“Pa, it’s a Herald—”
“I don’ care if it’s the King hisself! I know my rights!”
Pieters’ face was getting very red indeed. Mags wondered if he was finally going to have that apoplectic fit he’d been threatening to have for years now.
Well, Pieters might or might not know his rights, but the kiddies knew when to stay out of the way. The mining crew going in scuttled across the yard and down the shaft as quick as could be, while the outgoing crew scuttled toward the eating shed as fast as they could. It didn’t do to fall under Master Cole’s eye when he was like this because if he saw you, then you would be the next thing he took out his anger on when things settled down. It was especially true if he saw you looking at him.
So they all kept their heads down and got across the yard as quick as they could, heading for the colorless daughter waiting in the shed for them, and the equally colorless cook nervously ladling out bowls of soup. And it was a sign of how bad things were that there was no one to take the little sacks from them, the sacks that held their sparklies.
Mags caught Davey looking sly then, and he knew that Davey was thinking up some deviltry to be sure. And right enough, Davey was just about to snatch Burd’s little sack from him, when up came Jarrik and took it from him, then took Davey’s with a dirty look. Mags was quick to hand his over before Jarrik could even put his hand out for it.
He couldn’t be rid of it soon enough. Then he headed off across the yard as Jarrik headed for his brothers and the standoff at the gate.
But at that moment, everything changed again.
“That’s the one!” the man shouted imperiously, every trace of lazy drawl gone. “Him! You there! Boy!”
Startled, Mags looked to see who the man was shouting at, and to his bewilderment, saw the finger pointing straight at him. And one of the horses began rearing and prancing and carrying on like it had a burr under its saddle, tossing its mane and flagging its tail.
Bewilderment turned to panic as all the rest turned to stare at him. Mags looked from side to side for a place to hide, but there wasn’t anything. He was caught like a mouse in the middle of a kitchen floor, with hungry cats on every side of him.
“I didn’ do nothin’!” he squeaked. “I bin workin’! I bin workin’, I tell ya! It ain’t me!”
Truly, he had never seen this man or anyone like him in all his life, so how could the fellow be so sure it was him he wanted?
“I will be damned if ye take my best worker!” Pieters roared. “Ye kin take yer damned horses and be off with ye, or so help me—”
But the man had an even louder voice than Pieters, and the boys were all looking very alarmed now. “You will turn over that boy to me, or I’ll bring the Guard here and turn over every stone in the place and find every last lie and every last penny you’ve cheated the Crown out of and every last mistreatment of your servants you’ve done since you were in swaddling clothes!” he shouted, as Endal plucked at his father’s sleeve and begged, “The Guard, Pa! He’s gonna call the Guard on us! We cain’t hold off the Guard! Be reasonable!”
And that was when things got very strange indeed.
Jarrik pulled Endal away from their father, and shoved him toward Mags. “Get him! Bring him here!” Jarrik growled, and then motioned to two of his brothers, who surrounded their father and bodily shoved him off to the side, arguing with him in harsh whispers.
Meanwhile Endal had crossed the yard, seized Mags by the ear, and was dragging him toward the man, with Mags hissing in pain the entire way.
Endal only let go of his ear when they were within touching distance of the man and the horses, if the barricade hadn’t been in the way. Mags had never been this close to a horse before. Not a real horse. The mining carts and machinery were all pulled by donkeys, and he had never been allowed near the stables, nor the Pieters boys when they were mounted.
These horses were big. Very big, They smelled sweetly of cut grass and clover, with overtones of leather. Truth to tell, now that he was this close to them, they scared him. Something that big could mash his foot flat with a silver hoof and never notice, knock him down and trample him and move along without even noticing.
He stared down at the ground, unable to move, while the men shouted over his head. What could this fellow, this Herald, want anyway? He hadn’t done anything! He never left the mine!
This ... couldn’t be about his parents, could it? But what did he have to do with what they’d done? He’d only been a baby ....
