“So I brought ’em their dinner on the cart, like I always do,” the girl continued. “But yesterday and the day before they’ve been—different—when I came. Nervous, I would have said, except I’ve never seen them nervous. And today they were even jumpier. Every time there was a squeak or a rattle, they jumped and looked for what might have caused it. I pushed the cart into the room, just like always. And that was when it happened!”

Her hands were shaking so much that the water sloshed out of her mug and all down the front of her gown.

“What happened?” the cook asked, dabbing at her uniform gown with a napkin. The girl was so shaken she didn’t even notice.

“The ax! There was an ax in the room, on the wall in the room! And all of a sudden it just leaped off the wall, and flipped over three times, and split that dress-helm the tallest one likes to wear because he’s going bald!” She shuddered. “It didn’t just fall! It just about flew! Like someone was throwing it!”

Some of the kitchen staff looked apprehensive, and there was some murmuring back and forth. The maid spoke right over the top of them.

“I saw it and they saw it and they just went white! And the sly one pushed me out of the room and shut the door, which was a good thing, because I couldn’t possibly have moved otherwise! And I ran here.” She wasn’t as close to hysteria as she had been, but Mags had no doubt that she was very near some sort of breakdown.

So did the head cook, who snorted again. He, at least, was not at all impressed. Then again, he must have been serving here for—

:Almost thirty years that I know of.:

“I’ve seen things move around here many a time, girl. A Herald with the Fetching Gift can move things just by thinking about it.” The head cook shook his head. “You’ve got no call to go bringing ghosts into it, when there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation. Like as not, it’s one of the Trainees, pulling pranks. They aren’t supposed to do that sort of thing, but boys will be boys, and those mercenaries are a hateful lot. I couldn’t fault the boys for making ’em sweat.”

“But a Herald has to see what he’s moving, right?” the maid demanded. “He can’t just decide to move things without knowing what they are and where they are, right?”

“Ah . . .” She had caught him off guard, it seemed. He would like to pretend he was an expert in such matters.

“I believe that is true,” he said finally. “I believe that in order to move something, the Herald has to be able to see it.”