Closer to the Chest (14 page)

Mags whistled through his teeth as he contemplated the mess. “Some of the members of our Order have not been . . . treated well by men,” the Prioress said hesitantly.

Mags didn't see any reason not to be blunt. “You mean they've been abused in the past. You said a lot of them were mercenaries; I imagine that's not uncommon in some merc companies. I can see why you wouldn't want them exposed to this. This,
here,
where they are supposed to be safe? I'm sure they are tough, but coming on this unexpectedly—” He shook his head.

“Yes. Exactly. I didn't even want the elders looking at this.” He actually heard her grinding her teeth.

He took a few slow breaths; the paint was fresh enough to smear, so it was still giving off fumes.
At least we can be grateful that whoever did this didn't decide to piss and shit all over the room, too.
Was it only one person? Or more than one? This things wouldn't take long to scrawl on the wall, and without knowing how long the perpetrator or perpetrators had
been at this, there was no way of telling if there'd been more than one.

One would be safer, though. Two people can keep a secret, but only if one of them is dead, as they say.
If the remaining members of the Order had taken to their beds at a virtuously early time, the miscreant would have had candlemarks to do this in.

“We'll fix this, Prioress,” he said, finally. “It looks worse than it is. Is there any reason why the sanctuary was whitewashed?”

“It was cheap,” she replied dryly. “And easy to maintain. We don't waste coppers on ornament, as you've noted. Why do you ask?”

“Any reason to object to repainting in red?” he asked.

She considered that for a moment. “Not that I can think of. Associated with war, is the color red. Might be fitting.” She looked about, again, with a sickened expression on her face. “I can't imagine any way this could be scrubbed clean.”

He nodded. “My thought exactly. And it would take new plaster to keep the color from coming through new coats of whitewash. All right then. Give me a minute.”

Mags had the strongest Mindspeech of any living Herald, and at the moment, that Gift was exactly what was needed. He closed his eyes for a moment, sought out the Prince's mind, and made contact. It was a little like tapping someone on the shoulder, actually.
:Highness?:

:Show me the damage, Mags.:
The reply was immediate. Good, the Prince was probably still sitting alone where they'd left him, just waiting for Mags to report.

Mags let the Prince see what had been done, sensing fragments of the Prince's reaction as he went over every inch of the desecrated sanctuary. There was disgust, anger, and puzzlement, which had been Mag's reaction, too. Because this made no sense, the Order couldn't possibly have offended anyone
this
much, could they? From the solid look of the
buildings, they'd been here for decades, maybe even a century or two. So why had this happened now?

:Not as bad as it could have been, then,:
was the Prince's first open response.
:I was thinking broken statuary, smashed furniture, something more difficult to deal with than paint.:

:That was my thought. Four men to clean the paint off the floor, another half dozen to paint the walls, using the scaffolds left over from finishing the roof of Herald's Collegium. Big brushes and a lot of red paint should take care of the walls. The Prioress approves the color.:

The Prince considered this.
:It'll be a bit dark when they're done. I'll send some lanterns and brackets down as well. Sketch as much as you can stomach, write down all the raving, and stay down there in charge. I'll be sending a crew I can trust to keep their mouths shut. Tell the Prioress that all anyone will know is that I decided since I had made a charity gift to the Sisters of Ardana that I'd make one to her Order as well and redecorated the Sanctuary under your direction while the Order was out on their exercise.:

Mags nodded. It was a very good story, and no one was likely to challenge it.
:Very well, your Highness.:

:I'll leave you to it then.:

Mags let the connection between them drop, and turned back to the Prioress. “There will be a crew that will keep their tongues in their heads down here within a candlemark,” he told the woman, who had kept silent while he spoke to the Prince. “The Prince will let it be known that he decided to gift the Order by redecorating the sanctuary, and scheduled it with you to take place while most of them were out on that exercise in order to keep any disturbance to a minimum.”

For the first time since he had met her, he saw her smile, slightly. “He's going to make a good commander and tactician,” she said with admiration.

Mags made a little grunt of a chuckle. “He already is,” he
replied. Then he made another circuit of the walls, copying down the scrawls and the disgusting drawings. “You know,” he said, as he worked, “The paint's still shiny in places. This looks as if every bit of it was done last night, in silence, without disturbing anyone here. They certainly carried away anything that could have been considered as evidence.”

The Prioress folded her arms and contemplated the walls. “All I can say is, thank the Goddess that everyone still here is too old and too crippled to be larking about like this all night. If they weren't, anyone who got wind of this would probably accuse
them
of doing this.”

“Hmm-hmm,” Mags agreed, and pointed at one of the inscriptions. “Along the lines of that nonsense there, about women cooped up together turning into man-devouring monsters?”

She nodded. “There was a lot of that sort of thing in the letters.”

“I don't suppose you saved any of them, did you?” he asked, not really expecting an affirmative answer.

“Dear Goddess, no,” she said, curling her lip. “I got rid of the trash as quickly as I could. Into the fire they went, before anyone but me got a chance to read them. As I said, there are those among us who have . . . raw nerves on certain subjects. I didn't want to take the chance of exposing them to something that would awaken old, bad memories.” She bit her lip and turned to look him fully in the eyes. “Do you really think the letters and this are linked?”

“You said it yourself,” he pointed out. “Expressing the same sentiments. If you get any more, save them and send them to me.”

Anything more they might have discussed was interrupted by the arrival of a wagon, loaded with sleepy workmen and women, paint, brushes, lanterns, brackets, and the scaffolding. And Mags settled down to a steady job of supervising the workers, while the Prioress kept an eye on her aged, but still
curious, Sisters, until the inscriptions were covered up and the repainting reached the ceiling.

