Bastion

by Mercedes Lackey

  It had been deeply restful, quite as if he had spent the entire night curled up in a pair of giant, comforting hands. He felt as if this were the first solid night of sleep he’d gotten since he’d returned, and, for once, his dreams weren’t troubled by those memory fragments.

  He woke early—probably since he’d gotten to sleep very early—and lay quietly for a good long time, listening to the birds singing out in Companion’s Field behind the stable and to the sounds of the Companions themselves dozing in the rest of the building. He could, quite literally, feel muscles that had been tense all this time finally relax.

  But he couldn’t lie here all day, and he really didn’t particularly want to anyway. Judging the hour by the quality of the sunlight, he decided that it must be just barely dawn, and he decided to take advantage of the fact that almost no one ever had a bath in the morning to go up to the Collegium and have himself a good hot soak.

  He got up and checked the chest where he usually kept his clothing. Someone had made certain there were plenty of changes of freshly cleaned Grays that fit him. He felt a wave of gratitude for his unknown benefactor; it would have been perfectly easy to just leave the Grays that were in there alone, rather than clean the chest out and put in fresh ones, with sprigs of rosemary between each layer.

  The bathing room was empty and silent, and he ran hot water from the boiler into his favorite tub, the one in the corner. He felt as if he were soaking out more than just dirt, as if he were soaking out some of the lingering nastiness from his captors’ drugs and memories. At last he came down to breakfast with damp hair and feeling entirely presentable for the first time in weeks, to discover the dining room was full again—but it wasn’t to gawk at him. The moment he caught bits of errant thoughts from unshielded minds, he knew why, too—all three Collegia had the day off so Trainees could visit the Harvest Fair. It was a real day off, too; none of the teachers had assigned any after-class work or exercises, and everyone would be able to just enjoy their holiday without fretting over the work. In theory, anyway. There would always be Trainees like Lena who never stopped fretting over the work, and would probably still be fretting over the work when she got her full Bardic Scarlets.

  This probably wouldn’t be the first day most of them had gone down to the Fair. You were allowed to go to any of the Fairs anyway, if you didn’t have classes and had leave to go, but this was one day you could be sure of being able to go down with all of your friends.

  And fortunately, the same kind soul who had made sure he was going to be properly clothed had also made sure there were a few coins to spend in his purse—as he had discovered when he had put everything on.

  :Of course she did. I want pocket pies, and she hopes you’ll get her a little something,: Dallen snickered.

  That answered the question of who had made sure everything in his room was put to rights and waiting. He grinned. Trust Amily!

  :She wanted to be sure you wouldn’t feel that people had forgotten about you.:

  Well, he was fairly sure that someone would have seen to it that his room was ready and he’d had something to wear, even if all they had done was see to it that the uniforms already here had been laundered, and the bed freshly made up. But no one would have made sure the job was done as thoroughly as Amily. It made him feel very good.

  The dining hall had been one of the first places that had meant anything to him, and he stood in the doorway, feeling more of his tension ease away. As a completely starved mine-slavey, who rarely saw anything more nourishing than thin soup made with cabbage and bones, the good food so freely available to the Trainees had loomed very large in his life. The guard posts on the way here and the Collegium dining hall had been the first places, ever, where he had been allowed to eat what he pleased and as much as he pleased. And despite a few bad moments here, when people had doubted him and he had picked up on their thoughts, most of his memories of this place were good ones.

  It was a simple room, entirely of wood, with wooden pillars down the center. Banners bearing the crest of Valdemar along the walls and hanging from the rafters baffled some of the noise that so many young people eating together were bound to produce. There were counters at one end that served as tables for the serving dishes, and the rest of the room was filled with long tables with backless benches. Each table had a stack of plates and cups and cutlery at one end, which were replenished by the servers as they ran low.

