Changes

with heat.

Well... he might have nothing to do, but that just meant he could go see someone who could at least do something about the headache.

He got up, washed under the pump—the water was lukewarm—and got dressed in a fresh set of Grays. The headache wasn’t any better. In fact, it was a little bit worse.

He did not expect to see Bear on the path approaching him as he left the stable, however . . .

Bear looked as if he had spent a similarly unhappy night. Mags looked him up and down for a moment, taking note of the dark-circled eyes, the pinched look to his face. “Iffen I look like you—”

“You do,” Bear said abruptly. “Lena’s coming here in a bit. She’s not doing real good either.”

He sighed. He had hoped that at least one of them was managing to get along without problems.

Faint hope, evidently.

“What’s wrong wi’ Lena,?” he asked.

Bear rolled his eyes. “There’s... a rumor. Something someone says someone they know heard someone they know say Marchand said.” He looked as if he had bitten something sour. “I hate gossips. I really, really, hate, loathe, and despise gossips.”

“What this time?” Mags’ irritation with Bard Marchand rose. Sometimes it seemed as if every problem Lena had could just be solved if Bard Marchand would get hit by a runaway cart.

Bear looked away, and flushed a little. “Marchand thinks he may not be Lena’s father.”

Mags felt his mouth dropping open. “ ’E akchully said thet? Wi’ ’is own mouth?”

Bear waved a hand in irritation. “I don’t know! All I know is the rumor started, and Lena is taking it predictably. One moment she’s crying because she’s a bastard, the next she’s sure everyone is looking down on her, and the next, she’s thinking about leaving the Collegium because she’s here under false pretenses.”

Mags shook his head violently. “Now thet is plain stupid! It’d be false pretenses iffen she was pretendin’ she ’ad th’ Gift an’ didn’t—it ain’t yer name that gets ye in, it’s what ye got!”

“I know, I know, and we all managed to make her see sense on that one, but she’s still all in knot over this.” Bear’s jaw tensed. “And I haven’t heard anything back on the field trials of the first lot of the healing kits. I mean... nothing. It’s summer! People get hurt in summer! People get sick from bad food, people eat the wrong mushrooms, people fall out of trees, chop off their own hands—you’d think by now I’d be getting reports back! But... nothing!” He sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “I keep thinking... I was wrong. M’father was right. People are too stupid to be trusted with something like that. What if the reason I haven’t heard anything is because people are killing themselves with it? What if they’re killing other people with it? What if—”

“What if you share some of that headache medicine you promised to give me if I got out of bed?” Lena asked, coming around the side of the stable and looking every bit as miserable as the two of them. “You are the cruelest person in the entire world, Bear.”

“Maybe,” Bear retorted. “But you aren’t crying, and you’re out in the sun.”

“Which is stinkin’ hot, an’ we all have wuss headaches an’ prolly none of us et,” Mags interrupted. “How ’bout we take thet medicine an’ all go someplace cool an’ play ‘my life is miserabler than yours’?”

“I could do that,” Lena said, snatching one of the potion bottles from Bear and downing it on the spot.

“I know jest th’ place,” said Mags, doing the same. “Le’s go.”

Bear swallowed the last bottleful and left the empties on the side of a stall, as he and Lena followed Mags.

“Miserabler?” Mags heard Bear say to Lena. “Is that even a word?”

Chapter 12

There was no one in the grotto. And it was blessedly, blessedly cool in there. They all flung themselves down on the moss—Lena with a sigh, Bear with a grunt, and Mags utterly silent. It felt good to lie on the cool, soft moss, the three of them forming a sort of triskele with their heads in the middle, not quite touching.

For a while they all just lay there, waiting for the headache potion to take effect. When his headache finally began to ebb, Mags was able to feel all the muscles that had been tensed up, making it worse. One by one, he coaxed them to relax, keeping his mind blank and thinking of nothing else, just staring at the artificially irregular rock of the ceiling. He wondered how this grotto had been made and who had made it. Whoever had—well, Mags was grateful. And he was equally grateful that no one from the Palace was down here when they had arrived.

“Well,” Bear said into the silence. “You first, Mags. What happened?”

“Nothin’ good,” Mags sighed, but slowly, picking his words carefully, he related everything that had happened, from the time that he and Nikolas had taken up residence to the moment when Nikolas told him that they were leaving. He hid nothing: not what he had done to those poor children, nor what Nikolas had said.

“Huh,” Bear said. “Well... you probably should have gone for the long way with those younglings. At least then you wouldn’t be feeling all guilty now, and you’d know that... no, wait, that’s not true either.”

“What’s not true?” Lena asked.

“Even if—in fact, especially if Mags had spent days getting those little’uns to trust him, then bringing them to the Guard for protection, everyone could still say he’d somehow influenced them. And they would have. And Mags, you’d have even less reason to trust your training.” Bear made a rude noise. “Which is stupid, given what Dallen told you. Companions are better Mindspeakers than any human, or almost any. You’re sure you didn’t somehow taint those younglings, Dallen is sure . . .” His voice trailed off, but Mags knew better than to interrupt Bear when he did that. Something had just occurred to Bear, and he had to think it through before he said it out loud. “I have to wonder if Nikolas isn’t just as sure that you didn’t