He’d never had any patience with those sagas wherein the hero found, was given, or created a famous blade with a name of its own. Ridiculous! These things were just pieces of steel, not something sentient. And when you focused too much on “my famous blade, Gazornenplatz,” you were apt to forget that it was a tool, to be used and as readily left behind if need be. Aksel had felt the same, and when he’d caught cadets naming their blades and refusing to use any other, he often took the weapons in question to the forge himself and had them melted down, if they happened to have come out of the common arsenal. There wasn’t a great deal he could do about heirloom blades or gifts, other than to ban them from the salle, but that’s exactly what he had done. Fortunately, the question hadn’t yet come up here, but if it ever did, Alberich intended to follow Aksel’s example.

Alberich got sheaths and a belt and armed himself while Selenay waited with no signs of impatience.

When they left the salle, he discovered that Kantor had managed somehow to get himself saddled and bridled, and was waiting with a Companion mare in similar tack. How had he done that?

:Easy enough. When we show up at the stable door, the helpers know to get us tacked up. Don’t forget, here everyone realizes very well that we aren’t horses, and treats us accordingly.:

Alberich shook his head a little and mounted; Selenay was already in the saddle. The two Companions wheeled and trotted away from the salle, toward the Collegium.

“I’m on a long-track internship, just as you are,” Selenay explained, over the chime of bridle bells. When he looked at her without understanding, she quickly explained. “When a Trainee is considered ready to become a Herald, normally they’re given the white uniforms and they’re sent out along with an older, experienced Herald as a mentor. At first, all they do is observe and discuss what the mentor did afterward. Then, over the course of a year and a half, they gradually begin to take on every task that the older Herald does, until they are doing all the work and it’s the mentor that’s observing. But I can’t do that.”

“Not wise, the Heir out alone with only one other to have as guardian, and not possible, ordinary to be, a troop of guards trailing,” Alberich observed. “Not wise as well, the Heir to be out of reach, the countryside in, but worse, the Heir to be unguarded, a strange city within. Therefore, here the only option is.”