The Hills Have Spies E-Book

Mercedes Lackey

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Family Spies
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 572

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

In this new series, set in the bestselling world of Valdemar, Heralds Mags and Amily must continue to protect the realm of Valdemar while raising their children and preparing them to follow in their footsteps.Mags, Herald Spy of Valdemar, and his wife Amily are happily married with three kids. The oldest, Justyn, has the Gift of animal Mindspeech--he can talk to animals and persuade them to act as he wishes. Justyn's dream is to follow in his father's footsteps as a Herald Spy, but has yet to be Chosen by his horse companion.Mags is more than happy to teach Justyn all he knows. He regularly trains his children, including Justyn, with tests and exercises, preparing them for the complicated and dangerous lives they will likely lead. Justyn has already held positions in the Royal Palace as a runner and in the kitchen, useful places from which he can learn to listen. As the next stage of Justyn's training, Mags proposes that Justyn joins a group of traveling players and musicians, to get experience away from home and out in the world. Justyn joins the troupe, and he starts collecting information for his father. And the patterns he finds are unsettling....During the troupe's travels, Justyn witnesses growing rural unrest about an indigenous community of Valdemar, known as Hawkbrothers. When the troupe settles for a season at a fortified manor of a local lord, Justyn watches the unrest grow increasingly hostile. The manor lord dismisses Hawkbrothers as inhuman--and has a local militia to back up his hatred. When a child goes missing, the locals immediately blame Hawkbrothers, and Justyn finds himself in a dangerous position.He enlists the help of a local stray dog, who knows a lot about the town's goings-on, despite being a bit...odd. Justyn must find the missing child and warn the Hawkbrothers community of the trouble headed their way--before tensions turn deadly.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also by Mercedes Lackey and Available from Titan Books

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

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About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

Also by Mercedes Lackey and available from Titan Books

THE HERALD SPY

Closer to HomeCloser to the HeartCloser to the Chest

FAMILY SPIES

The Hills Have Spies

THE COLLEGIUM CHRONICLES

FoundationIntriguesChangesRedoubtBastion

VALDEMAR OMNIBUSES

The Heralds of ValdemarThe Mage WindsThe Mage StormsThe Mage WarsThe Last Herald MageVows & HonorExiles of Valdemar

THE ELEMENTAL MASTERS

The Serpent’s ShadowThe Gates of SleepPhoenix and AshesThe Wizard of LondonReserved for the CatUnnatural IssueHome from the SeaSteadfastBlood RedFrom a High TowerA Study in SableA Scandal in BatterseaThe Bartered Brides (October 2018)

Family Spies Book I: The Hills Have SpiesPrint edition ISBN: 9781785653445E-book edition ISBN: 9781785653452

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: June 20181 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Mercedes Lackey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.© 2018 by Mercedes R. Lackey. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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Dedication:Paul Fisher, Keeper of the Book of Face

1

Wham!

Perry’s captor slammed the door behind him, and the entire building quivered for several long moments with the force of the door crashing into place. Of course, Perry couldn’t actually see this; he had a bag over his head. He hadn’t expected the noise, and it made him jump and his heart pound frantically.

It wasn’t a very well-maintained or constructed building, given how much it shook, and Perry coughed a little as debris sifted down onto him from what was probably the disintegrating—or at least old—thatch roof above him. Fortunately, the bag over his head protected him from most of it. Calm down, he told his heart, sternly. He wasn’t going to be able to think with his heart pounding like a horse at the gallop . . .

He shut his eyes to clear his mind of distractions and concentrated on his surroundings.

He knew the roof was thatch despite the bag, because he heard and sensed mice and sparrows up there and got brief glimpses through their eyes, though he hadn’t yet put his mind to contacting them directly. And there were a couple pigeons as well, but they were on the rooftree, rather than in the thatch or on the rafters. While he slowly counted to a hundred, to make sure the man who had captured him was not coming back soon, he eased his way into one tiny mind after another, getting acquainted with them, getting them used to his presence in their heads.

He didn’t bother with the pigeons for now. Anything on the outside of the building wasn’t much use to him at the moment.

One by one, he coaxed the mice out of the thatch and had them line up on the central rafter, where the sparrows already were. He soon figured out that the mice were too nearsighted to do him much good, but the sparrows’ sharper vision gave him a clear view of the room where he was being held.

There he was, flour sack over his head, sitting on a simple wooden chair in the middle of an otherwise barren room with a rough plank floor. He’d been trussed up expertly, feet tied to the chair legs, hands tied behind the chair back. The chair was a pretty stout one: solid seat and back, thick legs. Heavy, or at least it looked like it. That was very smart of his captors; if they’d just left him tied up on the floor, he’d have been out of his bonds within a candlemark. The chair made things much more difficult. If he tried to tip it over backward, he’d probably break his wrists or hands, and if he tried to tip it over sideways, he’d surely break his wrist or forearm.

A very careful survey, as the sparrows peered around at his request, told him there was nothing in the otherwise bare room for him to use in any way.

Or so his captor probably thought.

The walls were also rough planks, but since there wasn’t any light coming through the cracks between the planks, they might be cob or plaster outside, or both. The windows were shuttered, and the shutters were barred in place on the inside, light leaking into the room from cracks between the boards of the shutters. Huh. This place looked stouter than he’d thought. Maybe the reason it had shaken when the door slammed was because of the strength of his kidnapper, not because the building was in bad repair.

There were two windows in the right-hand wall, two in the left, and a door at either end of the room. The one behind him was nailed shut with rough boards. The one in front of him was the one his captor had left by.

So, this is probably a one-room house with only one floor, unless that doorleads to a staircase. It can’t be inside the Old Wall of Haven or the roof would be shingle or tile, not thatch. And he didn’t carry me far enough for this to be completely outside Haven.

