Bastion

fact that the Court ate later than the Collegia allowed her to slip briefly away. But she got a chance to give him a welcoming hug, whisper that she was glad he was safe, and add a demand that he allow Lena to make at least one song about his misadventure.
    “But not immediately,” she added hastily, perhaps stricken with conscience at the hint of panic in his eyes.
    Once she was gone, he was hit with a moment of something that was a little like despair at the idea that he was going to be answering questions from people over and over—for how long? Weeks? Moons? Probably not years; sooner or later something more sensational would happen, and people would lose interest.
    He hoped.
    But even as he thought that, he realized that something odd was happening. All over the dining hall, the Herald Trainees were getting that look on their faces he associated with your Companion is having a word with you. And as they came out of their little trances, they were grabbing friends from Healers’ and Bardic, or the odd Blues, and whispering urgently in their ears. The expressions on most of the faces were a mixed bag of disappointment, understanding, and a bit of stricken conscience.
    As this phenomenon spread through the dining hall, people began gathering up plates, making farewells, and leaving, until there was no one left but Mags’ closest circle of friends.
    “Don’t tell me,” he guessed aloud. “Dallen had a bit of a say, and the other Companions told people to give me some peace?”
    The dark blonde girl across from him, who wore her hair tied up in a tail on the top of her head, laughed. “I told you he’d figure it out,” Gennie said, and shoved over a plate of honey cakes. “Just one more thing—Dallen promised he’d give all the Companions the best bits, and they could tell us, and he’d leave nothing out, so you won’t have to go over it until you’re sick of it.”
    That was a relief, because he was already sick of it. He’d been questioned and cross-questioned to death on an official basis once everyone was sure that the Karsites weren’t coming over the Border. Everything he could remember, things that Dallen had pulled out of his mind . . . “I just wish I could fergit it all m’self, at least for a little,” he said plaintively, lapsing somewhat into the crude accents of the mine.
    “Plagued by nightmares?” Bear asked, pushing his lenses back up on his nose from where they had slid down, as they always did.
    “No, and I dunno why not. Ye’d think I would be.” He shook his head. “Mebbe it’s still all too fresh.”
    “Well, I’ve got some good potions if you need them,” his friend assured him, patting his hand a little, his brown eyes peering at him anxiously from beneath an unruly shock of dark curls.
    “That’ll do, granny,” teased Jeffers, one of the few at the table who was not in a uniform. He combed his nearly black hair back out of his eyes and grinned. There was a healing bruise on one cheek, which was hardly surprising. He was a member of Mags’ Kirball team, of which Gennie was the captain. And Mags was stricken with a sudden sense of loss—because certainly the season was well underway, and certainly they had chosen someone to replace him. He would never want to spoil someone else’s pleasure by taking back the position—but Kirball might have been one of the few things he could do that would take his mind off everything that had happened to him.
    So amid everything else, his kidnappers had stolen his chiefest pleasure from him.
    He didn’t say anything, though he felt Dallen trying to comfort him. It would be better not to mention it at all, or wait for someone else to say something and then be gracious about it.
    But it hurt, and hurt with an unexpectedly deep pain, to know that for the first time since the game had been introduced—he wouldn’t be playing it. At least, not officially, and not on one of the four Collegium teams.
    While he wrestled with his emotions, the conversation had gone on. No one said anything about the game, although people were doing their best to catch him up on other things that had happened since his kidnapping. This, at least, was soothing. It was all commonplace, comforting stuff. Who was seeing whom, who had gotten Whites and gone out on their first Circuits in the Field with their new mentors. Which Companions had foaled. How Sedric was faring as Prince (“No one worries about Lydia. Lydia is perfect, of course,