“Reports?” he said, feeling thick and stupid. She didn’t know about his search for his parents, so how could—
“About what the Foreseers saw,” she explained. “There’s a protocol for such things, and a good thing too, considering how wild some of the rumors have gotten. All Foreseers are trained to either make notes on what they Saw immediately, when the vision or dream is over, or dictate to someone. And I have copies of many of them right here.” She patted a folder on her lap. “I can sum them up for you if you want, though, since they are all nearly identical.”
Mags nodded, not trusting his voice.
“Every vision was of the same thing, and every vision lasted about the same length of time—quite, quite short. They have the impression that this is the end of a fight. They first see the King, who is standing, but with a look of horror on his face, covered in blood, his hands also covered in blood. They then see what looks like a small, slight man, quite ragged, also covered in blood, with a knife in his hands. They get the impression that he is foreign-born. They get the impression that someone is dying and someone is badly wounded. And that is all.”
Mags blinked. “That’s it? Ev’think else is just what summon made up?”
She nodded. “Exactly. They don’t see the other man’s face. That’s all. They don’t know which of the two is dying, or wounded. They don’t even know if there is someone else dying or wounded that they can’t see, or even if there is an entire crowd there.”
Mags didn’t know quite how to feel. On this slender thread was hanging all that hostility, all that anger—for what?
“I think I wanta hurt someone,” he said finally. Amily nodded with sympathy. “I don’t blame you. The damage is done and it’s rather late to get things set straight.”
He sighed and buried his face in his hands. After a while, he felt her slender arm around his shoulders, and she hugged him a little. “I’m sorry Mags, I wish there was something I could do. But at least—or, well, so I hear—Gennie is doing what can be done for now.”
“Eh, she’s a good sort,” he mumbled. “Whole team is, akchully.”
I cain’t go back t’ these people an’ point out what’s in the reports, cause that’ll only make things worse. But I got to know— He steeled himself, because he knew this was only going to make more pain for himself. “Amily, kin you an’ Lydia an’ Marc an’ all do me a favor?”
“Anything,” she promised, still keeping her arm around his shoulders. And... it felt awfully good, that arm. Not like Lena, though Lena was a good friend, and could be quite comforting. No, this was something else. There was something about the warmth and pressure that made him feel odd, and a little light, and... well... tingly. He found himself wondering how long he could keep his head in his hands like this, as an excuse to keep her arm around him.
“Wouldja all tell me ’xactly what yer hearin’ ’bout me?” he begged. “I mean, ev’thing. I’m mortal tired of seein’ people whisperin’ behind their hands. I wanta know the worst.”
“Oh Mags . . .” she sounded as if she was going to cry. “It’s going to be nasty, I am sure of it, and I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I don’ wanna be hurt, but truth’s better’n not knowin’.”
She sighed deeply. “All right. If that’s what you want.”
He echoed her sigh. “Ain’t what I want, ’tis what I need.”
“All right,” she repeated, and finally took her arm away. Feeling vaguely disappointed, he sat straight up.
“Reckon I better go,” he said reluctantly.
:Probably a good idea. You certainly are not going to get any studying done around Amily.:
:Hush, you.:
“I suppose you had better,” she replied wistfully, then brightened a little. “Just remember, you can always come up here and share my nook with me.”
“I thought ye said ye came here t’ be alone,” he replied, that odd, tingly feeling teasing at him again.
“I said I came up here to get away from Father,” she corrected. “Alone—not necessarily.” She smiled at him, and he felt all lightheaded. Then she reached out and gave him a little kiss on the cheek, and he forgot to breathe.
He didn’t actually remember saying goodnight, though he was sure he had; she kissed him, and the next thing he knew, he was halfway to the stables.
:Well you’re certainly not shaych,: Dallen said, amused.
:Uh, what?:
:Never mind. Come do your studying and go to bed before you float away.:
“. . . and that’s how you make an ankle-wrap that actually works,” Bear said, finishing off the wrapping with a flourish.
