Now he had the attention of the entire table, and a couple of people on either side, and was really beginning to enjoy himself.

“Pigeons . . .” said Merrin.

“But that isn’t so bad, you know, nor are the bats. Empty towers, we don’t use ’em, and if we ever fancy pigeon pie or pigeon eggs, I just have to send a lad up there to knock a few on the head or gather the eggs, and there’s supper!” Those who could hear him were listening with rapt attention. “Hakkon, my Seneschal—you remember Hakkon? He got brave and went up there with a scarf wrapped about his face to investigate, and it’s his conviction that the towers were never built right in the first place. Howling great gap between the roof and the wall. Impossible to fix, of course, without one of the Emperor’s builder-mages, and maybe not even then. So we just let the bats and the pigeons have things. No harm to us, after all. And convenient for pigeon and squab and eggs.”

“Gap,” said Merrin.

“Bloody great one. Have you even been listening, Merrin?” Now people even further away had quieted their conversations, and he was really getting into the spirit of things. Trying to tell the “tale” the way he thought Squire Lesley would. “But that’s not really an issue, we’re really rattling around in that barn of a place. Built for four times the number we’ve got living there. No, it’s the other things that are a bit of a nuisance. Like the badgers in the cellars.”

“Badgers. In the cellars.”

Kordas knew damned well that no self-respecting badger would ever put his sett inside a human cellar.

He also knew damned well that there was not a single person in this entire Palace who would know that.

“Well, you can’t blame the Emperor’s mages for that too much. They built on the old manor, you know, and the cellars were already there, and—well—” He mimed drinking again. “I expect they thought they could skip a step. So the badgers moved into the cellars in my father’s time, and now every time we send a lad down for wine we have to send one of the huntsmen with a pair of hounds down with him. You know. To protect him. Tetchy things, badgers. Vicious, even. Take your arm off. But on the bright side, it means none of the servants are taking clandestine nips of the wine. And the badgers keep down the rabbits that moved in too.”

“Badgers and rabbits?” Merrin bleated.

“Well, the badgers and the rabbits were there before we were,” he pointed out. “It’s reasonable to think they’d try to move back.”

Merrin had been rendered speechless.