Bastion

stay alive, and maybe help you a little if I can. I have to be sneaky, mostly. I have to learn how to spot trouble ahead of time. I have to learn how to find ways to escape or get to spots where I can’t be reached. I have to think a lot about that. But I can do that, I know I can. More important, Weaponsmaster says I can. And that means if you go somewhere, I can go with you. You won’t have to worry about me, because I’m learning to take care of myself. If someone is after you, the way they are now, I won’t be a hostage or a victim again.” Then her voice faltered a little. “I thought—”
    “You thought right,” he said warmly, so proud of her he could scarcely stand it. “You thought absolutely right. And aye. I want you with me, too.” He’d worry a lot less, a whole lot less, if they were together. And if she got good enough to actually help guard his back, that would be best of all. Even if she didn’t, two sets of eyes watching for trouble were four times as good as one.
    “Let’s count on that,” he said, as those thoughts ran through his head. “Your Pa probably won’t like it much, but he’d like it even less if we was separated and both of us were frettin’ about t’other, and maybe not bein’ quite as careful as we could be, ’cause of it.”
    “I knew you’d have a good argument,” she said happily, and snuggled down into the arm he put around her, then craned her face up for a kiss, which he was more than willing to give her. After all, Bear and Lena were not paying the least little bit of attention to them.
    And despite all his worries, a little warm glow bloomed inside him. The rest of the trip back up went by far too quickly.
    •   •   •
    No matter how disoriented he had gotten during his abduction, so long as he wasn’t drugged completely insensible, he had always awakened at the crack of dawn, and that hadn’t changed. He’d parted reluctantly from Amily, thinking again with envy of Lena and Bear. One thing that they hadn’t been forced to deal with during their courtship was other people . . . “keeping an eye on them.” He and Amily must have a hundred “eyes” on them at all times. Amily, after all, was the daughter of the King’s Own. Practically every Companion on the Hill was “keeping an eye on her.” Literally nothing they did was really private, and if he and Amily got beyond a little kissing and cuddling, it was absolutely guaranteed that within a candlemark her father would know about it.
    Mags wasn’t entirely sure what Nikolas’s reaction to that would be. He had shown himself to be a reasonable man. His objections to Bear and Lena getting married on the sly had all been rational ones that had everything to do with political situations. Everyone knew that Mags and Amily were a couple. No one objected to that. There would be no political repercussions. . . .
    But the difference was that Nikolas was not dealing with a couple of younglings in the abstract, he was dealing with his “apprentice” and his daughter.
    From what Mags could tell, based on what his friends here said, things he’d read, and things Dallen had dropped, a man could be perfectly rational about a pair of younglings coupling, even give tacit approval (at least to the young man) right up until that couplinginvolved his daughter. Then rational thought went flying right out the window.
    So . . . for now, kissing and cuddling was all he was going to get.
    And, oh, how he envied Bear.
    It was, truly, a distinct advantage to get the entire bathing room to yourself of a morning—especially when certain parts of you were not at all pleased about the situation with your girl.
    Mind, of all of the many, many things that he loved about being a Trainee, the ability to have a hot bath whenever he chose was very high on the list. For a simple, uncomplicated pleasure, a hot bath was very difficult to beat.
    He was far too early for Bear and Lena to join him for breakfast. Unlike him, they were anything but early risers, and they had preferred staying up as late as possible even before they had gone from friendship to love. They both had bought treasures at the Fair they would have to show each other, and then . . . well, he knew the sorts of things that he and Amily would have been doing if there hadn’t been a hundred busybodies watching them while trying not to look as if they were dong so, and not all of those things involved being undressed and in bed together.