Intrigues

THE Heraldic Archives proved to be the best place for Mags to go to get away from suspicious glances, for more reasons than one. As he had already known, almost no one came up there. The Archive room was above the Heralds’ Wing, and no matter what their feelings were, Heralds had very disciplined minds and tended to not leak any surface thoughts. That made any place around the Heralds’ Wing a very peaceful venue for someone like him. Proximity was everything when it came to what he picked up; the closer someone was, physically, the easier it was for him to “hear” them.

And third? Well, third was Amily.

It seemed that Amily did not spend her time up in the Archives merely to get some privacy. Amily was helping to put the Archives in order.

When Mags left Bear and Lena, he decided that he’d take advantage of Amily’s little warm corner and get some more studying done. But when he opened the door on the Archives, instead of finding them deserted, he found all the lamps lit, and a very young fellow in Royal livery shelving several volumes under Amily’s direction. “Over there,” she was saying, as he carried what looked just like one of the boxes that the Guard reports were kept in. “Third shelf from the rear, south side, you’ll see the one right before it up on the shelf where you put it two days ago.” She made a little note.

“Hullo!” he called, startling both of them. Amily’s eyes lit up.

“Mags!” she said, and waved him over. “Mags, this is under-Archivist Jonson; he’s on loan to me from the Royal Library.”

The young man was very young on closer inspection. He couldn’t have been much older than fourteen; he was, however, extraordinarily tall. “More like a jumped-up page,” the lad said. “I’m good for reaching the top shelves. But I want to be an Archivist, and I’ll shelve stuff forever if that is what it takes.”

Amily smiled. “Very good at it you are, Jonson.” She spread her hands. “And this is what I do. Everyone needs a job, after all, and since I’m a Herald’s daughter, I’m probably the best one to know how to organize things here.”

“I kin see thet,” Mags nodded. “An’—say, why don’t I give ye a hand? I don’ have heaps of time, but what I got, ye kin hev.”

“Would you?” Amily asked, her face transformed by a smile.

“ ’Course. Jest tell me whatcha want.”

What she needed, it appeared, was for him to sort through piles of reports that had gotten muddled, either because they had been put back wrong or because someone had just tossed all the records in a box and shoved them up on the shelf. That had happened a lot. Amily wanted things to be as organized and tidy as they were in the Guard or Royal Archives.

So Mags would give the reports a cursory skim, and determine who had written them, and sort them by author. Then he’d go back and sort each author pile by date. Then he would actually identify the major events in each sorted pile, mark those on the outside of the box along with the author and the start and end date and major area of the circuit, and that was how they would be filed. First, by the geographic location of the circuit, then by date within that location, and last of all by the name of the Herald. Or Heralds, because often as not, it was the Herald and one or more of the Herald’s Trainees. This was the old way, the way that was supposed to work so well.

Just skimming the reports, Mags found out that it didn’t work all that well. It looked like the Heralds had to come to the rescue of their Trainees a great deal. Things that would have been minor problems here at the Collegium turned into much bigger problems when they were out there with—

Well, with no one to help.

Usually the situation wasn’t really hazardous. Usually. Nine times out of ten it was something stupid, something they made a mistake about and mucked up whatever it was that they were supposed to be fixing. And nine times out of ten the Herald would sort things out.

But it took time, it delayed things, and to be honest, it made the Heralds look—

:It makes us look bad.:

:Aye, it do. Makes ye look... like ye cain’t even keep yerselves sorted, so how kin ye sort out th’ problems yer supposed to?:

Oh yes.

:You might want to keep that thought for the next time that someone tries to claim how much better the old system was.:

:Already thunk of that.: He pondered that a moment more, and turned his attention back to helping Amily.

Already she had made a lot of headway, and he found himself feeling ridiculously proud of her. The chaos wasn’t going to get resolved quickly—and it was going to need some serious tending to, given that there was no one to keep a stern eye on things all the time the way that the Guard Archivists did.

But by the time he had to go off for class, he and Amily had made up another box, and young Jonson had shelved two rows of books again.

The Kirball practices were going well, at least for the South Team. They’d progressed to the stage of not only catching and throwing the ball, but hitting it with their paddles. Those who were supposed to try and catch it now had heavily padded gloves to spare their hands. Only one of the other teams had someone with Fetching Gift on it, and they had decided that the easiest way to deal with a “Fetcher,” was to have Mags “shout” at him with Mindspeech, breaking his concentration.

For the rest, it was all coordination. They practiced patterns, riding and afoot, throwing the ball to each other, and then as one or another split off to gallop downfield, someone standing in the stirrups to give the thing an enormous thwack. And when the ball reached that far off player, he or she would catch it or bat it into the goal They practiced sending the ball shooting across the ground, leaning down of their saddles to smack it with their paddles.

All this was conducted in relative silence, as Mags relayed their orders, the only other sounds being of the ball being hit and the drumming of hooves on sod.

Meanwhile it was also Lena’s turn to face the first big challenge of her Collegium.

All Bardic students had to compete in a twice-yearly contest. There was no excuse that would get you out of it, other than being very ill indeed on the day of the competition.

And Lena was a nervous wreck.

She didn’t have to say why, they all knew; she wasn’t sure whether she was more overwrought about her father showing up, or him not showing up. She agonized about her competition piece—was it too short? Too long? Was it too simple? So complicated it looked as if she was trying to show off? Should she perform something original?

“Do you have anything of yours that is fit to sing for an audience?” Bear asked, as she sat on the floor of the conservatory, surrounded by a half a dozen music manuscripts.

“Yes! No! I don’t know!” she wailed.

“Then sing something that ain’t yers,” Mags advised. “It ain’t as if ye ain’t gonna have more of these things t’ perform at. So go easy fer the first one, eh?”

“But—!” she exclaimed, but never got past the word. Instead, she picked up and put down each of the songs in turn.

Finally Mags got weary of it. “Come out of there,” he ordered, giving her his hand. “Leave them things on floor. We’ll settle this for ye.”

Bewildered, she took his hand and got up. He handed her off to Bear, who walked her over to a chair and made her sit down.

He looked around and finally picked up a bit of broken pot. Closing his eyes, he tossed it straight up to the ceiling. It landed on the floor with a clatter, then bounced about and ended up on one of the music manuscripts.

He picked the manuscript up and handed it to Lena.

“There,” he said firmly. “Tha’s it. Tha’s what ye’ll do.”

“But—”