Page 49 of Beyond

“Well, it’s nothing like when I was a foster, I can tell you that!” he replied. “You never were a foster here, were you, Merrin?”

The man colored a little at this reminder that his family was not considered important enough for him to be sent as a hostage. “No, my Lord, though I would have considered it an honor.”

“You wouldn’t have if you’d seen the dormitories, or the uniforms,” Kordas chuckled, and nodded to indicate he accepted the dish being offered to him of fresh greens. As usual, this was going to be a meal of several courses, each one having at least three dishes. At least it would probably consist of only three or four courses at most. He wondered if all of this was meant as a test of restraint, or a reminder of the Emperor’s bounty.

Probably both.

“Dormitories? Uniforms?” Merrin actually had a brief look of horror on his face.

“Oh yes, in my time we all wore uniforms, and we lived in rooms about the size of a wardrobe, just big enough for yourself and your body-servant.” He ate the greens, which seemed curiously tasteless. Did that have something to do with the ever-present perfumes dulling his sense of smell, or did the greens grown in the kitchen garden lack enough good soil and sunshine?

“Your—body-servant?” Incredulity mixed with the horror on Merrin’s face. “You shared quarters with your body-servant?”

“Oh, quite, quite, Merrin,” said a fellow dressed with about as much flair as that old Duke last night. He looked to be a little older than Kordas, and was soft, but not flabby. He seemed to relish the chance to rub it in that Merrin had not been of high enough rank to be a hostage. “Yes, indeed, you and your man, crammed in together on exactly the same, identical, narrow little cots. And all of us in the same uniforms, with the Emperor’s tabard, not a particle of difference among us. Quite the bonding experience, eh, Kordas?”

Aha. Now Kordas recognized him, by a little quirk of raising his eyebrow and his pinky finger at the same time.

“Absolutely, Baron Pierson,” he said, with false geniality. “Baron Pierson, may I introduce you to one of my Counts? This is Count Lord Merrin.”

“Charmed, charmed,” Pierson replied absently. “Oh! Don’t you remember little Macalay? How he’d get up a full candlemark before anyone else and scuttle into the bathing chamber to do his business before anyone could get in there and see him naked?”

I remember him scuttling in there because in his first week he’d been held under the water in the tub and nearly drowned, Kordas thought, as he pretended to laugh.

“You shared bathing chambers?” Merrin gasped.

That only increased Pierson’s mirth.

Kordas traded “school memories” with Pierson until someone on Pierson’s other side got his attention, and involved him in a debate on some woman’s charms. Merrin still seemed to be in a state of shock, but shook himself out of it when Kordas finished his course of beefsteak and got his attention again.

“So, as I was saying, Merrin, so far, I have to say everything here at Court is a delight. These Dolls! What servants they make! Silent, and you know they aren’t going to gossip about you belowstairs. And my apartment—well, it’s a sharp step up from the manor at Valdemar, I can tell you that!” Now … let’s see what you make of that.

“Your manor—what do you mean?” Merrin asked, taken aback.

“Well, you know, it was built a long time ago, and a lot of it’s empty, so …well, over the decades things have—happened.” He shrugged.

“What kind of things?” Merrin asked.

He lowered his voice. “Well, between just the two of us … I think the mages that built it might have been, you know—” He mimed drinking. “I mean, we both know Valdemar is a backwater, and the Emperor isn’t exactly going to send his best. The gods know he’s got far more important things to do than mess about making sure this or that manor is up to snuff.” He took a long swig of wine. “I mean, according to my grandfather, we were completely honored and gobsmacked that he had thought to build us a manor at all!”

He ate a few more bites to prolong the tension.

“And?” prompted Merrin.

“Well … we don’t know how they got in, but a couple of the towers are full of bats. Full of them! They come out in clouds every night! And after a while, you just accept the smell of their abundant droppings. Not,” he added, “that I’m complaining, mind you, because they are brilliant at eating up the bugs.”

“Bugs?” Merrin asked, a little faintly.

He nodded. “The bugs came in with the pigeons that took over what we call the Rose Tower, because you can see the rose garden so well from there. Or you could, if you didn’t have to kick through pigeon shit a foot deep on the floor of the top story.”

Now he had the attention of the entire table, and a couple of people on either side, and was really beginning to enjoy himself.

“Pigeons …” said Merrin.

“But that isn’t so bad, you know, nor are the bats. Empty towers, we don’t use ’em, and if we ever fancy pigeon pie or pigeon eggs, I just have to send a lad up there to knock a few on the head or gather the eggs, and there’s supper!” Those who could hear him were listening with rapt attention. “Hakkon, my Seneschal—you remember Hakkon? He got brave and went up there with a scarf wrapped about his face to investigate, and it’s his conviction that the towers were never built right in the first place. Howling great gap between the roof and the wall. Impossible to fix, of course, without one of the Emperor’s builder-mages, and maybe not even then. So we just let the bats and the pigeons have things. No harm to us, after all. And convenient for pigeon and squab and eggs.”

“Gap,” said Merrin.

“Bloody great one. Have you even been listening, Merrin?” Now people even further away had quieted their conversations, and he was really getting into the spirit of things. Trying to tell the “tale” the way he thought Squire Lesley would. “But that’s not really an issue, we’re really rattling around in that barn of a place. Built for four times the number we’ve got living there. No, it’s the other things that are a bit of a nuisance. Like the badgers in the cellars.”