Intrigues

other captives being held for ransom.

There were but three of these living, and two dead. The woman gave us to know that when the fighting began, one of the brigands was dispatched to the chamber to slay the captives, but the captives rallied and fell upon him. In the scuffle, two were slain before the brigand himself fell beneath a rain of blows and kicks.

The two dead were a woman and a man in foreign garb. The woman told us that no one could understand their speech, and they communicated mostly by signs. Their clothing was rich; presumably because of this, the brigands hoped to puzzle out whence they came and demand a ransom. With them was their child, a small boy of perhaps two or three years of age.

There was nothing else of value that could be pointed to as theirs except their clothing. Lacking any other clue, I placed the child with the townsfolk to be dealt with as an orphan without resources. We buried the captives within the chamber that had been their prison.

I then apportioned the loot as follows . . .

Mags stopped reading, the pages falling from his hands. So, there it was. His parents hadn’t been bandits themselves; they’d been captives!

There was nothing whatsoever wrong with his blood. . . .

The dread he had been feeling fell away, leaving behind a succession of emotions. A flash of rage that the Guard Captain should have so callously disposed of a helpless child. A strange grief for his parents who had come so close to being rescued. Frustration, that he still knew so little.

He quickly looked through the rest of the report, but there were no more details about his parents, not even a crude sketch of their “foreign” clothing. There was nothing to say what land they were from, nothing that had been found in the loot, nothing any of the captured brigands or the captives that had been imprisoned with them had said. Nothing at all.

He banged his fist down on the table and swore silently. So little—so little! Their clothing was “rich”—but what did that actually mean? How “rich” was “rich”—and was it “rich” by their own standards or by the standards of a provincial Guard Captain? If someone lived where sables were abundant and easy to trap, a sable coat could be the possession of almost anyone, but here in Valdemar, it would be an item only the wealthiest of highborn could afford.

So in a sense he was back at the beginning again. He knew only now that he was “foreign,” and not a bandit brat.

:I don’t see that it matters,: Dallen observed. :You are still the same person you were before you learned all this.:

Logically it shouldn’t matter to him. But it did. He wanted to know.

Well, he had come to a dead end at this point. Anyone who might have known anything about him was either dead or had long ago forgotten about the nameless child. He wasn’t about to try and find the cave and unearth what might have been left of the bodies just to see if there was a shred of a clue in their garments. Even assuming there was anything left but bones, which was not likely.

He put the report back in the box, and the box back on the shelf. On his way out, he turned over to the Archivist all of the little ribbons that he’d been given to mark where he was doing research.

“Hmm,” the man said, one eyebrow raised. “Find what you needed then?”

“Nossir,” Mags replied with resignation. “But I found all I’m goin’ to.”

Both eyebrows rose. “That has all the sound of a tragic ballad in the making. I’m sorry your excavations into the archives were not as fruitful as you would have liked.”

Mags managed a wan smile. “Well, at least I know I ain’t some bandit brat. Trouble is, that’s ’bout all I know.”

“Perhaps you can elaborate on that,” the Archivist prompted, looking interested.

Mags shrugged. “M’parents musta been caught by bandits. They was dressed good, guess they was bein’ held fer ransom. But nobody understood ’em, and they was dressed foreign, and they was killed when the Guard came after the bandits. An’ that’s what I know.”

“Actually, I can tell you a little more than that,” the Archivist responded. “They cannot have been Rethewellan, Hardornen, nor Karsite. Guard Captains have a smattering of all three languages, and the fashions of those places are either distinct, or very like Valdmaran. I would also suspect they were not Hawkbrothers, nor Shin’a’in, since the Clans are not inclined to leave their own in captivity, and they have ways of knowing where their kinfolk are. Vanyel more or less closed the passage to the North. So that leaves you with beyond Rethwellan as the likeliest.”

Mags blinked. “That’s—far.”

“And it begs the question of why your parents, who must have been traveling alone, came this far. What could possibly have driven them to come to a country where they didn’t even know the language and evidently had neither friends nor contacts? Because you may rest assured, if foreigners who did have friends or contacts went missing in Valdemar, the Heralds, the Guard, and ultimately the Crown would know about it and be looking for them.”

Mags felt that dread creeping back over him. The only reason he could think of was that they were running from something. “So mebbe I still am some kinda bad blood . . .” he said slowly.

But the Archivist only snorted. “Actually, I can think of a much better reason for running into a strange land, if one was young and foolish, as I presume both of them were.”

“What’ d that be, sir?” He held his breath, hoping for a sort of reprieve.

The old man shook his head. “One of the oldest stories there is, of course. They were in love, and their parents disapproved. And their parents were wealthy or powerful enough that only by fleeing far past the borders of their own land could they escape the long reach of parental authority.”

Mags blinked. “You think?” he ventured.

The old man shrugged. “I have known many young lovers, and most were fools,” he replied with more than a touch of cynicism. “Make of that what you will. I am sorry that you did not find all that you were looking for, Trainee, and I thank you for your courteous treatment of the Archival records.”

Well, that was a dismissal if ever he had heard one. Mags nodded, and trudged out the door and back to the Collegium buildings and his room at the stables.

Both Bear and Lena were out—at classes for the latter, probably, and off tending someone for the former— so he left them brief notes outlining what he had found.

:Look on the bright side,: said Dallen. :Now you won’t have to spend time going through those boxes anymore.:

“I suppose,” he said aloud.

:Well now that you know, maybe this will unearth some sort of memory for you. Maybe a word or two in your parents’ language, or a memory of what they looked like.:

“That don’t seem likely. I’d’a thought I’d’a remembered somethin’ like that afore this.”

:Maybe not. Memory is a funny thing. You know... smell tends to trigger it.:

“But if I cain’t remember what m’parents smelled like, I cain’t exactly trigger one, can I?” he objected.

:Not what they smelled like. The caves.:

Huh. Now that Dallen mentioned it... he did seem to get nightmares more back at the mine when the sleeping hole got mucked out and the smell was more of damp, cold earth than it was of rotting straw and filthy children.

“I’ll see if I kin ’member one of m’old nightmares,” he said, finally. “Don’ think I wanta bring ’em on me again. Useta wake up screamin’, an’ I reckon none of the Companion’s’d thank me fer screamin’ m’lungs out in middle of the night.”

:Hmm. You are probably right. So what are you going to do?:

“Right now?” Actually—he kind of wanted to take his mind off all of this, and let it rest for a moment. And he had a good idea what would do that. “Right now—I think I’m’a gonna find out about this Kirball.”

Chapter 5

:HERALD Setham,: Dallen said, instantly, and with