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  Finally the door opened, and another Blue came in—she knew him by sight but didn’t know his name. “Ah, Geoffers,” Master Ketnar said, finally looking up. “Have a seat. I have a few questions for you.”

  The boy took the chair, looking smug. He knows. Of course he knows. Master Ketnar made a great show out of looking through the papers one last time before speaking again. “Geoffers, your teachers have made an interesting observation. You and Abi seem to have identical exam results, right down to what was scratched out and how the problems were worked. Can you explain that?”

  “’Course I can,” the boy replied arrogantly, with a grin. “She cheated. She copied my work.”

  “But you were seated on opposite sides of the room!” Master Ketnar exclaimed. “How could she possibly have seen your paper to copy it?”

  The boy snorted. “Simple. We all know she’s got Gifts. She’s probably got Farseeing, and never told anyone about it. That’s how she does so well. How else could she be getting the kinds of grades she is, when she only just joined the Artificer Blues? She’s been cheating all along, using Farsight to copy all our papers!”

  Abi’s stomach knotted up and her eyes and cheeks grew hot, and she struggled to keep down a sob. And there it was—the one accusation she had no way of disproving. How do you prove you don’t have a Gift? Because if she was good enough, she could hide it from Heralds themselves! After all, she knew all about all kinds of Gifts, she even knew how to Shield, and she could have been hiding almost anything behind a Shield!

  “Well, that’s a very interesting theory,” Master Ketnar said . . . and his eyes narrowed. “There’s just one tiny little problem with it. You two didn’t get the same exam questions.”

  Abi felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach. What?

  The boy gaped at Ketnar, taken as much by surprise as Abi was. “What?” he blurted.

  “I said, you didn’t get the same exam questions. The answers Abi got and the work she did match the questions she got. But the answers you wrote and the work you did do not match the questions you got. But the answers do match Abi’s, down to the smallest detail.” Ketnar got up from behind his desk and loomed over the now cringing boy. “Do you have an explanation for this phenomenon?”

  “I . . . I . . . I . . .” the boy babbled.

  “Would you like to give that explanation under Truth Spell?” Ketnar continued. “It seems a pity to get a Herald to trot down here for such a petty reason as cheating, but both Abi’s parents have already volunteered to do so any time I discovered someone was trying to get her in trouble. So . . . are you prepared to tell me now, or must I summon one of them?”

  “Oh, gods—” the boy blurted, then buried his face in his hands and began to sob. “I—it was Dudley Remp. It was him!”

  “And just how, exactly, did Dudley Remp accomplish this amazing feat?” purred Master Ketnar.

  “I don’t know!” Geoffers said in a panic. “He just told me that when you called me in about the exams I was supposed to say she cheated and copied mine, and she used Farsight to do it! That’s all I know!”

  “Well, you can thank your friend Dudley for the fact that you are being expelled,” the Master replied ruthlessly. “I wish you good fortune explaining to your parents how this came about. You’ll be escorted off the Palace and to your sponsor, who will be told what you have done and will deal with you as he sees fit. Do not set foot within the Palace walls again.”

  Abi felt a little sorry—a very little—when he burst into tears. But there was no hope for it. Master Ketnar summoned one of the Palace servants to escort him off the grounds, and that was that. He wasn’t even allowed time to collect his books from the classroom he’d been in.

  “Now you know why your father was so secretive about how we were protecting you, Abi,” Ketnar said, when the boy was gone. “We didn’t want the slightest chance of this to get out. Now the mystery is how your answers ended up on his exam paper.”

  In a blinding flash, at least one explanation occurred to Abi. “Someone got hold of a blank exam copy,” she said. “Then they got Geoffer’s paper and my paper and copied my answers onto the blank, and put Geoffers’ name on it and slipped both back into the pile. But it would have to have been someone that didn’t know math, or they’d know the answers didn’t match the questions on the blank.”