“This boy is coming with me.” The man was not shouting now, but he didn’t have to, the anger in his voice was like a bludgeon. “You try and stop me, and so help me, I will do exactly what I said I would. The Guard will be here. They will tear this place apart. If you have done one thing wrong, we will find it. And then you will be for it, Master Cole.”
There was some urgent whispering as Mags stared and stared at his own two feet, until he had memorized every dirt-encrusted line, could have measured out his clawlike toenails in his sleep, knew he would be seeing them perfectly even if he closed his eyes. He couldn’t make out what the whispering was about, but it sounded as if the boys were getting their way with the old man. Finally Cole growled, “Then you’ll be paying me for him.”
The man barked a not-laugh. “Pay you for him? Slavery is illegal in Valdemar, Cole Pieters. You can be thrown in gaol for owning slaves, or selling them.”
“I’ve spent a fortune feeding and clothing this boy!” Cole sputtered. “Eating his head off, taking my charity, giving back naught—”
“A fortune, is it?” The angry drawl was back. “What kind of a fool do you take me for? I’m neither blind nor ignorant. I can see from here what kind of slop you feed these children. A good farmer wouldn’t give it to a pig. And if there is a rag on their backs that isn’t threadbare and decades old, I will eat it. As for shelter, where are you having them sleep? I don’t see a house big enough for them. Are you keeping them in the barn? In a cellar?” His tone got very dangerous, and Mags shivered to hear it. “Exactly what have you been spending all the money given to you for the keep of orphans on?”
What money? Mags thought dazedly. But Cole was right on top of that one.
“What money?” he sneered. “Nobbut one person wanted these brats. No fambly wanted ’em, no priest wanted ’em. And their villages couldn ‘ford another mouth to feed. Charity! It was my own charity that took ’em in, useless, feckless things that they be! My charity that feeds ’em, and me own kids going short—”
“Oh that’s a bit much even for you, Cole Pieters.” There was a growl under the drawl. “If you are going to claim all that, then I think perhaps a visit from the Guard and Lord Astley’s Clerk of Office would be a very, very good thing.”
There was a great deal more of that sort of thing, most of it so far over Mags’ head that it might as well have been in a foreign tongue. But the man was winning.
Mags only wished if he could tell if that was a good thing or a bad one. Usually he would immediately have said that anything Cole Pieters was against was going to be good for him, but now, he wasn’t so sure.
Finally, Pieters literally picked Mags up by the scruff of the neck, hauled him off the ground like a scrawny puppy, and shoved him over the barrier at the man, shouting “Take him then! Take him, and be damned to you!”
Without a word, the man mounted one of the two horses, reached down to grab Mags’ arm and picked him up like so much dirty laundry, then dumped him on top of the other horse.
Mags froze stiff with fear, his hands going instinctively around the knobby part of the thing he was sitting on, his legs clamping as hard as they could to the horse’s sides. But—but—but—
“I dunno howta ride ...” he tried to gasp out, but it didn’t come out any louder than a whisper, and anyway it was already too late. The man was off, the other horse right behind him, and Mags squeezed his eyes and hands shut, and his legs tight, clenching his teeth to stop them from chattering.
He’d never been on anything that moved before. He’d never even got a ride in the donkey cart. He opened one eye for just a second, then clamped it tight shut again, feeling dizzy and sick at how fast the ground was going by. Within moments, they were right outside the boundaries of any land he knew. He’d never been much past the mine and the Big House.
And suddenly he also realized that he had never had a close-up encounter with anyone that wasn’t either a priest, one of the kiddies, one of the servants or miners, or a member of the Pieters family.
And now this stranger was taking him away—somewhere. Where? Why?
Well, he hadn’t bound Mags to the horse like a criminal so he couldn’t escape, though right now, Mags wouldn’t have minded a few ropes tying him on ....
This was mad. He’d have been certain that he was going mad, except that there was no way he could have been making all this up in his own head.
His stomach was a tight, cold, little knot of fear, there was another icy knot of fear in his throat, every muscle ached from holding on so tightly, and yet he was too terrified to let go even a little bit. All he could do was hang on and endure and hope it ended soon, and that it didn’t end with him falling off and breaking his neck.
