Bad Blood, because his parents were bandits and had been killed in a raid by the Royal Guard. Bad Blood, because he’d been found in a cradle in the bandit camp after. Bad Blood, so bad that no one had wanted to take him in and he’d been left at the local Temple of the Trine with priests who were probably not at all happy about being saddled with the care of an infant. But then along had come Cole Pieters.

Out of the kindness, the pure kindness of my heart, I took ye. No one else wanted ye, not even the godly priests. They all knew what ye were. They all figgered one day ye’d turn on ’em. I’m a bloody saint, I am, fer takin’ a chance with you.

And so the infant had begun life in the Pieters household with the imaginative name of “the Brat.” And from the moment his tiny hands could actually do anything, he’d been put to work, an unpaid, poorly fed, scantily clad, dirty little drudge. He was told, and he believed it, that he’d worked before he could walk, dragging a wad of rag-strips as he crawled, all unknowingly cleaning the floor with it. He’d been Brat for years, going from job to job in the household, from floor duster to spit turner, from pot washer to garden weeder, until he was big enough to see over the side of the sluices. And that was when he’d gone to work at the mine.

And that was when he’d gotten the name of Mags.

Tap, pause. Tap, pause. He put his nose as close to the stone as he could and still see, examining the rock minutely.

He remembered that day. His only instruction had been to watch the older kiddies, do what they did, and look for things that sparkled and had color. He got the stuff that had already been picked over, no one really expected him to find anything. But as he had washed the gravel over and over again in his basin, watching not only the gravel in the pan but making sure he checked the stuff in the sluice as well, he had spotted something. It was no bigger than a grain of wheat, but it was bright, brilliant green. And then he found a yellow one, and a purple, and another green, a third green, and by the time the day was over, he turned over to his astonished overseer a little pile of tiny gem shards, a pile big enough to cover the palm of his hand.

“By the gods, Brat, ye’ve got th’ eyes of a Magpie!” Endal Pieters had exclaimed. And it was the same the next day, and the next, until they started calling him “little Magpie,” then Mags, and then—that was his name.