Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar

people in all of those but her room, and anybody might poke a head into her room at any moment to see if she was there, what she was doing, how she was feeling. And she thought she might hit the next person she saw.

So since she couldn’t do anything else right today, Aellele figured she’d add trespassing to her list of sins, transgressions, and general total failures and go break in to one of the classrooms. It wasn’t exactly breaking in—since they weren’t locked—but she knew perfectly well that Trainees weren’t supposed to be in them outside of class hours. She blocked Tases out of her mind as well as she could (which wasn’t very, but she didn’t think she could bear his sympathy right now, and he was good about giving her privacy) and went off to find the one that was farthest from ... anywhere.

Her penmanship had always been good (one of the reasons that getting lectured this morning on a paper too messy to turn in had hurt so much), and one of the joys of coming to the Collegium had been having as much fresh paper to use and almost as much time to write as she wanted. Recopying the pages was actually soothing (an essay on the history of the evolution of the Karsite religion, another one on the system of tithes and land taxes in the Jaysong Hills), and once she was done, she could crumple up the oil-spotted pages and toss them into the nearest stove. Then there’d be nothing left to show what had happened today. Oh, except for the fact that she’d broken the hairbrush Saraceth had given her as a special present when she’d left home just because she couldn’t hold onto her temper any better than if she were a two-year-old child.

She looked up in surprise when the door opened, but the man coming in wasn’t anybody she recognized.

It was a long-standing joke around the Collegium that Kailyon had been here so long that they should just give him Whites and have done. Kailyon didn’t mind the teasing. He was never going to wear Whites—no Herald he—but you didn’t need to wear Herald White (nor Healer Green, nor Bard Scarler, nor even Mage Yellow) to serve. And he was proud of the work that he did here, for it was vital.

For every Herald (and Healer and Bard and Mage) and Trainee at the Collegium there were dozens of servants whose only task was to make it possible for those others to concentrate on their work. Some of the tasks were common to the four Schools and invisible (like the laundry), and some were specific to just one (like the small army of grooms who cared for the Companions when their Heralds could not, and in many cases, taught young Trainees who had never seen a horse—much less a Companion—what to do to keep their new friends comfortable), and some were similar in each of the schools but were managed separately (Bard or Mage or Healer or Herald, one must eat, but it was far more efficient to have separate kitchens and staffs for each). It was both an honor and a privilege to be in service at the Collegium, and it was a point of friendly dispute between the Collegium’s servants and the Crown’s servants (one that would never truly be settled) as to which staff held the more honored post. Certainly service to the Crown of Valdemar called for uttermost loyalty and uttermost discretion, but such qualities were required of those who served in the Collegium as well—from the lowliest laundress to the lofty and rarefied Collegium Seneschal, who was in charge of all of who served within the walls of the Collegium.

Such as Kailyon.

Kailyon had come to Haven as a child barely five years of age, gaunt and big-eyed and carried across a Herald’s saddle, brought to Haven along with news of sickness and a failed well. His earliest memories were of blue leather and silver bells, and of the world as it looked from the height of a Companion’s saddle, and the years after that were happy ones spent growing up in the household of one of the Collegium’s grooms. It was no surprise to anyone that he would seek to serve among those who had loved him and cared for him. And so he had, through King Sendar’s reign and into Queen Selenay’s, and if he was fortunate, he would continue to serve for many years yet.

Like most of the servants at the Collegium, Kailyon was an invisible presence to the Trainees. Some of them had grown up in houses filled with servants. Others had been servants, or been destined to be servants, before they had come here. It didn’t matter, since once they donned their Grays, all were equal within these walls. Though many of his fellow servants often grumbled—and loudly—about how completely they were ignored by the students (“They treat us as if we were furniture!” was a complaint he often heard), Kailyon never thought so. The business of turning a citizen of Valdemar into a Herald was a demanding task, and it left the young students little time to focus on anything else, and if they did not (for the most part) precisely notice the servants who made sure that their lives were comfortable and well organized, neither did any of them—from highest-born noble to orphan child of the streets—ever abuse the Collegium servants. That would be grounds for correction swift and stern, from teachers, senior students, and their Companions alike.

