Changing the World: All-New Tales of Valdemar v(-103 Page 2

  Oh,it was true that he didn’t seem to do a lick of work, but why would he need to? He did what he did best for his father, bring in business to the little tavern with his ready stories and skill at games. He didn’t get paid for that, of course, but that didn’t matter. She was already doubling the family business with her weaving. Once it became widely known that she wasn’t just copying old cartoons for her tapestries, that she was making original images, she’d be turning business away. He could do what she couldn’t: flatter and please the customers, so she could concentrate on the weaving.

  She had it all planned out in her mind.

  And then, between one day and the next, he was gone.

  There had been some talk about some thefts—she dismissed them out of hand, and then the whole village had been forced to do the same when letters came back telling how he had been carried off by a Companion to be a Herald. The whole village had been forced to admit that they’d misjudged him, and although she got her letters with some misgiving at first, still, she was getting letters. She was not replaying her mother’s story all over again.

  But then the letters began to change. It seemed as if every other line ended with “. . . but of course, you wouldn’t understand.” At first it made her anxious and bewildered. Then, as the tone grew more and more patronizing, it made her angry. “Then explain it!” she demanded, more than once. It wasn’t as if she were stupid! If he thought she didn’t understand, well, if he would just—

  But the letters grew fewer and fewer and finally stopped altogether.

  By that time, her feelings had turned as bitter as her mother’s. She threw herself into her work. Her mother died in the middle of that winter, but at least Marya could congratulate herself that she’d had every possible comfort. Not even the mayor’s wife had such a fine goosedown bed, pillows, and comforter. Not even the mayor was served such savory morsels when she could bring herself to eat. It was all that Marya could do for her when the bitter love had turned again to anguish in her mother’s last illness, and she spent her last breaths weeping and calling for her lost lover.

  Oh, how she hated the Heralds.

  Her anger made the needles fly, and row after row of knitting grew beneath her hands. Stefan was an idiot. But then again, the entire village was Herald- mad. Probably all of Valdemar was Herald- mad. Little girls and boys made white stick horses and played at being Heralds. You found decorations of Heralds and Companions everywhere. There were more ornamental white horse heads than there were representations of the actual arms of Valdemar. The one and only commission she had ever turned down was for a tapestry of a Herald and Companion—the noble family of someone whose son had been Chosen. She had used the rather specious argument that she would never be able to get the Companion and the uniform white enough, and that the white wool would soon become dingy. They had countered that they would send her Companion mane and tail hair to make into yarn, hair that would never get dingy, because Companions literally shed dirt. She had replied (without attempting it) that Companion hair could not be made into yarn and that she could not in all good faith take on such a commission knowing that Herald and Companion would soon become a grayish yellow. She never heard from them again.

  And I would starve to death before I—

  There was a knock at the door.

  She did not rush to get up. She put up her knitting, made sure the fire was burning cleanly, while another couple of knocks came, and only then did she get up to answer it. Stefan could just wait out there with the night insects biting him.

  Serve him right if he was covered in welts tomorrow.

  She opened the door, intending to tell him brusquely to be off and slam it in his face again. But it wasn’t Stefan who was out there.

  It was the two Heralds.

  A moment of shock and rage held her rigid. And that was when the older of the two said the one thing that kept her from slamming the door in their faces.

  “Danet Stens is not a Herald.”

  They sat stiffly side by side on her weaving bench. She sat stiffly in her chair, hands uncharacteristically idle.

  But she was listening. And what she heard from the two Heralds—

  “. . . as far as we can tell, he did not begin by deciding to impersonate a Herald,” the older of the two—Herald Callan—was saying. “He sent back letters that he had been Chosen, we think, largely to cover up the thefts he’d committed here. But approximately a month later, he seems to have understood that if he actually put the full ruse into motion, he would have a free hand to do virtually anything.”

  She nodded, slowly. “But why keep on sending letters back?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Until we find him, we can only speculate as to why,” said the other, who had not yet given his name. “We have a lot of guesses—the most likely is to keep people from associating him with the thefts until enough time had passed that the losses were forgotten or at least the victims had given up on finding the thief.”

  She shook her head, puzzled. “I’d heard rumors of thefts but—you talk as if these were something large, and I certainly didn’t hear anything about that—”

  The Heralds exchanged a look. “I can’t speak for the victims,” the elder said, after a moment. “But . . . given the circumstances . . . I believe the items were purloined in a way that would have been very embarrassing to the victim if it had been made pub—”

  That was when the younger interrupted. “He was sleeping with women—and one or two men—and making off with small valuables. Most of them were married.”

  Shocked for a moment, she sat there, blinking. She thought about some of her mother’s comments. She thought some more about the curious silence that had followed Danet’s disappearance. And still more about the times when he’d said he had something or other to do for his father . . .

  “How did you—”

  “When we began tracking him, we knew where he had come from, and we had an old list of things that had been reported as missing to the Guard,” the younger said bluntly. “We’ve been interviewing the people who reported them stolen all day. Enough time has passed that when we told them that Danet is not a Herald, we usually got the truth out of them.”

