Changing the World: All-New Tales of Valdemar

“Well, and the reports had generally come from the husband, but when we interviewed the wives . . .” Herald Callan blushed, visible even in the firelight. “Let’s just say that they were less than happy. They were able to rationalize that he had taken the things to remember them by, when they each thought she were the only one. When we let it be known that this was far from the case . . .” He shook his head. “The spouses, of course, had no idea and had reported the items stolen independently. Most everyone assumed that it was a tinker or a gypsy or the like.”

“We haven’t enlightened the partners,” the younger Herald said, with a quirk of his lips. “That would be adding insult to injury.”

She unclenched her jaw. “I still don’t see what this has to do with me,” she replied stiffly.

They exchanged glances again. The elder cleared his throat awkwardly. “We were hoping you would come with us.”

At this point, her emotions had been up and down so often her reaction was less rage and more incredulity. “You people are insane,” she finally said, flatly. “Why in the name of everything considered holy would I want to do that?” Before they could answer her, she continued on. “I have a commission to finish. I have two more to start. This is how I pay for my food, my chopped wood, my wool. No one is going to give me these things.”

She didn’t mention that she had a very tidy sum tucked away safe and that if she wanted to, she could probably live on it for several years without taking another commission. In the first place, that was none of their business. In the second place, that was meant in case she became ill or injured or otherwise incapacitated. And in the third place, it was none of their damn business.

“And what makes you think I can or will do anything more than you can?” She leveled the most evil glare she could manage at them.

“We thought because you knew him best—” Herald Callan began.

“Well, I didn’t know he was sleeping with half the village women and stealing their valuables, and I didn’t know that he never intended to marry me, so I obviously didn’t know him very well, did I?” The bitterness in her words was so palpable that both of them winced. “Thank you for telling me the truth about him. You can leave now. No—wait—”

She got up and stalked to the little chest where she kept her few keepsakes and pulled out a bundle of letters. She didn’t know why she had kept them instead of burning them. Maybe this was why. She thrust them at Callan. “Here. Maybe you can make out something you can use against him.”

The Herald took the letters as gingerly as if they were on fire. “But . . . can you think of what he is likely to actually do? Anything? Anything at all? So far, all we have are complaints from what seem to be random isolated communities—that a Herald Danet comes through, makes a mess of things, and when he’s gone, there are valuables missing. By the time we get the reports, he’s long gone. This has been going on for two years now.”

So, he’d been at it from the moment he’d left her. Oh, she should have known better. Really, she should have known better all along. He was years younger than she was. What handsome young man would ever have been truly interested in a dried up old spinster like her, anyway? It had seemed too good to be true, and so it was.

And that was when the final humiliating thing occurred to her.

Until either he had seduced one too many women, or the wrong woman, or someone was starting to make noise about missing items, he probably had intended to marry her. After all, she was making fine money. And she would have demanded very little of him. He could have gone right on sleeping with anyone he cared to, and she wouldn’t have noticed. Or if she had, a few sweet words of contrition from him and she would have forgiven him. Over and over and over.

And meanwhile, he would have been living better than anyone in the village while continuing to do as little actual work as possible. As good as he had been at pulling the wool over her eyes, she’d have probably considered it her privilege to support him.

She went hot, then cold, then hot again with shame. Especially when she thought about how often she had daydreamed of the long winter nights they would spend together, cuddled up in each others’ arms by the fire . . .

That was when it occurred to her that there was one thing she knew about him that they probably did not.

“If you can find his trail, it will end at a place where he intends to spend the winter,” she said. “He won’t travel in winter. He hates the cold, the rain, and the snow worse than a cat. That’s all I know. You can get out of here now.”

Reluctantly, they left.

Unfortunately, they did not take what they’d put into her head with them.

If it had been daylight, she could have lost herself in her weaving. Instead, she picked up her knitting; the needles flew at a furious pace, but they could not still her thoughts.

It had been bad enough when she had thought he had just gotten tired of her. When she had been left to wonder if she really was that dull, that stupid, truly unable to comprehend what being a Herald was all about.

It was worse now. She really had been stupid, but in an entirely different way. She’d been manipulated. Made a fool of. Now she knew the reason for the pitying glances she sometimes caught from some women in the village. All this time she’d thought it was pity for having been jilted.

Oh, no.

It was pity for being such a fatuous fool as to believe a handsome young man could ever want her. All those women that Danet Stens had slept with had felt the superior sort of pity that you do for someone who doesn’t know she’s living in a fool’s dream.

Well, I got the last laugh, she thought bitterly. Now all of them know they were played for fools too. It didn’t help.

Mother probably guessed. Or at least she guessed that Danet was only interested in the money I made.

That would be about right.

Finally, as the fire burned down, and the thoughts in her head would not stop buzzing about like angry hornets, she realized that she was not going to get any sleep, any sleep at all, without help.

She went to the cupboard and got out the little bottle the Healer had given her for her mother, to help her through the bad nights. She carefully measured out the right number of drops into a cup of lukewarm tea and drank it down. She had expected it to be bitter, but it had a kind of blossomy taste. Strange but pleasant. She went back to her chair and put away her knitting, noting sardonically that anger was good for one thing, at least. She’d finished the panel. She’d bind it off in the daylight and start another. Firelight was no good for binding off; you were asking for dropped stitches.

As she did every night, she carefully hung her clothing on the chair next to the bed, the bed that her grandparents, and then her mother, had slept in—though the mattress had been made new for her mother in her last year. She got into a flannel nightrail. The nights were turning cold now. Fall was not far off. If those damned Heralds did their job properly, they’d find the wretch soon.

She got into the warm goosedown bed and wondered what he was doing right now. Probably getting into an equally warm goosedown bed with a pretty, plump woman who was someone else’s wife. Not a thin, ugly stick like her.

She fell into strange confused dreams in which the Heralds and Danet chased each other around and around a copse of trees, until the snow fell and a trio of beautiful women came and carried him off on a flying sheep. All three of the women laughed and pointed at her as they flew away. She woke up feeling entirely out of sorts. For the first time that she could recall, ever, she was so very out of sorts that she didn’t want to work on her tapestry.

Instead, she decided that she wasn’t going to get any creative work done, she might as well give the place a thorough cleaning. She did have the very bad habit of leaving things she knew she would want later piled up next to her chair, beside the bed, or on the table. She hadn’t organized the yarn since spring. For that matter, she hadn’t done more than give the place a cursory sweep and dust since spring.

She spent the morning turning things inside out. The floor got a scrubbing, the mattress was turned, aired and the bed remade, the blankets all came down out of winter storage and got a good wash. Every surface got a scouring. She reorganized the yarn properly. She stacked all the rectangles of knitting in order on a little table