As for a greater recognition, well, over the years, some of those who had begun simply as anonymous bodies in Trainee Gray ricocheting in-and-out of Kailyon’s orbit (for if he and his fellow servants were anonymous to them, well, the young Trainees were just as anonymous to the Collegium servants, really) had gone on to become friends, and Kailyon had followed the news of their lives as they exchanged Trainee’s Grays for Herald’s Whites, had greeted them with pleasure when they sought him out upon their returns to Haven—for the Collegium was home to the Heralds as well as school for the Trainees—and on a few sad occasions had heard it whispered that someone’s Companion had returned—alone—to seek rest and healing within the Grove, and hearing the name of the Companion, knew that he had lost a friend.

In his youth (decades gone now) Kailyon had fetched and carried heavy loads, rebuilt toppled walls, and dealt with every matter that a strong back and a strong arm could serve. If those feats were beyond his grasp now, he was not quite useless (as he had told Master Seneschal not two years past), nor was he ready for his pipe and his pension and his mug of beer in one of the rest houses that the Collegium kept for those of its servants who had no families to go to. Not yet. Dust fell as surely as rain, and boots left scuff marks, and woodwork needed polishing, and that was work a man could do and be proud of the doing. If it was not so fine and grand as serving as a groom in the Companion’s stables, nor a thing where the absence of his labor would be noted instantly (as it would did he toil in kitchen or the pantry), it was still honest, necessary work, and Kailyon had lived and worked among Heralds long enough to know that there was no need to be noticed or praised or thanked for doing what needed to be done.

It wasn’t arduous work by any means. A wing of classrooms to keep clean, and the Library as well, and while the Library was a full night’s task that couldn’t fairly be started until after the students were out of it, old bones kept late hours, and Kailyon did not mind laboring through the long, quiet hours when others were abed. Truth be told, he liked the solitude, the time to spend with his own thoughts. Each new Trainee who came to the Heralds’ Collegium was both a puzzle for the present and a promise to the future. Some of them were children barely older than Kailyon had been when he had come, some of them were verging on adulthood. All uncertain, in one way or another, about what the future might hold and what their place in it would be. Over the years, he’d seen so many of them—from skittish, wide-eyed arrivals to equally skittish, young Heralds departing on their first Circuits—and they all had one thing in common: the fierce determination to be worthy of the trust being placed in them.

As soon as he opened the door to the next room on his cleaning schedule this night, he saw the glow of the lantern at the back of the room (heard the faint mortified squeak and the rustle of papers, too) and knew he wasn’t alone. No point to asking, “Who’s there?” as if he were a panicky grandmam hearing imaginary housebreakers in the night. If nothing else, the Companions would stop someone who shouldn’t be here before they even got onto the grounds, and though these days, the younger servants entertained themselves by scaring themselves sick with tales about what the Mages might do if one had a mind to, what Kailyon was pretty sure of was that what the Mages did do was make the Collegium safer. So he merely took his large lantern off the cart and hung it up on the hook by the door and opened its doors.

If it were merely a regular lantern, holding a candle or burning oil, it would hardly be enough to light his work. But it held, instead, a spell of Mage-light, and so when it was opened, it cast a glow bright enough for him to work by. Certainly it cast enough light for him to see who was here that oughtn’t be.

It was just as he’d figured. Sharp-boned and big-eyed, and here long enough to have Grays that had been made for her, but not long enough to have gotten herself to the point where she wouldn’t stare round-eyed at a lantern full of Mage-light.

There was silence for the space of several heartbeats while the child stared at him as if he were seventy Karsite demons in one skin. She knew full well she oughtn’t be here, and up to no more mischief than seeking out a quiet place to study, if that inkwell and pile of papers was any indication.

“It will be a nice change to have company,” Kailyon said mildly, and set to his work as if she weren’t