“Dallen said. Ain’t much Dallen don’t know about,” Mags said with pardonable pride. “Him an’ me, we worked t’gether on these things. Taught me t’ make the braids, he did. Made page markers fer m’ other friends, down th’ hill. Master Soren Mender’s niece an’ her lot. Been spendin’ most of the holiday with ’em, since Bear and Lena’re gone.” He did not add that the page markers were his excuse to see them and vice versa, if they needed to get information from him directly. Just undo the braiding a little, and bring it to him to fix. Or send a message asking him to bring another.

Jakyr blinked. “Soren Mender? Councillor Soren Mender?” At Mags’ nod, he shook his head. “Lad, you are not only like the cat that lands on his feet, you are the cat which has landed on his feet in front of a bowl of cream, and had a trout leap out of the water to land beside him. Next, I’ll probably learn that the King’s Own has decided to be your mentor.”

Mags managed not to choke. Fortunately, Jakyr was looking down at the jesses, which were round horsehair braids with a knot on one end, each about twice as long as Jakyr’s hand. Mags hadn’t the foggiest clue what they were for, but Jakyr seemed very taken with them.

“In any event, I was hoping you could spend the rest of the morning with me. Have you that time free?” He smiled. “Since you’ve been so kind as to give me these, I thought you might want to see my bird hunting.” Since Jakyr looked as if he meant it, Mags nodded.

Together, they took Jakyr’s falcon out for some exercise and enough hunting to satisfy her—she was more than happy to rid the Palace of a couple of pigeons—and Jakyr showed Mags how the little braided jesses worked on the falcon’s legs. She had something on each leg that Jakyr called a “bracelet” that was a bit of leather with metal grommets hammered on each end. When Jakyr came to get her, she had something he called “Mews jesses” slipped through the grommets. These had a loop on the ends that was tied off to a leash. When Jakyr popped a kind of eyeless hat that he called a “hood” on her head, and picked her up, he changed these out with the ones that Mags had made.

“You see, if she decides not to come back, these will pull out of the bracelets, and they don’t have a slit on them to get caught on a branch,” Jakyr explained. “Once the jesses are off, she could rid herself of the bracelets, too.”