“With a fish,” Herald—no longer Trainee—Myste amended, her glass lenses glittering with reflected lightning. She sat down across from him without waiting to be invited. “A rather small fish,” she added in Karsite, with a chuckle.

The serving-girl, laden with Myste’s dinner, set her dishes down opposite Alberich’s, then she whisked back through the door to the common room, leaving them together.

“Ah.” He found trying to see past those lenses rather disconcerting. “You have been speaking with Selenay.”

He found it a relief to speak Karsite; Valdemaran was still a trial to him, and he had the sinking feeling that it was going to take years, even tens of years, before he was comfortable in it. He managed with his low-class personae mainly by being taciturn, knowing that the people around him wouldn’t recognize a Karsite accent anyway.

“It’s more-or-less my job,” she replied. “It’s thanks to you I’ve got the job, I’m told—training with Elcarth, and Interning in the city courts with Selenay as the senior judge. I’m Elcarth’s Second, and Elcarth believes I should be ready to step into the Herald-Chronicler position within a year or two.”

“Good,” he said, and meant it. “And what has my ignorance of fishing got to do with the Chronicles?”

“Not a thing,” she admitted. “It just came up in our discussions. I just let people rattle on, you know; it’s the most effective way to learn things.” She paused, and tilted her head to the side. “I don’t suppose you would be willing to rattle on at me?”

He opened his mouth to say no, then closed it again. It was an interesting thought. “And this would go into the restricted Chronicles?” he asked instead.

“Possibly. Some things should be common knowledge, and by the time anyone reads my Chronicles, all of those covert identities you’ve got now are going to be outdated.”

So she knew about what he was doing! Well, he shouldn’t have been surprised if she was Elcarth’s Second; she’d be reading the restricted Chronicles that he was writing. He wondered, knowing that she must know about the secret room here, if she’d come down on purpose to waylay him.

She ate two or three bites, reminding him that his own dinner was getting cold. He started in on it; delicious, as always from the Bell’s kitchens. Pigeon pie was a delicacy in Karse; the only pigeons there were the larger wood pigeons and calling doves, hard to catch and reserved for those with falcons to take them. Here in the city, though, there were pigeon lofts everywhere, and the common rock doves bred like rabbits. It was rabbit pie that was the ordinary man’s fare in Karse, in fact. Rabbit pie, rabbit stew, rabbit half-raw and half-burned on a stick over the fire…