Mags shook his head—and so did Lena. “I couldn’t make head or tail of the diagram in the book,” said Lena. “And yet it all seems so obvious when you do it.”
Bear laughed, and shoved his lenses further up on his nose. “That’s because the diagram is wrong,” he said, and pointed to one picture in the middle. “See? That one there. Dunno what the engraver was thinking, but that’s not part of the sequence.”
“I knew’d we was right t’ come talk t’ ye,” Mags said gratefully. “Uh . . .” he hesitated, then went on. “They still scratchin’ at ye t’ come home an’ get shackled?”
Bear lost his good humor, and his lips thinned. “Aye. But I figured out how to stall them some more.”
“How?” Lena demanded eagerly.
“So, they haven’t got near enough Healers, right? Not anywhere?”
They both nodded.
Bear raised his head in triumph. “So where there are no Healers, if I’ve put together a standard medical pack that will treat just about anything, something every Herald can take on circuit—they can still get good treatment until help comes. It might not be as good as a good Healer, but it’ll be as good as a weak one, and a damn sight better than nothing at all! I can put together a really big kit for—oh, say Temples and things, and all the instructions you’d need.”
“Oh Bear, that’s brilliant!” Lena enthused, looking happier. “How are you finding all the medicines you need?”
“That’s where I become indispensible,” Bear said smugly. “Maybe there’s herb-Healers that know more than me out there somewhere, but they don’t have my resources and most importantly, they aren’t here. I know all the ways to treat things without a Gift, and I can write them down properly, not all wrong, like in that textbook you two brought me. I can make simpler, clearer diagrams. There are artists here that can draw them properly for me. The project has already been approved, and I’m formulating the medicines and figuring out how to pack them to give them the longest life.” He hesitated, then added, a little awkwardly, “The Head of Healers says that when the standard pack is finished and it’s been tested, if everyone is happy with it, they’ll give me my Greens. They say this will be the equivalent of riding Circuit for me. Then my family can go—find someone else to marry that girl. I’ll be a full Healer and I will be the one who says where I go and what I do. I figure I can stay here and teach people like me, find more medicines. Personally, I think we ought to be training more Healers that don’t have Healing Gift. There are a lot out there, midwives and that sort of thing, but they don’t think to come here for training. Or else, they can’t manage to get the means to get here.”
Then he drooped again. “I got to get it done, though. Could take a year, maybe more. That’s the thing. I got to show plenty of progress, and some of this stuff is—hard. Coming up with medicines I know are going to be consistent, all the time. Writing out the directions. All that, and keep at my classes and—”
“And keep at my classes an’ do whatever I’m sent off t’ do by Nikolas, an’ Kirball practice—” Mags interrupted.
“And try and figure out what will make Father proud, and memorize my ballad cycle and get ready for the solo and ensemble trials—” put in Lena with a sigh.
They looked at each other.
“Ain’t we pitiful,” said Mags. He shook his head. “Complai
nin’ like that. Whine, whine, whine, like we was spoilt or somethin’.”
“Well,” Lena said, finally. “It just doesn’t seem fair that we work so hard, and then we don’t get rewarded for it.”
“If’n I had all the sparklies I pulled outa that mine in m’life, I’d prolly have m’own weight in sparklies,” Mags said sourly. “An’ thet goes fer the other kiddies, too. Life ain’t fair, an’ that’s that.”
Bear’s mind was heavily guarded, but Lena’s surface thoughts were so strong he couldn’t help but know what she was thinking. Her father now knew she was here, and he hadn’t done anything at all about it. Not an apology, not a visit, not even a brief note. She could probably draw attention to herself by doing stupid things, showing off or challenging other students to music contests, but all that would do would be to disrupt other peoples’ lives and concentration, and if her father actually took notice of it, she was pretty certain the reaction would be negative.
And that was not what she wanted.
