Changes

gonna be a summer plague or somethin’, an’ they’re gonna need alla th’ Healers? Mebbe—” Well, he could think of dozens of good reasons, but not any that meant they wouldn’t tell Amily the reason why. And there was a reason; he’d seen that in Nikolas’s face, in a brief flash of guilt when Amily demanded the reason of him and he’d said he couldn’t tell her.

Couldn’t. Which meant he was under orders. If he hadn’t known the reason, he would have said something to that effect.

What on earth could cause him to be under orders like that?

Amily knew all of this as well as he did.

And if the answer had been, “It can’t be done now because the Foreseers think it will kill you,” yes, she would be told that too.

The only thing he could think of was that it had something to do with the new spies—or assassins—that he and Nikolas had uncovered, and that made absolutely no sense at all. As Mags was very well aware, although the King would do so with tremendous regret and a guilt that stayed with him the rest of his life, he would not hesitate to sacrifice anyone, not even the daughter of the King’s Own, for the greater good of Valdemar. And what difference could this procedure make to the safety of the Kingdom anyway? That was like saying the safety of Valdemar depended on whether or not a particular orchard had fruit this year.

“You can come up with maybe’s until you turn purple, Mags,” she cried passionately. “So can I! I’m not a child; don’t I deserve to know what the real reason is?”

“Reckon yer pa jest wants t’pertect ye,” he said, for truly, what else could he say?

“But I don’t want to be protected!” Now she flushed with a little anger, which was good—at least she wasn’t crying anymore. “All right, I am going to be as afraid as anyone else if there is a good reason to be afraid, but I can face whatever it is! I can! I don’t need to be protected!”

Mags thought about how Nikolas looked whenever he thought Amily was going to be hurt, even a little, and the lengths he went to in order to keep that from happening, and clamped his mouth shut.

“Look, I’m certain-sure it ain’t ’cause they don’ think they kin trust ye,” he said finally. “An’ I don’ think it’s ’cause they reckon ye’d ever do summat thet’d cause a mort’a trouble. But mebbe they ain’t telling’ ye, ’cause if ye knowed, ye’d do summat that’d bollix things all up, wi’out realizin’ ye was doin’ it?” He shook his head. “I jest dunno—but I’ll try an’ find out.”

She dried her eyes some more. “I hate not knowing things,” she said fiercely. “Father used to keep all sorts of secrets from me, because he thought I’d be afraid, or I’d fret too much about the danger to him, and I fretted more because I didn’t know what was going on! He knows that! He knows it better than anybody!”

Mags could see that. “I’ll jest see what I kin find out,” he pledged, which was, after all, all that he could really do.

“. . . and they won’t tell me!” Bear fumed, his anger underlaid with anxiety. Of course it was. Poor Bear—the first thing he would think was that this delay was because “everyone” had realized that his father was right, and it was the height of madness to have put him in charge of this project, only no one would tell him that because they were all going to be polite about it.

Then he would be certain that the truth was that they all knew, and they were talking about him in pitying tones behind his back.

Pitying or scornful.

Bear had an active imagination. His next leap would be that shortly his father would be sent for, and he would go home and—

And he would never see Lena again, nor any of his friends. He’d become an animal Healer, dispensing herbs for sick sheep. Maybe his father would allow him to take a human as a patient, so long as it was nothing serious—or was purely mechanical, such as setting a bone or stitching someone up prior to the “real” Healers doing their work.

“Look—” Mags said, desperate to hold off the inevitable cascade of “and-then-they’ll-do-this.” “Has anybody said anythin’ ’bout this, ’cept ’tis bein’ delayed?”

“No—but—”

“How d’ye know it ain’t some Foreseer seein’ a summer plague i’ Haven?” Mags rubbed his temples. Getting Amily calmed down had been hard enough. Getting Bear calmed down was giving him a headache. “Hellfire, iffen there was one’a those, they’d be needin’ alla beds an’ ev’ry hand.”

Bear gave him a look. “There hasn’t been a plague in Haven for over two hundred years.”

“Then yer overdue,” Mags retorted. “It don’t have’ta be a plague. Could be a fire.” He thought about what a disaster that fire the assassins had set could have been if there had been a wind. “Hot, dry, big ol’ windstorm, some’un’s lantern goes over, whut happens then? Bad time t’hev some’un laid up i’ middle uv a complisticated Healin’.”

“That’s not even a word,” Bear said crossly, but he was listening at least. “So why not just tell me that?”

“Cause Foreseers got caught lookin’ stupid ’bout me?” Mags replied. “Mebbe ’cause—look, yer part’a my crew, so I kin tell ye. They’s a couple new lads from thet merry band’a killers, an’ they are whoa better’n the first lot.”

Quickly, he told Bear about the situation he and Nikolas had unearthed. As he had hoped, it at least got Bear’s attention and got his mind off his own troubles. “So what’f they seen this new lot doin’ somethin’ that hurt a buncha people? So, aye, they tell head of Heralds and head of Healers, and they find out Nikolas knows ’bout ’em already. But they ain’t a-gonna bandy this ’bout. Iffen it gits out, people’ll panic, start seein’ assassins ev’where, next thing y’know, there’s people beatin’ up people on account’a they got a funny way’a talking, or they look furrin’ or—well, you know people.”

Bear nodded, slowly, reluctantly. “But wouldn’t Nikolas tell you?”