Redoubt Page 13

  Bear nodded. “So, there you have it. I don’t care about insults, my wife doesn’t care about insults, his actions only bring disgrace on the Healers of his House, and I am not one of them. Let the Healers’ Circle decide what to do with him.”

  And with that, he took Lena’s hand, turned on his heel, and the two of them walked stiffly away, leaving Healer Tyrall looking stunned—and as if he had aged a hundred years in that moment.

  5

  Mags eyed the customer across the counter and behind the barred window with a suspicious expression on his face. Rightly, of course. The man was new to the persona Mags was currently wearing but long familiar to the Weasel and his deaf-mute nephew. He knew better than to present the Weasel with ersatz goods, but Mags was just about certain he was sly enough to try selling imitations to the new man behind the counter.

  The customer eyed him back, blandly; he was a cool one, Mags would have to give him that much. But Mags just did not like the color of the item sitting on the counter between them.

  “We’ll jest be testin’ that, then,” he said, reaching for the allegedly “gold” button.

  “That won’t be needful!” the customer bleated. He snatched the button up and fled out the door, exactly as Mags figured he would. The button had been heavy enough for gold, but Mags suspected a lead core. He also suspected the coating was nothing like gold . . . or, at least, had very little gold content. Clearly, the fellow hadn’t thought that the Weasel’s latest hireling had the intelligence to scrape something across a touchstone and add a little acid.

  Well, good. Now he knew not to come to the shop at all unless he had something worthwhile to sell.

  Mags was actually in disguise, and he was enjoying himself to the hilt. When Nikolas decided that Mags should be able to man the shop alone, they had discussed having the “nephew” be responsible and had discarded the idea pretty quickly, for all the obvious reasons.

  So they had invented a new persona; there was no way that Mags could present himself as old enough to be the Weasel’s friend, so it had to be another relative. The obvious choice was the older brother of the deaf-mute—that would account for “family resemblance.”

  After a few lessons in establishing his new appearance and demeanor from Nikolas’ actor friends, he had established a personality and a basic background. People would expect surly—but the Weasel was already surly. So, instead, Mags went for something as close to his own personality as possible. All he had to do was work out “if I wasn’t a Trainee, how would I react to all this?”

  He imagined himself plucked from the mine, given a couple of baths and semidecent clothing and regular feeding, then trained up to the duties of the store and aged about six years. So . . . he was as good-natured as the surroundings and circumstances would allow, figuring that whoever the Weasel plucked out of poverty would be so grateful to actually have a job that let him eat regularly, he’d never complain about anything. But he was also tough, young, hot-blooded, and not going to take anything off anyone except for his uncle, and he looked as if he were willing to be absolutely vicious to anyone who even thought about cheating the Weasel. As for stealing, well—

  His first day, he’d caught someone trying to filch one of the small items from the stuff on the other side of the counter wall. Evidently, the thief either thought he couldn’t see him or that it would take him too long to get through the door.

  Except he didn’t go through the door. He kept a pile of round pebbles at the side of the counter, and he flung one through the bars with enough force to stun the would-be thief. The fellow stumbled and fell to his knees; he wasn’t up again before Mags was kneeling on his back, twisting both of his arms into a painful hold.

  “Justice” in this part of Haven didn’t involve calling the Constables at this time of night, not for people like the Weasel. When you caught a thief, you did what you figured was necessary. And Mags suppressed his own distaste and delivered a vicious beating.

  It wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. Mags made sure to do as little damage as possible, for maximum effect. Anyone else around here who had caught the thief would have half-crippled him.

  But the beating sent a clear message: Don’t mess with the new man at the counter. And no one did.

  This incident would send another clear message: The new man isn’t a fool.

  People down here didn’t need to be taught a lesson twice, and they quickly learned from other peoples’ mistakes.

  So far, it looked as if Mags’ disguise was holding. It didn’t take much; as the deaf-mute, he hunched his shoulders and kept his face down, so most of the customers never got a good look at him anyway. As “Harkon,” he stood tall, squared his shoulders, walked with a bit of a swagger, and often glared at other men right in the face as if he suspected every one of them was going to challenge him. A bit of makeup gave him a hint of beard growing in, and some human hair from a wigmaker cleverly pinned with tiny, tiny combs into his own gave him streaks of a much lighter color than his real hair. The streaks were a new trick, one he liked. He often thought it was a pity he wasn’t a blond, or at least lighter-haired, like Nikolas. Nikolas could easily change the apparent color of his hair just by combing dirt and grease through it. With hair as dark as Mags had, that wasn’t an option.

  The actors had tentatively suggested a wig. Wigs . . . were not going to happen. It was far, far too easy for a wig to be pulled off, and they never looked quite right. And they were hot. In weather like this summer, he could not even imagine what it would be like to wear a wig. His poor brain would bake.

  But these little bits of hair that were easily pinned in and easily taken out. They worked just fine. His hair was thick, and the pins stayed in well, and when he tied it all back in a tail, there was very little chance they were going to work loose.

  He’d even tested the disguise by walking past a couple of his friends in one of the marketplaces during the day, and no one had recognized the young tough with the streaked hair who walked with a bantam-cock’s swagger.