She just wanted him to look at her once, and say, “Well done, Lena.”
She’d never tell Mags that, though, and not just because she was shy, but because Mags would never have his father look at him and tell him he had done well.
Mags started to reach out to pat her hand—then he realized that Bear was awkwardly doing the same thing. He quickly pulled his own hand back, and let Bear complete the motion. “We’ll make it through,” Bear said, and rested his hand on hers.
“Aye, ’cause we gotta,” Mags said, and stood up. “An thenkee, Bear, but I got to get.”
They nodded. He let himself out, and looked back through the glass. They were still where he had left them, with Bear’s hand still on Lena’s.
Chapter 8
THE Heraldic Archives proved to be the best place for Mags to go to get away from suspicious glances, for more reasons than one. As he had already known, almost no one came up there. The Archive room was above the Heralds’ Wing, and no matter what their feelings were, Heralds had very disciplined minds and tended to not leak any surface thoughts. That made any place around the Heralds’ Wing a very peaceful venue for someone like him. Proximity was everything when it came to what he picked up; the closer someone was, physically, the easier it was for him to “hear” them.
And third? Well, third was Amily.
It seemed that Amily did not spend her time up in the Archives merely to get some privacy. Amily was helping to put the Archives in order.
When Mags left Bear and Lena, he decided that he’d take advantage of Amily’s little warm corner and get some more studying done. But when he opened the door on the Archives, instead of finding them deserted, he found all the lamps lit, and a very young fellow in Royal livery shelving several volumes under Amily’s direction. “Over there,” she was saying, as he carried what looked just like one of the boxes that the Guard reports were kept in. “Third shelf from the rear, south side, you’ll see the one right before it up on the shelf where you put it two days ago.” She made a little note.
“Hullo!” he called, startling both of them. Amily’s eyes lit up.
“Mags!” she said, and waved him over. “Mags, this is under-Archivist Jonson; he’s on loan to me from the Royal Library.”
The young man was very young on closer inspection. He couldn’t have been much older than fourteen; he was, however, extraordinarily tall. “More like a jumped-up page,” the lad said. “I’m good for reaching the top shelves. But I want to be an Archivist, and I’ll shelve stuff forever if that is what it takes.”
Amily smiled. “Very good at it you are, Jonson.” She spread her hands. “And this is what I do. Everyone needs a job, after all, and since I’m a Herald’s daughter, I’m probably the best one to know how to organize things here.”
“I kin see thet,” Mags nodded. “An’—say, why don’t I give ye a hand? I don’ have heaps of time, but what I got, ye kin hev.”
“Would you?” Amily asked, her face transformed by a smile.
“ ’Course. Jest tell me whatcha want.”
What she needed, it appeared, was for him to sort through piles of reports that had gotten muddled, either because they had been put back wrong or because someone had just tossed all the records in a box and shoved them up on the shelf. That had happened a lot. Amily wanted things to be as organized and tidy as they were in the Guard or Royal Archives.
So Mags would give the reports a cursory skim, and determine who had written them, and sort them by author. Then he’d go back and sort each author pile by date. Then he would actually identify the major events in each sorted pile, mark those on the outside of the box along with the author and the start and end date and major area of the circuit, and that was how they would be filed. First, by the geographic location of the circuit, then by date within that location, and last of all by the name of the Herald. Or Heralds, because often as not, it was the Herald and one or more of the Herald’s Trainees. This was the old way, the way that was supposed to work so well.
Just skimming the reports, Mags found out that it didn’t work all that well. It looked like the Heralds had to come to the rescue of their Trainees a great deal. Things that would have been minor problems here at the Collegium turned into much bigger problems when they were out there with—
Well, with no one to help.
Usually the situation wasn’t really hazardous. Usually. Nine times out of ten it was something stupid, something they made a mistake about and mucked up whatever it was that they were supposed to be fixing. And nine times out of ten the Herald would sort things out.
