Intrigues: Book Two of the Collegium Chronicles (a Valdemar Novel) (2 page)

Read Intrigues: Book Two of the Collegium Chronicles (a Valdemar Novel) Online

Authors: Mercedes Lackey

Tags: #Fantasy - Epic, #Fantasy - General, #American Science Fiction And Fantasy, #Fantasy fiction, #Fiction - Fantasy, #General, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Valdemar (Imaginary place), #Epic

BOOK: Intrigues: Book Two of the Collegium Chronicles (a Valdemar Novel)
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Mags had to smile at that, and his mood lifted. He leaned into Dallen’s neck and continued to brush, letting the motion soothe them both. It had been another slightly edgy day for him, and maybe Dallen was right about people being out of sorts because they were cooped up. He couldn’t understand why—well, he couldn’t until he thought about it from the point of view of the other Trainees. Most of them thought being “forced” to stay warm and indoors was a trial, and not a hitherto unimaginable luxury . . . actually he was probably the only one who felt that every day was spent in luxury.
Eh, not quite. There’s a
couple
from sheep-country. An’ a couple farmers. An’ that gal whose da is a blacksmith . . .
Still, he was the only Trainee who came from what—to the others—was unimaginable poverty. The vast majority of the Trainees came from the highborn families, or at the very least, the prosperous. Even the poorest shepherd was appalled when he heard about the conditions Mags and the other younglings with him had endured.
People were always complaining about something—the food, the work, the beds, the uniforms didn’t fit, their rooms were too hot or too cold, or so-and-so was too hard a teacher. Sometimes he wondered if they just made things up to complain about.
Whereas . . . he was grateful to wake up in any kind of bed at all. Doubly grateful that it was a warm bed in a warm room, a clean warm bed on top of all of that.
For most of his life, his bed had been filthy straw in a hole under the barn floor, and a blanket more holes than cloth, a bed he shared with a dozen other slave-children. It had never been warm, even in the heat of summer. It had never been clean.
He
had never been clean, not even when they were all given the rare good meal and apparent good treatment on the occasion of a show visit to satisfy those who were supposed to ensure their well-being. Baths? Never heard of them. The only time dirt got washed off was by accident, as he worked the sluices, washing the gravel from the mine for tiny bits of gemstone.
Having a warm, soft bed—that was obvious, of course anyone would like that. But following his rescue and subsequent “civilizing,” he had quickly discovered he liked being clean. And after that first bath it had just gotten better, although initially the experience had terrified him.
To put on clean clothing that wasn’t rags, eat good food that filled you up—it was, by the standards he had grown up with, the stuff of which dreams were made. No, not even dreams. When he’d been a slave, he hadn’t even known that such things were possible, so how could he have dreamed about them?
Dallen was the reason all this had happened to him. Dallen had Chosen him, Dallen had come for him, and when the Companion couldn’t get him away from the man that had kept him and the others in terrible slavery, Dallen had fetched help in the form of another Herald—Jakyr.
Of course, at the time, Mags had been as terrified of the Herald as he was of his master, though in a way that had been good, because his fear had kept him too paralyzed to move or run until Dallen got him sorted out.
Then, oh how his life had changed!
Becoming a Trainee had changed his life so dramatically that he sometimes thought he had become an entirely different person.
Take the food. No more thin cabbage soup and bread that was mostly chaff, or even sawdust. No more digging into garbage pits and the pig-slop for food that was too spoiled for the people living in the “big house.” As a mine-slavey, his highest ambition had been to hit a richer vein of “sparklies” to earn himself one more tiny piece of bread than anyone else had.
And the living conditions. No more sleeping in a pit on rotting straw in a heap of other dirty children. Or trying to keep warm with only a thin blanket and the body heat of the rest. Or wrapping his feet in straw and rags because you hadn’t ever put a pair of shoes on your feet. No more chilblains. The Trainees here, at least so far, didn’t even know what a chilblain was!
And no more spending virtually every waking hour on his belly in a mine shaft, chipping out gemstones by hand, penalized by having some of his food withheld when the “take” wasn’t good enough—as if he had any control over what the rock yielded to him!
