“Renfry,” said the older minstrel, clasping his hand, with a slow smile that showed a good set of even, white teeth. “Not many real musicians on the Row. I s'ppose I should be treating you as a rival - but - hell, a man gets tired of hearing and singing the same damn things over and over. Bel had Jonny for a long while before she ruined him, and he trained here.”

“What happened to him? After, I mean.”

“We clubbed together and sent him off to a Healer the very next day, ended up having to send him across the Border. Uppity palace Healer didn't want to 'waste his time on tavern scum.' Never heard anything after that.” He shrugged. “If the poor lad ended up not being able to play again, I don't imagine he'd want anyone to know.”

Valdir shuddered; genuinely.

“Ol' Bel don't believe in letting the help sample the goods. She got drunk and thought Jonny had his eye on one of the girls.” He snorted in contempt. “Not bloody likely.”

“She must have slipped up once -” Valdir ventured. “I mean - the one that romanced her girl, like you said.”

Renfry laughed, and started up the dusty, near-empty street with Valdir following. The thin autumn sunlight stretched their shadows out ahead of them. “She did, because she was bedding the fellow herself. She never figured him for having the stamina to be double-dipping!

Truth to tell, I hope he was good in bed, because he surely had a voice like a crow in mating season, and maybe four whole chords to his name.”

Valdir thought about the way Bel had tried to come on to him, and could actually feel a shred of sympathy for the unknown minstrel. “Were you waiting out here for me?” Valdir asked, as they approached the closed door of The Pig and Stick, the tavern Renfry had been playing in last night.

Renfry nodded, holding the door to “his” inn open.

“Why?”

“To warn you, like I said. Let you know you'd better make tracks.”

Valdir shook his head, and his hair fell over one eye. “I can't. I - I haven't got a choice,” he confessed sadly. “I haven't anywhere else to go.”

Renfry paused in surprise, half in, half out of the doorway. “That lean in the pocket?” he asked. “Lad, you aren't that bad. You're a good enough musician, for true. Unless you really made more than just a mistake.”

Valdir nodded unhappily. “Made a bad enemy. Sang the wrong song at the wrong time. Used to be with a House. Now I've got the clothes on my back, my lute, and that's mostly it.”

“Save your coppers and head over the Border into Valdemar,” the other advised. “Tell you what, I'll stand you a drink and a little better breakfast than you'd get from old Bel, then I'll steer you over to a decent corner. Not the best, but with the palace a wreck, there's a, lot of guards standing about with nothing to do but make sure our High and Mighty Lord Visitor doesn't get himself in the way of a stray knife round about the Town Elder's house. You ought to collect a bit there, hmm?” He grinned. “Besides, I got an underhanded motive. You're about as good as me, and you know some stuff new to our folk. I'm going to bribe you with food to learn it, and then I'm going to get you out of town so you aren't competition anymore.”

Valdir smiled back hesitantly, at least as far as his sore cheek permitted. “Now that I understand!”

By nightfall Bel was sober, and when Valdir crept in at the open door she waved him to his place on the hearth with nothing more threatening than a scowl. He sat down on the raised brick hearth with his bruised cheek to the fire, and began tuning the lute. There were one or two customers; nothing much. Valdir was just as glad; it gave him a chance to think over what he'd picked up.

It had been a very profitable day. The Town Elder's servants were entertainment-starved and loose-tongued; once Valdir had gotten them started they generally ran on quite informatively and at some length before demanding something in return.

Ylyna had been a child-bride; that made Tashir's arrival eight-and-a-half months after the wedding so much more surprising. Several of the Mavelan girls had been offered as prospective treaty-spouse, but of them all, only Ylyna had lacked mage-powers, so only Ylyna had been acceptable to Deveran Remoerdis or his people. It was generally agreed that she was “odd, even for a Mavelan.” And strangely enough, it was also generally agreed that up until the night of the massacre Tashir had been a fairly decent, if slightly peculiar, young man. “A bit like you, lad,” one of the guards had said. “Jumpin' at shadows, like. Nervy.” If it had not been for his mage-powers there likely would have been no objection to his eventual inheritance of the throne of Lineas. But once those powers manifested, it became out of the question. No Linean would stand by and see a mage take the seat of power.

“We seen what comes o' that, yonder,” an aged porter had told him a bit angrily, pointing with his chin at the north. “Put a mage in power, next thing ye know, he's usin' magic t' get any damn thing 'e want out 'o ye. No. No mages here.”

So as soon as it had become evident that several of Tashir's younger brothers - all of whom markedly resembled Deveran - were going to live into adulthood, the Council demanded that Deveran disinherit the boy. They didn't have to pressure him, according to the Lord Elder's first chambermaid; he gave in at once, so quickly that the ink wasn't even dry on the copies of the proclamation when his heralds cried the news.

And strangely enough, Tashir didn't seem the least unhappy about it. “Didn”xactly jump for joy, but didn' seem t' care, neither,” a fruitseller had observed.

Lord Vedric - that was who Valdir assumed was the “Lord Visitor,” though he was never referred to as anything but “that Mavelan Lord” - had come as something of a surprise to the folk of Highjorune. They'd expected him to attempt to defend Tashir; instead he'd listened to the witnesses with calm and sympathy, and had expressed his horrified opinion that the boy had gone rogue. He'd kept displays of magery to a minimum, and had made himself available to the Council as a kind of advisor until someone figured out how to get Tashir back to be punished, and until they determined who the new ruler of Lineas would be.

As for the startling resemblance between Lord Vedric and Tashir -

“ 'E said th' boy could be 'is, 'e didn't know,” one of the chambermaids - a pretty one that Valdir suspected of getting gossip fodder via pillow talk - had whispered, sniggering, to Valdir. “ 'E said th' girl couldn' keep 'er skirts down, an' that she'd bribed 'er way inta lots o' beds, takin' the place o' th' girls as was s'pposed t' be there. Said 'e'd found 'er in 'is bed more'n once, an' that 'e didn't know it were 'is own 'alf-sister an' not the wench 'e'd called fer till mornin'. That was why 'e were tryin' t' keep th' boy heir, so 'e says; tryin' t' do right by 'im, like, just in case.” She sniggered again. “I 'card 'nough fr'm m' cousin 'bout 'Er 'Ighness an”er light-skirt ways I believe'im.”

And the cousin, it seemed, had been one of Ylyna's personal maids. More importantly, she had been out of the palace the night everyone else had been killed. The chambermaid had promised an introduction in a day or two.

“You gonna sit there all night diddlin' that thing, or you gonna play?” Bel growled, breaking into his thoughts. With a start and a cowed look, he began playing.

The young girl scampered back to her duties, leaving Valdir alone with the last surviving member of the palace staff, her cousin. The woman pondered him for a moment, then, a trifle reluctantly, invited him into her tiny parlor. The cousin was old; that surprised Valdir. And the odd look she gave him as he took the seat she indicated surprised him more.

“Why are ye askin', lad?” she queried, as she settled into her own chair. “If it's just morbid curiosity...”