Not that he’d wanted to be anywhere near the room at the time the entire thing unfolded. Whenever certain members of the Council were thwarted, they always looked at the Karsite as the source of their troubles. Funny. They suspected his hand behind even this without his being anywhere near the Council Chamber that day; they’d entirely overlooked Myste. :I’m not entirely certain about all those cross-cousin links Myste was finding. Surely the highborn of Valdemar aren’t that closely inbred.:

:Chosen! You don’t think Herald Myste would concoct information, do you?: Kantor asked, pretending to be aghast at the thought.

:You’re forgetting she was a clerk before she was a Herald,: he replied. :They spend a quarter of their lives writing things down, a quarter finding what other people have written down, a quarter hiding what was written down, and a quarter making sure if it should have been written down and wasn’t, it is now.:

Kantor had no real reply for that, but Alberich didn’t really expect one. And no, in the case of something important, he really did not think that Myste would stoop to forgery. But in the case of something like this, where nothing was hanging on a little judicious creativity but Selenay’s all-too-rare pleasure, Myste could and would unbend her rigid ethics in order to ensure that the “tradition” existed, even if it hadn’t been a tradition until a few moments ago when he’d thought of it.

Apparently Kantor agreed. :Consider it a tradition that’s been in place for centuries. You know, Myste is very good at aging documents.:

Well, she had to be; she had to know how to forge them in order to detect forgeries. And it wasn’t as if she’d be doing anything really unethical, like forging the Great Royal Seal. She could just insert it in a list of protocol from the last Ice Festival, hand it to the Seneschal as the guide to how he should conduct the feast at the end, and no one would be the wiser. And Selenay would get dancing partners that she could relax with. In fact, he’d handpick them. Or rather, he’d handpick them after consulting with someone who knew which Heralds were adequate dancers.

Which reminded him of something else.

:Don’t the wretches generally sneak off to some private, Heralds-only party as soon as they can when there is an enormous fete like this one?: he demanded, recalling that they had done just such a thing at Selenay’s Coronation.

:Um—: Kantor began, with overtones of guilt.