Closer to the Chest Read Online Free PDF

pies! Sheep’s-milk cheese. Mutton-fat instead of butter. Oh, and barley-bread, and barley-porridge, and never a sign of wheat. They do have every kind of root you can imagine, and plenty you can’t, and peas and lentils and beans, but their idea of how to flavor ’em is . . . mutton fat. Almost no herbs that aren’t for medicine. Not a sign of a fish. Not a glimpse of a goose or a duck. Now and again, they let loose of one of their precious eggs, and they
stare
at you while you eat it, to make sure you appreciate their sacrifice, I guess.” He shook his head woefully.
    â€œIt could have been worse,” Amily pointed out. “It could have been goat.”
    Pip shuddered. “It
was
goat in some places. At least where it was goat, the cheese was good. I am
so
glad to be back. Still. The weather wasn’t awful, and the good thing about sheep-country is every bed I had was a nice fat wool mattress. Yes,” he said, at Mags’ look of astonishment. “In the Way-stations. Nice, tufted, wool mattresses,
and
wool blankets if you please, all put up with some sort of herb to keep the moths away. So if the food was enough to make you weep with boredom, I slept good.”
    â€œSounds to me like you made out all right,” Mags observed, as Dean Caelen took a seat opposite them and silently began helping himself. “No disasters?”
    â€œNothing worth talking about,” Pip replied. “Just the usual lot of foolishness you get all the time out on circuit. Quarrelsto break up before they become feuds. Boundary disputes, sheep claimed by three different people. Gossipy old hags and interfering old men trying to run everybody else’s life for ’em. Runaway younglings, abandoned girls halfway to birthing, lost littles, claims of curses. People not liking the new laws, people wanting old laws changed right that moment, people wanting this, that, or the other, and me having to put their best case for them.” He waved his hand vaguely in the air. “The usual. Which is to say, I am very damn glad I don’t get the kind of excitement that
you’ve
gotten.”
    Pip had been a tall, lanky, brown boy, and he had become a tall, lanky, brown man, and he looked very handsome in his Herald Whites. He’d always been one for spending as much time out of doors as possible; being a Field Herald clearly suited him.
    There were more than one or two of the older female Trainees watching him out of the corners of their eyes, and several of the younger ones who were looking at him as if they were star-struck; Mags smiled to himself, though he felt a little sorry for them, for they had no hope at all. No full Herald would ever dally with a Trainee; it was considered very bad form. Pip would pretend not to understand any outright advances, although he’d be quite polite and not at all condescending about it.
    Dean Caelen, the head of Herald’s Collegium, smiled a little as Pip stopped talking so he could concentrate on eating. “Perhaps East on your next circuit?” he suggested, buttering a slice of bread. “We’ll try and keep you out of sheep country, but from the sound of it, you do a good job with country-folk.”
    â€œNobody complained, at any rate,” Pip offered. “We might be highborn, but we’re country highborn; more squire than Duke, if you take my meaning. My Ma is sort-of the peacemaker back home for everyone all around. Less than a judge, not a Herald, but more than just the manor lady. People were in and out of the manor, all day, every day, taking theirtroubles in with them, and mostly leaving those troubles behind them. Maybe some of it rubbed off.”
    Dean Caelen nodded. Like Pip, he was brown of hair and eye, but unlike Pip, he did not give the impression that he was a coiled spring, ready to bounce off at the first hint of something to release all his pent-up energy. Instead, he had an air of quiet,