  “They’d also have to have been in a hurry, concentrating only on the answers, or they would have noticed the questions themselves didn’t match.” Master Ketnar nodded. “I think my next move will be to talk to the scribes who copy out our exams for us. This should be very interesting.” Finally he smiled slightly. “I’m sorry if I put you through any anxiety, Abi, but your presence here was necessary.”

  “It’s all right, Master,” she replied, although the headache that now bloomed behind her eyes was absolutely monumental, and her jaw hurt from clenching it too tightly. “I understand. In case you couldn’t get him to confess, you needed to make it look as if I was the one in trouble.” But now that she knew what had been going on, anger smoldered inside her. Would it have been so very hard for her father to have told her what he and Master Ketnar intended to do?

  You’re a good actress, Abi, but not that good. You wouldn’t have been able to feign the panic when you thought Dudley had trapped you.

  True. But still!

  “I don’t feel well, Master,” she said finally. “May I be excused for the rest of the day?”

  Finally, finally, he looked at her, and his reaction was everything she could have wished. “Good gods, child, you’re as white as snow! I didn’t mean to frighten you that badly, I promise you! Yes, indeed, you may be excused. I think you should lie down for a while. Do you need someone to go with you to your rooms?”

  “I don’t think so, Master,” she said. “Thank you. I’ll be going now.”

  But she hadn’t gotten farther than the Palace proper when Kee and Tory came charging toward her out of nowhere, accompanied by Gryphon. She was so startled she stopped dead in her tracks.

  “Abi, Abi, we’re here to help!” Tory said, holding up a wet towel. “Put this on your neck! And lean on us!”

  “Yiss!” Kee echoed. “Here!” and he grabbed her hand and put it on his shoulder. “We’ll help you home!”

  Touched by the attention—too touched to be irritated by the fact that the two of them had obviously been spying on her by Farsight again—she accepted the towel, and pretended to “lean on them,” although she didn’t put any weight on their young shoulders. The wet towel was actually a good idea, it was wonderfully cool on her neck and went a long way toward unknotting the knots in it. The littles weren’t satisfied until she was lying in her own bed with the towel across her forehead. And even then, Tory asked anxiously if she wanted tea, or Mama, or a hot brick at her feet.

  “I’ll be fine now that I’m in bed,” she promised them—and actually, she did start to feel a bit better. They tiptoed away to go back to whatever they were up to in the center room, and she worked on relaxing those tense neck muscles and unclenching her jaw.

  I’m surprised I didn’t splinter my teeth. . . .

  But the windows were open, Kee and Tory whispering together was rather soothing and blended nicely with the birdsong coming from the other side of the room.

  The next thing she knew, the center room was full of chattering people and her father had just sat down on the edge of her bed, which was what had awakened her.

  “Feelin’ better, poppet?” he asked sympathetically. “I told ye I was takin’ care of it, didn’ I?” There was just a hint of admonition in his voice that she hadn’t trusted him.

  There were a lot of things she could have said at that point, most of them accusatory about not trusting her, but she decided to say none of them. “The headache’s mostly gone,” she said instead.

  “Well, good.” He patted her hand. “Yer M
ama read me a lecture on leavin’ ye outa plans what concerned ye,” he added. “So . . . I’m right sorry.” He let the sentence trail off, then cleared his throat self-consciously. “Master Ketnar an’ me had a little palaver wit’ th’ scribes, an’ you was right. One on ’em kept a copy of th’ test, put Geoffers’ name on’t, an’ got inter th’ place where the finished exams was an’ copied yer answers. Then ’e swapped the real exam fer the cheatin’ one.”

  “What’s going to happen now?” she asked.

  Mags made a face. “Not much. Scribe was turned out. Geoffers was expelled. But Dudley? Not much c’n be done t’touch ’im. Tisn’t a crime as such, an’ there ain’t anyone like t’ take it serious. Not serious ’nuff to bring the law on ’im.”