But it took time, it delayed things, and to be honest, it made the Heralds look—
:It makes us look bad.:
:Aye, it do. Makes ye look... like ye cain’t even keep yerselves sorted, so how kin ye sort out th’ problems yer supposed to?:
Oh yes.
:You might want to keep that thought for the next time that someone tries to claim how much better the old system was.:
:Already thunk of that.: He pondered that a moment more, and turned his attention back to helping Amily.
Already she had made a lot of headway, and he found himself feeling ridiculously proud of her. The chaos wasn’t going to get resolved quickly—and it was going to need some serious tending to, given that there was no one to keep a stern eye on things all the time the way that the Guard Archivists did.
But by the time he had to go off for class, he and Amily had made up another box, and young Jonson had shelved two rows of books again.
The Kirball practices were going well, at least for the South Team. They’d progressed to the stage of not only catching and throwing the ball, but hitting it with their paddles. Those who were supposed to try and catch it now had heavily padded gloves to spare their hands. Only one of the other teams had someone with Fetching Gift on it, and they had decided that the easiest way to deal with a “Fetcher,” was to have Mags “shout” at him with Mindspeech, breaking his concentration.
For the rest, it was all coordination. They practiced patterns, riding and afoot, throwing the ball to each other, and then as one or another split off to gallop downfield, someone standing in the stirrups to give the thing an enormous thwack. And when the ball reached that far off player, he or she would catch it or bat it into the goal They practiced sending the ball shooting across the ground, leaning down of their saddles to smack it with their paddles.
All this was conducted in relative silence, as Mags relayed their orders, the only other sounds being of the ball being hit and the drumming of hooves on sod.
Meanwhile it was also Lena’s turn to face the first big challenge of her Collegium.
All Bardic students had to compete in a twice-yearly contest. There was no excuse that would get you out of it, other than being very ill indeed on the day of the competition.
And Lena was a nervous wreck.
She didn’t have to say why, they all knew; she wasn’t sure whether she was more overwrought about her father
showing up, or him not showing up. She agonized about her competition piece—was it too short? Too long? Was it too simple? So complicated it looked as if she was trying to show off? Should she perform something original?
“Do you have anything of yours that is fit to sing for an audience?” Bear asked, as she sat on the floor of the conservatory, surrounded by a half a dozen music manuscripts.
“Yes! No! I don’t know!” she wailed.
“Then sing something that ain’t yers,” Mags advised. “It ain’t as if ye ain’t gonna have more of these things t’ perform at. So go easy fer the first one, eh?”
“But—!” she exclaimed, but never got past the word. Instead, she picked up and put down each of the songs in turn.
Finally Mags got weary of it. “Come out of there,” he ordered, giving her his hand. “Leave them things on floor. We’ll settle this for ye.”
Bewildered, she took his hand and got up. He handed her off to Bear, who walked her over to a chair and made her sit down.
He looked around and finally picked up a bit of broken pot. Closing his eyes, he tossed it straight up to the ceiling. It landed on the floor with a clatter, then bounced about and ended up on one of the music manuscripts.
He picked the manuscript up and handed it to Lena.
“There,” he said firmly. “Tha’s it. Tha’s what ye’ll do.”
“But—”
“Seriously, Lena, they are all good pieces, and you do all of them well. Any of them will do, and it might as well be that one,” Bear said, with just an edge of exasperation showing in his voice.
Lena sighed. “All right. You’re right. It might as well.”
“Hey,” Mags offered. “Look at it this-a way. Nobody’s gonna be lobbin’ balls at yer head.”
“I wish they would,” she said, so mournfully that both he and Bear laughed, and then they had to fall all over themselves apologizing for her hurt feelings.
They were still apologizing when Amily arrived, hobbling along on her bad leg with her crutch to assist her. “Now what have you two done?” she asked, looking from their faces to Lena’s, Mags held the door open for her. “Oh never mind. Listen, I just learned something you all need to know!”
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