Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar

She thought about bandits and could not contain a shiver.

She gathered her wits, turning to regard the innmaster. “How much would it cost me to stay here and convalesce?”

Olli rubbed his chin. “Your voice still works, yeah?”

“Clearly.”

“So then, you can still sing.” His wildly unkempt brows rose. “And maybe help a little with the picking up?”

“So long as the picking up in question only requires one hand.”

He grinned. “Mugs and plates, bread and bowls. Shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Olli, I am forever in your debt.”

He snorted. “I’ll be in your debt, before it’s over. A Bard—even a broken one—is going to make me money.”

“Well, when you put it that way—how much are you going to pay me?”

His eyes twinkled. “How does a room in the back sound?”

She made a show of thinking about it. “Sounds glorious.”

“Sounds like a deal.”

“That, too.”

“Being a Bard without an instrument,” Lelia said, setting the quill down and flexing her fingers, “really makes you rethink your repertoire.”

The Herald said nothing.

“I did a lot of duets, changing my voice for the different roles.” She cocked her head. “Conversations with myself seem to be a specialty, now that I think about it.”

He chuckled.

“I decided not to look at it as a restriction so much as a chance to explore other avenues. I used to have to play an instrument to really get my Bardic Gift going.”

“Now?”

“Just talking a certain way lets me use it.”

“Interesting.”

“Attendance slacked off after the first three nights, but Olli said it was still more business than usual.” She eyed the pages of writing she’d already done. “Herda came nearly every night.”

“But never said anything?”

She shook her head. “She lurked. I got the feeling she wanted to talk, and a few times I initiated, but she’d always scurry off. At first I was relieved—she was weird, you know—but after a while, I got curious.” She felt her mouth stretch in a grim smile. “You know that I met the Ashkevron Bard?”

“Really? Or did you just imagine it?”

“No, I really, truly did.” She traced one of the knife marks in the table. “At an inn in Forst Reach. After he assured me there was no chance in hell I was going to inherit his position—” The Herald coughed delicately, and Lelia grinned. “—he gave me some useful advice. He told me any idiot could write a song about a hero. It takes real skill to dig the stories out of the commonfolk. They all have stories, he said; you just need to ask the right questions and then frame the answers.”

“So . . . ?”

“I started asking questions.”

“She can talk to wolves, and chickens squawk in terror when she walks by!”

“I hear there’s a colddrake in her stable. She drinks its blood, and that’s why she doesn’t need a coat in the cold!”

“Her family died from fever, but she keeps their bodies under the floorboards, so now her house is haunted, and they eat those bones she keeps stealing!”

Lelia propped her head up in her good hand, regarding the three scamps with some amusement. She’d made friends with the children of the village, and Jarsi, Bowder, and Aric were three of her best informants. They’d do anything for a song—literally.

Questions about Herda, unfortunately, had yielded nothing but childish speculation.

From what Lelia had gleaned, Herda really was the village madwoman. She lived out in the woods, in a cabin once shared by her family until they’d perished of snow fever. She foraged for a living: mushrooms, medicinal roots, rare minerals, exotic barks, and so on. She also had a thing for creatures of all sorts, especially abandoned ones: wounded rodents, broken-winged birds. She loved—or perhaps the proper word was related to—animals more than people. There were even rumors of wolf cubs that had been tended to by the wild-eyed Herda.

That, Lelia suspected, was why she’d been pestering Olli for bones. Whatever menagerie she tended, she had to feed them.

No one shunned Herda, per se, but no one invited her over for tea and jam tarts, either. The kindest emotion Lelia had seen directed at the girl was pity. She was considered impoverished, even by local standards. No one sat next to her when she watched Lelia’s performances.

“Wolves and monsters and ghosts, eh?” Lelia arched a brow at the boys. “And you’re all three reliable eyewitnesses, I take it?”

“My cousin saw the colddrake!” said Aric. “She, uh, ran before it could eat her.”

“I saw the ghosts!” said Jarsi.

“So you’re saying you did see them?” Lelia asked.

“Yeah.” Jarsi squirmed. “Kind of. It was dark. I saw something! I ran before it could suck out my eyeballs.” He looked nervously at his two friends, both clearly skeptical. “What? That’s what ghosts do!”

“Wolves,” Bowder, the eldest boy, muttered. “I’m telling you, she talks to wolves. You ask her! She won’t deny it! She just ...”

“Grins,” Aric whispered.

“Right.” Lelia smiled and sat back. “Well, if you can prove any of this ...” She palmed a coin into her good hand, walking it up and down her knuckles. “We’ll talk, eh?”