Abi had completed her friend’s grooming to his satisfaction, and he nuzzled his thanks, backed out of the loose box, and went back to his friends in the Field. She picked out the mane and tail hairs and put them in his bag—Heralds and Trainees who didn’t have quite enough hair to finish a job generally helped themselves to whatever was in these bags. After all, it was still Companion hair.

“We should have just enough time to wash up before dinner,” said Trey just as she finished. “You want to sit at our table?”

Abi peeked into Dylia’s stall, Brice looked as if his cup of happiness was about to overflow.

The conversation at their table was dominated by Kirball, since the table itself was dominated tonight by Niko’s friends. Niko had just been made a guard on the Red team and was possibly one of the most enthusiastic players in the Collegia. Trey was utterly indifferent to the sport, but not to giving his sibling a hard time over it. Kat, however, considered herself a connoisseur of the horses and ponies that the non-Heralds on the teams rode, and would happily debate the merits of any beast on any of the four teams currently playing.

Emmit and Brice fit right into this group, which left Rudi and Abi off to the side. “You were right,” he said to her after a moment. “They’re just people.”

“Well . . . just people wealthy and important enough that rank and wealth don’t matter to them,” she temporized, but she couldn’t deny that his words made her feel very warm and happy. “There is that. You can’t get around that fact.”

Rudi thought about that for a while. “That’s true. I’m a blacksmith’s son. My father is the most important man in our village. So he can choose to treat everyone else the same as himself. But with anyone else in the village there’s a hierarchy and people know they had better respect it, pull their caps and say ‘sir.’ That never occurred to me until you said that just now.”

“And don’t forget that can change in a heartbeat.” Abi warned him. “Not that it’s going to happen with my friends, but when important people treat you as an equal and you actually aren’t, never forget they can change their minds about that in the time it takes you to say or do one wrong thing.”

Rudi smiled wryly. “Something they don’t include in our rather brief lesson on manners and conducting yourself.”

She nodded. “The younger they are, the more likely that is to happen, too.”

“Then hopefully I’ll only get commissions from the Crown or extremely old men. Who hopefully won’t die before I finish their building.”