And then, as suddenly as the ride had begun—it ended. He felt the horse start to slow, then stop, and his eyes flew open.
But he hadn’t even begun to take in his surroundings when the man grabbed him as Pieters had, by the scruff of the neck, and hauled him off the horse. At least, though, the man caught him before he fell, and lowered him easily enough to the ground, even if it was at arm’s length. But he was wearing white ... and Mags suddenly realized with an odd sense of shame that he was dirty enough to soil the fellow just by what he shed.
The man pushed Mags ahead of him into a building three or four times larger than the Big House, and terrifyingly grand looking, all clean and bright and polished, so much so that suddenly Mags realized just how shabby and neglected the Big House was by sheer contrast. It was two stories tall, made of timber-framed stone all rounded and smooth-polished, and not sharp-edged like the stuff chipped out of a mine, showing all the hundreds of colors that existed in the simple word tan. There was glass in all the windows, and Mags knew how ruinously expensive that was, because of the howl that had been sent up when one of the Pieters’ boys had shied a rock at something and hit a window instead.
Mags was certain they were just going to go around to the stable or some other outbuilding, where the man would hand him over to someone else, and ...
But no. The man marched him right in the big front door, all polished wood with shiny brass fittings to it.
And then they were surrounded by people. Well, maybe not surrounded, but there were five or six of them at least, and they were all big, all muscled, and all ...
... all in Guard blue.
Now Mags had never actually seen anyone in a Guard uniform before, but they’d been described to him often enough, and with great relish, as one or another Pieters would tell him exactly how the Guard would come to take him one day, how they would tie him up and throw him in a cart and carry him off to be locked up in a dark dungeon until the black beetles ate him because he was Bad Blood and he was going to prove it, inevitably. Or maybe they would just take him and lock him up on a preemptive basis. Because one day he might do something awful.
His knees went to water, and his insides, and it was a good thing he hadn’t eaten yet because he would have vomited it all up on their shiny, shiny boots. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t even really hear for the hammering of his heartbeat in his ears, and he didn’t resist at all as they half-carried him out of that little room at the front and off away to some other room—he couldn’t tell where, they passed so many rooms, with so many people in uniforms in them, only it was a long way from the front. All he grasped was that the floor was all polished wood and the walls were all whitewashed and the place smelled like leather and soap and the oil you used on metal things to keep them from rusting.
A door opened to a wave of steam and more odors of the sort that he had only vaguely whiffed on laundry day in the spring when everything was washed, and it was very hot and very light in there. He could scarcely see for the steam. And the next thing he knew, they had stripped all his rags off him (which wasn’t hard, since they went to pieces at a tug), picked him up, and dumped him in a huge thing like the horse trough full of water. He opened his mouth to yell at the cold, only it wasn’t cold, it was hot, and the yell didn’t come out anyway.
Then two more men, big burly fellows with their sleeves rolled up, took some yellowish soap and a couple of brushes like those he used to use scrubbing the kitchen floor. And then they went to work scrubbing him like the kitchen floor. They tsked over his hair and whacked it all off with a big shears before scrubbing his head.
He was so stunned by this turn of events he didn’t even squeak. Not even when they stood him up and took cloths and scrubbed at his jakko. Not that there was anything like poke-and-tickle, it was like they were scrubbing a sheep or something. It was a good thing he had a tough hide, because they scrubbed at him like they were not going to be happy until they got at least half his skin off. They pulled him out of the water, dumped out the first batch, and left him there shivering for a bit while they filled the big pan again and started all over again.
It took them one more round of water before they were satisfied. By then he was feeling very peculiar, more naked than being without clothes, and tingly all over from the brushes. His skin was a color he’d never seen it before, like one of the Pieters girls, only pinker. His hair, what they’d left of it after shearing most of it off, felt very strange and light. They trimmed off all his nails short, or rather, the fellow that did the hair cutting did. They let him towel himself dry with a piece of cloth big enough to use as a blanket by his standards, and then they shoved clothing at him to put on.