Now Perry transferred his attention to the pigeons strutting up and down the roof outside. There was an advantage to using such stupid birds; they scarcely noticed he was in their heads, and it was easy to get them to do what he wanted. And what he wanted right now was a view of the entire building and the neighborhood it was in.

The first time he had entered the mind of a bird and made it fly, he’d thrown up afterward. It had been worse than when he’d taken that dare to spin around while Trey counted to five hundred. Now, though, he was used to it; his gut was finally convinced that it wasn’t his body jerking up and down and making those crazy gyrations. The pigeon he picked was perfectly happy to launch itself into the air and sail in a circle around the building while he looked things over.

It took him a while to identify the neighborhood; it was outside the old wall, but the building he was in was a very small one and quite old; it probably had been a storage building or a laborer’s cottage for a big farm back when this had been farmland. Cob walls much the worse for years but still weatherproof, shutters closed and barred from the inside, and a very thick thatch roof gray with age and green with moss; it was unusual only in that it was built on a slightly raised wooden platform so that you had to go up three rickety steps to the door. The street began practically at the bottom step, and it was closely surrounded by other one- and two-room buildings in a similar state of repair. They were all weatherproof and sound, but not one single thing had been done to them to take them beyond that point. It was as if a single landlord owned everything on this street and adhered to the absolute letter of a contract requiring his cottages to be “stout and livable.”

The street seemed oddly deserted . . .

And then the pigeon turned its head and looked beyond the immediate street, and Perry knew exactly where he was and why it looked deserted. Everyone here was at work in the bigger building, three floors tall, that squatted two streets over, like an enormous sow among her piglets. This was the neighborhood of the Bannerites.

The Bannerites were an odd but harmless sect comprised entirely of bachelors—unmarried men and widowers disinclined to wed again. The Bannerites gave men a trade, a place to live in one of the tiny houses surrounding their central building, and enough wages to keep them decently clothed and fed. In return, they made a heavy twilled sailcloth that was highly prized for its strength and durability; as well as sails, virtually any sort of clothing that needed to take rough wear could be made from it. Raw flax came in at one end of that building, and finished sailcloth exited out of the other. Everything that needed to be done to turn fiber into cloth was done within those four walls, from the retting of the flax, to the spinning of the fiber, to the weaving and finishing of the cloth, the finish depending on who ordered it. Three times a day all work stopped so that the men could pray to the “Banner Bearer,” though that was the only information anyone outside the group had about the being they worshiped. Every eight days, the Bannerites took half a day off for worship and instruction in the faith, and there were evening instruction and prayer sessions for those who wanted more. Work began at first light and ended at sunset, so the workdays were shorter in winter than in summer. If this was an untenanted Bannerite cottage—and it probably was—he could make all the noise he wanted to and no one would hear him until the sun went down. And by then—

It wouldn’t matter. By then I won’t be here.

He let go of the pigeon’s mind and turned his attention back to the mice. This was going to be tricky. He was going to have to convince them that he was no threat and that the rope around his wrists was edible. It was a logical solution to getting free; mice could gnaw their way through rope in almost no time. Come on down, my little friends, he coaxed—but with feelings, not with words.

But no matter how hard he tried, he could not persuade them to come down out of the thatch. Evidently the Bannerites were pretty vigilant about chasing them off, and he couldn’t overcome their fear of human beings. Every time he got one to creep as far on the rafters as the wall with the door in it, the others panicked and scuttled back up into the thatch, and the one he had been coaxing panicked with them and retreated.

Dammit.

There weren’t any rats close by either, not even in the crawlspace under the building. A sharp, curious mind brushing briefly against his told him why. A cat.

And as he cast his mind farther afield, he sensed more and more cats, all of them sleek, semi-feral, but not starving. Clearly the Bannerites encouraged cats in the same way that farmers did, and for the same reasons. Which made sense—a little food and shelter bought you a great deal of pest control.

Well . . . all right. He brought his focus back into the building and hunted for one of the sparrows, eventually choosing a saucy little male. He wasn’t afraid of humans; probably the Bannerites put up with their occasional droppings because they hunted insects in the thatch and the buildings while the tenants were away. Perry had no trouble encouraging the little fellow to fly down and perch on his bound hands.

He couldn’t actually take over the bird’s body. All he could do was show it what he wanted it to do and encourage it to do so. That little beak wasn’t as sharp as mouse teeth, but it might be able to saw through the rope fibers, if he could get the bird to peck at the same place over and over.

He concentrated so hard on his task that sweat ran down his face inside the bag, his jaw muscles clenched until they ached, and then—

Peck. Tentative at first. Then peck, a little harder.

Wordlessly he flooded it with encouragement, and the bird exploded with energy, pecking and pulling at the fibers of the knot, scissoring its way through the first strand, then the second. The little fellow didn’t need any guidance at all now, and he could not have been more enthusiastic.

Even better, as soon as his fellows noticed him working away at the rope, after some puzzlement, they decided this was something that needed doing, so with some dim idea that they were going to get a reward out of it, three more crowded onto his wrists and hands to peck away alongside the first one.

Now he had another problem entirely. They didn’t always hit the rope, and those sharp little biting stabs hurt. He had to bite his lip to keep from wincing and crying out and frightening them up into the rafters again.

He kept up the tension on the rope by pulling his wrists apart, or rather trying to, and after what was probably a candlemark or two, but felt like a lot longer, he sensed the rope giving.

And when it finally parted and his hands came free, sparrows fluttering off to the ceiling, he nearly shouted for joy.

His first action was to pull the bag off his head, and the dust-laden air smelled impossibly sweet. His second was to untie his legs; he ignored the twinges and cramps as he was finally able to move. His wrists were raw from the rope, speckled with blood from dozens of badly aimed pecks, but it didn’t matter. He was free! And he was going to get out of there!

