"If you keep working the way you have, I don't imagine you'll have too much trouble in convincing the new lord of your worth." She paused. "I may end up grooming Farinelli at odd hours-gla.s.ses, I mean.

My schedule is not always what I would like."

"I will make sure he has grain."

"Thank you."

"He is young," Jecks observed as the group walked back across the courtyard, followed by Fhurgen and another arms man.

"He'll kill himself for those he respects, and you can't buy his respect," Anna said. 'Jimbob will need to know that. If it doesn't work out, I'll find him a place."

Jecks raised his eyebrows.

"I do have a holding, remember."

Jecks chuckled. Behind the older lord's shoulder, Alvar smiled.

Anna reflected on the stables, trying to cross-check her feelings against her observations. As in Loiseau, and at Falcor, the stalls were all swept and filled with clean straw. The mounts appeared well-fed and without whip-marks or signs of abuse. After his initial coldness, Bielttro had been positively voluble, and clearly the young man loved horses.

She shook her head. Synfal remained a puzzle.

A group stood in the late-afternoon shadows in the courtyard-the players.

Anna walked forward. "Liende. . . do you all have quarters?"

"Lady Anna." Liende wrinkled her nose.

"They smell?" asked Anna.

"The rooms are large enough, but not pleasant."

"I'll have some work for your players. I'd like to have you gather them in my quarters with their instruments in another gla.s.s."

"As you wish, lady."

"Thank you." Anna wondered if Liende would ever be more than cordial, or was it Anna? Everything pushed her toward being pushy and b.i.t.c.hy. She'd tried not to level Synfal, and nearly been killed by a madman, and was still fighting impaired vision. She'd been lenient with Madell, and the result had been disaster for Dalila. She wanted to shake her head. Instead, she added, "I'm sorry. I'm not being clear."

Anna paused. "I'd like to use a spell to clean out my quarters and then your rooms. That way, we'll all sleep better. But... I have to think about it. ... I haven't done cleaning spells."

That got a faint smile.

"Liende..." Anna added. "Please bear with a regent who's trying to do too much too quickly. I'll see you all in a gla.s.s."

Liende offered another smile, less tentative. "We will be there."

"Now, the kitchens," Anna said quietly to Alvar.

Jecks merely nodded.

The kitchens were at one end of the main holding building, and five women stood in the middle of the recently swept floor. All bowed as Anna entered.

"Regent Anna."

"Thank you." Anna took a long and slow look around the main room of the kitchen area-two large hearths, and two small ones, and what appeared to be a third hearth containing several iron doors. Bread ovens?

One of the hearths contained a number of iron brackets for spits or something similar.

"Do you roast a lot of things?" she asked.

"We used to, Lady Anna. Lately, it's been bullocks for the guardsmen. Lord Arkad, all he could eat was boiled fowl, not even game birds." The heavyset and gray-haired cook half nodded as she finished her statement.

"Did his illness change things beyond the kitchens?" she asked.

A puzzled look pa.s.sed over several faces.

Finally, the heavyset cook spoke. "Not so as we'd notice. Excepting that he would have none in the main ball save the cooks. No maids, none."

That answered-partly---one question. Anna nodded. "How many can you feed at once?"

"One time we fed twentyscore and we'd not have strained to feed twice that." The cook pointed to the narrow hallway to the right. "There-down that.. . I be showing you, lady. Not meats . . . those come from the animals and fowls in the old side bailey-that's the sunny one with the gra.s.s. Had a hard time making that clerk Fauren understand the need for gra.s.s." She shorted.

Anna followed as the cook escorted her down the hallway, opening doors.

"Beans-the black ones, more than a hundred scheffels here. White beans here. . . lentils... Fifty's more than enough."

The sorceress tried to keep an amused smile from her face as the head cook continued to point out all the dry supplies.

"Dried and sh.e.l.led maize here, then the flour in the next one, next to the barrels of the hard wheat, and then the next ones are the soft cake flour....

They came to a staircase.

"Down here be all the roots." The cook took a candle from the holder, and with a deft motion of the striker hanging beneath it, lit the taper.

Anna, Jecks, Alvar, and the armsmen followed her down the narrow brick staircase.

"Potatoes, 1 used to keep two hundred, but right less than half that now "Beets-one of the few roots the lord wouldn't eat. Could have fifty scheffels, but just ten or twelve, for the soup for the holding folk...: "Onions... three bins here, white, purple, and yellow. White keep best. Yellow turn mushy. . . have to watch them closer....

Anna grinned in the dimness.

When they emerged into the fuller light of the storage corridor, the sorceress was convinced that not only could the cook feed a small army, but that she had provisions for years.

"You are...?" Anna finally asked. "I mean, your name."

"Me? I'm Hilde. Always been Hilde. lady. Always will be."

Of that, Anna had no doubts. "Thank you, Hilde. You have been very helpful."

"You know yet who our new lord will be?"

"That hasn't been decided yet," Anna said. "But there won't be many changes in the people who work here. Not unless they don't feel comfortable with the new lord."

"So long as he lets us run the kitchen, don't matter too much."

Anna nodded. "I'll let whoever it is know that."

"Be a fool to change us."

