Mercedes Lackey - Foundation

And involuntarily cringed, waiting for a blow that was, in his mind, inevitable. He had been insolent. He would pay for that.

He couldn’t help himself. When you answered smart, you got smacked, if you were lucky, and beaten if you weren’t. But Herald Jakyr only chuckled. “Aye, I’ll take your word for it, Mags.” He placed a hand on Mags’ shoulder and his eyes went sad as Mags winced without thinking. “I can see you’ve had a hard time of it. Well, from now on, things will be better. You have my word on it.”

Jakyr’s words startled Mags, despite all that knowledge that was in him now. So many things he hadn’t expected, well, this was one of many. That someone he didn’t even know would be kind to him. He felt the stirring inside of nameless emotions, things he had not felt, and had not dared to feel, in ... in as long as he could remember, really. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry. His mouth went dry and his eyes wet. It had been so long since someone was kind ...

A long-ago dim memory half came to the surface and then subsided. Rough hands, but a soft voice, comfort and protection. Not complete protection, though, for that voice in memory sometimes sobbed, and sometimes wheedled, and after that had sometimes come pain. Being hidden in a corner by a fire ... he knew that fire, he knew that place. It was the kitchen of the Big House at the mine. Someone there had been kind to him, had cared for him. He remembered a wordless crooning, and warmth.

But the memory slipped away, overwhelmed by the immediacy of the present. He dared to glance sideways at the Herald. The man’s eyes looked weary, but not impatient, and his hand was still firm and warm on Mags’ shoulder. “All right, Mags, let’s get some food into you, since I took you away from that pig slop they were calling a noon meal. Judging by the look of you—” Jakyr sighed. “My heart tells me to stuff you with things you’ve likely never tasted before, but my head knows very well what will happen if I do. You’ll be sick and miserable, and there will be all my good intentions gone wrong. So. You eat bread, yes?” Mags nodded. “And something like porridge?”

“Not often, sir,” Mags replied truthfully. “Most times what you saw. Soup. Barley bread. What we could find.”

The men surrounding them murmured to one another, grimacing, and Jakyr winced. “All right, then. Let’s start you out with bread and some soup and see how that goes.”

Still leaving his hand on Mags’ shoulder, Jakyr steered him through the crowd of curious Guardsmen, most of whom were no older than the Pieters boys, and back into the building. Seeing these Guardsmen so young did not give him any measure of comfort; there was no telling what they might or might not do. Dallen seemed to think they were all wonderful people, but ...

Then that calm came over him again. But as the Herald tried to urge him along, Mags turned—again, involuntarily, not wanting to leave Dallen. It was more than a “want,” it was a need, the farther he got from Dallen. He felt as if he had to be with Dallen, every moment, every instant. He felt anxiety rising in him, almost to the point of panic, about leaving Dallen alone. What if something happened? What if they tried to persuade Dallen to go? What if they treated the Companion like a mere horse?

:I’m fine, Chosen, they cosset me here like a bride on her wedding day,: the Companion reassured Mags with amusement. :And I am never more than a thought away from you. You go on, eat, then sleep.:

Again, that cushion of calm came down over him. So Mags let himself be steered down that long corridor for the second time, until they came to an enormous white-walled, black-beamed room, the biggest he had ever seen, with nothing in it but Guardsmen eating and talking, with row after row of tables and benches. The smell of food was so intense it came near to making him faint. He couldn’t identify any of the smells, only that they all made his stomach knot with hunger, and his mouth ache to taste what made all those smells. Rich smells, savory and sweet, and spicy, all blending somehow. Jakyr guided him to the nearest empty seat, and one of the young men that had been with them went away and came back without prompting with an enormous bowl and four thick slices of bread, and a spoon. He put it all down in front of Mags. And when Mags looked into the bowl, he could hardly believe his eyes. It was full of the kind of soup he only saw once a year, when the strangers came to look them all over. Vegetables floated so thickly in the broth that they were pushing each other up to the surface, carrots and peas, three kinds of beans, lentils, bits of chopped root, and soft cooked barley, all in a broth so rich it looked like gravy, not like the watery stuff in the cabbage soup.

But even if new memories hadn’t told him that Jakyr was right about getting sick if he ate too much, too fast, his own experience did. Don’t gobble, or you’ll be sorry. So he took the spoon in one hand, a slice of the bread—wheaten bread—in the other. The only time he had seen wheaten bread was when it was burned and thrown in the pig slop. He and the other kiddies got barley or rye bread, coarse stuff that somehow failed to satisfy. He dipped a corner of the bread and sopped up broth. Ate the bite. Took a spoonful of soup that made his mouth sing with flavor and filled his whole head with the intoxicating aroma. Ate that. Dipped the bread again. He repeated this pattern, slowly, carefully. Even though his empty stomach screamed at him to fill it, faster, now, he went slowly. He hadn’t gotten as far as he had without being able to master his gut. Besides, you didn’t gobble food that tasted like this ... you gobbled food that tasted horrible so you could get it into your stomach before your mouth could protest.

Jakyr watched him, eyes narrowed at first, then relaxing. An approving smile touched his lips. Somewhere under the calm, Mags wondered—why did he care if Mags got sick or not? But the calm said, Of course he cares. He’s a Herald. He just does. “There’s a good lad,” he murmured. “Don’t worry, there’s more where that came from, as much as you want, and when you’re used to being better fed, butter for your bread and meat, and—” He grinned then. Mags paused between bites and found himself stretching his mouth in a return smile. It was a peculiar feeling. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled. It made him feel strange, but good, to do so. But he didn’t have a lot of attention to spare for feelings, not when there was good food to be eaten.

When Mags reached the bottom of the bowl, sopping up the last little bits of broth with the last bite of bread, he sighed, and pushed the bowl and spoon away.

“Had enough for now?” Jakyr asked. Mags nodded. One of the young Guardsmen came over with something, hesitantly. He set down the plate in front of Mags. On it was a sliced apple, whole and sound, not a wormhole or rotten spot to be seen, and a piece of creamy cheese, without a touch of mold to it. “Me gran would say he should have this, too, Herald Jakyr,” the young man said, and Mags got it, unbidden from the young man’s mind, that he had a little brother about Mags’ age, and that Mags himself was wearing this fellow’s outgrown shirt, as he was wearing discarded trews, boots, stockings, smallclothes, from four other young Guardsmen. Oddly enough ... that felt ... warming. Like they had given him a bit of themselves with the clothing.

“I expect your gran is right,” Jakyr agreed, and nodded to Mags to start in on the good things. “Have that, lad, if you can find a corner to tuck it in.”

Again, he ate slowly, the cheese first, savoring the richness of it, soft, creamy, a bit of a bite, and the unexpected crunch of tiny salt crystals, marveling that this was how cheese was supposed to taste. The only cheese he had ever gotten was cheese so covered with mold it was green, and as dried out and hard as a board to boot. Then the apple, so sweet it tasted like the nectar the kiddies used to suck out of the bases of flowers when they got a chance. But by that point, a full belly and being warm and the drone of voices as Jakyr talked to the Guardsmen was making him drowsy ... then sleepy ... and he felt himself nodding off with a slice of apple still in his hand. He woke up a bit when Jakyr shook him, and obediently let himself be led off by one of the Guardsmen, the same one that had brought him the cheese, to a room, where there was a bed, the first bed he had ever slept in. The Guardsman helped him off with his boots, and that was the last thing he remembered before falling into a dream of riding Dallen through apple-flavored clouds to the biggest Big House he had ever seen.