Changes

seems t’figger we’re courtin’. Even yer pa. Nobody seems t’hev asked you how ye feel ’bout thet. An’ nobody seems t’hev asked ye if ye fancied the courtin’ be fer real.”

Amily looked right at him, no blushing or faltering. He liked that about her so much—she was so straightforward.

“I was hoping that you holding my hand right now meant you were happy with the idea,” she said, with a faint smile. “Because I don’t think I would care to be courted by anyone else.”

He grinned hard enough to make his face split and squeezed her hand. “Reckon we feel ’bout th’ same, then,” he said warmly. He was about to say more when Amily held up her free hand, stopping him.

“But Mags, that was one reason why I wanted to have my leg fixed—don’t you see?” she said, anxiety now coloring her voice. “I’ve been such a burden on Father all these years, I don’t think I can bear to be a burden on someone else!”

He blinked, taken by surprise. His first reaction was to tell her she was no kind of a burden, but that wasn’t true and they both knew it. His second was to say nobody minded, and that was partly true. People were only people, patience ran out—

—well, just look at the prime fit that she herself had pulled when her Healing had been canceled. And she was one of the most patient people he knew.

The silence lengthened, and he knew if he didn’t say something, she was going to think the worst. He scratched his head. “Ye know, there ain’t no good answer t’thet. ’Cept thet I unnerstand. An’ it ain’t like yer never gonna git yer leg fixed, right?”

Her eyebrows furrowed, but she nodded.

“An’ it ain’t like nobuddy wants ter help ye. Ye know thet. Right?”

Again, she nodded.

“So ye ain’t hateful, an’ this ain’t gonna be ferever. It’s jest fer a liddle while longer. I think th’ world’a yer pa, but I think he’s a damn fool fer not tellin’ ye what’s goin’ on, though—an’ not jest cause it ain’t right.” He smiled crookedly. “ ’E’s a damn fool fer thinkin’ we’d all jest sit there wi’ our hands folded nice an’ not try an’ find out what’s what fer oursel’s.”

She managed a little smile. “Or maye he does know you’re all going to try, and he figures to let whoever ordered him not to tell find out that keeping you lot from chasing after a secret is like trying to keep kittens in a basket.”

“Ye’re in thet, too,” he reminded her. “Ain’t jest me an’ Bear an’ Lena. Bet ye’ve been snoopin’ a bit on yer own, aye?”

She blushed. “Well,” she temporized. “People do tend to forget that I’m around when I’m quiet. Can I help it if they say things I’d rather not hear?”

Something about the way she said that, gave him a sudden notion . . .

He knew part of what made Nikolas so good at what he did was that he did have a subtle Gift—maybe a variant on Empathy, Mags didn’t know enough about Gifts to guess—that made people forget he was there.

And it sounded as though Amily had the same Gift.

I thought Companions always Chose people with Gifts?

Well, maybe not. Maybe it was only that the people they Chose, had to have a Gift, and you could have one but not be Chosen . . .

“I’ll tell ye this,” he continued, abandoning that particular line of thought. “E’en iffen yer leg never gits fixed, it’ll be wuth dealin’ wi’ it t’be wi’ ye. An’ thet’s th’ plain truth. I ain’t gonna say it ain’t gonna be a pain, but it’ll be wuth it.” He grinned crookedly. “Iffen you kin put up with me getting’ beat up playin’ Kirball and moanin’ and whinin’ ’bout it after, reckon we’ll be even. Aight?”

Whatever she had been expecting him to say, it hadn’t been that, judging by her reaction. But judging by that same reaction, she was just as happy with it, if not more.

She looked puzzled for a moment, then suddenly just beamed at him as if he had given her the best present of her life. She looked as if she, too, was searching for something to say, but he had the sudden intuition that words were probably not the best reply at this moment.

So instead, he reached for and captured her other hand, leaned over, and kissed her.

Yes... that was the best reply. The best possible reply.

Chapter 13

Bear was right. People did babble to Healers. Mags had learned an amazing amount just by being the one who handed things to Bear while he patched folks up. He was becoming an expert on other peoples’ children, how they should be raised, other peoples’ love lives, other peoples’ grievances, other peoples’ pain, other peoples’ neighbors. Unfortunately, none of this information was leading to where the Agents were.

Mags had solved the possible problem of being forbidden to help Bear with his charity Healing by simply not asking for permission. Bear went down into Haven one out of every two or three afternoons, and if anyone asked Mags where he was on those occasions, he would reply with absolute truth that he was with Amily.

Which he was. She was helping Bear as well. Women were sometimes shy around a male Healer, even at the best of times. If they’d been abused or—as Bear delicately put it—“interfered with,” having to go to a male was problematic at best. So it was Amily who asked them questions, while Bear stayed a nonthreatening distance away, Amily who soothed them, and Amily who dispensed advice and herbs in equal measure. And if there was anything that was a testament to how successful Bear’s idea of allowing folk with training but no Gift to do Healing work could be, it was Amily’s work with these poor victims of abuse and assault.

Here, her leg was a help rather than a hinderance. These women saw it, saw her as someone even weaker and at a greater disadvantage than they were, and did not react to her as they would probably have reacted to