  She wanted to cry out that this wasn’t fair—that almost having her life ruined was serious. But . . . how would her life have been “ruined,” exactly? She couldn’t be thrown out of her home. Being dismissed by the Artificers would not have made her strange Gift vanish, and it was more than useful, and if no one else, the Heralds and her father would have a lot of use for it. She could have gotten tutoring from a Master who didn’t believe the cheating accusation. No one who cared about her—or who she cared about—would ever have believed she had cheated. Just people whose opinions didn’t count.

  Still . . .

  “I hate this,” she said instead, wrathfully. “There should be some way to make Dudley pay for what he did to me!”

  “Well, we thought ’bout thet,” he said. “We c’d bring ’im inter civil court. An’ we c’d even make ’im go under Truth Spell agin, and make it all come out. An’ then wut? Mebbe git some money from ’im, but ’ow much’s cheatin’ worth? ’Member, this’d be a civil judge an’ jury useter goats an’ ’ouses an’ things wut ye c’n put a number on. An’ no one’d trust ’im, a-course, but no one trusts ’im now, leastwise, not anyone with sense. An’ ’e’d ’ave even more reasons t’ ’old a grudge ’gainst you. This way . . . ye got a chance ’e’ll find somewhat else t’ go after.”

  She sighed, feeling utterly and completely cheated. Angry, frustrated, and sick all over again. But her father was right.

  “Not even us Heralds c’n make everythin’ right, poppet,” he said, sadly. “All we c’n do is try an’ make ’em better.”

  She couldn’t help it. A couple of hot tears of rage and disappointment coursed down her cheeks. But he was right. Damn it all, he was right.

  “We bested ’m twice, poppet, ’member that,” Mags admonished. “An’ if ’e tries a third time, we’ll do ’im agin. ’E thinks ’e’s smart, but ’e ain’t nearly as smart as ’e thinks.” He offered her his hand. “Git some supper. Ye’ll feel better. Tory ’n Kee ’re worried ’bout ye.”

  She took it, and as he rose, she got off her bed. “Nobody’s as smart as all of us put together,” she said, finally.

  Mags smiled. “Tha’s the truth. Now le’s eat.”

  8

  Abi actually got to enjoy the Harvest Fair.

  There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that needed the attentions of Mags, and by extension, his family at the Harvest Fair. Now, this was not unexpected; Harvest Fair tended to be concentrated on farmers and their harvests rather than entertainment. There was some entertainment, of course, and vendors, because farmers with money in their pockets could be tempted to part with some of it, particularly if they had done well. But most of the entertainment was in livestock shows, livestock contests, and expanded versions of the sort of contests (archery, feats of strength and agility) every sizable village, town, and city in Haven put on at this time of year.

  So there was plenty to see for free; since entertainers really could not compete with “free,” they confined their performances to evenings when there were no contests going on.

  As a treat, Abi took Tory and Kee to everything they wanted to see for several days of the Fair; granted the Royal Family always made a joint appearance at the opening and closing of every Fair, but that wasn’t fun. They’d walk through the Fair surrounded by the Royal Guard after officially declaring the Fair open, compliment a couple of vendors, see one or two of the most important contests, such as the archery or the Prize Bull, and leave.

  Amily had never been able to get away to take Tory and Kee to any of the Fairs, and until this fall, Abi and Perry hadn’t been free to do so either, and they certainly weren’t old enough to go on their own. So this was their first full Fair, ever, and both of them were round-eyed with excitement. Living in Haven all their lives, they’d never really seen anything smaller than a horse and larger than a chicken—there were chickens and dovecotes and even rabbit hutches at the Palace, but aside from the horses, cats, and dogs, these were the only animals they knew from outside of picture-books.

