Bastion

settled and yet still like themselves. Somewhere in the back of his mind had been the fear that being married would change them. Instead, they were still themselves. Closer to each other than anyone else, but still themselves.
    He didn’t want to lose himself; he’d come far too close to that already. If Lena and Bear hadn’t, then why should he and Amily?
    “Plan,” he reminded Bear. “I’m the only one with a Companion.”
    “There’re wagons going down to the Fair and coming back, regular,” Bear told him. “So, the plan is to get Amily, get a ride on the wagon, and do the shopping first. Then we reckon a bite of lunch, then we go see the entertainers that aren’t like what we got up here. Like jugglers, rope dancers—”
    Mags nodded. :Sounds like you’re bein’ left behind today, horse,: he teased Dallen.
    :Fine. Leave me behind. See if I care,: Dallen teased back. :Actually I’d be dreadfully awkward down there in all that crush. A couple of the others said it got pretty hot and uncomfortable at times. I have a plan to eat to the bottom of a bucket of windfall apples, then have a long nap, then another bucket of apples, then, well, give me some privacy.:
    Mags chuckled. :I can do that,: he promised. “There might be contests,” he said out loud. “We might want to watch some of those.” If there was a Master Archery contest, for instance, that would be very exciting. Hewould like to see wrestling, but he didn’t think the girls would. Horse races—everyone would like those . . . foot races too. Spear throwing. He could think of a lot of things that would be fun to watch.
    “I forgot about the contests, but Amily is all sorts of organized. She says she’ll have a list of everything and where it is,” Lena said, tucking her hand into the crook of Bear’s arm.
    “Well, then, let’s collect her and see what’s what.” Knowing that his friends were perfectly capable of sitting there and discussing what they might want to do for another candlemark, rather than actually doing it, Mags got himself out from the table and bench, picked up all their dishes, and took them to the hatch into the kitchen. By the time he turned around, Lena and Bear were waiting for him at the door.
    Herald’s Collegium was actually stuck at the end of the Herald’s Wing of the Palace, so they didn’t even have to go outside. Amily was ready and waiting at the door to the Heralds’ Wing, where every Herald that hadn’t made some other arrangement had quarters. Amily shared a suite there with her father—which made him wonder, would she be willing to live in his stable room with him? There was just about the same amount of space as she had to herself in the suite, but the level of creature comforts probably wasn’t as high . . .
    He hadn’t quite made up his mind whether or not to kiss her, but she took care of the situation by throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him. He was not in the least unwilling to kiss her back and was just a little bit disappointed when she broke it off.
    “Here’s the list of what’s going on and a map of the Fair,” she said, handing two pieces of reused paper to Lena. “I made two copies.” Mags got just a glimpse of what was on the other side; it looked like some sort of very dull document. That was the norm up here at the Palace; there were a lot of things that stopped having relevance after a while, and the backs of them got used for writing-practice, after-lessons work, and anything else that didn’t need pristine paper. He’d once written an entire series of assignments on the backs of harvest reports from decades gone by.
    The wagon left from one of the small gates in the wall around the Palace-Collegium complex, the one that usually admitted the supply wagons. In fact, this actually was a supply wagon, with high, slat sides; low on comfort but very capacious. The four of them squeezed themselves into spots along one side on the plain wooden wagon bed. No one had thought about how they’d rattle and jounce all the way down to the Fair, but, then, most of them were too excited to care. There was just enough room that Bear and Lena, and Mags and Amily, could put their heads together over their lists and the map and make some rough plans.
    “Lydia is even more organized than me,” Amily said, pointing out the merchants in the list that she had underlined and the rough area of the Fair each would be in. “Then again, she’s the Princess—she