  “Well, and the reports had generally come from the husband, but when we interviewed the wives . . .” Herald Callan blushed, visible even in the firelight. “Let’s just say that they were less than happy. They were able to rationalize that he had taken the things to remember them by, when they each thought she were the only one. When we let it be known that this was far from the case . . .” He shook his head. “The spouses, of course, had no idea and had reported the items stolen independently. Most everyone assumed that it was a tinker or a gypsy or the like.”

  “We haven’t enlightened the partners,” the younger Herald said, with a quirk of his lips. “That would be adding insult to injury.”

  She unclenched her jaw. “I still don’t see what this has to do with me,” she replied stiffly.

  They exchanged glances again. The elder cleared his throat awkwardly. “We were hoping you would come with us.”

  At this point, her emotions had been up and down so often her reaction was less rage and more incredulity. “You people are insane,” she finally said, flatly. “Why in the name of everything considered holy would I want to do that?” Before they could answer her, she continued on. “I have a commission to finish. I have two more to start. This is how I pay for my food, my chopped wood, my wool. No one is going to give me these things.”

  She didn’t mention that she had a very tidy sum tucked away safe and that if she wanted to, she could probably live on it for several years without taking another commission. In the first place, that was none of their business. In the second place, that was meant in case she became ill or injured or otherwise incapacitated. And in the third place, it was none of their damn business.

  “And what makes you think I can or will do anything more than you can?” She leveled the most evil glare she could
manage at them.

  “We thought because you knew him best—” Herald Callan began.

  “Well, I didn’t know he was sleeping with half the village women and stealing their valuables, and I didn’t know that he never intended to marry me, so I obviously didn’t know him very well, did I?” The bitterness in her words was so palpable that both of them winced. “Thank you for telling me the truth about him. You can leave now. No—wait—”

  She got up and stalked to the little chest where she kept her few keepsakes and pulled out a bundle of letters. She didn’t know why she had kept them instead of burning them. Maybe this was why. She thrust them at Callan. “Here. Maybe you can make out something you can use against him.”

  The Herald took the letters as gingerly as if they were on fire. “But . . . can you think of what he is likely to actually do? Anything? Anything at all? So far, all we have are complaints from what seem to be random isolated communities—that a Herald Danet comes through, makes a mess of things, and when he’s gone, there are valuables missing. By the time we get the reports, he’s long gone. This has been going on for two years now.”

  So, he’d been at it from the moment he’d left her. Oh, she should have known better. Really, she should have known better all along. He was years younger than she was. What handsome young man would ever have been truly interested in a dried up old spinster like her, anyway? It had seemed too good to be true, and so it was.

  And that was when the final humiliating thing occurred to her.

  Until either he had seduced one too many women, or the wrong woman, or someone was starting to make noise about missing items, he probably had intended to marry her. After all, she was making fine money. And she would have demanded very little of him. He could have gone right on sleeping with anyone he cared to, and she wouldn’t have noticed. Or if she had, a few sweet words of contrition from him and she would have forgiven him. Over and over and over.

  And meanwhile, he would have been living better than anyone in the village while continuing to do as little actual work as possible. As good as he had been at pulling the wool over her eyes, she’d have probably considered it her privilege to support him.

  She went hot, then cold, then hot again with shame. Especially when she thought about how often she had daydreamed of the long winter nights they would spend together, cuddled up in each others’ arms by the fire . . .

  That was when it occurred to her that there was one thing she knew about him that they probably did not.

  “If you can find his trail, it will end at a place where he intends to spend the winter,” she said. “He won’t travel in winter. He hates the cold, the rain, and the snow worse than a cat. That’s all I know. You can get out of here now.”

  Reluctantly, they left.

  Unfortunately, they did not take what they’d put into her head with them.

  If it had been daylight, she could have lost herself in her weaving. Instead, she picked up her knitting; the needles flew at a furious pace, but they could not still her thoughts.

  It had been bad enough when she had thought he had just gotten tired of her. When she had been left to wonder if she really was that dull, that stupid, truly unable to comprehend what being a Herald was all about.

  It was worse now. She really had been stupid, but in an entirely different way. She’d been manipulated. Made a fool of. Now she knew the reason for the pitying glances she sometimes caught from some women in the village. All this time she’d thought it was pity for having been jilted.

  Oh, no.

  It was pity for being such a fatuous fool as to believe a handsome young man could ever want her. All those women that Danet Stens had slept with had felt the superior sort of pity that you do for someone who doesn’t know she’s living in a fool’s dream.

  Well, I got the last laugh, she thought bitterly. Now all of them know they were played for fools too. It didn’t help.

  Mother probably guessed. Or at least she guessed that Danet was only interested in the money I made.

  That would be about right.

  Finally, as the fire burned down, and the thoughts in her head would not stop buzzing about like angry hornets, she realized that she was not going to get any sleep, any sleep at all, without help.

  She went to the cupboard and got out the little bottle the Healer had given her for her mother, to help her through the bad nights. She carefully measured out the right number of drops into a cup of lukewarm tea and drank it down. She had expected it to be bitter, but it had a kind of blossomy taste. Strange but pleasant. She went back to her chair and put away her knitting, noting sardonically that anger was good for one thing, at least. She’d finished the panel. She’d bind it off in the daylight and start another. Firelight was no good for binding off; you were asking for dropped stitches.