  He scanned the dining hall to see if his friends were already at one of the tables and quickly spotted Bear, Lena, and Amily clearly holding a spot for him. The dining hall had two sorts of service, depending on whether it was a general holiday or something large and important was being held on the Palace grounds. Most days, like today, you took a seat at one of the long tables, got passed a cup and plates, bowls and cutlery from the end of the table, and then got passed serving dishes of whatever was going at that meal (or waited for one of the Trainees on serving duty to bring more dishes around if your table had run out). On days when everyone was busy—or when there was a holiday and there just weren’t that many Trainees here because they were visiting with their families—you helped yourself from the buffet counter at the end nearest the kitchen.

  It was a hotcake day, which made his mouth water as the aroma hit his nose. And when he discovered that today the cooks had fried apple slices into the hotcakes, he could not have been happier. The cakes had already been buttered before being served; he had only to lift them onto his plate and drizzle them with honey.

  “I love hotcake days,” Bear said, around a mouthful. Mags nodded happily. Before he had come here, he had never tasted hotcakes, not even burned ones meant for the pigs. He thought that whoever had invented them must have been a genius. They’d been one of the first things he had begged Nikolas to show him how to cook. Nikolas’s version had involved frying bacon first, then frying the cakes in the bacon fat. This was because there obviously would be no butter if you were cooking in a Waystation, and there probably wouldn’t be any honey, either. But that didn’t matter because everything tasted good when cooked in bacon fat.

  “I love the fact that you know how to cook them, because I don’t,” said Lena, nudging Bear with her elbow.

  “I’ll teach you,” Bear promised.

  “Or I will,” said Mags. “Everybody should know how to cook.” Now that he was not so tired, he was being careful of his speech again. “That’s one of the things Nikolas was teaching me.” He didn’t mention that Nikolas was teaching him how to cook over the tiny fireplace in the little pawn shop the two of them ran in a rough part of Haven—a shop that bought information as often as it bought dubious goods. He didn’t have to. Bear and Lena were privy to the fact that King’s Own Herald Nikolas wasn’t primarily teaching him how to cook—he was teaching Mags how to be a spy.

  Ordinarily, some other senior Herald would have been teaching Mags that particular task when they were out in the Field, riding the Herald’s Circuit, but the two of them had to eat while they were between customers, and Nikolas never let an opportunity for some kind of lesson go to waste. And after all, no pawnbroker in their part of town would ever lock up to go to a cookshop for food and take the risk of missing a customer. Being able to fry or stew something up for himself merely added to the verisimilitude of the character he was supposed to be.

  “What?” asked Halleck, throwing his long legs over the bench and sliding in next to Mags. “Why would Herald Nikolas be teaching you to—” For a moment, Mags thought he had made a terrible blunder. Nikolas was the King’s Own Herald, and a very important personage; there was no good reason why he should be doing a lowly task like teaching Mags to cook. But then suddenly Halleck colored with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Mags, I’m an idiot.”

  Well, that was an unexpected response. Mags gave his friend and fellow Kirball player a sideways look. It appeared that Halleck had given him a reason for something that was unreasonable—he just had to find it out without directly asking. “I know you’re an i
diot, but why are you admitting it just now?”

  Normally Halleck would have mock-punched his shoulder for that, but he only flushed deeper. “Because you and Amily—and up until Bear fixed her leg—” He passed a hand over his face. “It’s not like it would’ve been safe for her to cook if you two were alone somewhere—but, I mean, I shouldn’t’ve just come out and said that.”

  Finally it dawned on Mags where Halleck was coming from, and he had to work to keep from grinning. Halleck was right, of course—if for some reason he and Amily had been somewhere together where they couldn’t just get food (like the Collegium) or buy food (like an inn or a cookshop or a baker), one of the two of them would have had to do the cooking if they were going to eat. And Amily had been pretty heavily handicapped for kitchen work with the way her leg had been all twisted up. She’d never have two hands to cook with, since one would always be involved in helping her balance. She couldn’t handle anything heavy. And she’d have been unable to get out of the way of danger if she’d had an accident. And, yes, Halleck was a little bit of a boor for saying so. But he’d given Mags the perfect explanation of his own slip-up.

