Then he dropped to the floor, arms wrapped around his chest, sobbing silently again. His eyes swelled and burned, his chest ached, his throat was so choked he could scarcely breathe. All he could think about was what he had said to Lena—what she had said to him. What he had done to Dallen.
No matter that he had destroyed his own life. He’d also destroyed Lena’s and Dallen’s.
He jumped as an angry pounding on his door startled him.
“Mags! Mags! Answer me! Answer me, you right bastard!”
It was Bear.
“Come out of there, you coward! Get out here so I can pound you! I’m going to whip you like the mad dog you are!”
Of course it was Bear.
“Who else, what else are you going to ruin, eh?” he shouted furiously, pounding with what sounded like both fists on the door. “Who’s next? Who else are you going to betray? You’ve already destroyed Dallen! Dallen’s probably never going to walk again without pain, much less ride a circuit! What kind of Companion can’t ride a circuit? And you sent Lena into a state where all she can do is cry! You couldn’t even bother to lift a finger to save me from what my family is going to do to me, you selfish bastard! Who else are you going to destroy? Gennie? Amily? The King?”
There it was. Bear believed it too. And if Bear believed it—it had to be true.
“You don’t belong here!” Bear screamed. “You don’t deserve a Companion! You don’t deserve to be a Trainee! Why don’t you go crawl back into your hole in the ground where you came from?”
Why indeed?
Bear was right. He didn’t belong here. He was a blight. An infection. An animal, a mad, dangerous animal. He shouldn’t be around decent folks.
The Foreseers were right.
Bear pounded and pounded on the door, yelling, but Mags wasn’t listening anymore. He was kneeling on the floor, his arms wrapped around his chest, sobbing and rocking, sobbing and rocking, until Bear finally gave up and went away.
Mags’ mind ran around and around in circles, like a mouse trapped in the bottom of a water jar. The candle in his lantern burned down, then out, and he remained where he was on the floor, still curled up around his pain.
There was nothing he could do. There was no way to make any of this right again. All he would continue to do would be to make things worse.
No wonder Nikolas had “disappeared.” He must have been the first to realize just what a bad lot Mags was. Maybe his parents hadn’t been bandits after all, but everything else that Master Cole had said about him was right. He was bad blood, not worth anything.
The best thing he could do right now would be to die—
But no, Dallen was still bonded to him. If he died, in the condition that Dallen was in now, Dallen would probably die along with him.
But Dallen could re-Choose. He knew that was possible. It didn’t happen often, and usually only when a Herald died, but it could happen. Tylendel’s Companion had repudiated him, and presumably had been intending to re-Choose.
Dallen could surely do the same.
And he, Mags, could force the issue.
Yes, that would be the very best thing that he could do. In fact, it was the only honorable thing left for him to do.
And that was where his mind finally stopped, frozen. With the conviction that this was the only possible answer to what he had done. And so he remained, sleepless, curled on the cold floor, in the dark, until at last the first light of dawn filtered in through the window.
Chapter14
MAGS knew that if he hesitated, if he said or did anything, if he even gave a hint of what he was about to do, someone would try and stop him. Stupid, but there was always someone who thought that the unsalvageable could be saved. Right now he didn’t want the temptation to change his mind or the effort it would take to fight the well-meaning. So he shielded himself completely. Dallen was in no condition to pick his thoughts up, but others might.
Not that the Companions were likely to do anything about him. They would probably be only too happy to see the last of him.
He wasn’t going to leave more of a mess than he had already created, however. He would make it easy for the rest to erase him, his presence, his life from this place. So he set to work, putting all of his books and class supplies on the table, packing his personal possessions in a basket, then carefully folding all of the clothing he had been given and laying it on the bed until the only things left were the clothes he had arrived in. He didn’t feel bad about taking those; after all, they had been cast-offs in the first place.
He dressed in the ill-fitting, un-matching shirt and trews, pulled on the much-patched boots, and peeked around the door to ensure that the Companions were still drowsing. His preparations hadn’t taken long at all, the stable was dark, lit only by the two night-lanterns at either end. Making no noise, he slipped out of the stable before anyone, even the grooms that served this stable, was awake. He crept across the grounds as he had learned to creep and hide back at the mine when he was sneaking about looking for food. The sun wasn’t even up yet. He scuttled from bit of cover to bit of cover, and not even the dawn-rising gardeners saw him leave.
The Guards had a bad habit; they watched and challenged people trying to get into the Palace or the Collegia, but not the ones leaving. So once he reached the gates where the lowest of the servants came and went, he stopped skulking; he went through the gates and just walked off the property in the wake of a delivery cart, and they didn’t give him a second glance.
But now, dressed as shabbily as he was, he quickly had to move to the “back” of all those fancy manors and near-palaces that were up here. He needed to get off the main road where he would be conspicuous, and into the alleys and lanes behind them, where people like he was “belonged.”
The first thing was, he needed a job. If he was going to stay alive, at least until Dallen decided to repudiate him and find someone else, he needed to keep himself fed and sheltered. And... that wasn’t as hard at he had made it out to be when he and Bear and Lena talked about running off. If you didn’t care how well you lived, only that you stayed alive, there were plenty of things he could do. None of it was interesting or rewarding, but why would that matter now? All he cared about, really, was that it be hard enough work to keep him from thinking and let him fall into the same exhausted stupor he had when work at the mine was finished.
And certainly, there was plenty of potential for being abused and mistreated, but that didn’t matter in the least to him. Right now, he didn’t really care how well or badly treated he was. It came to him after a moment that he’d actually welcome being punished, since he certainly deserved it.
The way to find a job like that was to ask for it. While there were places down in Haven where those looking for work could be hired, more often than not, the sort of thing he was looking for came to a person that presented himself at the right time, and in the right manner. He was clean and neat, which argued for being reliable, and he was dressed perfectly for the sort of person that would be in the lowest ranks of the unskilled servants; exactly the right sort of “shabby.” No one would trust him with horses, for instance, not even in mucking out the stalls, but they’d be happy to offload all the dirtiest, nastiest kitchen jobs on someone like him. Scullery jobs, that was the thing, jobs that went, even at the Pieters’ mine, to people who were paid in little more than food and a place to sleep on the floor.
One by one he went down the line of manor houses. At each, he presented himself at the kitchen door, looking for work. In late afternoon, he found a place, as one of the pot-scrubbers. There was no one lower. Potscrubbers—who also scrubbed the kitchen floor when the day’s work was done, and hauled out the garbage—frequently deserted their posts, so someone was always looking for replacements. He didn’t have to look as if he was eager; stupidity was an asset in such a job. No one cared if his eyes were swollen and red with weeping; all they cared about was a sturdy body and just barely enough intelligence to do the work.