  As she did every night, she carefully hung her clothing on the chair next to the bed, the bed that her grandparents, and then her mother, had slept in—though the mattress had been made new for her mother in her last year. She got into a flannel nightrail. The nights were turning cold now. Fall was not far off. If those damned Heralds did their job properly, they’d find the wretch soon.

  She got into the warm goosedown bed and wondered what he was doing right now. Probably getting into an equally warm goosedown bed with a pretty, plump woman who was someone else’s wife. Not a thin, ugly stick like her.

  She fell into strange confused dreams in which the Heralds and Danet chased each other around and around a copse of trees, until the snow fell and a trio of beautiful women came and carried him off on a flying sheep. All three of the women laughed and pointed at her as they flew away. She woke up feeling entirely out of sorts. For the first time that she could recall, ever, she was so very out of sorts that she didn’t want to work on her tapestry.

  Instead, she decided that she wasn’t going to get any creative work done, she might as well give the place a thorough cleaning. She did have the very bad habit of leaving things she knew she would want later piled up next to her chair, beside the bed, or on the table. She hadn’t organized the yarn since spring. For that matter, she hadn’t done more than give the place a cursory sweep and dust since spring.

  She spent the morning turning things inside out. The floor got a scrubbing, the mattress was turned, aired and the bed remade, the blankets all came down out of winter storage and got a good wash. Every surface got a scouring. She reorganized the yarn properly. She stacked all the rectangles of knitting in order on a little table beside the chair so she could finally sew them together. She went through her clothing, relegating a few things to be given away since they had shrunk or never actually fitted in the first place. She brought in all the dry blankets and laid them in lavender in the blanket chest at the foot of the bed. She looked at the number of knitted tunics she had and decided that her next project was going to be to use up the yarn ends in making another blanket.

  By noon, the little cottage was clean, but her temper was still high. She decided that since the wretched Heralds hadn’t let a closed door stop them from pestering her, she was going to finish her interrupted shopping. Serve them right if they turned up again and she wasn’t there.

  She was close-mouthed to the point of monosyllabic with the village merchants, but they were used to that. Usually it was because she was, in her mind, still back at her loom. It wasn’t often that her temper was as frayed as it was today. But as she bought her bread and meat pies, her winter squash and her cut oats for porridge, her fruit and her soap and candles, she noticed that the shopkeepers were just as preoccupied as she was.

  It was abundantly clear why. The entire village was abuzz with talk about Danet. And now, of course, everyone had suspected the worst of him. Even his own father, who held court in the taproom of his inn, holding forth about how his ne’er-do-well son had been a devil from the day he was born, and how no matter how hard he was beaten, all he did was shrug the punishment off and go and do what he liked.

  This much, at lea
st, Marya knew was a lie. Danet’s father had never so much as laid a willowwand to his back. Everyone knew how Danet could charm his way out of any scrape he got into. But Innkeeper Stens brewed the only decent ale and beer to be had in the village and imported the only mead and wine, so no one wanted to nay-say him. And as for the innkeeper, well, he was making sure that memories were being “corrected” by pouring with a freer hand than usual and forgetting to charge now and again.

  So the only one in the village today who wasn’t singing the new song was Marya. And of course, everyone remembered that Danet was supposed to marry her. Looks both superior and pitying were cast on her, and plenty of curious ones too. But no one asked her anything. Perhaps they had already heard about the reception that Stefan and the Heralds themselves had gotten. Perhaps the black storm behind her eyes was more obvious than she had thought.

  The upshot of it all was that she went back to her little cottage in the same temper that she had left it—and behind that temper was a sinking feeling. This was going to be a prime topic of conversation for the entire winter. And there was not one thing that she could do about it. Until something just as sensational took their minds off it, she’d be gawked at and talked about and whispered over until the thaw and hard work took peoples’ minds off scandal.

  She put her purchases away, put the eggs to boil, cleaned out a squash and tucked it into a corner of the fireplace to bake, then stood at her window and found that she was torn between wanting to sit down on the floor and bawl like a child, and wanting to break something. She and her family had always been odd ducks here—the only people whose income came from outside the village, and the only ones who made things that no one in the village could afford. They had always kept to themselves, and when Marya’s father had gone off to be a Herald—

  —and had he gone off to be a Herald, after all?—

  That isolation had only increased.

  She had reacted to the mocking as a child by throwing herself into the work—she did truly love the act and art of the weaving, the more intricate the better—and by going off somewhere no one would bother her and crying. This was often the dyeing shed; since the only way to get a big batch of a consistent color was to dye it yourself, that was what they did. Usually the shed was empty when a big tapestry was being made, so it was a good place to go to cry. Later, when she had mastered the craft of dyeing and was old enough to be trusted alone among all the boiling pots of dye and mordant baths, no one questioned why she wanted to take the job over. It was unpleasant in winter, hot in summer, and some of the dyes stank. Your hands turned colors, and it didn’t wash off, it had to wear off. Her mother was just happy not to have to do it herself.