  So he presided behind the counter of the shop with the authority to buy, and he reveled in the responsibility. It wasn’t as if he were alone, since he had Dallen in the back of his head the entire time. And it wasn’t as if anyone could get at him, not after Nikolas had bolstered the impression that he’d come into more money by reinforcing the wall and door between the “box” (as they called the main room that held all the valuables, the cash, and them) and the rest of the shop. By the time anyone managed to break in, Mags would be long gone, either down the hatch in the floor that led to the basement or up the stair to the attic that led to the roof.

  Amily was not entirely happy about this, since once again, he was spending a great deal of his “free” time down here and not up at the Collegium with her, but he was actually spending less time down here now than he had been before. The Weasel was generally only buying in person one night out of every four, instead of every night, so between the deaf-mute and Harkon, Mags was only here half as much as he had been in the past.

  It was dangerous to run a pawn shop at night in this area, yes. But he was giving the impression that he was sleeping here, which probably made it a bit less dangerous, since no one was going to lie in wait to ambush him. The shop was stoutly built and had weathered many attempted break-ins. He was in the protected part, which now took up about three quarters of the shop area, where things of real value were kept, and the money was out of reach of anyone but him. There was a stout brick wall with a heavy, barred door in it between him and danger, and his only contact with people came through the window over the counter, which had very formidable bars.

  At night when he was ready to close, he made sure that there was no one anywhere around with a simple mental scan of the area. Then, and only then, did he leave the box. He’d pop outside, blow out the outside lamp as fast as he
could, and pop back inside again. Then he would lock and bar the door, blow out the inside lamp, and hurry back into the box. Once there, he locked and barred that door, and after moving around in a way that would throw a few suggestive shadows, he would blow out that lamp.

  At that point, no one would be able to figure out what he was doing. People would assume (correctly) that there was a basement, that there was a bed down there, and that was where he slept. And, in fact, he or Nikolas or both had slept down there, now and again. But when he blew out that lamp, he went up, not down. Up into the bit of an attic, and up to the roof. Then it was over the roofs until he came to the bit of hidden stable where Dallen was and the room where he and Nikolas kept their disguises. A thorough wash followed, and he took the streaks out of his hair and changed his clothing. Then Trainee Mags and his Companion would emerge from the inn where they had spent part of the evening with Nikolas’ actor friends.

  So far no one had ever asked him about why he was allowed to spend one night in four consorting with actors. He’d thought of a few ideas, but he was just as glad that everyone assumed it was something Nikolas wanted him to do.

  One thing he had considered was speech lessons. Although he had lost most of the slur and mumble of a thoroughly intimidated slave and had refined his accent, sounding like someone like—oh, Pip, say, or Gennie—took a lot of concentration. It would be perfectly natural to take speech lessons from someone like an actor.

  And aside from that, at the moment, he reckoned that his next best answer would be to say that he was getting lessons from them in how to make a girl feel special, and blush.

  The blushing part wouldn’t be hard. Well, it wouldn’t be blushing so much as getting red with embarrassment. He knew that he was backward compared to just about everybody his age when it came to all that stuff. Well, look at Bear! But it seemed harder than any lessons he’d ever had to study for. He just couldn’t get his head wrapped around how easy it seemed for other young men to just . . . get romantical with a lady. Asking any of the other fellows for help . . . well, that was out of the question. He was supposed to be the Kirball hero, after all, and either they would think he was making fun of them, or they’d fall about laughing. He certainly couldn’t ask Nikolas, when the girl in question was his own daughter! Dean Caelen . . . never got his nose out of a book. The Herald that had first rescued him, Jakyr? Oh no. Jakyr had managed to totally mess up his own love life so thoroughly that he scrambled desperately into and out of Haven as fast as he could. He barely stayed long enough to resupply himself and get new uniforms before he was back in the Field, and all in an attempt to avoid the Dean of Bardic, who had once been his lover . . .

  No . . . Jakyr was probably the very last person in the whole wide world he would go to for any advice. Assuming he could actually catch Jakyr in Haven long enough to ask for it.

  He didn’t know any of the Healers well enough to ask them except Bear, and in no way was he going to ask Bear when he himself was still not convinced the whole marriage thing had been a good idea.

  And Dallen was no help at all, which scarcely seemed fair when you thought about how he had put Mags inside his own memories so many times in order to teach him how to be a human being and not a feral half-beast. But when he asked Dallen to help him out with Amily, Dallen would only chuckle and say, :That sort of thing is best left for you to discover for yourself.:

  Definitely nothing like fair. I don’t want to work it out fer myself, he thought with irritation. I want instructions, like! I want . . . maps! Guidebooks! All this discoverin’ for yourself stuff is overrated!

  He leaned over the counter with his chin in his hands, pondering the difficulty of feelings. “Feelings” were not something you had a lot of time for back in the mine, and you certainly didn’t have any energy to waste on them. The only “feelings” Cole Pieter and his offspring seemed to have for one another was contempt bordering on hatred, which was scarcely a good example to follow.