But before he did, there was one more thing he needed to do.

He unraveled the rope that had been around his wrists into hundreds of fiber bits and left them in a pile on the floor by the chair. That was what the sparrows had been after: good strong bits of material for their nests. The sparrows descended on the pile as if it had been grain and carried strands up to the thatch to add to their nests.

They deserved their reward.

And he couldn’t wait to get out of there.

Up or down? He looked up at the exposed thatch of the roof and saw what he had been hoping for: a trap door set into the roof to make it easy to get up there to repair the thatch.

Up.

* * *

Mags glanced at the time-candle as the light from his window was interrupted by something perching on the sill. He raised one eyebrow, smiled slightly, and turned to greet his eldest son.

“I expected you to take at least a candlemark longer,” he said, offering Perry a hand inside and noting the abrasions and tiny marks on the lad’s wrist. “Mice?”

“Sparrows,” said Perry, with a grin that also betrayed a touch of pain. “The mice were too scared.” Mags fished some soft bandages and a pot of ointment out of his desk and passed them wordlessly over; the boy deftly soothed and bandaged his wrists himself and handed the pot back.

As he wrapped his wrists, Mags regarded his son thoughtfully. Peregrine would be thirteen in two weeks, and he looked like a larger, better-nourished version of his father at that age, at least, as far as Mags could determine. He hadn’t looked at himself in the mirror that often back then, but Perry looked like what he remembered: dark hair that never stayed tidy, dark eyes with more than a hint of mischief in them, narrow face, and wiry body. “I think we can call the exercise a complete success,” he said, allowing his pride in his son to show in his words. “What did you do to the men I had watching for your escape?”

“Left ’em trying to catch me. I made a pass up in the attic of the Bannerite workhouse; they didn’t dare follow me in, and I left in a shipment of sailcloth.” Perry grinned, very proud of himself. “If I hadn’t been able to do that, I figured to drop down among the boys hauling the flax around and leave at sunset.”

Mags grinned and reached out to hug his son. “Good lad. Your mama was going to hold dinner for you, but now she won’t have to. Go tell her yourself.”

With a whoop of joy, Perry dashed across Mags’ workroom and out the door into the large central room of the suite. Mags smiled and went back to work constructing a series of delicate little telltales of a single hair with a sliver of wood knotted to each end. When fastened in place with a bit of wax, it would be easy to tell in an instant if a door or a container had been opened.

He and Amily no longer lived in the Heralds’ quarters attached to the Palace nor in the suite off the greenhouse at Healers’ Collegium. With three children, they needed more room than the two rooms off the greenhouse or any of the three-room suites could have provided. Not to mention the fact that the presence of three active children would not have made them very popular with whoever was living next to them. So they had been moved into a suite of rooms right next to the King’s quarters, which had been convenient for Amily as King’s Own and convenient for all the children—their three and the King’s four—as they all played and studied together until they were old enough to attend Collegium classes. There just were not that many small children here on the Hill. Most of the courtiers with children who were in residence at the Palace left them on their estates until they were old enough to make marriage alliances. Those who had manor houses on the Hill and had small children had their own nurses and tutors and kept the children in their own nurseries and away from the Palace. Sedric’s children and Mags’ just naturally ended up together. Fortunately, they all liked each other.

Mags finished the last of his little telltales and closed them carefully into a small box built like a tiny drawer that he could easily slip into a pouch or one of the many pockets hidden in his clothing. He flexed his fingers carefully and listened to the cheerful noise in what served as the gathering room for everyone. It sounded as if at least two of the four Royals had joined his brood, and Perry was relating his training exercise. Once again, Mags was happy to be reassured that he and Amily were not raising potential hostages. He’d had quite enough of that for his family already.

As for King Sedric’s four, well, they were getting a modified version of that same training, mostly steered toward evading potential captors and knowing where to run to and all the hiding places in the Palace. There had been a lot of those before. Thanks to Mags and Lord Jorthun, there were a lot more now.

Maybe it’s time for them to learn how to deal with being tied up. There were plenty of tricks to use to make sure that bonds were not tied as tightly as a captor thought they were. And young joints were more agile than old ones when it came to getting wrists within reach of a pair of strong teeth. Perry, Abi, and Tory had learned these tricks at a very young age indeed; that was why Perry had been tied up by an expert in all those tricks this time. The King’s littles shouldn’t need anything but some simple escapist ploys.

He took a deep breath and consciously relaxed all the muscles that had tightened up while he worked. That’s better. It was still a little strange to think of Sedric as King, but shortly after the birth of Sedric’s fourth child, King Kyril had announced he was stepping down in favor of his son. Of course he had warned everyone close to him that he was planning this a good year before he did so, but it still came as something of a shock to the highborn and his lower-ranking subjects, who probably had thought he wouldn’t go through with it. A King? Stepping down? Unheard of ! Surely he was ill! Surely there was something wrong!

It had taken nearly another year before everyone was convinced that no, there was nothing wrong. It was still a source of wonder that a King of Valdemar had chosen to leave the throne.

And at the same time, Amily’s father, Herald Nikolas, had quietly retired from the most public parts of his duty. He and Amily had been working for years to ease her into prominence as the “real” King’s Own; she was a fixture as the Crown Prince’s attending Herald long before the King abdicated, and when he did, that was the final push it took for people to see Amily as King’s Own.

We’ve been incredibly lucky, Mags thought, as he put his tools and supplies away in his worn wooden work desk and stood up. This hasbeen the easiest, most successful transfer of power in the history of Valdemar. The Crown Prince and Princess had had long years of training at the King’s side, and Amily had had her father to teach her everything the King’s Own ought to know. And me being me, it makes me wonder what horrors the universe has lying in wait for us. Well, a pessimist is never unpleasantly surprised.

