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had an easy time of it. And as for those that have, well, suddenly finding themselves without personal servants and all the good things that come with rank is quite a shock to their systems!”
    They all chuckled at that, and with that as the opener to a new conversation, Amily encouraged the Dean to talk about some of the more amusing “quirks.”
    Mags quietly ate, and considered all that, and with a burst of nostalgia decided, on the whole, he
would
like to come back here all over again as a Trainee. Provided, of course, that as the Dean said, he still had his adult perspective, and had
not
had the parentage he’d had. The idea of spending four or five years with nothing more life-challenging than classes and games . . . sounded rather heavenly.
    Nothing more engrossing than classes, nothing more desperate than exams, and nothing more exciting than Kirball . . .
    Then again . . . not bloody likely. Even if he could have somehow sloughed off his own past, if some magic had given him a regular family, the Dean was right, and who was to say whether or not some
other
drama would have cropped up?
    And even if he’d had a normal family, there would still have been Lena’s wretched father, the unfortunate Bard Marchand, who had single-handedly made a wretched mess of her life and had betrayed the King with his carelessness and pride. And there would have been Bear’s horrible family, and all the messes and misery they had caused. The Karsites would still have been sending their spies and agents here. And who knows? There still might have been a missing Sleepgiver “Prince,” and the Sleepgivers
still
could have turned up, taking jobs for the Karsites with an eye to getting paid while looking for their missing heir.
    There was no telling how that might have ended, if he had not, after all, been the “missing Prince.” The only changelikely would have been considerably less grief for him, since he wouldn’t have been a foreigner, and there wouldn’t have been any ambiguous visions from the Foreseers involving
him.
Or, rather, there would have still been ambiguous visions from the Foreseers, but it wasn’t likely that anyone would have interpreted them as involving him . . .
    :This would be entertaining speculation for a writer imagining alternate versions of history,:
Dallen reminded him dryly.
:But it didn’t happen that way, and we are here, and your life is scarcely wretched now, is it?:
    The others were still being entertained by the Dean, and he smothered a smile.
:True, horse,:
he replied. Look how things had turned out, after all! He was
married,
for heaven’s sake, to the loveliest and most patient and dearest girl he had ever known. A girl he could count on in any situation, and who would always be honest with him. Someone who would not pout and feel offended when the job took his attention and time from her. And rather than being faced with the perils of Field duty, he and Amily had positions here, in Haven. True, you could not call what they did
safe,
since nothing a Herald did was
safe,
but they were in the safest possible place to be a Herald. And they weren’t moving all the time, the way Heralds on Circuit were. They had a real home, together with all of the creature comforts that meant. Any possible separations would be temporary at worst. There were scarcely any Heralds in the entire Heraldic Circle who could say that.
    Life, in short, was rather good.
    :Yes it is. It will be even better if you bring me a pocket pie,:
Dallen prompted.
    :Sorry, not on the menu tonight,:
Mags replied.
:You’ll have to make do with pears.:
    There was a long pause from Dallen.
:I take it back about life being good.:
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    Mags and Nikolas had turned over the day-to-day running of the pawn shop to their hand-picked half-dozen ex-actors and retired Guards. They still went down to it several times