Skif just shook his head. “Figgers. Us Heralds, we just keep thinkin' we gotta do everything by ourselves, don't we? We can't do the smart thing an' get help fixed up beforehand. Even you. An' you should know better.”
“Yes,” Alberich agreed. “I should. We do.”
We. It was a lovely word.
One that Skif was coming to enjoy a very great deal
* * * * * * * * * *
A Herald he didn't recognize brought Skif his knives, meticulously cleaned, as the Healer fussed over Alberich right there in the street, which was so full of torches and lanterns it might have been a festival. Well, a very grim sort of festival.
It actually looked more like something out of a fever dream; the street full of Heralds and Guards, more Guardsmen swarming in and out of the warehouse, a half-dozen Heralds and their Companions surrounding Alberich — who flatly refused to lie down on a stretcher as the Healer wanted — while the Weaponsmaster sat on an upturned barrel and the Healer stitched up his wounds. Four bodies were laid out on the street under sheets; one semiconscious bullyboy had been taken off for questioning as soon as he recovered. Not that anyone expected to get much out of him. It wasn't very likely that a mere bodyguard would know the details of his master's operations.
No one had sent Skif back to the Collegium, and he waited beside Alberich, between Kantor and Cymry, listening with all his might to the grim-voiced conversations around him. Most of the Heralds here he didn't know; that was all right, he didn't have to know who they were to understand that they were important. He did recognize Talamir, though, who seemed considerably less otherworldly at the moment and quite entirely focused on the here and now.
“This is going to have an interesting effect on the Council,” he observed, his voice heavy with irony.
Alberich snorted. “Interesting? Boil up like a nest of ants, when stirred with sticks, it will! Sunlord! Guildmaster Vatean! Suspect him, even I did not!”
“Gartheser is going to have a fit of apoplexy,” someone else observed. “Vatean was here was here at his behest in the first place.”
Hadn't they noticed he was here? This was high political stuff he was listening to!
Well! Interesting…
“Gartheser will be a pool of stillness compared to Lady Cathal,” Talamir observed, with a sigh. “He was a Guildmaster after all, and she speaks for the Guilds.”
“Oh, Guildmaster, indeed,” someone else said dismissively. “Becoming a Master in the Traders' Guild…” He left the sentence dangling, but everyone — including Skif — knew that the requirements for Mastery in the Traders' Guild mostly depended on entirely on how much profit you could make. Provided, of course, that you didn't cheat to make it. Or at least that you didn't get caught cheating.
“He was,” Talamir pointed out delicately, and with a deliberate pause between the words, “quite… prosperous.”
“And now, know we where the profits came from,” Alberich said harshly. “It is thinking I am that Lady Cathal should be looking into profits, and whence from they come.”
“And Lord Gartheser,” said Talamir. “Since Gartheser wished so sincerely to recommend him to the Council.”
“There is that,” observed someone else, in a hard, cold voice. “And now we know where the leak of Guard movements along Evendim came from.”
“It would appear so,” Talamir replied thoughtfully, “Although… it is in my mind that Lord Orthallen was equally, though less blatantly, impressed with the late Guildmaster's talents…”
But a flurry of protests broke out over that remark; it seemed that the idea of Lord Orthallen having anything to do with all of this was completely out of the question.
Except that Skif saw Talamir and Alberich exchange a private look — and perhaps more than that. Looks weren't all that could be exchanged when one was a Herald, and far more privately.
I wonder what all that's about.
