Bastion

creates. There’s nothing there that I can look at and say, “Aha! That’s where they come from!” I don’t recognize the language, even. Rolan doesn’t.:
    It wasn’t the first time that Dallen had shared things at a great distance with Rolan; Mags’ Companion seemed to have an extraordinarily long “reach” when it came to Mindspeaking. And that gave Mags some comfort. Rolan knew . . . a lot. He’d been the Companion to the last three King’s Own Heralds, and as a Grove-Born, Mags had every reason to suppose that he had access to a wealth of information no other creature—except maybe a few gray old scholars—had ever seen.
    :While I’ve heard of drugs that repress Mindspeaking, I’ve never heard of drugs that open you up to memories like that. The talisman they used . . . that seemed to be where those memories came from. Something of that sort is completely new to me and to Rolan as well.:
    Dallen settled himself back down, as Mags brooded on what he’d said.
    :Was there anythin’ at all that was useful?: he finally asked.
    :Hints. I wish there had been more of their life outside of their training. Or more of their more—esoteric training. Spy work. There were hints of things that could have been enormously useful to you in the path that Nikolas is mapping out for you. The techniques and tricks of an assassin are useful for a lot more than just killing people.:
    It was too bad that Dallen had not managed to glean anything more useful, and yet Mags was just as glad he wasn’t going to have to re-experience those memories for the sake of learning . . . spycraft. Surely Nikolas could teach him everything he would ever possibly need to know. Mags would just as soon not think too hard about what had been stuffed into his head. The best of it was unpleasant, and the worst made his skin crawl. He was just glad that it was all—secondhand, as it were. Something that didn’t feel as if he had done it.
    And he was just as glad that his parents had escaped that poisonous environment. He didn’t like to think what he would be like if he’d been raised that way, with every waking moment in earnest competition with other killers. Being a mine-slave had been bad enough; he still was not sure why it hadn’t turned him hard and cruel. But the training that his blood kin went through . . . that was worse. It was meant to turn someone hard and cruel. It was meant to turn someone into a ruthless killer who would not hesitate to murder a babe in its mother’s arms.
    They rode up the slope, and now, again, above the farm fields and meadows that surrounded it, was Haven, close enough to make out people on the road leading in, the low Hill on which the Palace and the Collegia stood rising slightly above the rest of the city, secure behind their stone walls. And farther out, the city walls built of the same mellow stone. Not that the city needed walls anymore; evidence of that lay in the sprawl of city streets that spread out untidily outside them. The walls themselves were not even manned these days, except as a place for the City Guard to use as an easy path for patrolling, and a vantage point for looking down over the streets below. No enemy had come far enough into Valdemar to put the capital under siege in twenty generations or more. Only on the Borders did cities need to huddle inside their walls—and really, not even on all the Borders. Mostly the one with Karse, although there were places in the north and west where small, organized troops of bandits were enough of a threat that no one wanted to build outside a defensive wall.
    Spreading out over what was ordinarily a quiet stretch of common land between the city and the river was a second city of tents and canvas booths, and ever since the city had come into view, traffic on the road had been growing thicker. This was a reminder, not that Mags needed one, of how long he’d been gone from Haven. He had been stolen away in early autumn. It was now almost winter. This was the Haven Harvest Fair, the last Harvest Fair in Valdemar for the year. Those merchants and peddlers disinclined to travel in the winter descended on the capital for one last spate of commerce before settling back into their shops and workshops for the winter months. Farmers brought their stock and their produce for merchants to store and sell all winter long. There was a Hiring Fair in one corner, a Horse Market in another. And, of course, where there was a Fair there were