The suite that had been given to Mags’ family was arranged in a rectangle, nine smaller rooms and an entryway out into a hall, arranged around a central larger one. That gave each of the children the unheard-of luxury of having their own small rooms, with the other six devoted to Mags’ and Amily’s bedroom, their very own private bathing room and indoor privy, Mags’ workroom, their own library, a pantry and tiny kitchen if they didn’t want to eat at the Collegium or with the Court, and a storage room. The storage room was part armory . . . if anything went wrong in the Palace, neither Mags nor Amily intended to have to run to the actual armory to ensure that all five of the family members were equipped for mayhem. At this point, all three of the children could hit their targets every time with slings, knives, or hand-crossbows.

Sure enough, Perry was holding court among his sibs and the Royals. They were all clustered at the far end of the big room, where the fireplace was. Light came in through all the open doors on the two sets of the rooms that were on outer walls. He had unwound the bandages on his left wrist to display his rope burns.

The children all leaned close to examine them, the three dark heads of Mags’ offspring clustered with the four of varying shades of light brown of Sedric’s. “Ouch!” said Sedric’s eldest, Prince Trey. “Did he have to tie you that tight?”

“It wouldn’t have been a proper test if he hadn’t. It’s not bad,” Perry shrugged. “I think all the sparrow pecking hurt worse.”

“And now they have a taste for human bloooooood!” said Abi, making her brown eyes big and round and wriggling her fingers in the air. “You’ve unleashed killer sparrows on Haven!”

Sedric’s youngest, Prince Kyril—called “Kee” to differentiate him from his grandfather—looked seriously alarmed. He was the only one of the four who had blue eyes, and they grew enormous with apprehension. “Really?” he said, in an uncertain voice. He sounded as though he was valiantly trying not to cry.

“No, Kee, not really. Abi is just making things up.” Princess Katiana—predictably, “Kat” for short—elbowed Abi, making her giggle. “You’ve got to stop that, Abi. Kee doesn’t know things like that can’t happen. Tell him, Abi.”

“I am just making it up, Kee,” Abi said, patting him on the head. “You know I like to make up stories.”

Kee looked relieved. “I don’t like that story!” he replied. “I like your stories where nice things happen.”

“Well, this story has something nice in it,” Perry put in, wrapping his wrist again. “I took the rope to bits, and the sparrows all carried it up to their nests. So tonight they’ll be weaving walls up there in the thatch with all that stuff, and their eggs will be safe as houses from now on!”

Kee beamed. It occurred to Mags, not for the first time, that Kee was an extraordinarily sensitive child. Wonder if I ought to have the Healers check him over for Empathy.

:Good idea,: his Companion Dallen said. :You should definitely do that. If he’s Empathic now, even a little, the sooner someone trains him to ground,center, and wall out unwanted emotions, the better.:

All of the children were dressed fundamentally identically, in sturdy brown or gray canvas tunics and breeches and lightweight matching linen shirts. Except for the fact that their clothing was free of mends and patches, they probably couldn’t have been told from any ordinary craftsman’s children. Trey and his younger brother Niko were the ones in Gray—Trainee Grays, to be precise.

They had always dressed like this—no finery for the Royals. This was deliberate, for several reasons; the practical one was that neither family felt it was worthwhile putting active children into expensive clothing. Why either force them to be careful about their clothing or scold them when the inevitable happened? But another was that if anyone got this far into the Palace looking for the Royals, he wouldn’t find children that looked Royal. And the longer an intruder stayed confused, the better the chance for the children to escape or get into hiding.

This must have been the sort of thing that Nikolas had to consider all the time, Mags thought, as he watched them. Nikolas probably would have suggested the common play clothing, but we thought of it before he got a chance to.

Amily would not have been able to play with King Kyril’s children, not with her leg healed all wrong and twisted. From what Amily had told Mags, Sedric and his sibs had been extremely active children, so she had fallen in with Lydia and her friends instead, who didn’t spend every waking moment they could escape from their tutors out of doors.

“Enough of Perry’s test for now,” Amily called from the other end of the room. “I need you all to come set the table while I light the candles.”

This was the disadvantage of this suite; the big common room in the center didn’t get a lot of light, and the rooms on the two inner sides didn’t get any. Once again he found himself wondering what it could have been intended for. It was right next to the Royal Suite; could it have been a big nursery, with rooms for the Royal Children and their servants and nurses and storage? It was certainly convenient to have windowless bedrooms for the children; with no windows, they didn’t wake up at the crack of dawn. . . .

Thank the gods. He’d had more than enough of active toddlers crawling into the bed he shared with Amily at unholy hours, demanding rides on Dallen right now, Daddy!

For once, there were no objections, not even from Perry. All of them trotted over to the long trestle table and picked up a stack of dishes or handful of tableware and began setting them out. Looks like we have all the littles tonight. It really was too much to ask the youngest of the lot to sit through a Court Dinner more than once a week, so both broods ended up eating with Mags and Amily or in the Royal Suite depending on where they ended up by supper time. Mags got the distinct feeling they’d have been happier never dining with the Court, but that was one of the things that the Royals had to learn to do. And out of sympathy, Mags’ three always joined them. And out of sympathy for them, Mags and Amily made the gathering complete.

Just as the children finished laying the table, the servants arrived with platters and baskets of food, and pitchers of water and tea. As usual, they left those on a sideboard and exited. Getting waited on was only for eating with the Court. With only a little fuss, the children took their seats on the two benches. Mags and Amily had the chairs on either end. Tonight it was Amily’s turn to hand the dishes around; as compensation for having to do that, the one that handed round got to fill his or her plate first. In a very short period of time, they were all eating.

“So, I didn’t ask you, Perry, but did any of the Bannerites spot you in their workhouse?” Mags asked.

