Redoubt (16 page)

Finally, Bear spoke, and his voice was cold. “I don’t know this man,” he said. “It
is true that we share a name, but there are many Tyralls in this Kingdom, and no one
I would call Father would ever act in this foolish and treasonable manner. I declare
he is of no relation to me. It’s of no consequence what he says about me, and as for
his insults to my wife, well—”

Bear looked at Lena, who raised her chin. “The Companion isn’t concerned with what
a donkey says about her. Nor is the eagle in the least bothered about the insults
of the foolish cricket. If you listen to dogs barking, and believe what they say,
then you have only yourself to blame for getting upset.”

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

M
ags 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.