Mercedes Lackey: Intrigues

By midmorning, he was established. He settled himself just out of the way of foot traffic, his eyes sealed with wax and bandaged, his staff across his lap, and the bowl, which looked nicely forlorn and battered, in front of him.

He dropped some of his shields, ever so cautiously, and let the thoughts, and particularly the images, of the people passing by seep into his mind. Uppermost for the most part were concerns about where they were going, so he got lots of glimpses of the street and the people in it.

Until the madman somehow connected with him again, this was Mags’ best hope of finding him; looking for the foreigners through the eyes of other people.

Now and again he heard the metallic sound of a small coin falling into his bowl. When he did, he murmured a quiet thank you, groped convincingly for the token, and stuffed it in his pocket.

Dallen was a comforting presence in the back of his mind again, even if the Companion was mostly drugged and comatose. There were a hundred questions he wanted to ask, and unfortunately, right now, he couldn’t.

Foremost was the suspicion that at least part of the reason why Nikolas wasn’t giving him help was that the King’s Own was testing him again.

If that was so, well, he was actually all right with that. He still felt as if he needed to be punished—or at least to atone in some way—

Maybe someone else would have resented this, but he was trying to be honest with himself, and if he had been in Nikolas’ shoes, he’d have done the same. After all, Mags had run away from the Collegium; Nikolas had to be sure that he could count on Mags to do what he was asked to do.

So Mags had to prove himself, show he was still able to perform as he had been taught, and do so without any outside support.

While he watched the passing crowd through the eyes of the crowd itself, he pondered where it might be likeliest to find the foreigners now. Would they have tried to hide themselves in the slums?

Don’t think so. One of the things that Nikolas had taught him was that each block in the poorer sections of Haven was like a village. Everyone knew everyone, and they all knew each others’ business. For a lot of foreigners to suddenly intrude—well, they would stand out. It would be obvious that they weren’t poor, no matter how they tried to disguise themselves. And—hmm.

Another question to ask Dallen: just how widespread were the stories about foreigners’ plotting the King’s death? If such tales were current all over Haven, there were plenty of people who would report their presence to the Guard, no matter how they themselves felt about the Guard, or whether or not they were lawbreakers. Because there was bound to be a reward tied to their capture, and there is nothing like a reward to make the former lawbreaker turn law-abiding citizen.

So he could probably dismiss the slums.

On the other hand, they had stolen horses now. They didn’t have to be in Haven at all. They could be anywhere within half a day of the city, though it was likeliest that they were closer than that.

So if I was one’a them, what would I want right now?

The one he was linked to had clearly wanted something, and it was an actual object. Mags had the impression that very recently he had decided he had left it behind somewhere. There was no doubt it was important, very important.

Maybe that was why he was back in the city! They must have stayed at a lot of inns in order to keep from arousing suspicion by staying too long in one. The lost object would probably be in one of those inns.

Now, the inn Mags had found them living at was not exactly a cheap one—not luxurious, but not cheap. He doubted that they would ever stay in a cheap place. In a decent inn, when you left something behind, the innkeeper held it until you turned up again and asked for it; it paid them to do such a simple service, for it guaranteed repeat customers.

Perhaps one way to go about this would be to consider just where in the city a foreigner could stay without causing comment in the middle of winter, besides that row of inns on the Trade Road.

Well... time to consider what he had learned from Master Soren, and at Master Soren’s gatherings. There were only a limited number of kinds of merchants that would need housing in the middle of winter. If the foreigners were trying to avoid detection, they would have to be careful about what they were trying to pass as.

One thing sprang instantly to mind. At the Midwinter Festival, he had overheard a conversation with a Master Goldsmith. If he recalled this correctly, the man had been recounting—with great pleasure—the long negotiation he was having with a particular gem trader who had decided to overwinter in Haven purely to keep the bargaining going. So gold and gem merchants would remain... particularly if staying would get them a really good bargain.

They was sportin’ a mort’o sparklies, he recalled. Huh. I wunner if they was like t’ sell any on ’em? If so, the gems they were selling would lend verisimilitude to pretending to be gem traders. And no one thought twice about gem traders being foreign. In fact, if he had been in their shoes, and had not established an alternate safe house down in Haven, that would be exactly what he would do. Well, unless he thought of something even safer.

Well, that gave him an outline for another course of action. Investigate the inns—and there couldn’t be many—where the goldsmiths were. That could be a bit difficult in his current disguise, but not impossible.

Do wool sellers overwinter? It would be easy enough to find that out with a day or so of lingering in that part of the city.

Horse and cattle traders—no. There were horse fairs from Midsummer on, but they stopped at the first snow. There was a cattle fair for weaned calves at Midsummer, then nothing until the fall, but by the time the first snow fell, cattle traders were safely back home. No use looking there. Same for sheep and other livestock. Besides, aside from exotic breeds of horses, like Shin’a’in, the sellers were all Valdemaran.

Spices, dyes and medicines... maybe. He’d have to lurk again.

Grain... no, and anyway all sellers would again be Valdemaran, not foreign.

He wracked his brain. A merchant that was foreign would have to be selling something exotic and very expensive, and in order to overwinter, he would either have planned to be here, or got caught by surprise.

All right. That narrowed things down quite a bit.

Weapons... no. That would make them stand out, which was something that they wouldn’t want to do.

What about a reason for being in Haven that had nothing to do with selling anything?

Aha. Scholars. Virtually every Temple had a library and archives. Now that might be the answer. If they were pretending to be scholars, they could move from inn to inn without causing comment, and only needed to go out “to study” during the day to keep up the ruse. No one thought twice about scholars being foreign, peculiar, or reclusive.

And that led to another, sobering thought. What if all those trips down into Haven on the part of the bodyguards had NOT been to get drunk, but to scout out potential places where they could all go should they need to abandon the Court?

He hoped that Nikolas had thought of that.

Never mind. Concentrate on what he could do; that was the important thing right now.

He picked up his begging bowl and held his staff out in front of him, sweeping it back and forth in little arcs to “feel” his way. Which he wasn’t actually doing, of course, he was using other peoples’ glimpses of him to figure out where he was going. It could have been disorienting had he not gotten used to it while he sat in his corner this afternoon; it was a bit difficult to do, but not disorienting—like trying to thread a needle by looking at it in the mirror.