Perry shook his head. “I came in at the attic and hid in one of the carts when no one was watching it.”

Mags nodded in satisfaction.

“When do I get kidnapped?” Abi demanded.

“When you are better at escaping your bonds,” her mother told her.

Abi frowned rebelliously. “Perry cheats,” she protested. “Perry gets animals to help him.”

“You cheat,” Perry retorted. “You keep escape tools in your underwear.”

“I—!” Abi began, furious with indignation, her face growing red.

“You both cheat,” her mother said firmly. “And so you should. You don’t play fair with kidnappers, you play dirty. You take every advantage you can get, and you make some more up if you can. Perry can use his Animal Mindspeech, and that’s why you have weapons and tools, Abi, because you don’t have that Gift. As soon as we figure out what Gift you do have, we’ll teach you how to use it to save yourself and others. Eat your greens, Trey, don’t push them around on the plate to make me think you’ve eaten them, or you won’t get any seedcake.”

Trey made a face, but he pushed the scattered stewed greens together into a heap on his plate and, with a sigh, doggedly started shoving them into his mouth.

“So, Trey, do you think your Mindspeech is good enough to be kidnapped yet?” Mags asked the eldest Prince.

Trey looked eager for a moment, then crestfallen. “Not really,” he admitted. “No. Lyspeth still isn’t big enough to come to my rescue. She’d get hurt. So unless you let me use it to call a Herald—”

Mags shook his head. “What if no Herald is in your range? What if you get taken outside the city? Either you’re going to have to learn to escape your bonds as well as Abi can, or no kidnapping for you yet.”

Trey sighed with disappointment.

Prince Trey had been Chosen, but in a startlingly rare occurrence, his Companion was little more than a foal. He’d been on Foal Watch—his uncle’s Companion, Darly, had specifically asked for him even though he wasn’t a Trainee, and the King had thought it would be good practice. They should have guessed that something was up, but none of them had. The newborn Lyspeth had Chosen him as soon as she was able to stand, much to the astonishment of his parents and everyone else. So a good part of Trey’s Collegium education was being postponed until she could take his weight.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been taking the academic classes and weapons training for years now, so he wasn’t behind on those things. In fact, Mags had been concerned for Trey in the last year or so. At the time Lyspeth Chose him, he had been fifteen and still hadn’t been Chosen, and he looked as if he had been feeling the strain.

But now he was relaxed again. There was now an official Crown Prince, and it helped him even more that his younger brother Niko had been Chosen four moons later. The Royals took their duty seriously, even as young as they were.

Still, actually putting on Grays and becoming an official Trainee had meant that he was something apart from his little brothers and sister and his three friends. Mags suspected that Trey was looking at his relatively carefree childhood, and now that the stress of not being Chosen was over, he had grown apprehensive about what was coming next. As Crown Prince, he was well aware there were a lot of expectations about him, and a great deal he had to live up to. Did he wish now he wasn’t having to grow up so fast? Very likely. Poor lad. That’s a lot for young shoulders.

Trey’s next brother, the almost-silent Niko, had been Chosen by a Companion that was a young adult, and Niko—named for Amily’s father, Nikolas—was already well into his first year at the Collegium. From his general demeanor, which was a steadfast contentment, Mags judged he was doing well and still considered himself to be one of the “children” without thinking about it too much. He had Lydia’s temperament: calm, and difficult to ruffle. He still lived in the Royal Suite and, like his older brother, did not seem to be in a hurry to leave.

Not that anyone is going to ask them to move into the Collegium rooms, notwhen they are infinitely safer where they are.

Perry, on the other hand, seemed impatient to “grow up.” He was always eager to try whatever training Mags suggested; he couldn’t wait to be allowed to go down to work in the pawn shop, where Mags bought as much information as he did goods. He’d even had a stint or two as one of Mags’ runners and had done well at it.

And . . . he was, at least according to Lord Jorthun, one of the best students that worthy man had ever had, excelling at whatever was taught him and plunging into learning with the dogged determination of someone whose mind was set on mastery. And when he did master something, he was as good as an adult. For instance, when Perry didn’t want to be found, not even Mags could find him. And that was saying something.

At that moment, as he watched his eldest son dig cheerfully into his portion of rabbit pie, Mags realized that Perry had gone far beyond his father’s simple determination that none of his children would ever find themselves helpless in the grip of an enemy determined to use them against their parents—or against their Kingdom. Perry had a real aptitude for spycraft.

I never intended—

But it had happened without Mags intending anything.

He dropped his eyes to his own plate and considered this. The first thing he needed to do, as soon as they were alone, was discuss this with Amily.

* * *

Perry was pleased with himself on the whole. Of course, the escape might have been easier if he’d been Chosen—but then again, it might not have been. Companions were giant white signals that there was a Herald about. Even though Dallen was spookily good at keeping himself hidden, even he couldn’t have managed it well enough to have been close enough to get Perry out of trouble. This wasn’t the first time he’d had this ambivalence about whether or not it would have been useful to have a Companion.

. . . but he’d seen how his father was with Dallen and his mother with Rolan. And now, how Trey was with Lyspeth . . . and he wondered. What was it like, to have a friend like that? Someone who would always stick with you, would always be with you? Sure he could Mindspeak with animals, but that wasn’t even close to being the same thing.

And so, the arguments went back and forth in his mind.

That wasn’t all. Sometimes it felt . . . uncomfortable, as if people—not his parents, but other people—were eying him as they’d eyed Trey, wondering if there was something wrong with him, that he hadn’t been Chosen yet. And he found himself wondering that.

And other times . . . all he could think of, especially when Lord Jorthun was teaching him something, was that having a Companion around wasn’t at all necessary for what he needed to do. In fact, a Companion might just get in the way . . .

