Redoubt (17 page)

And when you got married or you started sleeping together, weren’t there always babies?

That part made him absolutely panic. He didn’t know anything about babies. The mine-kiddies
always turned up able to take care of themselves—as far as he knew, he was the only
one that had ever arrived not able to do that. He couldn’t even
imagine
the responsibility of having a baby! He sometimes felt as if he was hardly more than
a kiddie himself now, how could he
ever
expect to guide and take care of a baby?

And what was Amily expecting out of him, anyway? What did she have in mind when she
thought about being married to someone? What sorts of responsibilities did she expect
him to take on? What sorts of things did she expect him to do for her? And what was
she looking for? Did she want those breathless, crazy, excited feelings? Was she getting
them now? Was she figuring he could somehow conjure them up? Oh, he could probably
read her mind and find out . . . which would be wrong, so wrong it wasn’t even a temptation,
much. But without reading her mind, he was left pretty much in the dark.

Really, truly, seriously unfair of Dallen to leave him floundering like this . . .

Maybe I actually should talk to them actors and get some lessoning in what ladies
like.
The actors, even the old ones, all gray-haired and going a little soft, still got
plenty of ladies. They weren’t the ones doing the courting, either. Whatever it was
that they knew, Mags dearly wished he had some books about it.

Poetry was no help at all, really, except to make him more certain that he was doing
something wrong. The stuff in the poetry just made him feel so awkward he started
to stammer. The Herald who taught poetry seemed to think it was all something he called
“metaphor” and that all the feelings stuff was just meant to represent something else,
which really just did not sound right.

And the one time he’d brought it up to a Healer he didn’t know, thinking that with
a stranger he’d get something good and honest, he got a lecture on husbandry he could
have just as well given back, seeing as he’d practically grown up in a barnyard and
shared his “bed” with a lot of kiddies and a few people who weren’t kiddies and had
no sense that they required privacy for the urges of their bodies. He
knew
all about that part, who was to put what where, and what it all sounded and looked
like. And even though at the time it had seemed like a waste of energy to him, now
that he thought back on it, well, it did make him want to put
that
part of himself . . .

Well, that wasn’t the sort of feelings that the poetry talked about. It was more like
Dallen when he was competing with Rolan for a mare.

Which wasn’t bad, but . . . that wasn’t what you were supposed to have a marriage
over. And he did at least know one thing: That was lust, not love. Not that lust was
bad, but . . .

Why does this stuff have to be so complicated?

The bell over the door jangled, and one of the regular customers came in—not one of
the thieves, but someone who used the shop
as
a pawnbroker. A carpenter who had been out of work for a while, his tools were the
only thing that stood between him and having his family starve. When he couldn’t get
work, he pawned them and took whatever odd jobs he could get until more work came
up. That was how close people around here were to disaster—having to put up the things
that gave them a livelihood just to keep food in their mouths.

He came to put down another little payment that would keep his tools from being sold
until he could redeem them. Mags nodded at him and opened the drawer that held the
individual account books and found the right one. When he opened it, he found a note
in it from Nikolas.

Give him his tools. Tell him there was a mistake, and he’s redeemed them as of today.
Then tell him to check with Father Poul—the Guard was so tickled with the way he beat
Bear’s father that they raised enough money for an extension to the Temple. There
will be work there for him. And I have had a word with Father Poul; if he does good
honest work, he’ll be kept on to learn from their Master woodworker. The old man’s
hands aren’t up to the job anymore.

Well, that was just like Nikolas; any chance he had to make an honest man’s life a
little better, he went out of his way to arrange.

“Huh,” Mags said, and shrugged. “Note here from the boss, says you’re redeemin’ yer
tools t’day. Some kinda mistake, guess he was overchargin’ ye or summat, so ye don’
owe past this last payment.”

He pulled the couple of copper coins over into the cash drawer, then went to get the
carpenter’s chest of tools. It was a nice one, but it should be, since such a chest
provided a display of the carpenter’s skill. Nothing fancy though, no inlay work or
carvings.

