“Girl. She'll be your year-mate; got Chosen six moons ago. Oh, I made sure I left enough hot water for a good bath.”
“Thanks.” That decided him. Maybe he'd already had one bath today, but he was still stiff and sore, and another wouldn't hurt.
Kris was still looking at him quizzically. “I hope you don't mind my asking — but how did you get that black eye? It's a glory! If you haven't seen it, it's gone all green and purple around the edges, and black as black at your nose.”
“Smacked it inta Cymry's neck,” Skif admitted ruefully. “Ain't never jumped on a horse afore.”
Kris winced in sympathy. “Ouch. Better go soak. Good night!”
“Night,” Skif replied, and got a robe of his own to take the boy's advice.
When he got back to his room and started putting his new belongings away to clear his bed so he could sleep, he found one last surprise.
On the desk were all of his things. Every possible object he owned except the most ragged of his clothing from both his room next to Jass', and the Priory. Including his purse, with every groat still in it.
Startled, he tried to think at his Companion. :Cymry!: he “called” her, hoping she'd answer.
:What do you need?: she asked sleepily, and he explained what he'd found.
:Who did that? And how come?: he finished. It worried him…
:Oh. That would be Alberich's doing, I expect,: she replied. :Usually they go send someone to tell families that the Chosen's arrived safely, and to get their belongings, if they didn't bring anything with them. Don't you want your things?:
Well, of course he wanted his things. :I just — :
The fact was, he worried. Who went there. What they'd said. And how they'd known where he came from…
:Kantor says it was all Alberich's doing, at least getting your things from your room.: Well, that was one worry off his mind. Alberich would have gone as the sell-sword, and intimidated his way in. Good enough. :He sent off the usual Guardsman to the Priory. They'll have told the Priory you were Chosen, and the Guardsman would have brought someone hired to take your place, so the Priory won't go shorthanded. Kan for says Alberich didn't tell your old landlord anything. Is that all right?:
Since it was exactly what he would have wanted had he been asked, he could only agree. :Aye. That's fine, I reckon.: In fact, he couldn't think of anything else he could possibly want.
:Get some sleep,: she told him. :It'll be a long day tomorrow.:
A longer one than today? With a sigh, he climbed into bed, feeling very strange to be in such a bed, and even stranger not hearing the usual noises of the city beyond his walls.
But not so strange that he was awake for much longer than it took to find a comfortable position and think about closing the curtains he'd left open to let in every bit of breeze. About the time he decided it didn't matter, he was asleep.
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A SCANT week later, Skif was just about ready to face all the returning Trainees. He knew what the Heralds of Valdemar were about now — at least, he knew where they'd come from and what they did. And he was starting to get his mind wrapped around why they did it. If he didn't understand it, well, there were a great many things in the world that he didn't understand, and that didn't keep him from going on with his life.
Something had happened to him over the course of that week, and he didn't understand any of it. The things he had always thought were the only truths in the world weren't, not here anyway. He was going to have to watch these Heralds carefully. They might be hiding something behind all this acceptance and welcome.
But since a lot of what was going on with him had to do with feelings, he came to the unsatisfactory and vague conclusion that maybe it wasn't going to be possible to understand it. He was caught up like a leaf in the wind, and the leaf didn't have a lot of choice in where the wind took it. If it hadn't been that Cymry was a big part of that wind —
Well, she was, and despite everything he'd learned until this moment, he found himself thinking and feeling things that would have been completely unlike the boy he'd been a fortnight ago. Soft, was what he would have called what he was becoming now, but what he was now knew that there was nothing soft about where he was tending. If anything, it was hard… as in difficult.
And difficult were the things he was learning, and the things he was going to learn, though truth to tell, it was no more work than he was used to setting himself. Physical exertion? The weapons' work he was doing, the riding, none of it was as hard as roof walking. Book learning? Ha! It was mostly reading and remembering, not like having to figure out a new lock. Even the figuring — the mathematics, they called it — wasn't that bad. Since he could already do his sums, this new stuff was a matter of logic, a lot like figuring out a lock. The real difference was that he was obeying someone else's schedule and someone else's orders.
Yet he'd run to Bazie's schedule and Bazie's orders, and thought no worse of it, nor of himself.
For every objection his old self came up with, the new one — or Cymry — had a counter. And if there was one thing he was absolutely certain of, it was that he would not, could not do without Cymry. She didn't so much fill an empty place in him as fill up every crack and crevice that life had ever put in his heart, and make it all whole again. To have Cymry meant he would have to become a Herald. So be it. It was worth it a thousand times over.
And once again, just as when he'd been with Bazie, he was happy.
He hadn't known what happiness was until Bazie took him in. Moments of pleasure, yes, and times of less misery than others, but never happiness. He'd learned that with Bazie, and since the fire, he hadn't had so much as a moment of real, unshadowed happiness.
Now it was back. Not all the time, and there were still times when he thought about the fire and raged or wept or both. He wasn't going to turn his back on these people, not until he figured out what their angle was. But for the most part it was back, like a gift, something he'd never thought to have back again.
After that, he knew he couldn't leave. Out there, without Cymry, he'd go back to being alone against the world. In here, with her, there was one absolutely true thing he was certain of. Cymry loved and needed him, and he loved and needed her. The rest — well, he'd figure it all out as it came.
But he woke every day with two persistent and immediate problems to solve. When his fingers itched to lift a kerchief or a purse, he wondered what would happen if he gave in to the urge — and when Kris and Jeri accepted him without question as one of themselves, he worried what would happen when they (and the rest of the Trainees) learned he'd been a thief. Cymry might be the center of his world, but he'd had friends before in Bazie and the boys, and he liked having them. He didn't want to lose the ones he was getting now.
He woke one morning exactly six days after he had arrived, a day when he knew the rest of the Trainees would begin coming back in, signaling the beginning of his real classes tomorrow, although it would probably take two or three more days for all of them to make it back. It helped, of course, that they all had Companions, and however long their journeys were, they would travel in a fraction of the time it took an ordinary horse to cross the same distance. He had met most of his teachers, and even begun lessons designed to allow him to fit into the classes with some of them. He had no idea how many of them — besides Alberich and Teren — knew his background either.