  “Well, now we both have to learn,” Mags pointed out. “’Specially if she decides she’s coming with me on Circuit, which she might well. She’s stubborn that way.” It wasn’t unheard of for the mates of childless Heralds, or those whose children were grown, to accompany them on Circuit. And after seeing Amily’s determination to make herself a partner, not a burden, to Mags, he had the notion this was exactly what Amily had in mind.

  A few moons ago, he would have had some serious doubts about the wisdom of this idea. Now—well, as long as she could hold her own, defensively, he knew there was no question. Who knew how long he’d be at risk from his parents’ clan? And if he was at risk, so was she. He would much rather have her with him than be fretting away half his nights, worrying about her.

  “I reckon I’ll f’give you for being a ham-handed idiot, but better not let her ever know what you were thinking,” he said, and passed Halleck the porridge. “Are we all goin’ down to Harvest Fair in a bunch, or what?”

  “Amily’d kill us if we hared off without you two,” said Bear, knowingly. “Last night she was dropping all kinds of hints about how we should do things ‘the way we used to,’ and all.”

  Mags had to chuckle. “You are married,” he pointed out. “That makes it hard to do things the way we used to.” He rather doubted, for instance, that the pair of them would welcome him and Amily staying well into the night in Bear’s cozy lodgings. It was rather too bad, though, because Bear’s rooms shared the special heating system with the greenhouse that kept all his herbs flourishing in the winter, and that made it a fine place to sit and study, play games, read quietly, or just talk.

  “She has a point, though,” Lena said, and passed him the bacon. “Just because we’re married, we don’t have to live in each others’ pockets. I wouldn’t at all mind spending all day with you.”

  Mags passed the bacon to Halleck, wondering if he ought to invite his friend to be one of the party. “Well, I’m spoke for,” the saturnine Trainee said with a grin. “The Kirball Riders are each getting a new mount thanks to Princess Lydia. The team wants me to cast my eye over prospective candidates.”

  Mags managed not to lose his smile at this reminder that the team had, in essence, gone on without him. Halleck’s obliviousness had made itself known again. And since Halleck wasn’t talking about Amily, he was never going to figure out how insensitive he was being. “Better you than me,” Mags said, swallowing his own feelings, along with a lump in his throat. “All I know about horses is what other people tell me. Gods only know what kind of spavined crow bait I’d recommend because I felt sorry for it.”

  “Funny you should mention that,” Halleck replied, and began an involved story of how he had managed to find what he considered the bargain of the century, because the horse in question wasn’t acting all nervous—and, in fact, was dozing away in the paddock!—in the strange environs of the Horse Fair. “People were thinking he was deaf, or old, even though one look at his teeth would have shown them he was four, at most. Or sick, or just a slug. He isn’t any of those things! He’s just too smart to let himself get bothered by other horses getting bothered. He was actually bored by the Fair after being there for a few days, and he’s perfect for us! Jeffers nearly went mad after trying his paces!”

  Mags gritted his teeth and looked interested and appreciative and was effusive in his praise of Halleck’s (and Halleck’s Companion’s) ability to judge a beast. Not that he wanted in the least to spoil Halleck’s pleasure—after the other teams had seen the mounts he’d scored, they wanted his help, and he was justifiably proud of that. It seemed to take an age, but Halleck finally got off the subject and on to other things, and then the Captain of the Greens came to collect him so they could go down to the Fair together.

  When Halleck was finally gone, Mags finished his breakfast fighting off gloom. He felt Bear’s eyes on him, but he refused to meet them until he managed to get himself into a better frame of mind. After all, what did he have to feel sorry about? He was home—a home he had never thought to see again. He was himself, and not some stranger taken over by foreign memories, something that had seemed out of the question not that long ago. He was safe, everyone had missed him and welcomed him back, and absolutely no one was giving even a hint that they thought he didn’t belong here, among the Heraldic Trainees. Just because his team had—understandably!—replaced him in a game was no call for sulks.

