Intrigues: Book Two of the Collegium Chronicles (a Valdemar Novel) by Mercedes Lackey Read Free Book Online

while you be servin’ the wine, an’ if you go all moony and spill the wine, it’ll be the pots an’ pans for you for the rest of the year.”
    “Well put, Una,” the head cook rumbled, from where he was supervising the making of porridge for breakfast on the morrow, and he cast a dark look around the kitchen. “That goes for all of you. If I hear of one incident that happened because you were gawking at the Bard, the gawker will find herself demoted to scullery maid if she’s lucky!”
    That didn’t stop the gossip, but at least it went to whispers behind hands, as the head cook shoved the finished dinner basket at Mags.
    So across the lawns and gardens he went—the gardens still slumbering under their layers of carefully raked leaves and compost. Like Herald’s Collegium, Bardic had separate sections for the girls’ and boys’ rooms. But the moment he turned up at the door to the girls’ rooms at Bardic Collegium and asked to see Lena he was told to “wait right there.”
    He sat down on a bench in the little entryway, thinking that it was a very good thing that there was an extra hot plate in the bottom of the basket keeping everything warm. He had been here before, now and again; people were allowed to have other people in their rooms. He knew that the Dean of the Collegium had her office quite nearby, and shrewdly reckoned it was to keep any mischief from happening in the girls’ section. Bards were not known for keeping regular hours and the head of Bardic was no exception to this rule. If you didn’t know for sure whether or not the Dean was in her office you would probably think twice about getting up to something.
    And that was when he heard it . . . Master Bard Lita Darvalis, Dean of Bardic Collegium, and head of the Bardic Circle . . . sounding off in full voice. And she was not singing. Oh no.
    “I am appalled! Appalled, Tobias! If you were a Trainee, you’d be in the kitchen peeling roots at this very moment, with an assignment to analyze all three hundred verses of ‘Maddy Graves’ to follow! How dare you order Trainees about as if they were your personal pages? Not even Bardic, but a Herald Trainee, over whom you have precisely no authority!”
    There was a moment of silence, which Mags, his ears burning, assumed wasn’t silence at all, but the Bard attempting to answer.
    “Well if you are going to act the fool in the middle of a crowded hallway at dinnertime, you had better anticipate that the gossip is going to be all over all three Collegia before the pie is served!” Mags let out his breath. Oh good. He wasn’t going to be the one Bard Marchand was going to blame for being hauled before Bard Lita. “And above all else, how dare you try and turn the King’s Own into your personal flunky? I have children in this Collegium that were raised in barns and fostered by sheep that have better manners than you displayed—in public no less! And you a Master Bard!”
    There was another moment of silence. Whatever it was that Marchand said, it only made Lita angrier. “You are a disgrace, Tobias! Dear gods above and below, did every single bit of what you learned in Courtly Graces fly out of your head the moment you left the Collegium? No one, no one, sends the King’s Own a note about a performance unless it’s about a suspected assassin in the audience! If I could do it, I swear I would break you down to Journeyman at this very moment! What in the name of the Seven Hells were you thinking? ” Lita didn’t give him a chance to reply this time. “Never mind. I would rather assume that you weren’t actually thinking at all. It’s far preferable to knowing that this was some twisted little trick of yours to prove your inherent superiority to mere Heralds.”
    Mags was very, very glad that he was sitting politely in the entryway and right where he was supposed to be, because he really did not want anyone to think he had placed himself deliberately where he could overhear this. Mind,