•   •   •

Mags was glad to get back up the Hill, change out of the Whites that had (inevitably) gotten spattered with red paint, stuff himself at dinner, and go to lie down on the bed he had been forced to abandon
far
too early in the morning. Amily was off somewhere, but he knew Dallen had kept Rolan appraised of what was going on, and Rolan had made sure she knew what he was doing.

He wasn't altogether sure what
she
was doing, but it was probably her usual duties. That would be at least one Council meeting today, and he was quite, quite certain that the activities of the Poison Pen—or Pens—were
not
going to be mentioned at the meeting. First of all, they had nothing linking the letters to the Court with the desecration of the Temple. Second of all, the Prioress herself, as well as the Prince, had asked that nothing be said. And he understood why. Only too well.

He was no empath, but it hadn't been hard to read the shame and the doubt in the Prioress's stiff manner. It didn't
matter
that no one in the Order of Betane had done anything to earn those disgusting scrawls. The fact that the desecration had happened in the first place was enough to shake the Prioress's faith, not in her Goddess, but in herself. Mags had seen it time and again, administering justice down in Haven. Stupid people never doubted themselves. Intelligent ones, however, went straight to self-examination whenever anything bad happened.
Did I deserve this? Did I bring it on myself? Did I somehow do something that I shouldn't have?
Even though the sanctuary of Betane was now clean, painted, lit with beautiful brass lanterns, and looked
better
than it had before the insult, the Prioress would probably be on her knees all night in there. She'd
say
she was guarding it until the rest
of the Order got back, but the real reason was because she was going to punish herself for “letting” it happen, and beg her Goddess's forgiveness for whatever imaginary fault had permitted an enemy to penetrate into the Order's heart.

I would love to get my hands on whoever did this.
But he already knew that he could administer all the punishment in the world, and it would have no effect, because the ones who had done this were
stupid
people, who had absolutely no doubt that they were in the right. No matter what they were told, no matter how many times they got caught and punished, they would go straight out and do it again. They knew they were right, and nothing would shake that faith.

:I wish there was a plague that would target only stupid people,:
he thought stormily.
:Life would be so much easier for all the people that were left.:

“What are you thinking, frowning like that?” Amily said from the foot of the bed. “You look as if you're aching to get your hands on someone and beat some sense into him.”

“If only it were that easy,” he sighed, opening his eyes, and told her what had been going on since he'd left her this morning.

She pursed her lips, and rather than replying, went back into the sitting room. When she returned, she had a leather document case with her, and sat down next to him on the bed. “It looks to me as if we have something widespread and nasty on our hands,” she said.

“Wait,” he interrupted her. “Let me find my notes.” The notebook, as he had thought, was under the bed where it had ended up after he'd thrown himself down onto it. She pulled a handful of what looked like letters printed on crude paper and handed them to him. He looked them over, frowning, while she perused his notes.

“Look at this,” she said, pointing to one of the inscriptions he had carefully copied out. “I'm sure there is something with the exact phrasing in one of those letters.”

“There is,” he said, picking it out of the group. “And this
one is similar. Here's one that's like the inscription I wrote on the next page.” He looked up at her, and saw she was as troubled by this as he was. “Clearly, we have a problem. If it's a single person, how is it that he can deliver letters up here on the Hill, and yet be down in Haven to desecrate a Temple in the dead of night? If he lives on the Hill how would he have known that the Temple was going to be empty? And if he lives in Haven, how would he deliver letters up on the Hill?”

“And if it's more than one person, clearly they are working together. They're using the same phrasing, and they think
entirely
too much alike.” She shivered. “I'm beginning to be glad you sleep with weapons at hand.”

He glowered at the letters. “I think you should start. I'm not always here.”

“I think I will,” she replied. “Or . . . better still, maybe I should get one of Dia's mastiffs.”

“That wouldn't be a bad idea. We've got the room. I'd feel better about you being alone here. Not”—he hastened to add—“that I think you are incapable of defending yourself. But you can't be awake all the time. And if you sleep too lightly you'll never get any rest.”

“I'll talk to her about it tomorrow.” She put the letters into the document case, and when he handed it to her, added the notebook. “And we should both see the King and the Prince and probably Father tomorrow at breakfast.” Her eyes went distant for a moment. “Rolan's taking care of it.”

“Most people have a personal secretary for such things,” he said, his mouth quirking a little.

“Hush. He might ‘hear' you. Besides, he's no good as a personal secretary, he can't write.” She leaned over and kissed his nose. And then his mouth. And then they forgot about breakfast appointments and Poison Pen letters for a while.

•   •   •

:Time to wake UP!:
Perhaps it had been the remark about being a personal secretary, but Rolan seemed to take great glee in booting Amily out of what had been a nice, peaceful rest. But as she levered herself up on one elbow, hair falling down over one eye, Mags groaned theatrically and batted at the air, as if trying to make something invisible go away.
Dallen isn't being any kinder to him, I see.

“It won't work,” she reminded him. “He's in your head, and you can't get rid of him that easily.” She pushed the hair out of her eyes.

“Wretched horse,” he grumbled, and blinked sleepily. “At least they woke us up with plenty of time to make ourselves presentable. Did I tell you what the Prince was wearing when I got rousted out of bed yesterday?”

“No,” she replied, groping for her shift. She definitely remembered it going over
this
side of the bed last night . . .
ah, there it is.

She laughed at his description as they both washed up and put on clean uniforms. It was still dark as they left their rooms for the Palace, document case in Amily's hand, heading for the Royal Suite.

The Guards posted here probably would have been demoted to cleaning boots if they
hadn't
known the King's Own on sight, so the moment Amily and Mags appeared at the end of the hall, one of the men on duty started opening the door for them. They went through, side by side, with nods to both Guards, and the door closed smoothly behind them.