Foundation

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.

I’m gonna fall off. I’m gonna fall off and die.

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 ...