In their leisure, they often got together with other Trainees for impromptu singing and dancing. Many of them seemed to be musicians, and he wondered where they found the time to practice! He never learned to play anything, of course, never learned to dance, never heard any music but the drunken bawling of the Pieters family on the rare occasions when they celebrated anything. The Trainees were not the only ones who gathered for impromptu fun; the Heralds often came down to Companions’ Stable to do the same, according to the stablehands. They hadn’t yet, but Mags had passed by the Trainees’ rooms or even a classroom before he went to bed, on his way back from the library, and heard the other Trainees laughing and talking and singing together. He didn’t precisely feel left out—it was more that he felt as if he simply didn’t understand them.

The Guards had done much the same thing, actually, when the day was done. He didn’t understand them either. He had felt awkward, as if he should want to join them, should want to do what they were doing—but his head wouldn’t quite shape itself to what they were doing, and all he could do was gawk and try to figure out what they were laughing about.

Sometimes he noticed that the Trainees would play games, or tell stories, even over meals or when waiting their turn at something. He had seen gambling games, but of course never had the leisure to play them, and the only stories he knew were about the mine . . . not a good choice for telling, even if he had been inclined to do so.

Until now, the height of his ambition had been to go to sleep with a full belly. They were as strange to him as if they were some sort of exotic bird. He felt as if he moved among them like a ghost; they scarcely registered his presence and none of them seemed to even remember his name without prompting from a Companion.

So, gifted with this unexpected bit of free time . . . he found he had nothing with which to fill it. On the other hand, the one thing he had not done yet was explore around the Collegia; he had been so busy that he hadn’t seen much outside of his classrooms, the salle, the riding grounds, the eating hall, and the stables. Curiosity was not encouraged at the mine, but now he slowly felt it stirring. There would be no harm in looking about a bit.

There was nothing to see in the Healers’ herb gardens; everything was under a cover of mulch and snow, and in the gray light that filtered through the heavy clouds, there was nothing to distinguish it from an ordinary, snow-covered, hummocked field.