When they let him go, he had barely enough energy left to drag himself to the bathing room and pour himself a bath. He stank of fear and sweat and—suddenly he was feeling fastidious, being around all these cleanly people. He didn’t want anyone to think he didn’t know better. Not now. And besides, he was so wet through, and so drained, that he was shivering with chill as well as reaction. His stomach was still in knots, and he still kept wanting to hide. It took forever to fill the bath, his hands were shaking so that the buckets sloshed.

So he stripped and soaked in the hot bath, trying not to think of anything, until his shivering, internal and external, stopped. He lay back against the rear of the tub, his mind emptying, steam rising in his face.

:You mustn’t be afraid, Mags.:

Now, until this moment, Mags had accepted whatever Dallen told him unquestioningly. But this was too much to swallow. He knew very well he should be afraid. What was he? Nothing. Now, he was not very smart, and it was clear to him from everything that Dallen had been pouring into him that the way he and the other kiddies had been treated was not the way things were usually done. Yet Master Cole had gone on doing it. Mags was not very smart, and he was not at all wise in the ways that the world worked, but there was one thing he did know, and that was all about power. You either had it, or you didn’t, or you had some, but not as much as someone else might. The Pieters boys had some, over the kiddies and the other mine workers, and they did whatever they wanted to the people below them. But Master Cole had power over them and did what he wanted to all of them.

Now this was a fact: Master Cole had treated the kiddies very badly indeed. Yet he had been able to do so for years and years and years, stretching far back beyond where Mags’ memory started. So it stood to reason that somehow Master Cole had plenty of power that extended far beyond his own mine. Or, if he didn’t, there was someone with a lot more power who was protecting him.

Now what Mags was telling Herald Jakyr and the stranger was going to turn Master Cole’s mine upside down, maybe even shut it. That was going to make Cole Pieters very angry, certainly angry enough to kill. And if there was someone even bigger than Cole Pieters involved, it would surely make that person angry, too.

So what reason was there for Mags to not be afraid?

Dallen read all that swiftly from Mags’ mind, as quickly as he reasoned it out himself. And for the first time, Dallen was silent.

Finally, he spoke.