Take a Thief Page 27

  The Herald's smile widened. "And I see that you and Cymry Mindspeak.

  That is excellent, especially in so early a bond." Talamir stepped forward and extended his hand to Skif, and when Skif tentatively offered his own, took it, and shook it firmly but gently. "Welcome, Skif," was all he said, but the words were a true greeting, and not a hollow courtesy.

  "Thankee, sir," Skif replied, feeling an unaccountable shyness, a shyness that evidently was shared by Cymry, who kept glancing at the other Companion with mingled awe and admiration. Talamir seemed to expect something more from him, and he groped for something to say. "This's—all kinda new t'me."

  "So I'm told." Mild amusement, no more. No sign that Talamir had been told anything of Skif's antecedents. "Well, if you feel overwhelmed, remember that when I first arrived here, I was straight out of a horse-trading family, I'd never spent a night in my life under anything but canvas, and the largest city I ever saw was a quarter of the size of Haven.

  My first night in my room was unbearable; I thought I was going to smother, and I kept feeling the walls pressing in on me. Eventually, I took my blankets outside and slept on the lawn. Very few of us are ready for this when we arrive here, and—" he chuckled softly, the merest ghost of a laugh, "—sometimes here is even less ready for us. But we adapt, the Trainee to the Collegium and the Collegium to the Trainee. Even if it means pitching a tent in the garden for a Trainee to live in for the first six months."

  Skif gaped, totally unable to imagine this elegant gentleman living in a tent, but quickly shut his mouth. "Yessir," he replied, his usually quick wits failing him.

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  He had no idea how to end this conversation, but the Herald solved his dilemma for him. "Have a good evening, youngling," Talamir said, and he and his Companion turned and drifted off through the dusk like a pair of spirits, making no sound whatsoever as they moved over the grass. The moon, three-quarters now, had just begun to rise, and its light silvered them with an eldritch glow.

  "Is't just me," Skif asked, when he was pretty sure they were out of earshot, "Or are they spooky? "

  :They're spooky,: Cymry affirmed, with an all-over shiver of her coat.

  :Rolan is Talamir's second Companion. Taver was killed in the Tedrel Wars, when Talamir and Jadus were trying to rescue the King. They say that everyone thought Talamir was going to follow Taver and King Sendar until Rolan came and pulled him back. Ever since then, Talamir's been—

  otherworldly. Half his heart and soul are here, and half's in the Havens, they say.:

  Skif shook his head. All this was too deep for him.

  :Still!: Cymry continued, shaking off her mood. :His mind is all here, and Talamir's mind is better than four of anyone else's! Would you like to see Companion's Field?:

  "I thought this was Companion's Field," Skif replied confusedly.

  She made a chuckling sound. :This is only the smallest corner of it. Most of it is across the river. Think you can get on my back without a boost?:

  "Please. I can pull m'self up a gutter on t'roof without usin' legs," he retorted. "I oughta be able t' get on your back!"

  She stood rock still for him, and after a moment of awkwardness, he managed to clamber onto her bare back. Stepping out into the twilight at a brisk pace, she took him across the river on a little stone bridge, and they spent a candlemark or two exploring Companion's Field.

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  Finally the long day caught up with him, and Skif found himself yawning and nodding, catching himself before he actually dozed off and fell off Cymry's back. Cymry brought him right back to the place where they'd met, and from there, he stumbled up to his room.

  Someone had come along and lit the lanterns set up along the walls, so at least he wasn't stumbling because he couldn't see. When he got to the door of his room, he discovered that someone had also slipped a card into a holder there that had his name on it.

  A sound in the corridor made him turn; his eyes met the brilliant blue ones of an older boy— hair soaking wet and wrapped in a light sleeping robe, on his way out of the bathing room. The other boy smiled tentatively.

  "Hullo!" he greeted Skif. "I'm Kris; you must be the new one, Skif. It's me and Jeri here over Midsummer."

  "Uh— hullo," He eyed Kris carefully; definitely highborn, with that accent and those manners. But not one with his nose in the air. "Jeri a girl or a boy?"

  "Girl. She'll be your year-mate; got Chosen six moons ago. Oh, I made sure I left enough hot water for a good bath."

  "Thanks." That decided him. Maybe he'd already had one bath today, but he was still stiff and sore, and another wouldn't hurt.

  Kris was still looking at him quizzically. "I hope you don't mind my asking— but how did you get that black eye? It's a glory! If you haven't seen it, it's gone all green and purple around the edges, and black as black at your nose."

  "Smacked it inta Cymry's neck," Skif admitted ruefully. "Ain't never jumped on a horse afore."

  Kris winced in sympathy. "Ouch. Better go soak. Good night!"

  "Night," Skif replied, and got a robe of his own to take the boy's advice.

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  When he got back to his room and started putting his new belongings away to clear his bed so he could sleep, he found one last surprise.

  On the desk were all of his things. Every possible object he owned except the most ragged of his clothing from both his room next to Jass', and the Priory. Including his purse, with every groat still in it.