  If he was just going on what was going on inside him, well, it felt as though he and Amily belonged together. But how was he to trust that? He could be wrong, and then he’d mess things up just as badly as Jakyr had. If he went by the only stuff he could find in books and the like, there wasn’t any of that wild breathless stuff between them that there seemed to be in songs. He just felt good around her, peaceful. He wasn’t over the moon or in a daze. Kissing was nice, real nice, and there were certainly a lot of tingly-good-exciting physical things going on when they kissed, but it wasn’t as if they both dove into each other the way he’d lost himself in Dallen’s eyes when they bonded. And what about that? Was that a problem with him? Was he supposed to feel about her the way he felt about Dallen?

  Or was it just a problem with Heralds, that there wasn’t, couldn’t be, room for anyone in your life other than your Companion? If that was the case, the last thing he wanted to do was lead Amily on!

  There wasn’t any of the painful stuff of songs and poems and legends, either. He didn’t ache inside when he was away from her, he just looked forward to when they’d get together again. He wasn’t torn up with jealousy when she talked to other fellows. He didn’t worry about her falling for someone else all the time.

  And he, at least, didn’t seem to feel that certainty that Bear and Lena seemed to feel—Bear had said he couldn’t imagine being with anyone but Lena, and when he said that, Mags had seen he absolutely meant it. But as for Mags, when he thought about himself and Amily really being together, as in, responsible for themselves and all the decisions they would have to make, all kinds of doubts sprang up. Were they old enough? Truly? What if after a while they realized they were only doing this because it seemed to be expected of them? What if either of them did meet someone that gave them all those wild and breathless feelings? They didn’t always agree on everything now, and he worried that would make trouble later. He had to keep secrets from her now, sometimes, and he knew that could make trouble later. She disliked it when her father kept secrets, and he was afraid that somewhere in the back of her mind, she had the idea that her husband wouldn’t.

  And when you got married or you started sleeping together, weren’t there always babies?

  That part made him absolutely panic. He didn’t know anything about babies. The mine-kiddies always turned up able to take care of themselves—as far as he knew, he was the only one that had ever arrived not able to do that. He couldn’t even imagine the responsibility of having a baby! He sometimes felt as if he was hardly more than a kiddie himself now, how could he ever expect to guide and take care of a baby?

  And what was Amily expecting out of him, anyway? What did she have in mind when she thought about being married to someone? What sorts of responsibilities did she expect him to take on? What sorts of things did she expect him to do for her? And what was she looking for? Did she want those breathless, crazy, excited feelings? Was she getting them now? Was she figuring he could somehow conjure them up? Oh, he could probably read her mind and find out . . . which would be wrong, so wrong it wasn’t even a temptation, much. But without reading her mind, he was left pretty much in the dark.

  Really, truly, seriously unfair of Dallen to leave him floundering like this . . .

  Maybe I actually should talk to them actors and get some lessoning in what ladies like. The actors, even the old ones, all gray-haired and going a little soft, still got plenty of ladies. They weren’t the ones doing the courting, either. Whatever it was that they knew, Mags dearly wished he had some books about it.

  Poetry was no help at all, really, except to make him more certain that he was doing something wrong. The stuff in the poetry just made him feel so awkward he started to stammer. The Herald who taught poetry seemed to think it was all something he called “metaphor” and that all the feelings stuff was just meant to represent something else, which really just did not sound right.

  And the one time he�
�d brought it up to a Healer he didn’t know, thinking that with a stranger he’d get something good and honest, he got a lecture on husbandry he could have just as well given back, seeing as he’d practically grown up in a barnyard and shared his “bed” with a lot of kiddies and a few people who weren’t kiddies and had no sense that they required privacy for the urges of their bodies. He knew all about that part, who was to put what where, and what it all sounded and looked like. And even though at the time it had seemed like a waste of energy to him, now that he thought back on it, well, it did make him want to put that part of himself . . .

  Well, that wasn’t the sort of feelings that the poetry talked about. It was more like Dallen when he was competing with Rolan for a mare.

  Which wasn’t bad, but . . . that wasn’t what you were supposed to have a marriage over. And he did at least know one thing: That was lust, not love. Not that lust was bad, but . . .

  Why does this stuff have to be so complicated?

  The bell over the door jangled, and one of the regular customers came in—not one of the thieves, but someone who used the shop as a pawnbroker. A carpenter who had been out of work for a while, his tools were the only thing that stood between him and having his family starve. When he couldn’t get work, he pawned them and took whatever odd jobs he could get until more work came up. That was how close people around here were to disaster—having to put up the things that gave them a livelihood just to keep food in their mouths.

  He came to put down another little payment that would keep his tools from being sold until he could redeem them. Mags nodded at him and opened the drawer that held the individual account books and found the right one. When he opened it, he found a note in it from Nikolas.

  Give him his tools. Tell him there was a mistake, and he’s redeemed them as of today. Then tell him to check with Father Poul—the Guard was so tickled with the way he beat Bear’s father that they raised enough money for an extension to the Temple. There will be work there for him. And I have had a word with Father Poul; if he does good honest work, he’ll be kept on to learn from their Master woodworker. The old man’s hands aren’t up to the job anymore.