  He must have been getting better at this sort of thing, because when he had finished the last bite, he had managed to persuade himself out of the gloom and into nothing more than a mild melancholy. “Right, then,” he said, meeting Bear’s concerned gaze again. “What’s the plan? I know you got one, you never do nothin’ without a plan.”

  Bear’s expression lightened. “We promised we’d collect Amily about now. She’s having breakfast with Lydia; Lydia wants some stuff particularly from the Fair if we can find it, but the Princess can’t actually be seen wandering about like you or me.”

  “So Amily’s gonna get it for her.” Mags nodded. “I don’ mind that, ’specially if you an’ me can find things t’look at in the same places.” He had no doubt that they would; didn’t they both have ladies to buy nice things for?

  Bear made a face. “Shopping,” he said in tones of resignation. Lena elbowed him.

  “I could say the same thing when you get into the herbs,” she teased.

  Mags was just happy to see them so settled and yet still like themselves. Somewhere in the back of his mind had been the fear that being married would change them. Instead, they were still themselves. Closer to each other than anyone else, but still themselves.

  He didn’t want to lose himself; he’d come far too close to that already. If Lena and Bear hadn’t, then why should he and Amily?

  “Plan,” he reminded Bear. “I’m the only one with a Companion.”

  “There’re wagons going down to the Fair and coming back, regular,” Bear told him. “So, the plan is to get Amily, get a ride on the wagon, and do the shopping first. Then we reckon a bite of lunch, then we go see the entertainers that aren’t like what we got up here. Like jugglers, rope dancers—”

  Mags nodded. :Sounds like you’re bein’ left behind today, horse,: he teased Dallen.

  :Fine. Leave me behind. See if I care,: Dallen teased back. :Actually I’d be dreadfully awkward down there in all that crush. A couple of the others said it got pretty hot and uncomfortable at times. I have a plan to eat to the bottom of a bucket of windfall apples, then have a long nap, then another bucket of apples, then, well, give me some privacy.:

  Mags chuckled. :I can do that,: he promised. “There might be contests,” he said out loud. “We might want to watch some of those.” If there was a Master Archery contest, for instance, that would be very exciting. He would like to see wrestling, but he didn’t think the girls would.
Horse races—everyone would like those . . . foot races too. Spear throwing. He could think of a lot of things that would be fun to watch.

  “I forgot about the contests, but Amily is all sorts of organized. She says she’ll have a list of everything and where it is,” Lena said, tucking her hand into the crook of Bear’s arm.

  “Well, then, let’s collect her and see what’s what.” Knowing that his friends were perfectly capable of sitting there and discussing what they might want to do for another candlemark, rather than actually doing it, Mags got himself out from the table and bench, picked up all their dishes, and took them to the hatch into the kitchen. By the time he turned around, Lena and Bear were waiting for him at the door.

  Herald’s Collegium was actually stuck at the end of the Herald’s Wing of the Palace, so they didn’t even have to go outside. Amily was ready and waiting at the door to the Heralds’ Wing, where every Herald that hadn’t made some other arrangement had quarters. Amily shared a suite there with her father—which made him wonder, would she be willing to live in his stable room with him? There was just about the same amount of space as she had to herself in the suite, but the level of creature comforts probably wasn’t as high . . .

  He hadn’t quite made up his mind whether or not to kiss her, but she took care of the situation by throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him. He was not in the least unwilling to kiss her back and was just a little bit disappointed when she broke it off.

  “Here’s the list of what’s going on and a map of the Fair,” she said, handing two pieces of reused paper to Lena. “I made two copies.” Mags got just a glimpse of what was on the other side; it looked like some sort of very dull document. That was the norm up here at the Palace; there were a lot of things that stopped having relevance after a while, and the backs of them got used for writing-practice, after-lessons work, and anything else that didn’t need pristine paper. He’d once written an entire series of assignments on the backs of harvest reports from decades gone by.