That was the biggest change of all, at least, on the inside of him. Now he was using his head for thinking and learning all the time. His world had gone from the confines of the mine and yard to—well—a whole world. His days were spent doing things that were difficult but rewarding, and there was no punishment meted out if he wasn’t good at them. Instead of punishment, he got help.
Unbelievable.
No, the others had no idea how good they had things here.
And to be honest, he didn’t want them to know, the way he knew. No one should have to live like that.
But the differences between his life and theirs still made the adjustment hard for him in ways he suspected no one really understood. He didn’t even understand it, except that he was always in a state of vague discomfort except when he was alone with Dallen. He felt like a kitten being raised by chickens. It was obvious that no one here reacted the way he did to things, and everyone here knew from their own experience how people were supposed to treat each other.
He hadn’t been raised like a human being, he’d been raised like—no, worse than—an animal. He knew how to read and write, because it was the law, and the owners of the mine he’d worked at grudgingly made sure the children learned that much, but he didn’t really know how to conduct himself among people who had what he now knew were “normal” lives.
He stumbled and fell in so many situations that required an understanding of how people were supposed to be. That got him in trouble—or at least, garnered him odd looks—so many times in a day that he didn’t bother to keep track. He was never quite sure of exactly what it was he had done or said when he violated some code or guideline for behavior that others just took for granted. At least, not until after the fact when Dallen would explain it to him.
And no matter what he did, how much he learned about behaving like other people did, simply because he was so grateful for the smallest of things—and so completely unused to them—he often had the feeling he was never going to fit in.
He’d been a Trainee for months now, and he still felt as if he was running in a race in which he would never catch up. That no matter how hard he tried, everyone else was always going to be smarter, faster, stronger than he ever would be. It went without saying that everyone, from the lowest servant to the highest in the land, was used to simply having more things than he did. The most that one of the mine children could claim was a ragged scrap of a blanket, and then only if someone bigger didn’t take it. The idea that he actually owned things was sometimes preposterous to him. Under it all was a fear he could never quite shake, that someone would find him out and it would all be taken away from him. That fear had faded over the months, but it was still there, an undercurrent to everything.
:You know, all I can do is to keep telling you is that you do belong here, I Chose correctly, and no one is ever going to send you away,:
Dallen said, breathing warm hay-scented breath into his hair affectionately.
:Eventually I’ll wear all that away, like water wearing away a rock.:
Mags sighed, and patted Dallen’s neck. Even Dallen didn’t quite understand it. He couldn’t help it. This was the way he had lived forever and ever, and . . . maybe the rock was just too hard to wear away.
And then there was . . . well, his position here. Most of the people around him, his fellow Trainees in particular, were used to a lot of deference from those of lesser rank, and of course, most folk outside the Collegium were of lesser rank. They were self-assured, they expected that people would speak to them respectfully. He was in the habit of expecting as many blows as words, and no one, ever, had spoken to him with respect until he had put on Grays.
The Trainees were used to treating each other with a casualness that came hard to him, while he had to battle to keep from giving them the same deference the servants gave them. That, of course, was viewed as “sucking up.”
And last of all, he truly admired the Heralds, and many of the older Trainees. He really wanted them to know that. They had earned his admiration. Hellfires, the Heralds had saved him and all the younglings at that mine! Life was short there at the best of times . . . at the worst, well “accidents” had happened to the youngsters who got the least little bit rebellious. There were always more unwanted orphans to replace them.
Manners, deference, knowing how to act around other people, all these things were absolutely alien to your thinking when you had grown up fighting over kitchen scraps, and sucking up was a way to keep from getting beaten. There had been plenty of times at the mine when he would happily have done almost any degrading thing in order to get just a little more food, or a blanket that was a tiny bit larger. Anything. So how could he relate to people who thought he was trying to curry favor when he was only thinking how much he appreciated being here?