  Startled, he tried to think at his Companion. :Cymry!: he "called" her, hoping she'd answer.

  :What do you need?: she asked sleepily, and he explained what he'd found.

  :Who did that? And how come?: he finished. It worried him….

  :Oh. That would be Alberich's doing, I expect,: she replied. :Usually they go send someone to tell families that the Chosen's arrived safely, and to get their belongings, if they didn't bring anything with them. Don't you want your things?:

  Well, of course he wanted his things. :I just—: The fact was, he worried. Who went there. What they'd said. And how they'd known where he came from….

  :Kantor says it was all Alberich's doing, at least getting your things from your room.: Well, that was one worry off his mind. Alberich would have gone as the sell-sword, and intimidated his way in. Good enough. :He sent off the usual Guardsman to the Priory. They'll have told the Priory you were Chosen, and the Guardsman would have brought someone hired to take your place, so the Priory won't go shorthanded. Kantor says Alberich didn't tell your old landlord anything. Is that all right?: Since it was exactly what he would have wanted had he been asked, he could only agree. :Aye. That's fine, I reckon.: In fact, he couldn't think of anything else he could possibly want.

  :Get some sleep,: she told him. :It'll be a long day tomorrow.: 242

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  A longer one than today? With a sigh, he climbed into bed, feeling very strange to be in such a bed, and even stranger not hearing the usual noises of the city beyond his walls.

  But not so strange that he was awake for much longer than it took to find a comfortable position and think about closing the curtains he'd left open to let in every bit of breeze. About the time he decided it didn't matter, he was asleep.

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  16

  A scant week later, Skif was just about ready to face all the returning Trainees. He knew what the Heralds of Valdemar were about now— at least, he knew where they'd come from and what they did. And he was starting to get his mind wrapped around why they did it. If he didn't understand it, well, there were a great many things in the world that he didn't understand, and that didn't keep him from going on with his life.

  Something had happened to him over the course of that week, and he didn't understand any of it. The things he had always thought were the only truths in the world weren't, not here anyway. He was going to have to wa
tch these Heralds carefully. They might be hiding something behind all this acceptance and welcome.

  But since a lot of what was going on with him had to do with feelings, he came to the unsatisfactory and vague conclusion that maybe it wasn't going to be possible to understand it. He was caught up like a leaf in the wind, and the leaf didn't have a lot of choice in where the wind took it. If it hadn't been that Cymry was a big part of that wind—

  Well, she was, and despite everything he'd learned until this moment, he found himself thinking and feeling things that would have been completely unlike the boy he'd been a fortnight ago. Soft, was what he would have called what he was becoming now, but what he was now knew that there was nothing soft about where he was tending. If anything, it was hard… as in difficult.

  And difficult were the things he was learning, and the things he was going to learn, though truth to tell, it was no more work than he was used to setting himself. Physical exertion? The weapons' work he was doing, the riding, none of it was as hard as roof walking. Book learning? Ha! It was mostly reading and remembering, not like having to figure out a new lock.

  Even the figuring— the mathematics, they called it— wasn't that bad.

  Since he could already do his sums, this new stuff was a matter of logic, a lot like figuring out a lock. The real difference was that he was obeying someone else's schedule and someone else's orders.

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  Yet he'd run to Bazie's schedule and Bazie's orders, and thought no worse of it, nor of himself.

  For every objection his old self came up with, the new one— or Cymry—had a counter. And if there was one thing he was absolutely certain of, it was that he would not, could not do without Cymry. She didn't so much fill an empty place in him as fill up every crack and crevice that life had ever put in his heart, and make it all whole again. To have Cymry meant he would have to become a Herald. So be it. It was worth it a thousand times over.

  And once again, just as when he'd been with Bazie, he was happy.

  He hadn't known what happiness was until Bazie took him in. Moments of pleasure, yes, and times of less misery than others, but never happiness.

  He'd learned that with Bazie, and since the fire, he hadn't had so much as a moment of real, unshadowed happiness.

  Now it was back. Not all the time, and there were still times when he thought about the fire and raged or wept or both. He wasn't going to turn his back on these people, not until he figured out what their angle was. But for the most part it was back, like a gift, something he'd never thought to have back again.

  After that, he knew he couldn't leave. Out there, without Cymry, he'd go back to being alone against the world. In here, with her, there was one absolutely true thing he was certain of. Cymry loved and needed him, and he loved and needed her. The rest— well, he'd figure it all out as it came.

  But he woke every day with two persistent and immediate problems to solve. When his fingers itched to lift a kerchief or a purse, he wondered what would happen if he gave in to the urge— and when Kris and Jeri accepted him without question as one of themselves, he worried what would happen when they (and the rest of the Trainees) learned he'd been a thief. Cymry might be the center of his world, but he'd had friends before in Bazie and the boys, and he liked having them. He didn't want to lose the ones he was getting now.