Sometimes when he thought that, he felt sort of guilty. And yet, it was undeniably the truth.

He was just as glad that everyone seemed to be too busy with dessert—strawberry pie!—to ask him any more questions about his escapades this afternoon. Truth to tell, he was tired; he’d done a lot of climbing and a lot of roof-running, it had all been planning-on-the-fly, and he wanted to sit quietly and think over what he’d done to see if he could have done anything differently.

So he was pretty pleased when the Royal Nurse popped her head in just as they were finishing to remind his friends that their parents were expecting them this evening. That meant Trey, Kat and Niko—baby Kee would probably only manage to stay half-awake for a goodnight kiss before he was taken off to bed.

The servants came in to clear away the dinner things, and his father raised an eyebrow at him in that wordless language he and Papa seemed to have had for as long as he could remember. He shook his head slightly and looked at the door to his room. His father gave the slightest of nods, and the faintest of smiles, and took Mama’s arm.

Abi picked up a book from the shelf where she had left it and went to her own room. She was always perfectly happy to settle in a window seat or on her bed with a book until Mama came to remind her about bedtime, and Tory, like Kee, was ready for bed as soon as he finished his pie. That meant Perry could retreat to his own quiet bedroom, lie back on his bed, and watch the moving shadows on the ceiling as the candle flame wavered while he thought.

After he was satisfied in his own mind with what he had done, he glanced over at the marked candle. A whole candlemark had passed. He listened—hard—to the murmurings in the other rooms. Then he cast around the area for an eavesdropper. By pure luck there was a sleepy bird just outside the room where the voices were—Papa’s workroom. Concentrating on what the bird could hear, he could make out not only the words, but that one of the three voices was that of his father’s good friend Teo, from down in Haven. Teo had been Perry’s kidnapper.

“. . . cleaner’n a rat’s whisker,” Teo was saying, with admiration. “Prettier piece’a work I niver saw.”

Perry smiled in satisfaction. If he’d left Teo in the dust, likely the only person who’d have been able to track him would have been someone else trained the same way he and his father had been. He stopped listening through the bird. It tickled him no end to hear Teo praise him, but his pride wasn’t so great that he needed to hear more.

Despite his bandaged wrists—trivial, really—it had been an altogether excellent day. And no lessons tomorrow. There had been a big box of new books delivered to the Palace library a few days ago, and he and Abi had been given leave to take whatever they wanted from there to read. In fact, that was probably where Abi had gotten the book she was reading now. He got up and trotted over to his father’s workroom, which was where Teo, Papa, and Mama were talking. He made sure to make enough sound so they noticed him.

All three heads swiveled toward him as if they had been pulled by the same invisible string. Perry choked back a giggle.

“Library?” he said.

His father made a shooing motion. “Go. Stay up reading as long as you like. Sleep as late as you like. You’ve got no lessons tomorrow and you’ve earned it.”

“Aye, that!” Teo agreed heartily.

Perry grinned and trotted for the door. This was turning out to be one of the best days of his life.

2

As of this year, when he had turned thirteen, Perry had followed in Trey and Niko’s footsteps; he had left the little schoolroom in the Royal Suite where all the youngsters had studied together under the auspices of a pair of tutors and began taking classes at the Collegia—mostly at Heralds’ although the history class he was taking was taught at Bardic. But since he wasn’t a Trainee and didn’t have the classes with a Companion—combat riding and agility training—his afternoons alternated between private lessons with Lord Jorthun’s own Armsmaster and spycraft lessons with Lord Jorthun himself. The private lessons were devoted to the sort of fighting that never took place on a battlefield—dirty tricks stuff, real street combat, and the sort of thing you’d get into scrumming with criminals. He knew how to ride, of course, and Arms-master Leandro combined his arms training with riding—but there were specific things that the Trainees learned with their Companions that required that mind-to-mind bond. Whenever he watched them, particularly the Grays about a year away from going into Whites, it always made him drop his jaw in amazement. And he felt more than a mere twinge of envy when he watched his father and Dallen practice; they were at one in a way that simply was not possible, and would be life-risking to try, with a mere horse. Or would it? Could he master Animal Mindspeech well enough so that he could do that sort of thing with a horse? He wondered sometimes. It would have to be a remarkable horse . . . and he’d have to be awfully good at Mindspeech. And it would never be the same as being Chosen . . . but . . .

He didn’t miss the schoolroom itself, though he missed the competition with Abi. It didn’t seem right to make lessons into a competition with his classmates. He couldn’t put a finger on why, exactly, just that it didn’t. Maybe it was that the competition with Abi was always friendly, and he wasn’t sure how the other students would take it? Or just that now that it wasn’t among family, it didn’t feel right to compete? Or maybe it was just because he could see some of the others were struggling, and it felt as if he shouldn’t be making them feel worse.

At any rate, morning was lessons in the classrooms of the Collegia. Afternoons were spent with Lord Jorthun.

His Lordship had warned Perry a long time ago that “spycraft is mostly boring.” What Lord Jorthun had actually meant, Perry suspected now, was that “spycraft is mostly watching.” Which, of course, it was, and watching could be boring if you had to do it for days and days and days. But also, in order to make yourself invisible so you could do that watching, you had to learn to do a lot of potentially boring things.

Today, for instance. Lord Jorthun and some of the Queen’s Handmaidens were staging a Court Feast—an abbreviated one, of course—with himself and Lady Dia standing in for the King and Queen. Ostensibly this was a rehearsal to train the Handmaidens in the etiquette of such an affair. Actually this was a test for Perry. He was among the highly trained servants, and he was supposed to pass for one. He’d been preparing for this for a good moon; now they’d all find out if he could not only pass for one of the servants to those supervising the servants, but also pick out which of the Handmaidens were passing information to each other.