But there was one thing he could always count on. Somehow Dallen always managed to make him feel better, no matter what happened, no matter what faux pas he managed to commit.
And the moments when he was sure he would never, ever go into Whites were getting fewer. Most of the time he thought he was actually getting close to acting like everyone else, even if he didn’t actually feel like everyone else.
:Just keep on acting. Pretend long enough that you belong, and eventually even you will believe it.:
Dallan nudged him with his nose.
:You might also think about that spot right under my chin . . . :
He grinned a little, and gently ran the bristles of the brush along his Companion’s chin. Having Dallen as a comforting and persistent presence in the back of his mind kept him steady. It was only when the invisible pressure got too much that he needed to physically come to Dallen for relief.
Just now, the trigger that had sent him here had been a brush of a resentful thought that he was somehow trying to become the teacher’s pet, when in fact all he was doing was trying to stay even with everyone else in class. He couldn’t help it. He was grateful to the teacher for taking the extra time to explain. Why was saying so wrong?
“You allus make me feel good,” he murmured to Dallen’s shoulder. “I dunno why you don’ get tired of me.”
:I’ll forgive you if you actually hand over that apple pie that you promised,:
said Dallen, nosing at Mags’ pocket urgently.
:You know pocket pies are far and away best when still warm, and you said you’d bring an extra from lunch.:
Happy to have something to take him away from thoughts that were always uncomfortable, Mags reached into his pocket and pulled out the two small rectangular pastries—a special treat for the colder day from the kitchen staff. They were a handy way to take the dessert out of the dining hall and eat it later, they kept your hands warm, and the students always appreciated them. It took a little more effort to make the individual pies, but then again, the dining hall tended to clear that much faster if the food was taken out. That meant the dishes could be worked on faster, tables wiped, floor mopped and the whole job done that much sooner. Everyone benefited.
The door banged open again, showing that Mags wasn’t the only Gray-wearer that had thought to take the chance of a few stolen moments with his or her Companion. Possibly with an extra pie to share as well. Companions did have a sweet tooth. He didn’t bother to see who it was; if they wanted to talk to him they’d already know he was here. And if they wanted privacy he wasn’t going to invade it.
Mags watched the pie vanish as Dallen practically inhaled it.
“I got no idea why you like ’em so much,” he said, “considerin’ that you couldn’t possibly taste it. I’d be surprised if it e’en touched yer tongue.”
Mags took a bite out of his own pie. It was delicious; it tasted as if the apples had been picked today, which was remarkable, considering it was probably made from dried apples from last year. The head cook did pride himself on making food for well over a hundred people still taste as though it was made for a small family meal. He almost always succeeded. Luncheon today, for instance . . . Mags licked his lips, thinking about it. Thick bean soup with bacon in it, winter greens cooked with ham hocks, lots of bread so fresh from the oven it burned your hands a little as you cut open the rolls and spread them with butter. “Good plain food and plenty of it is what these younglings need,” was what he’d overheard the man saying. “And if the highborn are too good for it, they can go and eat elsewhere.” Well, if this was “good, plain food,” he really didn’t want to eat with the highborn. His head would probably explode.
And, of course, after this luncheon there had been the pocket pies waiting to be taken away at the door instead of regular pies on the table. There were always pies. The cook reckoned pie was a good way to share out fruit now that it was winter, and make it last. Another undreamed-of luxury. At the mine, the only time he ever tasted anything sweet was chewing the ends of clover-blossoms, stealing honey from a wild-bee nest, or grubbing something sweet and burned out of the pig-food.
:I taste my pie just fine, thank you. So, do you feel that you are getting on in classes now?:
asked Dallen, his enormous tongue licking teeth and lips and curling up around his nose in an effort to retrieve every crumb and speck of sugar, honey and spices.
:Sometimes it’s hard to separate your general air of anxiety from things you and I genuinely need to address.:

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