Bastion

of formal acknowledgement, but I don’t know for certain. All I do know is that things cooled off rapidly enough that it was the cause of gossip for some time, and things have been uncomfortable between them ever since.:
    Mags felt a certain amount of sympathy for them both. Who knew? There might not have been any great tragedy, but certainly every Herald and Trainee knew that the nickname for those in Whites among the Guard was “moving target.” Maybe Jakyr had been having second thoughts about having a romance with anyone when he might be killed without warning.
    And maybe, after the blowup with Lita, it just became a lot easier for him to prevent any further ties from developing.
    :It did happen about the same time that Nikolas recruited him. That might have had something to do with it,: Dallen observed.
    Hmm. Perhaps Lita had known and objected. Perhaps Jakyr had just been made aware that his potential to be a target had just increased a lot when Nikolas recruited him as an intelligence agent.
    Perhaps Lita had known and wanted to be included.
    I think I am just going to stop speculating and enjoy this ride. It ain’t my business, it’s his. I don’t like it when other people get all up in my business, and I don’t reckon he likes it either.
    “We don’t get too many chances to enjoy ourselves, youngling,” Jakyr said aloud, in an uncanny echo of Mags’ own thoughts. “I don’t know how much of this expedition of ours is going to be pleasurable, but right now, it’s a treat. Take my advice and drink it in.”
    They were practically the only people on the road, in fact. The fields to either side were full of farmworkers getting the last of the harvests in. A little while ago, they’d passed workers drying hop cones, stirring the cones on their drying sheets. The air had been scented heavily with the pleasant bitterness. At the moment, they were passing through apple orchards with some folks gathering up the windfalls to feed to pigs and cattle, some up on ladders getting down the last of the ripe and green apples. The green were just as good as the ripe ones, if you knew what you were doing, as Mags had found out when he’d helped in the Collegium kitchen. The farmer had a press going in there, just out of sight of the road. The winey scent of freshly pressed cider was enough to intoxicate.
    Jakyr inhaled deeply. “There’s the thing I think about come autumn! Now, I like cider better when it’s had a chance to age,” he said, philosophically. “Just hard enough to make a man feel pleasant.”
    “I like it hot, with spices,” Mags said. “Maybe a drop of mead in it. Like Master Soren sets out at his Midwinter parties.” He sighed. “I am going to miss that. Midwinter, we’ll probably be living in caves. Master Soren sets a mighty table at Midwinter.”
    “Caves with villages near enough that we can buy ourselves the makings of a nice little Midwinter feast,” Jakyr reminded him. “And caves we can make all cozy before then. I’ve spent many a Midwinter in a Waystation that hadn’t been kept up as well as it should have been, and I’d prefer a nice dry, draftless cave any day over a Waystation with holes in the wall you can stick a finger through.” He paused a moment in thought. “Now that I consider it, if we offload everything from the caravan into the caves, we can drive that caravan to one of the biggest villages and load it up well—and do it over again at another village. If vermin turn out to be a problem in the caves, we can keep it all safe in the caravan. I think getting a cat would not come amiss. She can live in the caravan and keep out the mice.”
    “I know you can’t cook,” Mags said. “I can, but not a lot of things.” He made a rueful face. “Wish I could say different, but if we depend on me, we’ll be eating a lot of porridge, beans, and eggs.”
    “I can cook very well, actually, although I would really rather people think I can’t. My mother and father are both cooks, they run a good inn, known for its food.” Jakyr flashed a grin at him. “Don’t fear you’re going to starve around me. What you will do, is learn to cook as well as me.”
    “I’d like that,” Mags said honestly. It seemed not only a generally useful skill, but a skill he could use. He could walk into just about any inn and have a job, if he could cook, and inns were fine sources for information. If he were to be sent someplace where he wasn’t supposed to be known as a