He had to rush to the kitchen, select the platter someone of his training would be allowed to handle, and rush out, serve properly, and rush back to the kitchen with the platter. He wasn’t allowed to wait on the Lord or Lady—that was the privilege of the highest-ranked servants. He also wasn’t to take platters to those—here, imaginary—guests “below the salt.” They were only “waited on” by the lowest-ranked servers, who left platters of food at intervals along the table and, at a real dinner or feast, took them away only when empty. He was serving the Handmaidens on the left side of the table; offering the platter to each, describing what was on it, and then serving some of the purely imaginary food to her if she indicated she wanted it. He was not to drip any sauces or spill anything—Lord Jorthun and the Head Steward were both keeping a sharp eye on all the boys to make sure platters stayed perfectly level and imaginary serving was deft. He was not to skip any of the girls he was assigned to. He was not to make conversation with them nor dally too long with any of them. He was not to laugh or be flirtatious. Above all, he was not to stand out from among the other serving boys. And all the while, he looked for the tiny signs of messages being passed.

About halfway through the “meal”—thank goodness, no one was actually being served or eating anything, because that would have made this torturously long—he knew which of the girls were his targets. And he was fairly confident none of the servants had any idea he wasn’t one of them. He’d managed to fetch and carry and pretend to serve and clear away without a single fumble.

It was all over in about two candlemarks. Lord Jorthun thanked the servants (borrowed from the Palace) and his steward sent them back; Perry thought the steward was giving them little gifts of money for their extra service, which would be just like Lord Jorthun. The steward had been the only one besides those at the table who had known he wasn’t what he seemed. The other servants probably assumed he was one of Lord Jorthun’s household.

Perry went off to a storage room where he changed from his borrowed livery into his regular clothing and joined his mentor and the Handmaidens. The Queen’s Handmaidens were Dia’s own clever spy corps.

How the group had come to exist was a little story in itself. The Palace simply could not support all of the attendants most of the highborn ladies would prefer to have brought with them. And those maidservants that they did bring were often at odds with one another and the cause of a great deal of disturbance and even outright fighting among themselves and between the ladies they served. In the middle of one such outbreak, Dia and Mags had had the brilliant idea of creating the Queen’s Handmaidens to tend to the ladies’ needs, instead. These were young women of highborn status but no wealth, who might otherwise have been little better than unpaid servants to their better-off relatives. Trained by Dia, they got regular pay that they could save for their own purposes, a certain cachet and status, were housed in the Palace itself, and were not under the control of any single lady, but rather reported to the Queen’s steward. They served as the personal handmaidens to the ladies of the Queen’s Court—and kept their clever eyes and ears open at all times. There wasn’t a breath of gossip that stirred that one or more of them didn’t hear. And they reported it all back to Amily and Dia.

“All right, Perry, I can tell you that not one of the servants suspected you were anything but what you seemed, so you’ve passed the first half of your trial,” Jorthun said, as he entered the library where they were all sitting. “My steward is satisfied with your serving abilities. So now, for the second half, can you tell me which of these young ladies was a naughty minx?”

“Alyson and Seris,” he said, promptly. “They were passing notes under the dish of salt. Alyson sent Seris two, and Seris sent Alyson three.”

The other Handmaidens giggled, as a red-faced Alyson held up the three, tiny folded pieces of paper she had gotten, and Seris held up her two.

“Girls, if you have to pass a note, pass only one,” Dia chided gently. “The more notes you pass, the more likely it is you will be caught. And do so by dropping it in your folded napkin to the floor, if there is no tablecovering, or simply exchanging napkins under the table covering if there is one.”

“Yes, Lady Dia,” they chorused.

“Now to be fair, I did not see the exchanges,” Dia continued. “So at least you were not obvious to a simple participant in the meal. And also, to be fair, with actual food on the table, probably the only person who would have had a chance of catching you would be a real spy among the servants, as Perry was, or a spy among the guests.”

“And if there is a spy among the servants, it had better be one of Mags’,” Jorthun growled, with a fierce glower. Which only made the Handmaidens giggle again.

“All right, then, young ladies. Back you go to the Palace, before your ladies miss you,” Dia told them, making a dismissive motion with her hands. “And thank you for helping.”

When they had gone, Perry took the seat that Jorthun indicated, facing him and Lady Dia.

This was an extremely comfortable room, and it was the one in which his mentor met him the most often. But that was not because of the comfort—it was because it was the room in which they were the least likely to be spied upon themselves. Thanks to the muffling qualities of the walls of books, anyone speaking quietly could not be heard at either the door or the windows, and there were fire screens specifically designed to prevent voices from traveling up the chimney in front of the hearth.

The furniture was also comfortable, wooden settles softened with stuffed cushions on the seats and backs. Lord Jorthun sat at ease, looking his usual dignified self: long, silver-white hair, imposing eyebrows, and neatly trimmed beard making a frame for his piercing blue eyes. It was hard to say just how old he was; certainly he had been a spymaster long enough to have trained Herald Nikolas, Perry’s grandpapa. He was staggeringly rich as well as highborn; how he had turned his hand to spycraft was probably a fascinating story, but it was one he hadn’t shared with Perry.

More’s the pity.

As for his wife, Perry thought Lady Dia was probably the most beautiful woman he knew, bar the Queen. He loved his mama, but Lady Dia was something very special. He couldn’t have articulated why she was so beautiful, only that she was, and everyone in the Court would probably agree with him. Today her knee-length dark hair had been braided and wound into an elaborate crown held in place with a couple of silver ornaments. Beneath that crown of silken hair was a face everyone called stunning.

“Well, you’ve mastered being a table servant, Perry,” Jorthun said, when they were all settled. “What would you like to learn next?”

