Changes

quarreling all day, Lena and Bear and Amily wouldn’t even turn up at the same meals as he did, and the drain of the heat and the headache would build all day long. He’d go to a fretful sleep feeling just a little sick from it.

Nevertheless, he was absolutely determined not to end up moping and hiding with Dallen in Companion’s Field.

Besides... he wouldn’t be that alone out there. Trainees and their Companions were camped out all over the wretched place. He kind of resented whoever it was that had staked out the chapel in the middle; it had stone floors. Though it was said to be haunted by Tylendel’s ghost, at this point he was thinking a ghost just might be better company than some of the living.

He had already found out the same day what Lena had been doing, closeted with Dean Lita; there had been plenty of people listening avidly when Marchand was called in, and there were enough who disliked Machand that the story spread, in a great deal of detail, rather quickly. As Mags had rather cynically expected, Marchand claimed that he had been doing his proteges a favor, and they had asked him—indeed, he claimed they had begged him—to use their melodies in his songs. From all reports he went on at great length about how he had taken simplistic little “apprentice tunes, not worthy of a moment’s notice,” and improved them out of all recognition.

Of course... all the proteges he had stolen work from were “conveniently” so far away that without using a Herald to relay the testimony, no one was going to learn the truth soon. Ah, but Marchand had a hidden card to play. He had young Farris brought in to prove his case.

This had not done him the good that he had thought it would—though that might have been because another Bard had taken pains to explain that stealing someone else’s work and claiming it as your own was a serious breach of Bardic ethics. So, perhaps with his hero-worship shaken a bit, Farris must have been less than successful at proving Marchand’s innocence. He did go on at some length that he considered having his tune used by Marchand was an honor he didn’t deserve, however. So they got a contradictory answer. Farris wasn’t certain that he’d given Marchand the melody and the permission—but he was certain that it was an honor, and in his confused way, he indicated that if Marchand had asked, he would have offered the tune with both hands.

Mags would very much like to have heard Lita’s thoughts about that. As Mags understood it, teachers did use student work all the time, but it was always with permission beforehand and with full credit. Not appropriated without, or with ill-informed, consent, and not without credit. But with Farris partially backing Marchand’s claim, there wasn’t a great deal she could do other than rebuke him sternly for his “carelessness” in not giving full credit. Then, according to the sources, the volume of the discourse had been reduced to muttering.

More than that, he didn’t know, since no one was there except Lita, Lena, Farris, and Marchand himself, Lena wasn’t talking to him, and no one else was talking at all.

Mags was quite certain that if outright theft could have been proved, Marchand would have been in very serious trouble indeed. He suspected that Lita was going to ask the Heralds for a quiet little investigation into the matter, but until they came back with answers, Marchand had skated by again. As it was, he was ordered to keep away from Farris and not to take on a protege again. Ever.

Whether or not he would actually do that... Mags was dubious. Marchand spent a lot of time away from Court and the inquisitive eyes of his fellow Bards. It would be quite easy to aquire another Talented youngster out there and just keep him away from the Bardic Collegium entirely. He could teach this unofficial protege himself, even find a position for him in some place that knew nothing of how the Bardic Collegium worked, where if Marchand said the protege was a Bard and he wore Scarlets, well, then, he must be one. Marchand would have someone to steal tunes from, and no one the wiser.

It just remained to be seen whether getting caught was enough to frighten him into doing his own work again and not resort to what would be fraud.

So much for Marchand. He was someone Mags would rather not think about.

Except, of course, it seemed that Lena had finally been goaded into standing up against her father openly, and that could only be a good thing.

Meanwhile, the search for Ice and Stone went on. Down in Haven, Nikolas was not only hiding from his daughter’s temper, Mags knew he would be extending himself and his resources as far as he could to find the two Karsite agents. But these two were cut from a cloth that no one in Valdemar had any experience with. What had always worked before was not going to work now.

Some people surrounding the King thought they had probably left already; after all, they had been thwarted in a very public manner, and their identies had been compromised. But Mags wasn’t so sure of that. He’d had a look at some of their thoughts; these weren’t men who would take even that grave a setback as the reason to retreat.

For one thing, even if they went back to Karse rather than going back to wherever they called home, they wouldn’t find much of a welcome when they got there. They knew enough about Karse to threaten a Karsite native with demons... which meant that they knew very well such things were real and deadly. The Karsites would not tolerate failure from an unbeliever; they barely tolerated it in their own ranks. Mags was damn certain that he wouldn’t risk it.

For another, the fact that they had executed their predecessors for failure indicated that they knew that were altogether likely to face a similar fate if they returned without fulfilling their contract. And maybe they were the very best of their kind—they were certainly better than the first batch that had gone out—but even the best can be overwhelmed by sheer numbers, and even the best have been trained by someone. Mags recalled the images he’d caught from Temper’s mind—the harsh environment, the rigid rules of behavior, the unforgiving nature of Temper’s superiors. No, Ice and Stone would find no sympathy there. And it was—at least according to all the history he had been reading—a time-honored tradition for the Master to eliminate the student who failed.

If Mags had been in their shoes... he would lie low, wait until vigilance was relaxed, and try some other way to at least give the appearance of destabilizing the Crown or harming Valdemar in a significant way. What that could possibly be... he had not a clue. Amily was probably no longer a target; there really was no good reason to make her one. Even with collaborators on the Hill, everyone was looking out for her now. If she so much as stabbed herself with a needle, there would be people checking to make sure it had been an accident and the needle wasn’t poisoned.

For all he knew, though, these men had some way of unleashing a plague on Haven, and summer was certainly the time to spread disease. A plague could wipe out thousands very quickly, and the highborn would certainly not be immune unless they left Haven. Even if the King and his family didn’t sicken and die, it would lay low many of those also responsible for ruling the country.

Or—hot as it was, dry as it was—if they spread across the city one night, setting fires, they could engulf the