His afternoons were going to be exhausting, though. All of his weaponry classes were held in late afternoon, which meant he would be going from Kirball practice to weapons work.
Well, if this was a wartime situation, it wasn’t as if he would be able to take a break from the fighting.
Besides, as he told himself, so far nothing he had done had been as physically demanding as a day of mining on too little food.
There was one little problem, however. The first full day of team practice, he learned that the South team would have their session right after the noon meal, which was not such a good thing on a full stomach.
After thinking about it, he decided that what he would do would be to get himself a packet of things that would keep, eat very lightly, then have a second meal after the practice, dividing his lunch into two small meals.
So for the first day of practice, he sat down and warmed himself with a quite small bowl of soup, which he ate slowly, with a bit of bread. He was halfway through it, intently thinking over what Gennie might demand of them today, and what Setham might want them to do, when a tap on his back startled him.
Old habits died very hard, so when startled, he froze rather than yelping or jumping. While he sat there, Bear sat down on the bench next to him and eyed his lunch critically.
“I wouldn’t say you needed to lose weight.”
Mags grinned a little and shrugged. “Kirball fer m’team is right after noon.”
“Ah!” Bear nodded back. “In that case, you’re doing the right thing. You could get really sick if you ate like you usually do, then went out to practice. I don’t think you’d impress anyone by losing your lunch suddenly.”
Mags shrugged. “Happen ye learn a mite or two ’bout eatin’ when ye ain’t got a lot t’ eat.” He turned his attention fully on Bear, for something about his friend did not seem quite right. “Happen I ain’t been payin’ much heed t’ friends lately... Bear, ye seem a bit fashet. Ye been frettin’ bout somethin’?”
Bear looked uncomfortable and actually squirmed a little in his seat. “It’s nothing,” he said starting to stuff a huge bite of cooked greens into his mouth. Mags kept looking at him steadily.
Bear shoveled three more bites in, pretending to ignore the stare. But then he stopped, and put the fork down, and sighed. “You’ve got no idea how lucky you are to be an orphan.”
Mags froze with the spoon halfway into his mouth. It felt like his mind was stuck in mud for a moment, because he could not imagine why Bear would have said anything like that. Finally he ate the soup, then put the spoon in the bowl. “Ye got any notion how crazy that sounds?” he asked.
Bear grimaced. “Very. But Lena’s not the only one with parents that . . .”
Mags waited. When Bear didn’t finish the sentence, he prodded. “What, I know they’re all Healers, be they pretendin’ ye don’t exist cause ye got no Gift?” He snorted. “The more fools them.”
Bear looked sick. “It’s worse than that. We got into it over the holiday—or rather, they all sat and lectured me, one at a time, and then all together. They think I don’t belong here, ‘taking up a space that a real Healing Trainee could use.’ They think if I were to leave here, someone from the provinces would get an open place. They won’t understand that it doesn’t work that way anymore, that anyone who can come here and be spared at home is free to come. They just refuse to believe that. They want me to pack up and come home and marry some . . .” he made a flailing gesture with his hands. “... some neighbor girl I supposedly used to play with that I don’t even remember, so that I can maybe breed some children that will have the Gift.”
Mags felt his jaw dropping. “Where—what—” He got control of himself again, but he felt a little as if Bear had suddenly announced he was going to become an Artificer.
“The Dean of Healers is stalling them. I mean, they can’t exactly come up here and pull me out of the Collegium by the hair. They’d have to have my consent to come home. But . . .” Now Bear looked even sicker. “Here’s the thing. I’m not sure they’re wrong.”
Mags felt his jaw unhinge. “Now you are th’ one sayin’ crazy stuff.”
“No but look—most of what I do is with herbs. They generally won’t let someone without a Gift do any cutting, because someone without a Gift can’t See what they’re doing and where they’re going. So I probably won’t be learning surgery. I can set bones, sure, but someone with a Gift can do it better. So that leaves just the herbs. And what good is that here?” Bear’s face was bleak. “I can help a little, and I can take care of people who for one reason or another refuse to let a real Healer touch them, or the few people that Healing Mindmagic doesn’t work on. That’s all I can do, and I’m not sure I’m not wasting space. Maybe I’d be better going home and treating animals. Nobody would mind if I did surgery on them, and there just aren’t many animal Healers.”
“Didn’ you even lissen t’ Amily?” he asked, aghast. “She said ye had a Gift, an’ don’t ye think she’s right?”
“Of course she would say that,” Bear said bitterly. “She’s the ungifted crippled daughter of the King’s Own who has never been Chosen. She has to believe that people without Gifts are just as effective as those with them, or her own life would be unbearable.”
Mags had never heard Bear talk like this before, and he was somewhat at a loss for what to say. He felt a little sick, and a little like crying. Bear was so clever, and so kind, that to see him in this state made him want to jump up and do something right now, and of course there was nothing that he could do.
“Well, I got a Gift, an’ a Companion, an’ I say ye got a Gift,” he replied after a while, and laid his hand cautiously on Bear’s shoulder. “What’s more, I bet if’n ye ask the Senior Healers over there, they’d be tellin’ ye the same.”
Bear smiled wanly. “Thanks, Mags.” He stirred his cooling greens, gazing broodingly down at them. “Oh, what was in that note you left me the other night? I haven’t had a chance to talk to Lena, and I spilled a decoction all over it and it’s illegible.”
Glad to change the subject, Mags told him what he had uncovered in the Archives. “So all I know now is, I’m a furriner.”
He hadn’t made any effort to keep his voice down, although it wasn’t as if he had any great secret to hide. But suddenly he noticed that he was getting odd glances from everyone within range of the sound of his voice.
And Bear’s expression changed again, this time to wary. He hunched his shoulders and glanced furtively from side to side. “Aw hellfires, Mags, did you have to say that out loud?” he whispered.
“Uh . . .” Mags blinked. “There a prollem?”
Bear groaned. “Don’t you ever listen to any gossip? It’s all over the Collegia and the Court too.”
Mags shook his head. “Ain’t like I ever talk t’ too many people,” he pointed out. “An’ I been pretty busy past few days. Why?”
Bear carefully removed his lenses and polished them with his sleeve. “Because this morning a lot of the Foreseers got visions. They saw the King covered in blood, a shadowy figure next to him, and the sense that someone had tried to kill the King and the feeling that the shadowy figure was foreign born. Which... you are. And the feeling is that only someone known to the King or otherwise vouched for could get that close to him. It’s not as if he’s ever unguarded, and he’s a damn fine fighter on his own merits. So there’s been a lot of speculation about who could be foreign-born and be able to get to him, and there’s not a lot of people around that match those two things.”