He rubbed the bruise Bel had gifted him with this morning - it matched the first - and tried to get her measure. She was a bit younger than Savil, and small, but proudly erect. There was something very dignified about her, and out of keeping with her purported position; she didn't hold herself with the air of a servant. She was plainly clothed, in dark wool dress and white linen undertunic, but the wool was fine lambswool, tightly woven, and costly, and the linen as fine as he had ever seen on his mother. She watched him from under half-closed lids. Her eyes seemed full of secrets.

She had been out of the palace that fatal evening, the girl had told him, because she had been here, in the home of her aged mother, who had fallen and could not be left alone at night. There was a great deal about her that prompted Valdir to trust in her honesty; enough that he decided to tell her a certain measure of the truth.

“I want to find out what really happened,” he said, as sincerely as he could manage. “The stories I've heard so far don't make a lot of sense. If there's something that needs to be told, perhaps I'm the one to tell it. A minstrel can tell an unpleasant truth with more success, sometimes, than anyone else. I'm a stranger, with no interests to protect. It might be I'd be believed more readily than a Linean.”

She looked away from him, and her face was troubled. “I don't know,” she said, finally. “This ...” She looked down at her hands, and her attention seemed to be caught by a ring she wore.

It was an unusual ring in the fact that it was so very plain; burnished, unornamented silver, centered with a dull white stone. The stone was nothing Valdir recognized; it looked like an ordinary, water-worn quartz pebble.

Then her attention was more than caught -

The stone flared with an internal, white flame for a moment, and it seemed that she could not look away from it.

The woman's face took on a blankness of expression he'd only seen in the spell-bound.

Valdir felt the back of his neck chill. There was a Power moving somewhere, one he didn't recognize. He longed to be able to unshield and probe, and maddeningly knew he dared not. This felt almost like someone was working a Truth Spell, only the feel of this was old – old -

“Lady Ylyna-” she said, in a strangely abstracted voice. “At the bottom of this, it all comes down to Lady Ylyna.”

“Tashir's mother?” Valdir asked, biting his lip in vexation when it occurred to him that his words might break whatever spell it was that held her. But her expression remained rapt, and he ventured more. “But – how -”

“She was hardly more than a child when she came here,” the woman said, still gazing into the stone of her ring, “but I've never seen a more terrified girl in my life. She'd been the ignored one, until Deveran refused to take any girl to wife that had mage-powers. Then she was valuable, and you can believe her family kept the strings on her. She was terrified of them. She was so happy when she was first pregnant - Deveran made a great deal of her, you see. But then Tashir came early - there was no telling him that it was just accident the boy looked like his uncle. So he only came to her to get her pregnant, and once pregnant, he ignored her until the children were born.”

“But - “

She didn't seem to hear him. “He ignored the boy, too. She was scarcely old enough to have left off with dolls, she hadn't a clue what to do with a child. Then the letters started coming - letters from Baires, with the royal seal on them, from The Mavelan. She never let us see them, but they terrified her. And she took it all out on the boy. The other children, the ones that took after Deveran, they had nursemaids, and careful watching, but not Tashir. He was left to her. Poor child. Half the time she petted and cosseted him like a lapdog - that was when her letters seemed to be good. The other half of the time she'd take a riding crop to him till the poor boy was bruised all over. That was when the letters frightened her. Then the boy started showing wizard-power, and it got worse. I watched her watching him one day - I've never seen such jealousy in my life on a human face.”

“Why would she be jealous of him?” Valdir wondered aloud.

The old woman shook herself, and gave him a sharp look. “I've said more than I intended,” she told him, almost accusingly.

He tried to look innocent and trustworthy. “But what you've said is important.''

She rose and walked slowly across the tiny sitting room to the door, and opened it. “Come back in two days,” she said, in tones that brooked no argument. “I may decide to tell you more then.”

Nearly ready to burst with frustration, Valdir left, doing his best to show none of it.

She shut the door behind him, and he wandered back down to the Row, looking for a good place to set out his hat for a few more hours.

He still had to eat, after all.

:How much of this can you trust?: Yfandes asked.

:Well, I'm hardly going to be able to run Truth Spell on her,: he replied, staring up into the darkness and listening to old Petar snoring loud enough to shake the chimney down. :Although-gods help me, it seems as if something was doing that for me. And you have to admit, this report of alternate petting and abuse certainly explains some of his reaction toward women. Mothers in particular.:

:But it doesn't explain what happened that night.:

One of the two girls murmured in her sleep. Vanyel shivered, and pulled his blanket a little closer. The cold of the dirt floor was seeping through his thin straw pallet. :There's more. I know there's more. I think she - or whatever it was that made her talk - is testing me, and I don't know why. Gods, and the questions I have - why allow only blood relations to serve the Remoerdis Family? And why does it feel as if the old lady is - Gifted? Or geased, bespelled. Or both, I don't know. And I don't dare test her to find out, with Vedric in the city:

:Mm,: she agreed. :Wise. What's he up to?:

:Being utterly charming,: Valdir replied.  :He's got the locals coming more and more over to his side. And he's agreeing with them on every point. It's hard to believe that this is the same man my sister called a viper.:

:Interesting. And these Lineans are a hard-headed lot.:

:It would just about take an angel to change their minds about the Mavelans,: Vanyel told her. :But Vedric seems to be doing just that.:

Petar snorted, coughed, and turned over. There was silence for a moment, then he snorted again, and the snores did not resume.

:Take the chance to get to sleep while you can,: Yfandes advised dryly.

But sleep refused to come.

Tonight had been particularly bad. Not only had Bel made another try, but Valdir had fended off the attentions of someone else as well.

Even if he hadn't taken Bel's glare as warning that she meant what she'd said about not taking up with her customers, he'd have avoided this one. Shaych, yes - but in a way that made Valdir's skin crawl as much as Bel did. The man hadn't been physically repulsive, but there was something twisted about him, something unhealthy. Like a fine velvet glove over a taloned hand. The man had looked at him with a hunger that made him shiver with reaction even now. He had reminded Vanyel - not Valdir - of the mage that had called himself “Krebain.”

I don't know what to think anymore. If I'm not shaych, then why can't I just do what Bel wants and get it over with? If I am, then why did that hunter revolt me? He turned onto his side, curling into a ball against the cold, the ache of his empty stomach, the misery his own uncertainty was causing.

And today - gods. That sick little game I was playing on the serving girls. Leading them on - knowing I was leading them right down a dead end. Yes, I got information - but I was actually enjoying deluding them, having a little power over them. Gods, that was sick. And I would have gone right on playing little sex-flirtation games if 'Fandes hadn 't threatened to kick me into next week. I'm turning into something I don't much like.