Closer to the Chest by Mercedes Lackey Page A

integrate them into his runner network, unless they proved to be uncommonly bright. In
that
case, he’d assign them to schooling exclusively, for a literate youngster could get any number of superior jobs, and a literate informant in a runner’s job was priceless. Already he had half a dozen youngsters in apprentice positions around the city, another half dozen had places as servants among the highborn, and he looked forward to the day when he’d have as many informants as Nikolas did. One of his prize pupils was Coot, from the first gang he’d liberated. Coot was the lad in charge of the day-to-day operation of the runner-service now, with all the runners reporting to him at his very own office in what had once been a hot-sausage-stall squeezed in between two prosperous inns. As a sausage stall it had not been able to compete once one of the two innkeepers had taken a notion to open up a window on the street selling leftover meat on loaf-ends, and jugs of beer—bring your own jug. As the counter of a messenger-dispatching service it did a brisk business.
    The runner-service was turning a profit, too, now, and Mags was very proud of how Coot was handling it.
    So now, this new lot of skinny, bruised, ill-treated littles was getting to see “how things was done fer th’ Cap’n”—the“Cap’n” being what the very first group had decided to dub him, probably because the ultimate authority they had known (and feared) on the street was the local Captain of the Watch.
    They never called him by his real name, and never referred to him as a Herald. Most of them had never seen a Herald except at a distance before Mags had revealed himself to them, and
all
of them knew that the fact that “Harkon” was also a Herald was a secret none of them was to divulge.
    Not that anyone would likely have believed it if they had. Harkon had too definite a reputation down in this part of Haven for anyone to do more than guffaw at such a ridiculous notion, and probably send the child off with a box to his ear for being an outrageous liar.
    One by one, the rest came up to him, made their reports while he took notes, and collected their pay. The newcomers watched the others interact with him wearing varied expressions ranging from skepticism to awe—the awe when extra copper bits and even a small silver piece got doled out. Finally the last of them had made his report, and the lot swarmed Aunty Minda, who decreed that “Ye kin et, now,” and began ladling out porridge and cutting thick slices of bread and giving them a smear of butter and jam. The new littles had been here long enough to know that the food wasn’t going to vanish, no one was going to take their shares away from them, and there would be plenty to go around, so while there was the expected jostling that would go on in any group of children, be they low or highborn, there was no frantic scrambling to get a share of the food. In fact, some of the new ones had begun to make friends among the established group. Both groups mingled together to eat; it was easy enough to spot the new ones by how thin they were, and how their “new” clothing was much too big for them.
    He liked to stay—pretending he was going over his notes—to watch them eat. Of all the things he had done, rescuing these children from near-slavery and terrible hardship madehim the happiest. He couldn’t claim to have been personally responsible for rescuing his fellow mine-slaves—that had been due to Jakyr and the other Heralds—so he did his best to rescue and support as many other wretched little mites as he could.
    The last of them were just mopping up the last bits of porridge with their last bites of bread when one of the seasoned runners came bursting in, frantically looking around, his face suffused with mingled alarm and relief to see that Mags was still there. “Harkon!” he exclaimed, “Hatchet,