“Dog boy,” he said promptly. Lady Dia was known for her special dogs; there were waiting lists among the highborn for her protection mastiffs and her muff-dogs. “Pretty much any highborn living in the country has a pack of hunting hounds and probably other dogs, too. Nobody ever pays attention to the hound boy.”

“Good choice,” Jorthun said, as Dia nodded. “Your gift of Animal Mindspeech should make this an easy task to master, so why don’t we add stable boy and falconer to the list for you to tackle this summer? That will get all three out of the way at once, and all three put you in a good position to hear most of the household business.”

“Turn up tomorrow morning in old clothing that you won’t need to worry about, because hound boy is a dirty job,” Dia added. “I’ll tell my kennel chief to expect you.”

He grinned. He was going to enjoy this, dirty job or not. And it would give him a lot more exercise in his Gift. He enjoyed the bright, sharp minds of the birds of prey—simple, deadly, unambiguous. And of course, there was nothing better to be among than the affectionate minds of dogs and horses. Actually, he was rather glad his Gift was Animal Mindspeech. He did not envy his father having to delve into the murky, tangled, and devious minds of human beings.

Lord Jorthun craned his neck a little to look out the window. “Well, Perry, we seem to have finished the test much sooner than I anticipated. Run along to the armory and tell Master Leandro I think he should give you a little workout before you go back to the Palace for supper.”

Perry sprang to his feet. “Aye, m’lord!” he said with enthusiasm, sketched a suggestion of a bow, and, as ordered, ran.

Master Leandro was indeed in the Armory, doing an inspection. Lord Jorthun rarely allowed anyone into his armory, and if he had, they would surely have been surprised, even shocked, at the number of weapons stockpiled there. The room was easily big enough to hold eight farm carts, and it was full of weapons: weapons on racks bolted to the stone floor, weapons on racks bolted to the walls, pole weapons and spears neatly bundled in stands in the corners, and entire chests of crossbow bolts and arrows. It looked as though Lord Jorthun was prepared to outlast quite a long siege.

Part of the reason for that was that Lord Jorthun’s manor was one of the oldest on the Hill, at least, the core of it was. Things had been uncertain enough in those days that every highborn with a manor on the Hill had his own private militia to augment the Guard. So some of the weapons in Lord Jorthun’s armory were heirlooms, dating all the way back to those long-ago days. Perhaps even as many as half.

But half were certainly not. And only a select few people knew that every one of Lord Jorthun’s servants was trained in the use of at least one weapon, even the smallest pages, who were impressive shots with slings. Although not every ruling Lord of Jorthun’s line had been a spymaster in the service of the King, they all had fielded a secret force consisting of the members of the household in case of a dire emergency.

Hence, Jorthun’s own personal armorer and Weaponsmaster.

But Master Leandro was more than “just” that. He was as much Artificer as weaponsmaster. He had created the weapons that Amily and Mags had had sewn into their formal Whites and their wedding clothes—as well as the garrotes and wire saws that were sewn into the hems of all their children’s outfits. He had created a clever little folding hand-crossbow that could fit in a sleeve. And he probably had plenty more inventions of offense and defense that Perry hadn’t been shown as yet. He kept all of those in a workshop only Lord Jorthun and Lady Dia were allowed into. Yes, even in Lord Jorthun’s own manor, Master Leandro could forbid anyone entry into his workshop!

Master Leandro turned at the sound of Perry’s running steps and grinned to see his pupil. “Finished early, did you? Excellent! I was just thinking I wanted to give you a refresher in dagger.”

“Wood or full metal?” Perry asked promptly, heading for the rack where the practice weapons he had been allotted were kept.

“Wood,” Master Leandro replied, in a lazy drawl. “I’d rather not go into armor this afternoon.”

Perry perked up at that. When Master Leandro used that tone of voice, and didn’t want to go into armor, it meant he was going to teach Perry a new trick or two.

Half a candlemark later, Perry was extremely glad that the grass in the spot in the gardens that Master Leandro used for outdoor practice was thick and soft, because for the tenth time, he was lying on his back with the breath knocked out of him.

The Master had already taught him a clever disarming technique that also left your opponent with his arm immobilized with pain from a rap on the elbow in just the right place. Now Leandro was trying to teach him a feint-feint-leg-sweep pattern that let you catch your opponent off balance. A very dirty-tricks move, since Perry could easily see how you could, if you were on the right sort of ground, combine that with a handful of dirt or sand in the eyes and have your opponent completely at your mercy. Assuming he could get the timing right, because when he didn’t, Leandro put him in the grass. Which was ten out of twelve tries so far.

Three more grass landings. He was getting bruised all over and was beginning to think this was going to be trickier than he had thought.

Another half a candlemark, and he lay in the grass, panting, and realized he was not going to be able to get up for a while. At least, not on his own. As he stared at darkening blue sky framed by green branches, Master Leandro’s narrow face interposed itself between him and his view. His expression harbored a rare hint of sympathy.

“I believe I wore you out,” Leandro said conversationally. “I haven’t done that for a while. To be fair, I didn’t think you’d get the timing of this in one session. And you certainly got the disarming trick fast enough. I’m satisfied.” Leandro offered Perry a hand. Perry took it, and Leandro hauled him to his feet as Perry groaned.

“Whoever taught that to you must have been a demon in human form,” Perry said, feelingly.

Leandro held out his hand for the practice dagger; Perry gave it to him and brushed himself off. “You didn’t do badly,” the Master observed, which made Perry feel a little better, even if it didn’t help the bruises. “Your father certainly didn’t do any better when I taught it to him, if I recall. Two or three more sessions and you might have it. Get along with you.” And with that, Leandro turned and headed back to the armory or his workshop. The Master generally did not waste time on idle chitchat. When you were done with a session, you were done, and he expected you to get to the next thing on your schedule, since he certainly would.