Limits of Power (57 page)

“None, so far as I know.”

“Then the junior yeoman program will be good for him. I'll write a note to Marshal Cedlin. Do you plan to keep him with you or foster him out?”

“He wants to stay with me,” Arvid said.

“That will do for now,” she said. “Now as to you—you're still in your probationary year as a Girdsman, and that means you need a place to attend drill. Did you stop at any granges as you trav-eled?”

Arvid felt himself flushing. “No. We spent only one night in Fiveway, and I was more concerned to avoid the thieves I knew infested it. And no more than one night in any town since.”

“Gird said nothing to you about that?”

“No.”

“Well, now you're in Fintha—and even more, in Fin Panir—you'll need to attend drill regularly. For the time being, that's at Marshal Cedlin's grange; I'll include that in my note to him. I want you to tell me—and him—about any instance that Gird speaks to you. Now, for employment—you write a fair hand, do you not?”

“Yes,” Arvid said.

“Good. I need someone to compile the notes I've made during recent meetings into a coherent report. Our scribes are overloaded. Will you accept that employment?”

“Yes,” Arvid said, “though I do not want to be away from the boy all day.”

“A half-day, mornings,” she said. “He can go to the grange for his schooling then. Will that suit?”

“Yes,” Arvid said. He did not want to ask how much, but she was already answering that.

“It will pay for your board at the inn, and we'll take care of your mounts if you'll agree to lend them—two of them, anyway—when we need them.”

“Certainly. Use all of them, if you can.”

“You'll start tomorrow. I'll write the note now, and you can take it as introduction to Marshal Cedlin.”

Marshal Cedlin accepted both Arvid and the boy into the grange community without demur. Whatever the Marshal-General had written, she had, Arvid suspected, left out the part about his having been a Thieves' Guild enforcer.

“Certainly your son should spend his mornings here, at least until he's caught up in his schooling,” Marshal Cedlin said. “He's not too old and seems a bright lad; he should make good progress.” He turned to the boy. “Young Arvid, you'll be working with my yeoman-marshal Geddes for the time being. The barton's through that door; he's teaching now. Just take him this note.”

“Yes, Marshal,” the boy said, ducking his head, then went as he was bid.

“And polite, too,” Marshal Cedlin said to Arvid. “It must have been a wrench to have him stolen away, and Gird's own grace you found him again.”

“Indeed it was,” Arvid said.

“Well—and you a late convert and in your first year. The Marshal-General says you read and write well—and she's hired you as a scribe, so that must be so. Then you're ready to go beyond the Ten Fingers, I'm thinking, and should start learning the Code itself. You have your evenings free, but for drill nights; you can start on the first book, and we'll see how you get on. Let's trade blows, so I can assign you to a drill group.” He grinned at Arvid's expression. “Small grange, was it, there in Ifoss? Most men aren't Girdish there, I know. Here we're full every night, and we have groups according to skill.”

Cedlin was indeed more skilled with staff and blade than Porfur had been, though not Arvid's equal with the long blade. “You say you practiced with the Duke's Company—or whatever they call it now?”

“Fox Company, Marshal,” Arvid said. “Count Arcolin's taken the same insignia. But I did not practice with them all the time.”

“You're strong, agile, excellent with a long blade, but you need more practice with the staff and in formation,” Cedlin said. “I think you'll fit into Yeoman-Marshal Vallan's group, and you can meet him tonight. Your group will drill tomorrow. You'll hear the bell; Pia complains sometimes that it knocks a flask off the bar in the Loaf.”

N
ext morning, Arvid saw the boy dash across the street and into the grange—already greeting several other children also running in—and headed up the hill. Scribes had a long room with desks in rows. He was early, as he'd meant to be; a senior scribe greeted him, showed him his desk, and then went off to stand by the door. Arvid's desk already had a stack of papers held down with a round stone, and another stack of fresh sheets, an inkstick, and a hollow stone with water already in it. He looked at the notes. They were arranged in order, the earliest on top.

By midday, his fingers were cramped, his neck hurt, and he had worked his way through the first stack and a second one the senior scribe brought him. He also knew a lot more about the workings of the Fellowship of Gird. The Marshal-General—who wrote a crabbed, squarish hand—had taken notes at every meeting she attended. Conferences, they were called, on the education of junior yeoman, the education of non-Girdish children in grange programs, the correct order of business at grange meetings, the allocation of grange relief, the standardization of burial guild practices … and more. Legal issues relating to the appearance of mage powers in those not known to be of magelord blood. Mage powers? Had blood magery come to Fintha?

He shook out his fingers, massaged his neck, and then approached the senior scribe. “To whom should I take the work I've finished?”

“You are working for the Marshal-General—I can take them to her office for you, but you could take them yourself.”

“I will, gladly,” Arvid said.

She was not in her office—at some other meeting, he supposed—and he left two stacks on her desk: the notes and the report.

Young Arvid was already in the inn and halfway through a hunk of cheese and bread when Arvid came in. Arvid paused in the door to look at him. Healthy, strong, lithe, and energetic. Happy, from the look on his face. When he caught sight of Arvid, he grinned around his mouthful of food. Arvid went to the table, and Pia immediately brought over another plate.

“I can write my name!” the boy said. “Look!” He moved his finger on the table.

