Well, he hadn’t bound Mags to the horse like a criminal so he couldn’t escape, though right now, Mags wouldn’t have minded a few ropes tying him on. . . .

This was mad. He’d have been certain that he was going mad, except that there was no way he could have been making all this up in his own head.

His stomach was a tight, cold, little knot of fear, there was another icy knot of fear in his throat, every muscle ached from holding on so tightly, and yet he was too terrified to let go even a little bit. All he could do was hang on and endure and hope it ended soon, and that it didn’t end with him falling off and breaking his neck.

And then, as suddenly as the ride had begun—it ended. He felt the horse start to slow, then stop, and his eyes flew open.

But he hadn’t even begun to take in his surroundings when the man grabbed him as Pieters had, by the scruff of the neck, and hauled him off the horse. At least, though, the man caught him before he fell, and lowered him easily enough to the ground, even if it was at arm’s length. But he was wearing white . . . and Mags suddenly realized with an odd sense of shame that he was dirty enough to soil the fellow just by what he shed.

The man pushed Mags ahead of him into a building three or four times larger than the Big House, and terrifyingly grand looking, all clean and bright and polished, so much so that suddenly Mags realized just how shabby and neglected the Big House was by sheer contrast. It was two stories tall, made of timber-framed stone all rounded and smooth-polished, and not sharp-edged like the stuff chipped out of a mine, showing all the hundreds of colors that existed in the simple word tan. There was glass in all the windows, and Mags knew how ruinously expensive that was, because of the howl that had been sent up when one of the Pieters’ boys had shied a rock at something and hit a window instead.

Mags was certain they were just going to go around to the stable or some other outbuilding, where the man would hand him over to someone else, and . . .

But no. The man marched him right in the big front door, all polished wood with shiny brass fittings to it.

And then they were surrounded by people. Well, maybe not surrounded, but there were five or six of them at least, and they were all big, all muscled, and all . . .

. . . all in Guard blue.