“There’s a mort o’ folks that’re happy about that, mistress,” Mags said, with an awkward half-smile, as Master Soren moved away. So Master Soren had told his niece, at least, quite a bit about Mags. He wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or otherwise. He finally decided to be pleased. It probably saved him a lot of awkwardness.

The girl smiled again, warmly. “Just Lydia. And this is Marc, Amily, Tomas, Saski, Jak, Renton, and Dia.”

Mags nodded in turn to each of them, fixing their names and faces together in his mind. Fortunately, he was rather good at that, and getting better all the time. Sometimes he wondered if his memory had always been this good, and he finally decided that it had been, there had just been less for him to remember, so he hadn’t noticed.

The pale young man called Tomas made a wry face. “Hope you don’t think too badly of me, Lydia, nor you, Trainee Mags, but ’tis holiday season, and I had rather not think of tales of misery at the moment.”

“And from the unease in his eyes, I suspect Mags would rather not talk about them,” observed round little Dia, looking at him shrewdly from deep brown eyes.

Mags nodded, though he wasn’t sure what he could talk about with these sleek, well-dressed young people. It wasn’t as if he had a lot in common with them.

“First, have some cider to warm you.” Dark Jak, whose skin was nearly as tanned as Mags’, pushed a mug into his hands, and motioned him to a seat on one of the cushioned benches. “Then tell us what you know about those mercenaries that lot of merchants brought with them. You have to have seen them, since I know they are doing weapons work at the Palace salle.”

He blinked, and sat down gingerly. “Well,” he replied, slowly, “Aye . . . but I on’y seen them at that salle . . .”

Tomas, red-haired Marc, and Jak all nodded vigorously. All of them leaned forward eagerly.

“That’s what we want to hear about.” Somewhat to Mags surprise, it was Lydia who said that, not one of the young men. “We want to hear what their fighting technique is like.”

Well, there, at least, he was on solid conversational ground. Slowly and carefully, he described what he had observed; that they absolutely preferred to gang up on someone in a pack, who in that pack was weakest, who was strongest. With all of them hanging on his words, he detailed the style they used, and where it differed from what the Weaponsmaster taught, and how. They listened hard, nodded, and occasionally made intelligent comments or questions.

Finally—“That’s all I c’n think of,” he said, spreading his hands apologetically, then looked with surprise at the empty mug in one of them. He didn’t remember drinking all of that cider.