“Very good,” Arvid said.

“I can already say the Ten Fingers—I learned that back in Valdaire—but now I can learn to write them. And some of what we do is drill things, with hauks. They're heavy.”

“For a boy your size, yes.”

“Geddes says I will get stronger fast with good food. And I met a boy named Brok; he has red hair, and his father is a farrier. I told him I had a horse—well, that you did—and he said if it needed shoes to come to his father. And a girl named Piri, she's the fastest runner of all of us.” He gulped down a swallow of water. “How was your morning?”

“Interesting,” Arvid said. “But I'm glad not to be doing scribe's work all afternoon. Let's explore the city, shall we? I have drill tonight, and I need to walk the kinks out of my back and legs.”

That walk through the streets of Fin Panir—down to the river and the gate to the River Road through which he'd ridden more than a year ago—made clear to him how he'd changed. Fin Panir was smaller than Valdaire or Vérella and tidier than both. Most people wore something blue—shirts, aprons, head scarves, belts—but other colors also. The money changers in their Guildhouse, where Arvid went to change his remaining Aarenisian coins to Finthan, wore black gowns and stiff white collars, as they did everywhere, with only a blue band around one sleeve, but most merchants in the shops he explored wore shirt and trousers like everyone else.

Those things were the same as before, but the looks people gave to a man in similar clothes, with a lad at his side, were very different from the looks he'd had when walking through the city alone, wearing thieves' black; they saw no danger in him now. Once that would have bothered him; he'd liked being seen as mysterious and dangerous. Now he enjoyed the friendly smiles, the nods, the acceptance.

It's not so bad to have friends.

He managed not to jerk. This was not a crisis … was it? No answer. In the next small market, fruit lay displayed in baskets: summer apples, cherries, plums, the late summer berries. Young Arvid's eyes rounded at the sight. Arvid bought a handbasket of cherries for them; young Arvid ate four to Arvid's one. Then it was time to climb back up the hill to their inn and supper.

Drill here, so near the training hall for the Knights of Gird and paladins, was more advanced than in Fossnir. As he'd been warned, the grange was almost full—and this was only part of the grange membership. They began with a recitation of the Ten Fingers—even Marshal Porfur had done that once a tenday—but then Marshal Cedlin began asking one or another to give an example of that rule in real life. After that, drill with Yeoman-Marshal Vallan began.

The yeomen were much more precise—and the drills more complicated—than those in Ifoss, more like the soldiers of Fox Company. Arvid's arms trembled when they stopped; the next drill, he discovered, was a run in formation through the streets: down the hill to the River Road gate and back up, chanting as they went. Theirs was not the only such group, he saw as they went down the hill. He had no idea how many granges were in Fin Panir, but at least a half dozen groups were in the streets, running down, up, or around a market square.

By the time his group made it back up the hill, he was winded and drenched in sweat. He wondered if he'd be able to keep up with this every few days. Vallan called him over. “You did well for your first drill,” he said. “Marshal says you rode up from Aarenis, so making that run surprised me, to be sure. You're working as a scribe—if you'll take my advice, you'll spend two glasses a day, at least, in exercise.”

“I … will…” Arvid said, still breathless. “We went today … up and down…”

“Very good. Geddes wanted to speak to you about your son … he's over there.”

Geddes, his once-dark hair at least half gray, turned from the woman he'd been talking to and greeted Arvid. “That boy of yours is eager to learn and well mannered,” he said. “I wouldn't waste paper on his scribbling now, but if you could manage a slate for him, he could practice.”

“I'll do that,” Arvid said.

T
hat set the pattern: mornings in the Marshal-General's service as a scribe, afternoons with his son, evenings either at drill or studying the Code of Gird as Marshal Cedlin handed out one chapter after another. After he had copied out the Marshal-General's notes from the meetings, she started him copying notes brought back from Luap's Stronghold. Though he knew from the casual chat of other scribes that the conference on magery was still going on, he heard no more details. Whatever was written there did not come across his desk.

To his surprise, Arvid found both the Code and the material from Kolobia fascinating. What he was learning about the history of the Fellowship, what he saw in the Code of Gird and the papers from the distant stronghold, all showed Gird the founder to be very different from the image he'd had in his mind for years. Not, for one thing, the insufferably perfect model farmer he'd been told about and not a dull clod, either, from the increasing sophistication of the Code of Gird. He learned that Luap's version of Gird's life hadn't pleased some of his followers—including Gird's daughter. Arvid hadn't thought of Gird as having a daughter, and he wondered what she'd looked like. And Gird had had other children, who disappeared in the war that made him famous.

Luap, Arvid decided after delving into his writings, was an idiot. He took that opinion to the senior scribe, Doullan. “Why did Gird put up with him?” he asked. “Look at this letter—”

“I've seen it.” Doullan rubbed a hand over his bald head. “Arvid, you write a beautiful hand, but you're young in the Fellowship. Luap was revered for years—”

“And he's so hungry for power, I can smell it all these hundreds since.”

“What makes you so sure?”

What made him sure was a lifetime in the Thieves' Guild, where ambition was controlled only by force … as his own had been and as he had controlled others. But the Marshal-General had asked him not to discuss his background. “Experience,” he said blandly. “I've run across that type before.”