Well, that was going to change, if he was up to it. A Master woodworker had all sorts
of skills, and more skill meant more and better jobs. There must not have been anyone
at the Temple with the inclination or ability for the old man to pass on his heritage,
for him to be willing to teach someone outside the brotherhood.

Mags unlocked and unbarred the door and handed over the chest. The carpenter took
it with a face full of happiness, his hands almost caressing the wood. “Didja hear
’bout that buildin’ that’s goin’ on over at Temple of Rusal?” Mags asked casually.
“Puttin’ in either a new wing or a second floor, I ferget which, an’ they’re gonna
hire outside th’ Temple.”

The carpenter paused. “No?” he said a little doubtfully. “You certain ’bout that?
I’d’a thought I’d’a heard ’bout it afore this . . .”

“Eh, I wouldn’t’ve heard it if it ain’t fer the story that come with it!” With great
relish Mags related the tale of the trouncing of Healer Tyrall, as he himself had
heard it from one of the Constables. The tale had grown in the telling.

In fact, the tale had grown to a domestic epic.

Take Bear’s father—Healer Tyrall had been painted in the broad strokes of a real villain,
something of a monster, really. According to the story, it wasn’t that Tyrall wanted
Bear home breeding little Healers, it was—

Well, the story went that Bear was some sort of miracle worker with herbs. This, of
course, was a very valuable skill so far as ordinary folk were concerned, because
you couldn’t always get a Healer, but you
could
get hold of a ’pothecary, or, here in Haven, you could go begging up at the Collegium
and get herbal physick for nothing. Quite a number of people down here in Haven actually
knew Bear because of that. Either they’d gotten medicine directly from him, or they’d
benefited from the newly acquired skills of someone he had taught. So people were
inclined to believe what Bear’s own father did not—that his ability with herbs was
a sort of Gift.

Now, according to the story the Constable had told, Healer Tyrall was a venial and
greedy man. This was believable indeed, since even down here, people knew about the
abduction, how Healer Cuburn had venially and greedily sold information to the assassins
about the comings and goings on the Hill, and people knew Cuburn had been Tyrall’s
man.

So it made sense to them that Tyrall was incensed that Bear was tending to the poor
rather than making
him
wealthy by using his skills on the rich.

So they believed the embroidered version, that Tyrall was not only going to break
up the lovers, he was going to drag Bear back to a drafty old tower, lock him in,
and put him to a sort of slave labor making potions for the highborn to keep them
young.

The carpenter listened, rapt. All this was news to him. But he nodded at all the right
places and looked angry at all the right places, which encouraged Mags to believe
that just about everyone that wasn’t actually up on the Hill was going to take this
version at face value.

Tyrall certainly had not done himself any favors by thundering through Haven on horseback
with a troupe of mercenaries in tow. There were lots of witnesses to that . . . and
probably no few people who hadn’t been anywhere near but would swear they had seen
it and, moreover, had seen Tyrall and his flunkies trample children, kittens, and
puppies in his mad race up to the Palace.

At this point, it was Father Poul who became the hero of the story.

According to the story, it was Father Poul who had urged the pair to wed in order
to keep Tyrall from exerting paternal force over his son. It was Father Poul who had
stood at the gate, crook in hand, and took on not only Tyrall but half of his mercenaries,
beating them into submission with nothing more than his crook; and it was Father Poul
who had stoutly defended Bear and Lena to the Collegia, speaking on their behalf for
candlemarks until his voice was scarcely more than a croak.

Father Poul would likely never recognize himself.

“Anyroad, Guard figgered any’un thet would do all thet must’ve got god-touched or
somethin’, plus the Healer-boy helped them out a powerful lot over the past couple
years, so they raised the pelf fer some more work on th’ Temple,” Mags concluded.
This last was the only unvarnished truth. The Guard had so much admiration for the
crusty old priest that they decided he needed to be rewarded, and since he wouldn’t
accept a reward for himself, they donated it to an expansion of the Temple of Rusal.
Father Poul could scarcely turn
that
down, after all. “Reckon there’s gonna be work there.”

