:I’m going to find out if I can help,: he replied, feeling even more awkward, if possible.

There was silence in his head for a moment. :It isn’t a Heraldic Trainee,: Dallen said cautiously. :I would be very careful if I were you. It could be the daughter of someone highborn in the Court. She’d not appreciate your help. Especially not if she is lovelorn or something of the sort. She won’t appreciate you coming in and wanting to know her private affairs.:

He gave a mental shrug, but Dallen wasn’t finished. :She might even be insulted. Some of the highborn are rather . . . touchy about being approached by someone who is not of their rank and class.: Dallen’s tone conveyed a certain resignation. :Much as I would prefer otherwise, there are those who believe that their blood entitles them to look down on the rest of humanity.:

:Even a Herald?: he asked.

Another moment of silence. :In some cases, especially a Herald.:

In a way, that statement came as a relief rather than otherwise. So the Heralds didn’t get along with everyone. Or rather, not everyone saw them as an unalloyed blessing from the gods. That, to Mags’ mind, was far more realistic than the “everyone adores the Heralds” image he had been getting from Dallen and everyone else in Whites or Grays. Instinctively, he had been certain that could not be the case. In his experience, life was not just an apple with a worm in it, it was an apple that was mostly worm, and one could only hope to pick free bits of apple. So here was the worm, or perhaps, many worms, revealed at last.

:But such people are few!: Dallen all but bleated.

:The more reason to know they’re there, and who they are.: He began working his way into the gardens, guided by the sound of sobbing. :You don’t have to tell me now who they are, just warn me when there’s one about.: He might have added more, except at that moment he rounded a clump of three evergreens to find himself practically face-to-face with a young girl, dark-haired, thin, and smaller even than Mags, with a dead rabbit in her lap.

:Don’t!: Dallen shouted in his mind, before he could say anything. And rightly so, because Mags’ impulse on being presented with a dead rabbit was to ask when she was going to cook it and did she need help in skinning and gutting it. Not that long ago, a dead rabbit would have been cause for the nearest thing he and the rest of the kiddies knew as a feast. He would have welcomed a dead rabbit with all his heart, but the only ones he had ever seen were going into the Pieters’ kitchen.