There was nothing to see in the Healers’ herb gardens everything was under a cover of mulch and snow, and in the gray light that filtered through the heavy clouds, there was nothing to distinguish it from an ordinary, snow-covered hummocked field.
But the gardens around Old Bardic Collegium, in back of the building itself, were a little more enticing. Bards, it seemed needed inspiration from nature, and even in winter the gardens were interesting, a kind of tamed wilderness, dotted with secluded places to sit, lit even at this hour with a variety of outdoor lanterns. It was the very opposite of everything Mags was familiar with. These gardens were not utilitarian, the way the herb and vegetable gardens were; they were not laid out in formal patterns as the ones nearer the Palace were. But they were also utterly unlike Companion’s Field, which was just that, a field allowed to grow wild, with groves of trees and spreading bushes. Mags had never actually wandered about in there before; he had always been too busy during the day, and at night sleep had seemed preferable to stumbling around on half-lit snowy paths. Especially when he had overheard no few of the Trainees making plans to meet there after dark with someone. It seemed unlikely that he would run into a couple slobbering over each other by daylight, though, so he decided to explore further.
He hadn’t penetrated very far past the boundaries when he heard something. For a moment, he stood quite still, trying to identify it. After a moment, he realized what it was.
Muffled sobs. Someone—a girl by the high voice—was crying.
More strongly than ever before, he was torn between his old self and the new one—the person he used to be might have turned his back on whoever was weeping and pretended he knew nothing about it. After all, this was some stranger. Right? It was no one he had any obligation to. He would not set in trouble if he ignored her. Why should he care if some strange girl was crying? How could it possibly matter if he walked away?
But the “new” Mags—that boy could not walk away. Not a those heartbroken sobs in his ears.
On the other hand, if this girl, whoever she was, was not alone, then him barging in there would not be good. She might be a girl friend. Worse, she might be with a boy friend. The boy might be the one who was making her cry. Or he might be trying to comfort her.
So he carefully let his protections thin a little. Then a little more. Finally, when he could dimly sense her thoughts, although it was like hearing a voice so far in the distance that he could not make out the words, only the anguished tone, he allowed his senses to check the area around her.
Nothing. Not even the “alive-but-blank” feeling he got from someone who was shielding his thoughts too.
:What are you doing, Mags?: Dallen must have sensed enough to pull his attention away from the rest of his friends.
:I’m going to find out if I can help,: he replied, feeling even more awkward, if possible.
There was silence in his head for a moment. :It isn’t a Heraldic Trainee,: Dallen said cautiously :I would be very careful if I were you. It could be the daughter of someone highborn in the Court. She’d not appreciate your help. Especially not if she is lovelorn or something of the sort. She won’t appreciate you coming in and wanting to know her private affairs.:
He gave a mental shrug, but Dallen wasn’t finished. :She might even be insulted. Some of the highborn are rather ... touchy about being approached by someone who is not of their rank and class.:
Dallen’s tone conveyed a certain resignation. Much as I would prefer otherwise, there are those who believe that their blood entitles them to look down on the rest of humanity.:
:Even a Herald?: he asked.
Another moment of silence. :In some cases, especially a Herald.:
In a way, that statement came as a relief rather than otherwise. So the Heralds didn’t get along with everyone. Or rather, not everyone saw them as an unalloyed blessing from the gods. That, to Mags’ mind, was far more realistic than the “everyone adores the Heralds” image he had been getting from Dallen and everyone else in Whites or Grays. Instinctively, he had been certain that could not be the case. In his experience, life was not just an apple with a worm in it, it was an apple that was mostly worm, and one could only hope to pick free bits of apple. So here was the worm, or perhaps, many worms, revealed at last.
:But such people are few!: Dallen all but bleated.
:The more reason to know they’re there, and who they are.: He began working his way into the gardens, guided by the sound of sobbing. :You don’t have to tell me now who they are, just warn me when there’s one about: He might have added more, except at that moment he rounded a clump of three evergreens to find himself practically face-to-face with a young girl, dark-haired, thin, and smaller even than Mags, with a dead rabbit in her lap.
:Don’t!: Dallen shouted in his mind, before he could say anything. And rightly so, because Mags’ impulse on being presented with a dead rabbit was to ask when she was going to cook it and did she need help in skinning and gutting it. Not that long ago, a dead rabbit would have been cause for the nearest thing he and the rest of the kiddies knew as a feast. He would have welcomed a dead rabbit with all his heart, but the only ones he had ever seen were going into the Pieters’ kitchen.
As for himself, Mags had eaten dead crows, dead sparrows—even a dead cat, once ... it was almost second nature to think of any beast only as a potential meal.
Which, he knew in the next moment, would have been a terrible, and very hurtful thing to say. You didn’t stroke the fur of your dinner the way this girl was petting the dead rabbit. And you certainly didn’t weep over it the way she was doing. And now, here, he found himself thinking of one of the other kiddies, a creature of indeterminate gender that had attached itself to one of the barn cats, and the cat to it. The Pieterses did not have “pets” as such—every animal in their lives was either food or a beast of some use. But the child and the cat had been almost inseparable until the child took ill the past winter and died. And the cat had vanished.
He coughed slightly to alert her to his presence. She looked up, huge brown eyes bloodshot, tears pouring down her delicate face, and that was when he noticed that she was wearing the rust-red uniform of a Bardic Trainee, and he felt some of Dallen’s anxiety ease. “Hey,” he said awkwardly. “I heard ye. Ye maybe should go inside. Yer gonna get cold out here like this—”
She stared at him blankly, then sobbed. “He’s dead! went back to my room to feed him, and he’s dead!” Anything more she might have said was lost in the torrent of sobs that followed.
Awkwardly, Mags sat down on a garden seat opposite her.
“They don’ live very long,” he suggested. “Mebbe ’twas his time—” Not the most tactful of things to say, perhaps, but at least it didn’t cause her to cry harder.
“He wasn’t very old!” she sobbed, stroking the rabbit’s brown fur. “He was only four!” Mags grimaced. He really didn’t think rabbits lived much longer than that; certainly that seemed to be about the average life for a cat around the Pieterses’ mine, and cats were about the same size as rabbits. But the young girl wasn’t done. “M-m-my best friend Kaley gave him to me; she found a nest a-a-and gave Bumper to me to k-k-keep me c-c-company.”