“I reckon there is, since I ain’t heard about it yet, an’ that means prolly no one
else’ll get there afore me,” the carpenter said with glee. “Thenkee, Harkon!”

Mags closed and locked the door, dropped the bar across it, went to the window, and
made a disparaging noise. “Eh, don’t thank me, make some money an’ come back ‘ere
and pick up that set’a wood chisels ol’ man Greyer went an’ left ’ere when ’e died
wi’out payin’ it out!” He spat. “I ain’t gonna hear the last of that outa the boss
until summun buys th’ damned things, an’ I’m likelier t’get King’s Own comin’ through
that door than summun what does fancy carvin’.”

The carpenter laughed. “I might just do thet,” he agreed, and he hurried out the door.
It was early enough in the evening that the Temple would still be a hive of activity,
and unless Mags was very much mistaken, the man was going to present himself and his
chest of tools as someone in need of work before the night got much older.

Mags went back to musing. The bell jangled again, but this time it was neither a thief
nor a regular customer. Instead, it was a fellow who nodded at Mags, passed by the
used clothing and old linens, the heavy items that would take a very determined man
indeed to steal, and went browsing among the trinkets and small items meant for ladies.
Or at least, what passed for ladies in this part of town. When the choice was go hungry
or without a bed or to look for someone willing to buy a few moments of sex, well . . .
you survived how you could, around here. And that didn’t mean that someone, somewhere,
wouldn’t want to give you a present, no matter who your legs had been wrapped around
last week.

In the mathematics of survival, if there was someone willing to pay for something
you had, you sold it, and there was no shame on either side.

Some of the trinkets were, quite frankly, stolen—usually the kerchiefs and scarves
of finer quality fabric than was affordable by the folk of these streets and the metal
jewelry with paste jewels. Some was not. There were bits of jewelry carved of wood,
river shell, bone or common stone that was honest work. Among the ornaments were necklaces
he was actually a little proud of that he himself had made, round horsehair braids
with a single pretty bead strung on them. He picked out the beads from the broken
stuff the Weasel had taken in, things that didn’t have a full set to remake into a
necklace. These pieces, like the others, were not valuable enough to lock up, but
they were good enough to make a girl feel special—and well made enough to make her
feel special for a good long time. And just as important, they were new. People down
here didn’t see much that was new, they couldn’t afford it. Give a girl from here
a brand new necklace, and she’d feel like Princess Lydia.

Mags was the one who braided those necklaces, a skill he had learned thanks to Dallen.
Companion-hair braids were sought-after tokens among the friends of Heralds and Trainees.
The first Midwinter he’d been here at the Collegium, he’d despaired of coming up with
presents for his friends, and Dallen had gone into his head and patiently taught him
how to make the tight, intricate braids to fashion into necklets, bracelets, bookmarks,
and even a set of falcon jesses. The same skill worked equally well on horsehair,
and since reading while he was in the shop was out of the question, making the necklaces
kept him from being bored to death. With a pretty bead strung on them, they looked
very nice indeed.

What would make Amily feel special? If there was anyone who had
no
need of any more Companion-hair anything, it was Amily.

When it came right down to it, there wasn’t much he
could
give Amily. She had virtually everything she needed. If she
wanted
anything, she never showed it and had never actually told him.

“Why do they
have
t’be so complicated?” he sighed, staring at the necklaces, and he didn’t realize
he had spoken aloud until the potential customer looked up, startled.

“What?” the man said.

Mags sighed again.
“Wimmen,”
he replied.

“You said it, brother,” the customer agreed fervently, and they shared a look of complete
understanding and universal brotherhood that, in that moment, crossed the barriers
of merchant and customer, Trainee and citizen, privileged and poor, boy and man.

They both enjoyed it for a good long moment, and finally Mags was the one who broke
the spell.