“Healer Juran!” he called. “This lad was down at stable when—”
“When two of my fellows who should have gotten a lot more spankings and a lot less being told how important they were when they were small came storming down there and blasted anyone with a touch of Gift and an unshielded mind with a display of their pique,” the perpetually weary-looking Healer said tartly. “Yes, we all felt it, and I was heading out to see if anyone had been hurt by their carelessness. Come along, my good man.” He took the man’s arm, and Mags let go. “We’ll get your splitting skull set to rights. And you—” he added over his shoulder, “You might want to go see your friend, young Bear. Standing up to a parent is a rather difficult thing to do at his tender age. Even when they are in the wrong.”
Mags nodded, and he half closed his eyes, waiting for the sense of “Bear” to tell him where his friend was. It didn’t take long, since Bear was very distressed. That sort of thing tended to make it easy for Mags to find him.
There were two other people with him, both full Healers in their most formal Greens, but by the time Mags found the room he was in—an empty classroom from the look of it—they were on the way out.
“Ah, good,” said the first, spotting Mags just outside the doorway. “Your friend Mags is here, Bear. Skip your classes today—or the morning ones, at least. This situation was very stressful for all of us, but it was a lot worse for you.” He eased by Mags and walked briskly in the direction of the Infirmary.
“Take him out for a long walk,” muttered the other to Mags as he passed.
Bear continued to sit where he already was, in one of the classroom chairs, looking drained. Mags decided the Healer was right. He walked straight up to his friend, grabbed his elbow, and tugged.
“C’m on,” he said gruffly. “Outside, where th’ air don’t stink uv bad temper an’ errer-gence.”
“That’s arrogance,” Bear corrected, automatically, then smiled just a little. “Little did I know that Father planted a spy among the Healers here who has been reporting every time I breathed in a way that Father wouldn’t like. Which explains... a lot. That was . . .” He shook his head. “That was like being beaten with words. If they’d wanted to punish me, they couldn’t have gone about it more thoroughly. You know, I’d rather be tied to that chair with a madman about to kill me than go through that again.”
Mags snorted. “Oh, I reckon they wanted t’punish yer. An’ more’n ever now. Yer right, they be wrong, an’ they got told so, an’ I reckon folk like yer pa and brother don’t get told they’s wrong real often.”
“Never, as far as I know,” Bear said wryly.
“Then they ain’t gonna fergive them’s told ’em real soon,” Mags told him bluntly. “Well, reckon now thet th’ King’s put ’is oar in, ye won’t hev’ta see ’em if’n ye don’ wanta. Le’s git a walk afore it gits stinkin’ hot. Got stuff t’tell.”
He hoped that telling Bear what he was going to be up to would take Bear’s mind off his own problems, and it seemed that he was right. As they walked slowly down the road away from the Collegia, Bear listened attentively, nodding from time to time, but didn’t interrupt until Mags was finished. It was still pleasant: sultry rather than “stinking hot,” birds and insects making a cheerful racket, and the occasional breath of flower scent from the Palace gardens.
“Would you like to come ‘talk’ to a deaf person, so you can see exactly what you need to do to counterfeit it?” Bear asked, a little diffidently, when Mags was done. “And would you be pretending to be someone who was born deaf, or someone who lost his hearing because of a sickness or injury?”
“They’s a difference?” Mags asked, surprised. “In how they act, I mean.”
“Very much so.” By this time the meandering course they had been taking wound them up at the Kirball field, and they both leaned against the fence and watched a Companion foal scrambling over some of the obstacles under the watchful eye of his mother. The little fellow was very intent. Mags wondered if he had dreams of playing the game.
“Which’d be easier?” Mags asked. “I mean, obvious, I wanta do what’s easier.”
“Someone who had once been able to hear, definitely,” Bear told him. “Juran has a fellow like that helping him. He does all the distilling for the Healers’ Collegium. Even I use him when I need more than a single dose of something. He’s very good and very dedicated, and he has an amazing nose.”
Mags nodded; that made sense. When people lost one sense, the rest tended to get sharper. He remembered how his own senses had sharpened when he was only pretending to be blind.
He followed Bear to Healers’, taking the side entrance where the House of Healing was but bypassing the rooms where the patients were. Still, you couldn’t avoid the sharp smell of the things they used to keep infection away, or the feeling that if you cracked your shields, you’d be bombarded with pain. It wasn’t just Heralds and folks from the Collegia and Palace that were brought here. Anything anyone down in Haven thought too serious for the Healers there was treated here.
Bear ushered him around to the stillroom, where, amid a bewildering array of odors both sweet and bitter, a relatively young fellow who had lost his hearing in a fever walked him through what it was like for him now.
Something Mags had not anticipated was that the fellow could still speak. He sounded odd and a little mush-mouthed, and his tone was flat, but he was perfectly understandable. Should I try that? No, best not. Might make people think I kin still hear some.
The young assistant had learned to “read” what other people were saying by watching their lips as they spoke. Now Mags could see what Bear was talking about; there were a lot of little behavior quirks that Mags was going to have to think about adding to his character. The young man stared intensely at his lips when Mags spoke. He always had his back so close to a wall that no one could get in behind him and startle him. Mags realized at once that in someone operating in the criminal world, such a habit would be even more pronounced. In a world where he would (supposedly) not be able to hear anything, looking nervous all the time would not be out of character. Mags noted how the young man was acutely sensitive to any vibration, looking about immediately when the floor trembled the slightest bit as someone nearby dropped something heavy. He understood then that while he must never react to something that was purely a sound, he could, and should, react to anything that he could feel. As for the young man’s sense of smell, well, it was clear by how he monitored the progress of the three different distillations he was running by scent alone that this was one of the strongest and most reliable of his senses. This very brief exchange told him far more than he would have thought of on his own. This would make life much easier for both him and Nikolas.
“Nights are bad for him,” Bear said, as they left the young man. “A friend stays in the same room with him because he’s terrified that something will happen in the night, a fire or something, and of course he won’t hear an alarm, and in their haste to get out no one will remember him. I would expect anyone who couldn’t hear would feel the same.“
“Then I best never nap ’less Nikolas is about,” Mags mused. “Heh. Not thet I would. Be crazy t’let down yer guard down there. This was a damn fine notion, Bear. Learnt more’n I coulda thought.”
They walked out of Healers’—which somehow was always cool in summer no matter how hot it was—into the full strength of the sun. There was heat-shimmer above the grass, and the scent of heated rock instead of flowers. Least we ain’t goin’ down there by day. Thet part’a Haven i’ th’ sun’d stink like a midden. They ducked back inside, electing to face the Infirmary and sickroom spells rather than the heat.