Bastion

how to run a survey, you don’t really need a class in adjudication, you’ll never be asked to do a score of things that Heralds riding Circuits need to know how to do. What you will need to know are things Nikolas is already teaching you—things you’ve proven yourself proficient in. You’re a natural with weapons. And you’ll need to know how to properly survive in the wilderness, without any sort of help at all, because it is entirely possible in your line of work that you will find yourself forced to do just that. You need to learn how to read people, how to know what they mean, rather than what they say. How to know when they are hiding something. How to get it out of them. To get to the point, Mags, you don’t need classes to get the rest of what you’ll need to know, you can get it all from being tutored, directly, with a senior Herald. So for the remainder of your time as a Trainee, we are going to revert to the old ways. You’re going out in the Field with a senior Herald.”
    “Yes but—” He could already see a huge hole in this. The assassins knew all about his closest friends, about Amily, and they wouldn’t hesitate to take them and use them against him.
    “Mags, we’ve been discussing this for days, Nikolas and I,” Caelen told him, interrupting the frantic flow of his thoughts. “I am fairly certain you are worried about your friends. That’s why they’ll be going with you.”
    Mags felt his jaw dropping. “What?”
    Caelen shook his head wryly. “It’s so mad an idea it practically has to work. Lena is ready for Scarlets and needs to go on her Journeyman’s ride to gather the material for a Master piece. Healers don’t have an equivalent, but Bear is more than ready for his full Greens. He is going to be granted them so that he can go with her to continue teaching the use of his healing kit to an even wider audience. The Healers will approve when Dean Lita suggests it; they’ve already been discussing sending him out anyway, and only the fact that his wife was still a Trainee was stopping them.”
    It occurred to Mags that for Lena, having a husband like Bear was the ideal situation. He wasn’t a Gifted Healer, so no one would object that he was being “taken away” and leaving a hole in the Healers’ ranks. Sending him out with Lena, however, was going to allow him to disperse his vital information even faster than he had before—and away from Temples and Houses of Healing, some of which had senior Healers who, like his own father, objected to anyone who wasn’t Gifted practicing any form of medicine.
    Best of all, with the Collegium supporting Bear monetarily, they didn’t have to rely on the whims of Lena’s audiences for their income.
    Eventually—Mags suspected it would be sooner rather than later—she would find a permanent patron and settle. And Bear would settle with her, probably as the family Healer, or in addition to the family Healer.
    That gave Mags a sudden pang of sadness. Because that was going to happen. They were all going to part ways, eventually. They’d write . . . he might be able to visit them . . . but they would never again be as close a group as they were now.
    But Dean Caelen was continuing. “Amily will supposedly be sent off to visit relatives. You won’t leave together; it will look as though each of you is heading off in a different direction, and then you’ll catch up with each other at some point outside of Haven.”
    Mags felt a little dazed at this plan. Caelen was right, it was an absolutely mad notion. Except it was incredibly sane. Amily was a brilliant fighter, obviously whichever Herald was to serve as Mags’ mentor would also be a good armsman. Mags reckoned himself the equal of most now—
    :Two Companions are not to be sneezed at, either,: Dallen pointed out.
    They could easily defend themselves and Lena and Bear if it came to it. But with luck, it wouldn’t. With luck, all would go according to plan, Mags would be reported dead, and the trail would stop. They’d all return in a year, or maybe two, and . . .
    Well, that was when they would all part ways. But they would have had a final, wonderful year together.
    “The initial plan is this. We’ll send Bear and Lena out first, with a caravan big enough to sleep all of you,” the Dean continued. “That way no one will be able to track your passage by looking for you at inns. You’ll actually be rather comfortable, I would think, since I expect you’ll be