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  He woke one morning exactly six days after he had arrived, a day when he knew the rest of the Trainees would begin coming back in, signaling the beginning of his real classes tomorrow, although it would probably take two or three more days for all of them to make it back. It helped, of course, that they all had Companions, and however long their journeys were, they would travel in a fraction of the time it took an ordinary horse to cross the same distance. He had met most of his teachers, and even begun lessons designed to allow him to fit into the classes with some of them. He had no idea how many of them— besides Alberich and Teren—knew his background either.

  And eventually, it would come out. Secrets never stayed secret for long.

  Eventually someone would say something.

  He had worried over that like a terrier with a rat; in fact, he'd gone to bed that night thinking about it. And when he woke, it was with an answer at last.

  Whether it would be the right answer was another question entirely. But he knew who to consult on it.

  The Collegium cook, a moon-faced, eternally cheerful man called Mero, had turned up three days ago. The Collegium bells signaling the proper order of the day had resumed when Mero returned. So now, when Skif awoke at the first bell of the day and went down to the kitchen at the bell that signaled breakfast, he would join Kris and the girl Jeri and some of the teachers around a table in the kitchen for a real cooked meal. With so few to cook for, Mero declined help in cooking, but afterward they all pitched in to clean up. Some of Skif's daydreams about food were coming to pass— Mero even made homely oat porridge taste special.

  After breakfast came Skif's first appointment of the day. It wasn't exactly a class… especially not this morning.

  And this morning, he could hardly eat his breakfast for impatience to get out to the salle, where some of the weapons training was done. He cleared the table by himself so that he could leave quickly.

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  He ran to the salle, a building that stood apart from the rest of the Collegia, and for good reason, since it needed to be a safe distance from anywhere people might walk, accidentally or on purpose. The Trainees from all three Collegia learned archery, and even some of the Blues, the students who weren't Trainees at all. And some of those archery students were, to be frank, not very good.

  Skif, although he had never shot a bow in his life, had proved to be a natural at it, somewhat to his own surprise. Seeing that, Alberich had tried him with something a bit more lethal and less obvious than an arrow. He'd tried him in knife throwing.

  Skif had been terrifyingly accurate. Where his eye went, so did whatever was put in his hand. He had no idea where the skill had come from— but at least his ability to fight with a knife, or with the blunted practice swords, was no better than anyone else's.

  Alberich had promised something in the way of a surprise for him this morning, and Skif was impatient to see what he meant, as well as impatient to speak with him.

  When Skif arrived at the salle, Alberich was throwing a variety of weapons at a target set up on the other side of the room. Alberich was a hair more accurate than Skif, but Alberich's skill came from training, not a natural talent. Nevertheless, Skif watched with admiration as Alberich placed his weapons— knives, sharpened stakes, and small axes— in a neat pattern on the straw-padded target. He didn't interrupt the Weaponsmaster, and Alberich didn't stop until all the implements he'd lined up on a bench behind him were in the target.

  The salle, a long, low building with smooth, worn wooden floors, was lit from above by clerestory windows. This was because the walls were taken up with storage cabinets and a few full-length mirrors. For the rest, there wasn't much, just a few benches, some training equipment, and the door to Alberich's office. For all Skif knew, Alberich might even have quarters here, since he hardly ever saw the Weaponsmaster anywhere else.

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  "So, you come in good time," Alberich said, as the last of his sharpened stakes slammed into the target. He turned toward Skif, picking up something from the bench where his weapons had been. "Come here, then.

  Let us see how these suit you."

  "These" proved to be little daggers in sheaths that Alberich strapped to Skif's arms, with the daggers lying along the inside of his arms. Once on, they were hidden by Skif's sleeves, and he flexed his arms experimentally.

  They weren't at all uncomfortable, and he suspected that with a little practice wearing them, he wouldn't even notice they were there.

  "Of my students, only two are, I think, fit to
use these," Alberich said.

  "Jeri is one. It is you that is the other. Look you—" He showed Skif the catch that kept each dagger firmly in its sheath— and the near-invisible shake of the wrist that dropped it down into the hand, ready to throw, when the catch was undone.

  Skif was thrilled with the new acquisition— what boy wouldn't be? —but unlike most, if not all, of the other Trainees, he had seen men knifed and bleeding and dead. Men— and a woman or two. Even before he left his uncle's tavern, he'd seen death at its most violent. And he knew, bone-deep and blood-deep, that death was what these knives were for. Not target practice, not showing off for one's friends. Death, hidden in a sleeve, small and silent, waiting to be used.

  Death was a cold, still face, and blood pooling and clotting on the pavement. Death was floating bloated in the river. Death was ashes and bones in the burned-out hulk of a building.

  Death was someone you knew found still and cold, and never coming back. And these little "toy" daggers were death. Not to be treated lightly, or to be played with.

  But death was also being able to stop someone from making you dead.

  "Can you kill a man?" Alberich asked suddenly, as Skif contemplated the dagger in his hand.

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  Skif looked up at the Weaponsmaster. As usual, his face was unreadable.