in, and what classes within the Forms.

  He searched until he found the class that the youngest boy—who he now knew was named Lavan Chitward—was in. That was where he would start. Stowing the papers in a pouch he slung over his shoulder, he stopped long enough at his room for his woolen cloak. It was cold out there, through the weather wise predicted the usual false summer around Sovvan.

  Classes had been canceled for a week, so Pol knew that the children he wanted to talk to should be at home. :Ready for that trip into the city?: he called to Satiran, swinging his cloak over his shoulders.

  :Already saddled,: was the prompt reply. :And waiting for you at the gate.: With that came the mental picture, and Pol nodded his approval. Satiran had asked for and gotten the full formal rig-out, with barding, bridle bells, and all. The more impressive they looked, the less it was likely they would have to argue with possibly nervous parents.

  He pulled on white doeskin gloves and held his cloak shut against a blast of chill wind as he left the barracks, walking briskly to the Herald's Gate in the wall that encircled the Palace-Guard-Collegia complex. He saw Satiran as soon as he got out of the sculpted trees of one of the formal gardens, a tiny, toylike white horse against the gray stone wall.

  He picked up his pace and shortly caught the chime of Satiran's bells as the Companion shifted his weight from hoof to hoof to keep from stiffening in the chill.

  "Business in town, Herald?" asked the Gate Guard. "Or just pleasure?"

  "It's never 'just' pleasure, I assure you," Pol replied. "But, yes, I'm in charge of investigating that fire a few days ago. I'm Herald Pol, assigned to the Collegium." It wouldn't hurt to have word spread; if any of the Guard had heard anything, they'd know who to come to with it.

  "Yes, sir, I understand." The Guard saluted, and opened the Gate for them; Pol mounted, and he and Satiran went out into the city with every step marked by the chiming of bells.

  Streets in Haven were built in a mazelike spiral configuration, a leftover from the days when the city itself might expect enemy attack. The establishments closest to the Palace walls were the homes of the highborn, enormous manses with extensive gardens and galleries. Some were as old as the Palace itself, and had been rebuilt, added onto, or remodeled at least as many times as the Palace, with mixed results. Most of these were the property of some of the oldest families in Valdemar, with a rotating population that depended on what branch of the family wished to come to Court, who was superfluous on the home estate, who was serving as a representative, not only of the family, but of the district, and who wanted to get something accomplished that could only be attained at Court. A few were as rundown and imperiled by lean times as the families themselves. Two had, in Pol's time as a Herald, been acquired by new families and either extensively repaired or torn down altogether to make way for a new Great House in the most modern style.

  A full circuit of the city brought him to the next level, where the homes owned or leased by lesser families were located. The houses here were half the size of those of the greater families, the gardens—Well, there were no "gardens" attached to each house; there was a single pleasure garden for each, a small herb garden for the kitchen, and a courtyard just past the gates. There were, or so Pol had been told, even a few very wealthy private citizens living here with no inherited titles whatsoever to their names.

  Round another circuit, and he was in the district of the wealthiest; merchants mostly, with a sprinkling of those who had inherited wealth and built it higher, and one or two adventurers who had discovered wealth or wedded it. This, however, was not where he was going. The offspring of these folk were either educated privately, by tutors, or if the child was exceptional, by the Collegia and the Master Artificers.

  One more round brought him to the moderately wealthy; those who had attained Mastery in their Guilds and had their own flourishing trade or kept a workshop full of Journeymen and Apprentices. This was where he would find his first subjects; Owyn Kittlekine and his parents.

  Finding their home was a simple matter of asking two or three of the servants being blown along the street by the harsh wind, off on errands. Master Kittlekine was a Leatherworker, as the gate of his house, with its sign of the stretched hide worked into the wood in bronze, proudly proclaimed. Pol rode straight up to the gate and knocked on it with the butt of his purely ornamental riding crop, without dismounting. Someone peeked thro
ugh a peephole to one side of the gate, and an unnerved servant opened it hastily.

  "M-m-master Herald, sir, there was no word, nothing—" the servant stammered.

  "I know," Pol said, simply, with gravity, but without too much of a stern demeanor. "I wish to speak with Owyn."

  "Owyn?" the servant squeaked. "But—but—but—the Master is not at home, and the Mistress is making calls—"

  "It is very cold," Pol interrupted, "and this is a matter of some urgency. It is Owyn with whom I wish to speak, and not the Master or Mistress of the house."

  The servant evidently decided that the wishes of a Herald overruled whatever orders he'd been given, and escorted Pol into the best parlor of the house while Satiran was taken into the hothouse that the Kittlekines had in place of a garden. There, he would at least be warm. In the parlor, with a good-sized fire to thaw him, Pol waited for someone to bring Owyn to him.

  There were whisperings and the scuffling of feet behind him; word of a Herald in the house must have spread quickly. Pol pretended to be oblivious.