Mostly, when he heard voices on the other side of his door, he just tried to ignore them. He had a great deal of practice at ignoring things, once he was able to decide that what was being talked about didn’t matter to him. Back at the mine, there were times when your life, or at least your health, depended on “not hearing” things. He’d “not heard” the boys messing about with the kitchen- and housemaids, for instance, plenty of times. He’d “not heard” the boys saying ugly things about their father. And here and now, he was careful about all those careless, feckless lovers, and careful about Trainees blurting out things they probably shouldn’t have. It harmed no one to forget all about those little secrets. But there were some conversations he couldn’t just put aside and forget. And one of them started one evening with two mature voices coming into audible range as he was doing sums.

“. . . Holden, I’m telling you, this Collegium idea is criminally stupid.”

The man had been speaking too quietly for Mags to make out what he was saying for some time now, though it had been obvious from his tone that he was arguing. But this was a rather startling statement for a Herald to make. He assumed it was Heralds, and Dallen confirmed it.

“That’s a bit of a leap,” came the reply. Evidently the fellow he was arguing with agreed with Mags.

“No? Have you seen how these younglings are being taught? In classrooms! Out of books!” Incredulity warred with indignation in the man’s voice. Mags wondered what was wrong with learning things out of books. Surely when you did things that way, you didn’t stand nearly as much risk of making the same mistakes as someone else. “A Herald doesn’t need books to show him what to do, he needs another Herald! You don’t learn that sort of thing out of books! You learn this sort of thing by seeing it, doing it—hands on, Holden! We’ve always been hands on!”