Valdemar 06 - [Exile 02] - Exile’s Valor Read Online Free PDF Page B

among the jailers—spilled the blood of the prisoners.
    Of course, the conditions were spartan and crowded, and no prison was a good place. But compared with those jails that Alberich had seen in Karse—not to mention the ones that were rumored to exist. . . .
    Myste grimaced as they rode in at the stable, and grimaced again as they walked in through the front door. Alberich was wearing his Whites—no one looked at a Herald’s face, they only saw his Whites. The prisoner would see the Whites and not even think that the man inside the white uniform might be the madman that had attacked him.
    They were taken to a little room, windowless, lit by a single lantern, that held a single chair. The chair was for the prisoner, whose legs would be tethered to it; Myste and Alberich would be free, so that they could evade any attacks he might try.
    The prisoner was brought in and his legs shackled to the legs of the chair. He was as pale as a snowdrift when he saw who was there to speak with him.
    Slowly, and carefully, Alberich outlined exactly what he had observed, while the man listened, jaw clenched, eyes staring straight ahead. “So,” Alberich finished. “What have you to say for yourself?”
    He half expected the man to flatly deny everything, but after a long, tense silence, he spoke.
    â€œI cannot tell you what you want to know.”
    A candlemark later, Alberich and Myste left the jail. There was a frown of frustration on Herald Myste’s round face.
    Alberich didn’t blame her. The man certainly had been paying people to try to foment discontent against the Queen—quite a few of them, in fact, but with, by his own admission, limited success. And he had been doing so on the orders, and with the money, of someone else.
    The only problem was, he didn’t know this “someone else.” He had never even seen the man’s face.
    Myste had not even needed to cast the Truth Spell to force the truth out of the man; her own innate Truth-sensing Gift had told her he was telling them everything he knew. He himself had a grudge against the Crown in general, and Selenay in particular, for when she had served her internship in the City Courts of law with Herald Mirilin, she had made a ruling against him. So there was his personal motive—
    But who had sought out this man with a grievance against Selenay? Who had supplied him with the money and the idea to foster rebellion?
    And why?
    Only one thing was absolutely certain; the trail came to a dead end now. It was unlikely that the man would ever be contacted again, for someone astute enough to find him in the first place would certainly be sharp enough to discover he had been arrested and know not to use him again.
    â€œNow what will you do?” Myste asked, as they neared the Collegium.
    â€œKeep looking,” he said, and shrugged.
    There seemed nothing more he could say. Or do.

    The closing in of winter always brought one definite disadvantage to the weaponry classes; much of the time practices and lessons had to be held in the salle instead of out of doors. This limited the kinds of lessons that could be given and the way that practices could be held. Every season brought its difficulties for a Weaponsmaster; in spring and summer there were torrential rains to deal with, it was difficult to muster enthusiasm for heavy exercise in high summer, and in the winter, of course, there was the cold and the snow. Well, if the job had been easy, anyone could have done it.
    Alberich still held some outdoor archery classes in the winter, but when, as today, snow was falling thickly, with a wicked wind to blow it around, there wasn’t much point in keeping the youngsters at the targets. Yes, they would find themselves having to fight for their lives under adverse conditions, but adverse conditions affected the enemy, too. And as for needing to hunt, well, no Herald was going to starve because he or she could not hunt in a blizzard;