For once, the salle was empty. The mercenaries, so the rumor at breakfast said, had gotten into a drinking contest down in a tavern in the city. They had won—barely—but two workmen who had seen them brought back up again in a hired wagon told everyone within earshot that it was unlikely they would be moving swiftly this morning. If at all. From the condition they had been in, and the fact that they were brought up just at dawn, well, the workmen were taking bets on whether they would be seen in public at all that day.

So Mags had the salle all to himself, which he rather liked. He’d been able to set up an archery target inside, something he rarely had a chance to do, which was a vast improvement over standing in the snow to shoot. When he had shot his required fifty arrows, and had decided that throwing knives at his current skill level was going to be hazardous to the big glass mirrors, he switched to simple exercises to round out the workout. He was working out against the pells alone when he heard someone enter the salle. He didn’t look up, however, until he heard a familiar voice say, “Fancy trying your skill against me, youngling?”

And then he whipped his head around and grinned with delight. “Herald Jakyr! I—”

What he was about to say was I forgot all about you coming, but fortunately he stopped himself. That would be—very impolite. Jakyr weighed a practiced blade in one hand and said, with a look of embarrassment touched with a bit of apprehension, “I know you were expecting me, but I was detained. And I can’t stay—”

“Well, you come at last, so I c’n give ye my little somethin’!” Mags replied happily, resolutely tightening his shields against Jakyr’s thoughts. He didn’t want to know what the man was thinking . . . but guilt gave them such force that a little of it leaked through anyway. . . . not someone else, clinging to me, strangling me . . .

“Little something? Mags, you didn’t get me a Midwinter Gift—” Jakyr betrayed more apprehension, although if he hadn’t been getting those lessons from the King’s Own, Mags probably wouldn’t have seen it. “That is really unnecessary.”