New clothing, near as he could tell. It wasn’t white, nor blue, but seemed a bit of odds and ends, most of it too big. but he rolled up sleeves and trews and shoved his feet first into thick warm stockings so soft he almost cried, and then into soft boots that tied up around the foot and leg like the plaited bags he made for winter, only better fitting and a lot stronger.
And then they marched him out again, out to the man in white, who stood by the back door with one of the white horses beside him. He looked up speechlessly at the man. who did not appear angry now, only somewhat resigned and weary and with a good deal of some emotion Mags couldn’t identify.
“Well,” he said, finally. “Here’s your Companion, boy. You haven’t raised your eyes to look at him yet, so do so now. And I hope for his sake you aren’t as feebleminded as you seem to be.”
And with that, he took Mags’ chin in his thumb and forefinger, shoved his head up and over to the side, and Mags looked into the face of the horse, and into eyes bluer than the bluest sky, the bluest water, the bluest sparkly that Mags had ever seen ...
He fell into those eyes. No, he dove into them. Here was something he’d been starving for, and never knew it. Here was love, warmth, and welcome. Here was everything he had ever wanted.
Here was his Companion. His. For now, and forever.
:Hello, Mags.:. The simple words in his mind gave no indication of the sheer force of welcome behind them. :Oh, my poor Chosen, you are so bewildered!:
And then came a flood of information that poured easily from Dallen’s mind into his, like water into an empty vessel. Or into a dried-up pond after a rain. What a Companion was, and what a Herald was. What they did. Their place in the world, and what the world itself, this Valdemar was all about. What he would be doing for the next several years. He understood, most immediately now, what his “Gift” was—Mindspeech—and that it meant he could speak without words to whoever also had that same Gift, and to some who did not—that he could read the thoughts of others, if he exert
ed himself, as easily as he read his letters. He knew now that he’d had this thing, this Gift, for the last two years, and it hadn’t been whispering he’d been overhearing from others; it had been that when he tried to hear what they were saying, he heard it straight from their minds. In the mine, when he’d stolen to the mouths of tunnels, in the sleeping hole when someone had muttered in their sleep. Dallen showed him in that moment the rudiments of how to use that Gift, and how to control it, and promised there would be others who would teach him mastery of it. All of this was filling up his empty head until he was quite sure it was going to overflow, and then ... it stopped.
He blinked, coming back to himself, and feeling a strange ... calm ... overlying everything. He had never felt quite like this before. Underneath it was still the terror, but right now it was the calm that was in control. That calm came straight from Dallen, who was a stick to lean on, a shoulder, a support until he could deal with all of this by himself.
He didn’t understand more than a fraction of what had been poured into him; it was all so foreign to what he knew life was supposed to be like that he might have been standing among moon-creatures. But he also knew that, eventually, he would understand. That, too, was part of the calm.
:Time to pay attention to the rest of the world, Chosen,: Dallen said with an overtone of amusement. :Otherwise they, are going to think that I have stolen your mind away.:
He blinked, and fell out of the entrancement as easily as he had fallen in, staggering a little at the abrupt transition, and looked around to find that he and Dallen were surrounded by a ring of people, all watching them closely.
Everything seemed sharper, clearer; he was aware of the things around him in a way that he had not been until now. The chill against his skin, the soft hide of Dallen under his hand, the way Dallen’s breath, hay-scented, huffed against his shoulder.
He looked up into the skeptical eyes of the Herald. Jakyr said memory. Herald Jakyr. “His name’s Dallen, Herald Jakyr.” Mags muttered, still trying to sort through the most immediate of the things dumped into his mind. “I’m ... Mags. Don’t got no other name.” He caught a flicker of something from the Herald and scowled, feeling insulted. This man had no call to think of him as some sort of idiot! “And I mebbe scrawny, but I ain’t lackwitted,” he added with irritation. Then, belatedly, he realized that he had just been impudent to a master; he paled and appended, “Sir.”
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