Everything seemed sharper, clearer; he was aware of the things around him in a way that he had not been until now. The chill against his skin, the soft hide of Dallen under his hand, the way Dallen’s breath, hay-scented, huffed against his shoulder.

He looked up into the skeptical eyes of the Herald. Jakyr, said memory. Herald Jakyr. “His name’s Dallen, Herald Jakyr,” Mags muttered, still trying to sort through the most immediate of the things dumped into his mind. “I’m . . . Mags. Don’t got no other name.” He caught a flicker of something from the Herald and scowled, feeling insulted. This man had no call to think of him as some sort of idiot! “And I mebbe scrawny, but I ain’t lackwitted,” he added with irritation. Then, belatedly, he realized that he had just been impudent to a master; he paled and appended, “Sir.”

And involuntarily cringed, waiting for a blow that was, in his mind, inevitable. He had been insolent. He would pay for that.

He couldn’t help himself. When you answered smart, you got smacked, if you were lucky, and beaten if you weren’t. But Herald Jakyr only chuckled. “Aye, I’ll take your word for it, Mags.” He placed a hand on Mags’ shoulder and his eyes went sad as Mags winced without thinking. “I can see you’ve had a hard time of it. Well, from now on, things will be better. You have my word on it.”

Jakyr’s words startled Mags, despite all that knowledge that was in him now. So many things he hadn’t expected, well, this was one of many. That someone he didn’t even know would be kind to him. He felt the stirring inside of nameless emotions, things he had not felt, and had not dared to feel, in . . . in as long as he could remember, really. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry. His mouth went dry and his eyes wet. It had been so long since someone was kind . . .

A long-ago dim memory half came to the surface and then subsided. Rough hands, but a soft voice, comfort and protection. Not complete protection, though, for that voice in memory sometimes sobbed, and sometimes wheedled, and after that had sometimes come pain. Being hidden in a corner by a fire . . . he knew that fire, he knew that place. It was the kitchen of the Big House at the mine. Someone there had been kind to him, had cared for him. He remembered a wordless crooning, and warmth.