  The sheep—especially the show sheep, with their wool washed and brushed for the competitions—absolutely enchanted them. A couple of indulgent shepherds allowed the boys to bury their hands in the wool of their ram’s backs and touch the curly horns, to their absolute delight. The goats frightened Kee a little with their strange eyes, but Tory coaxed him into petting a nanny and feeding her wisps of hay. Geese and ducks were new to them; they liked the ducks, but the aggressive behavior of the geese caused them to watch the flocks being auctioned off from a safe distance and marvel at how the goosegirls managed to boss their flocks around. Cattle were a strange mystery to them—big as a horse but nothing like a horse. And the huge pigs with their tiny, squinting eyes and grunting were of no interest whatsoever except as something to be wary of.

  The actual shows for most of the animals bored them; they couldn’t see what made one goose or sheep better than another, and truth to tell, neither could Abi. But the human contests and the horse and dog shows, now, that was a very different matter.

  Especially since Lady Dia was showing some of her mastiffs, including the ones she’d bred out of the ones Perry had brought back from his adventure for her.

  Familiar with riding horses, they marveled at the strength of the huge beasts bred to pull enormous drays and tug plows through tough turf and clay-heavy soil. Beautiful gaited horses with shining coats of every color thrilled them, and made them both declare that they wanted one—Kee wanted a palomino, and Tory a black destrier with feathered feet.

  But it was the dog shows that held them spellbound.

  “I never knew there were so many kinds of dogs!” Tory exclaimed, after sitting through the competitions of the lurchers, the bloodhounds, the greyhounds, the spaniels, and the hunting hounds. But Abi didn’t get a chance to say anything more, because it was time for the mastiffs and to cheer Lady Dia on.

  She won, handily, and joined them in the viewing stands after collecting her prize medal and sending her dog back up to her kennel with one of her servants. “Have you enjoyed the shows so far?” she asked the boys with a twinkle in her eye.

  That unleashed a flood of words as they poured out their enthusiasm. With a smile and good graces, she let them babble for as long as they liked, and when they finally ran out of words, she said, “Well, next you are going to see something truly remarkable. Sheepdogs!”

  “Dogs that are like sheep?” Kee wondered aloud as he settled onto the hard wooden seat of the stands, perfectly prepared to sit through anything if Lady Dia said it was something special.

  “No, dear, the dogs that take care of sheep,” Dia replied. “They are extremely clever, and so clever I don’t think I am clever enough to train them. Look, here come the sheep now.”

  Sure enough five nervous sheep were herded into the arena, where they milled about uncertainly, while the first competitor and his dog eyed them from the sidelines. The dog was a shaggy little black and white thing that didn’t look to Abi as if it could herd a duck, much less five sheep that were each four times its size.

  But the judge blew a whistle to start, the shepherd made a motion with his arm, and the dog was off like a
falcon.

  For the next quarter candlemark they all watched in amazement as that dog made those sheep do everything but stand on their heads. Abi had never seen anything like it, and Tory and Kee were laughing and applauding the entire time.

  The next dog wasn’t quite as good as the first, the third fell a bit short as well, then the next two seemed to do as well. The contest ultimately came down to a second trial between the first dog and the tenth, in which the first dog won by successfully driving one sheep into each corner of the arena and the fifth into the center, and keeping them all in their places despite their natural instinct to come together as a flock. The other couldn’t manage to keep the one in the center put.

  The proud shepherd and his prancing partner collected not only their prize medal, but a handsome prize of money as well.

  “Why didn’t you get any money, Lady Dia?” Kee asked, since the sheepherding contest was the last dog competition of the day.

  “Because I will get money every time my dog goes to make puppies with another mastiff,” Dia explained, matter-of-factly. “That’s what the real prize is for many of the farmers here. If they have the prize-winning bull, or gander, or ram, other people will pay them money for many years for what are called ‘stud fees.’ And for a farmer who has to depend on weather and doesn’t know from one year to the next what his crop will be like, to have the certainty of money coming in every spring is very important.”

  There was no doubt that all of this was very new to both boys, and they listened with wide eyes. But they were not the only ones listening to Lady Dia; from behind them in the stands, someone cleared his throat, and said, “Well, if you’re to be tellin’ these lads what a farmer’s life be like, I can be helpin’ with that.”