Mercedes Lackey - Take A Thief

Roughly a quarter-candlemark later, a harried individual in Royal livery stuck his head in the door and stared at him. “What — Did I order you to light the lamps?” he asked, sounding more than a bit startled.

Skif made his voice sound high and piping, more childlike than usual. “Yes, milord,” he replied, with a bob of his head. “You did, milord.”

The man muttered something under his breath about losing one's mind as the hair grayed, then said, “Carry on, then,” waving a hand vaguely at him.

Skif hid his grin and did just that. It was one of the things he'd learned impersonating a page at Lord Orthallen's. If a boy was doing a job (rather than standing about idly), people would assume he'd been set the task and leave him alone. Even if the person in charge didn't recall setting the task or seeing the boy, that person would take it for granted that it had just slipped his mind, and leave the boy to carry on.

When the upper servant appeared again, with a bevy of boys clad just as Skif was in tow, Skif was relieved to see that none of them were the boy he'd won his uniform from. That had been his one concern in all of this, and with that worry laid to rest, he paid dutiful attention to the servant's instructions. He actually paid more attention than the real pages, who fidgeted and poked each other — but then, they were yawningly familiar with what their duties were, and he wasn't.

The food arrived then — tidbits, rather than a meal, something to provide a pleasant background to the reception. He managed to get himself, by virtue of his slightly taller stature, assigned to carry trays of wine glasses among the guests. That was a plus; he'd be able to move freely, where Alberich would be constrained to go where the Queen did.

When all was in readiness, the doors into the courtyard (now nicely lantern-lit, thanks to Skif's efforts) and the doors to the corridor were flung open, the page boys took their places, and the guests began to trickle by ones and twos into the room for the reception.

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ALBERICH stood at Selenay's right hand as she circulated among Lord Orthallen's guests. He wore his formal Whites, something he did only on the rarest of occasions. He was not at all comfortable in what, for the first two decades of his life, had been the uniform not only of the enemy, but of the demon lovers. Only three people knew that reason, however; to tell anyone but Selenay, Talamir, and Myste would have been to deliver a slap in the face to those who had rescued and cared for him and taken them into their midst.

Sometimes, though, he did wear the uniform, when the need to do so outweighed personal discomfort. In this case, he wore his Whites because he would be far more conspicuous in his favored dark gray leather than in his Heraldic uniform.

Talamir stood at Selenay's left, where he could murmur advice into her ear if she needed it. Alberich stood on her right, where his weapon hand was free.

He watched everyone and everything, his eyes flicking from one person to the next, and he never smiled. This evidently bothered some, though not all, of Lord Orthallen's guests — the ones who had never seen Alberich before and only knew of him by reputation. Those who frequented Court functions were used to the way he looked at everyone as if he saw a potential assassin.

He did, however. Everyone was a potential assassin. Of course the likelihood that any of them actually were assassins was fairly low. But he was the Herald who had saved Selenay from death at the hands of her own husband, cutting the Prince down with the Prince's own sword. He saw treachery everywhere, or feigned that he did, and when he looked at someone he didn't know with suspicion in his eyes, that person tended to get very nervous.

Sometimes he wished that he didn't have quite so formidable a reputation. Sometimes he wished that he could just look at someone and not have them flinch away.

That was about as likely at this point as for him to turn as handsome as young Trainee Kris.

That was what Herald-Chronicler Myste said, anyway, looking at him from behind those peculiar split-lensed spectacles of hers that forced her pull her head back to peer down her nose when she was reading and tilt her chin down to peer through the top half when she was looking at anything past the length of her arms. “What do you expect?” she'd ask him tartly. “The man who'll cut down a prince wouldn't hesitate at putting a blade in the heart of a man of lesser rank. But for the gods' sake don't ever try smiling at them. You aren't any good at faking a smile, and when you try, you look as if you were about to jump on people and tear their throats out with your teeth.”

A pity Myste was perhaps the Herald who was the most inept with weapons in the entire Circle. He could do with a dose of her good sense here tonight. Not that she'd enjoy it, of course. She would far rather be where she could avoid all this interminable nonsense, in her quarters, either writing up the current Chronicles or going over old ones, a glass of cold, sweet tea at her elbow.

Where she would probably knock it over at least once tonight. Hopefully when she did, the glass would be empty. If it wasn't, well, at least the papers on her floor were discards, unlike the ones piled all over Elcarth's office.

Alberich pulled his attention back to the reception. The heat wave had finally broken, though the thick stone walls of the Old Palace kept every room in it comfortably cool even during the worst of the heat. With the doors open, there was a pleasant scent coming from the roses in the courtyard. No one had gone out there, though, for Selenay and Orthallen were in here. No matter how tired anyone's feet got, he wouldn't leave where the power was.

If Alberich's gaze rested more often than usual on a particular page, circulating among the guests with a tray of wineglasses, probably no one was going to notice. It was a very ordinary-looking boy: small, dark, curly-haired. If he moved more gracefully than the usual lot, that wasn't likely to be noticed either. Alberich was pleased with the way he was looking up at the people he was serving — not staring enough to make him seem insolent, just paying respectful attention. Very good, very smooth. The boy must have done something like this before, many times, though Alberich doubted it had been for any purpose other than to filch food from whatever noble household he had infiltrated.

Lord Orthallen, on whose behalf this reception was being held, also circulated among the guests quite as if he was the one who was the host, and not the Queen. This particular festivity was a reward for those who had helped Orthallen to conclude a set of delicate negotiations that would ultimately benefit the Crown substantially, according to Myste. Alberich was not at all clear on just what those negotiations were, only that they had involved a number of men (and a few women) of vastly disparate backgrounds, many of whom had personal differences with each other.

One thing they all had in common, though. They were all very, very wealthy.

That much showed in their costumes, rich with embroidery and of costly materials, and in their ornaments, heavy gold and silver and precious gems. The details didn't matter to Alberich, though Myste would have been studying them with the eye of one who would be recording every subtle detail later in her writings. That was the problem of living around a Chronicler; he never knew just what detail, what secret that he assumed was just between them would end up in one of her Histories, to be goggled at by some other generation of Heralds to come.

Right now, he was in the unusual position of having part of his attention devoted to something other than Selenay and her welfare. He watched that one small boy, not as a hunter watched prey, but as the prey watches a hunter, alive to every nuance in his behavior, waiting for the slightest sign that the boy recognized a voice he'd only heard once.