“ ’Cause when people died? All I could think was I was glad it weren’t me. I’m still glad it weren’t me. Them as is dead, is dead, an’ nothin’ is gonna make ’em not dead.” He hung his head. “Reckon ’m as bad as Master Cole.”

Jakyr turned to stare at him. “Good gad, Mags, I certainly don’t think that!” When Mags looked up at him, it was his turn to struggle for words. “Look, I think what you are feeling is a great deal like what I felt when I was a young man in the Guard, and I was in battles. I mostly did not know my fellow soldiers, there was no time to get to know them and, Mags, when they died, I felt the same. I was glad it wasn’t me.”

He swallowed, and searched Jakyr’s face for a hint of falsehood. He found none. “For true?”

Jakyr nodded. “For true.” The Herald looked away again. “It may have been a battlefield for you your entire life, Mags. How can I think you are a bad person because of how you handled it?”

Mags swallowed. It was comforting, and yet . . .

Oh, well.

“Well, is it important to you to actually see it? See the man get his punishment?” Jakyr seemed to be finding something very interesting outside that window to look at.

Mags shook his head dismissively. “Nossir. It don’ matter. Not a bit. I guess . . . I dunno why, it just don’ matter. ‘S like the Mags you hauled outa there an’ me, they’re two different kiddies.” He shrugged again. “The ol’ Mags, he woulda danced on Master Cole’s grave. The new one . . . Cole don’t matter. I got stuff to do, and Cole don’t matter. ’Cept that he’s trouble. I cain’t ’splain it any better nor that.”

“Then I’ll take your word for it.” Jakyr nodded decisively, just as the bell rang for supper. He seemed satisfied. “Go nurse your aches and get fed. The sooner you can ride well, the sooner we can be gone.”

Mags limped off.

He himself was more than a little puzzled about his own lack of emotion. Once, nothing would have pleased him more than to see with his own eyes Master Cole being humiliated at worst, and punished terribly at best. Now . . . now he had other things to think about. His mind was so crowded with all of those things that, no, it just didn’t matter.

Well, all but a feeling of warmth when he thought about the other kiddies, especially the youngest, being taken somewhere that they were getting the same sort of care and treatment he was. And he had been the instrument of that. That felt good.