He sighed. :Cain’t find nothin’ quick or thet doesn’t hurt. Them flyspeck ’shrooms hurt a lot too. And so does water iris. There ain’t no cliffs ’round here t’ toss myself off, they closed up Bell Tower so ye cain’t throw yerself outa there, on’y th’ Palace towers’re tall ’nuff, an’ no chance me getting’ inta one’a them towers... :
:Stop that,: Dallen ordered, desperately. :Don’t talk like that. You aren’t going to drown yourself or throw yourself off a tower or eat poison. You are my Chosen and we have each other. We will get through this.:
Right now he was so far from imagining how they would that not even Dallen could persuade him. :Ye heard? They’re talkin’ ’bout Black Companions again. An’ ’bout Black Heralds. Ev’ crazy idea they had afore, they got goin’ now, an’ people’re startin’ t’ think ’bout takin’ ’em all serious. Someone’s even floatin’ the ideer that there’s some kinda second soul’r somethin’ in me, an’ it’s hidin’ behind me an’ controllin’ me an you. People are listenin’. An’—:
He couldn’t go on. And it wasn’t as if Dallen wasn’t already aware of this. What Mags knew, he knew, and he probably knew a lot more than Mags did. In fact, he was starting to spend an awful lot of time by himself in Companion’s Field, as if even the other Companions were starting to doubt him and his Chosen.
:Ye’d be better off w’out me,: he said dully. :Go Choose someone else. Ain’t nobody’d miss me, and plenty’d be happy t’ get rid’a a big problem. An’ I know damn well ye kin Choose agin, specially if I’m so bad rotten. It’s all right there i’ those Archives an’ Reports I been sortin’ through.: He felt his throat closing up. :Hellfires, I’m startin’ t’ believe all them stories.:
:Don’t be ridiculous! You are not bad! Look at everything you’ve done; it was all to help people!:
:Reckon Bear ’n Lena’d argue wi’ ye.:
:Exercise,: Dallen said desperately. :We need something to take our minds off this. The Kirball field will be empty. Let’s take the fastest run we can over that. A hard workout, the sort of thing we can’t do with the team.:
Mags was about to object, then sighed. He just didn’t have the will to fight Dallen on this. It wouldn’t help anything, but it wouldn’t hurt anything either, and it might exhaust both of them enough so that their minds stopped spinning in the endless circle of “we have to prove we’re innocent, but it hasn’t happened yet, so how can we prove we’re innocent, but we have to prove we’re innocent . . .” Mags was irresistibly reminded of the poor Lunatic’s mind, and how it kept going round and round the same cycle of words.
Aye an’ mebbe tha’s what makes me snap an’ kill the King. That would be an irony of monumental proportions—that the very suspicion and hostility that was being heaped on him was what would cause him to lose his mind and turn into some sort of insane killer. So the people that were the ones convinced he would do this thing in defiance of all logic and past behavior would be the very ones to make him into the monster that would do it in the first place. He thought about trying to put that to someone in authority—
But who? Nikolas had vanished, the King certainly wouldn’t see him, Herald Caelan was only the head of the Collegium, not someone who had any sort of say in what went out outside it. And anyone else would likely laugh at him, or think that this was yet more evidence of his unstable—or evil—nature.
Well, being exhausted would not be bad. And although there was no way he was going to go into the Collegium and take a hot bath afterwards, it was just warm enough to do the same thing in one of the Field ponds without freezing to death. Plus if he put a hot brick in his bed to warm it up, the combination of being chilled from the bath and the exhaustion and getting into a warm bed would put him right to sleep.
Mind, that would do nothing about the nightmares. He hadn’t had a night that was free of them since all this started. And the last of Bear’s nightmare potion was long gone. Even if anyone else at Healers’ Collegium had known how to make it, the question was whether he was going to trust them enough to drink something they’d concocted. Bear was very popular among the Healers, and while they might have some qualms about his skills, they had none about his personality, and very little about his right to be here. They probably all blamed him for not using his influence on Nikolas too.
So would he trust something that had been made by someone who wanted to punish him?
Prolly not. They’d be as like t’ give me somethin’ that made the nightmares worse. Or jest somethin’ t’ give me a bellyache.
But he’d heard worse ideas than Dallen’s. :All right. But it’s gettin’ on t’ twilight. It’ll be hard for ye t’ see. I don’ want ye to hurt yersel’, strain a tendon or summat. That’d jest be the end. Team’d never forgive me.:
Dallen’s mind-voice was full of relief. :All the better to simulate, oh, a battle that’s going long, a sneak attack by the enemy on our camp, or—oh, something else going wrong around twilight. I’ll be able to see well enough. Besides, we know that field like I know my stall; we could probably run it in a night of moon-dark.:
:All right,: Mags agreed reluctantly. :I’ll come saddle ye. If’n thet’s what ye really want.:
He left the bridge and trudged down to the stable, and selected a saddle and bridle from among Dallen’s neatly-stored tack. It should be neatly stored. He’d spent enough time cleaning, mending and putting it away today. He didn’t actually saddle Dallen so much as strap on a very light riding pad, meant to keep Companion and Chosen from chafing each other, and as close to riding bareback as you could come. And, as usual, the special bitless bridle, light and well worn and comfortable as bridle made of ribbon for him.
Dallen was impatient, and instead of walking, they galloped down to the Kirball field, where already the setting sun was turning things a bright red-gold. There was no one there, not even one of the groundskeepers. This, of course, was exactly what Mags wanted. No one around. He relaxed a very little. Not much, but a little.
:Is there a particular route and obstacle set you want to take?: Dallen asked, dancing in place to loosen up his hocks and warm up his muscles.
:Yer choice,: Mags replied, settling himself in Dallen’s saddle, in the one place in which he still felt at home. :You were the one that wanted t’ do this, so, you figger out what ye wanta do. I’m jest the baggage.: He hunched himself down low over Dallen’s neck, and rested part of his weight in the lightweight stirrups so that he could shift it at a moment’s notice.
The instant that Dallen sensed he was ready, he gathered himself and launched himself at one of the goals as if he had seen a starting flag go down. Mags shifted his weight smoothly as Dallen dodged imaginary foes and headed for the goal at his top speed.
He didn’t gallop up and down the ramp, either; he repeated the move that had won them the North flag, making a huge, straining leap for the top of the goal, managing to scramble up it anyhow as Mags shifted his weight practically over the Companion’s neck, whipping around on his hindquarters and leaping back down again.
From there, it was a high-speed scramble over the hillocks of “the bad side.” Mags kept in tune with him, shifting his weight to assist as they plunged toward the other goal. Dallen glanced to the side; Mags felt the turn coming. Dallen pivoted to the right, jumped down into a gully and scrambled up the other side like a goat. At the top he leapt into the air and did the sort of kick-out that he would do if there were soldiers right behind them. Warhorses did this sort of thing too, but they had to have the signal from their riders. Companions didn’t need signals because they could think, but they did need to be perfectly in tune with their Chosen so that the human wouldn’t fall off or otherwise botch the maneuver.