The sorceress agreed, if not for quite the reasons Hilde probably had in mind. One thing Anna had noted.

There were no locked cupboards or closets. No guarded storerooms. She frowned. Again, she was missing something.

"Are there any official chambers?" she asked Jecks as they took the door that led along a narrow back corridor to the main entry ball.

"I did not look." He shrugged.

"There is a large dining salon," Alvar said, "and some larger rooms. They are very dusty."

What might have once been a state dining room held a long table and matching benches, although Anna had to lift the blanket-like coverings to look at both. The ornately carved wood was dark, but Anna had no way of knowing if that darkness were because of age or stain or natural coloring. An odor of mildew clung to the coverings.

"Khhchew!" She stepped back and rubbed her nose.

The hall adjoining the large dining area was empty, except for several twice-life-sized paintings of men in armor, several faded tapestries, one of which appeared to be a rendition of Synfal itself. The floor, unlike the others in the holding, which were either polished stone or brick, was wooden.

"Odd," she murmured.

Jecks was frowning. "Abomination..."

"What?"

"I had heard, but one never believes all one hears."

Alvar nodded, but both Fhurgen and the armsman acting as guard looked as puzzled as Anna felt.

"I may be regent," Anna finally said, "but I don't know what you're talking about, and I have the feeling that I should."

"Dancing," Jecks said. "This is a... place for dancing. I knew the Suhlmorrans were decadent, but..."

Anna managed to keep her jaw in place. Her talents didn't lie in that direction, and she certainly wasn't the world's best dancer, but why would anyone call dancing decadent?

"lt's a misuse of the harmonies," Alvar added. The sorceress wanted to shake her head. Dancing, a misuse of the harmonies? How could movement in time to music be a sacrilege? Just when she thought she might understand Liedwahr, something like this popped up... How many more surprises were there?

Too many. "Are there places on Erde where dancing still goes on?" She finally asked, not wanting to say anything directly about dancing.

"They say that the Sea-Priests use it in some of their ceremonies," Alvar said.

Jecks was still shaking his head as he turned and surveyed the room. "They didn't even hide it."

"They obviously didn't think it was evil," Anna ventured.

"I am glad Arkad died without heirs." Jecks' voice was cold.

Anna wanted to shiver. Just as she'd thought he was approachable... "We can't do much now," she said quickly. "Jimbob or Herstat could turn this into something more... appropriate."

"They must-before Synfal is acceptable for guesting.''

Anna moved toward the arched double doorways. After a moment, Jecks and Alvar followed.

The next hall was smaller, and contained a dais, with a covered chair or throne upon it, and a series of straight-backed chairs lined up around the wainscotted walls. Bronze sconces on all the walls held age- discolored candles behind relatively clean gla.s.s mantels. The receiving room would have held two of the largest halls at Falcor.

"Another remnant of the Suhlmorrans?" Anna wondered if agreeing to give the holding to Jimbob was wise, or whether he would get delusions of grandeur. She and Jecks definitely had some educating to do.

"It would seem so."

There were other smaller chambers, including an intimate dining room almost off the kitchens and a library that held more empty shelves than volumes-or so it seemed to Anna. But there were no more surprises, just rooms, all of them dusty.

By the time they finished the inspection and returned to the second floor, the players were gathering outside the guest quarters Anna had adopted for her use.

"I'll be a moment," she told Liende. "Why don't you tune while I check out the spell I'll need?"

"I will wait outside," Jecks said.

Anna nodded, aware she was getting distant again, but fighting fatigue and discomfort took some toll.

Once inside the smelly guest quarters, she rummaged through the folder she carried in the lutar case.

Where was the basic spell?

She wondered if part of the room's smell weren't coming from one sorceress, dirty from days on the road.

It probably was, but the place was so dirty that she couldn't be sure.

After using her knife to sharpen the grease marker, left-handed and awkwardly, she sat down on the chair and pulled it up to the small table, making sure the chair didn't touch the bed she was certain was vermin- ridden. How could she adapt one of the spells the players already knew?

It has to be short. That meant the shorter building spell. After studying the spell for a time, she shifted the marker to her right hand. She finally closed one eye, trying to see the paper well enough to read as she wrote.

Abruptly, she stopped.

"Idiot! Why do you have a headache and double vision?" Because the d.a.m.ned spell you used on the keep was Darksong...." And what are you doing now?" Drafling a spell that will do the same thing.

She rubbed her forehead again. All she wanted to do was rest and sleep, and she wouldn't get either in the pigpen that Synfal's main hall had become. And she didn't want to ride elsewhere. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, trying to think.

She'd killed thousands, without the impact on her that the truth spell or the loyalty spell had created. So a spell that created death wasn't necessarily Darksong. Manipulation of living things-or once-living things?

"Wait a moment." Anna considered the structure of her battle hymn. After a moment, she smiled... if grimly. It was simple, and it was, clear, and it was insane. Her battle spells bad only moved inanimate objects against animate objects. Even her household spells had impacted inanimate objects.

So you can kill... Don't even think about it! Just figure out a quick way to clean this pigpen with Clearsong... and only Clearsong.

Anna managed to ignore the stabs of pain in her band as. she wrote slowly, and with one eye closed.