Changes

repeat what you did last time—moving through the city until you can sense them, then narrowing down our search until we find where they are.” He gnawed his lip. “I’ll know better after I report to the King—but yes, be prepared. We might be settling in for a long job.”

An’ there goes any chance’a seein’ Amily fer a while. He sighed. “Yessir,” he said obediently. This’s too important. Even wi’ her Healin’ thing a-comin’ up. Nikolas knowed it, an’ ’e’s ’er pa. An’ she’ll know it too.

She’s ’er pa’s daughter, after all.

Chapter 10

Mags woke from a dream of the mine knowing exactly what he needed to do to get to those three children down in Haven. It pained him—but it was absolutely the surest, fastest way. They would never respond quickly enough to kindness—that was what the dream had been about. In the dream he’d outgrown being allowed in the kitchen. He’d been just old enough to have been tossed in with the rest of the kiddies to learn the business of chipping out sparklies, and one of the older boys had immediately latched onto him. He had become the lad’s personal little slavey, which was generally the norm with the very youngest of the children. He’d been bullied and hit, and at the end of the day, half his sparklies went to his “master.” Only later, when the older boy had died of a fever, had he figured out that he had been better off with him than without him. Maybe he’d had his sparklies taken, but he never went without food—the older boy had always seen to it he had his bowl of “soup” and his slice of bread and never let anyone take it from him. He might have been bullied, but he had never had to fight—the older boy had protected him.

That was how he would approach these kiddies. They likely thought they were safe from discovery in their little cellar; he would ambush them there, give them a good fright, and tell them that they were working for him from now on. A cuff or two would get them in line fast enough. If he’d had time, he would have tried wooing them with kindness; he didn’t have the time. Maybe later he could make it up to them; right now he had to get them cowed, under his thumb, and compliant enough that he could worm their recent activities out of them.

And in the process, he would be able to protect them and see that they were adequately fed. The combination of care and bullying should do the trick.

He explained it all to Dallen as he washed and dressed. The Companion listened without interruption until he was done.

::I don’t like it,:: Dallen said, slowly. ::Oh, not the plan, the plan is sound enough. I just don’t like that it puts you in the position of hurting those children even a little. I can see why you think you have to—I just don’t like it.::

::No more do I,:: he confessed. ::But kin ye see another way?::

::No,:: Dallen admitted. ::Not an expedient one.::

::Aight. I’ll arsk their f’rgiveness later. Make it up to ’em. Mebbe thet Lord Somethin’ what took care a Selna kin find ’em someplace good t’ go. Now, I gotter find out what they was doin’. Maybe it weren’t nothin’ but runnin’ t’fetch stuff, an’ they don’ even know what ’twas they was fetchin’. But mebbe it were somethin’ important fer us t’know. Either case, I gotter find out.::

Instead of going straight to lunch, he went to Nikolas’ rooms—and walked straight into a storm of tears.

Nikolas nearly opened the door to his rooms in Mags’ face; they were both shocked, Nikolas that he was there, and Mags because Nikolas hadn’t sensed him before he opened the door. But Amily was wailing, and Amily never wailed, her voice thick with tears and pitched high with frustration.

“But why?” she sobbed. “Why?”

“I can’t tell you, sweetness,” Nikolas said, in a tone of voice that suggested to Mags he had used this very phrase several times now. “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

“You can, but you won’t!” she wept. “That’s not good enough! I got myself all ready for this! I can’t bear dragging myself around any more! I want to get it over with, and I want to get it over with now! What if something happens? What if Bear’s parents drag him off? What if the other Healers get tired of waiting about and get assigned somewhere else? What if it never happens?”

Mags quickly deduced what was going on: for some reason, the complicated procedure to straighten Amily’s leg had been canceled, and she was justifiably upset, the more so because her father wasn’t telling her why. Somehow, something had changed, and changed drastically, between last night and this morning.

“The King has already issued the order that Bear is to stay here,” Nikolas reminded her, an edge of exasperation in his voice. “And the cancelation has nothing to do with Bear.”

“They don’t trust him!” she cried. “I trust him! That ought to be good enough!”

Nikolas pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Amily,” he said sharply, “I have been over this with you a dozen times now. We will fix your leg. I don’t know when, but this is just a temporary delay. You have to stop this; you’re going to make yourself sick—”

“As if you care!” she cried, burying her face in her arms.

Nikolas gave Mags a look of frustration. “See if you can calm her down,” he said, in the tone of someone who was quite at the end of his rope. “I’ll be back.”

Oh... great... How was he supposed to do that?

He closed the door behind himself, quietly, and crossed the room to where Amily wept, draped over the arm of a settle. He sat down beside her. He didn’t know what to say, so he opted to say nothing; he just patted her shoulder now and again, awkwardly.

Finally she stopped crying and sat up and looked at him with eyes red and swollen. “I don’t understand!” she said blotting her face with a handkerchief. “They just came and told me that they were putting off fixing my leg! They won’t give me a reason, and they won’t tell me when they will allow it! They won’t talk to me about it at all! Don’t they understand how scared I am to do this? Don’t they understand how hard it was to decide to go ahead? Why won’t they just—”

“I dunno either,” Mags said, feeling utterly helpless. “This’s the fust I heard of ’t. There’s gotta be a reason... I dunno, mebbe they wanta give Bear more time t’get ever’body all coordinated like? Mebbe Foreseers figger there’s