The Farseer Series Books 2 and 3: Royal Assassin, Assassin’s Quest

The Farseer Series Books 2 and 3: Royal Assassin, Assassin’s Quest Robin Hobb Books two and three in The Farseer Trilogy by international bestselling author Robin Hobb.‘In today’s crowded fantasy market Robin Hobb’s books are like diamonds in a sea of zircons’ George R. R. MartinHonesty is the bedrock for any relationship. But how can Fitz – royal bastard, trainee assassin, holder of secrets crucial to the security of the kingdom – bare his soul to his beloved Molly?Danger lies all around him – from the raiders savaging the coastal towns, and from within the court. The king has been struck down by a mystery illness and his eldest son, Verity, is bound up in the defence of the realm.When Verity leaves the court in search of the mythical Elderlings, Fitz finds himself friendless apart from his wolf, Nighteyes, and the king’s strange, motley-clad fool, exposed to Prince Regal’s malign ambitions. He will be asked to sacrifice everything – his heart, his hope, even his life – for the sake of the realm.Continue the adventure with books two and three of Robin Hobb’s magnificent Farseer Trilogy.This bundle includes Royal Assassin (book two) and Assassin’s Quest (book three). The Farseer Trilogy Books One and Two Royal Assassin Book Two Assassin’s Quest Book Three Robin Hobb Copyright (#ulink_ffc3caf3-c7ea-5fb5-913d-a6b6d43f3268) HarperVoyager An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB www.harpervoyagerbooks.com (http://www.harpervoyagerbooks.com) Royal Assassin Copyright © Robin Hobb 1996 Assassin’s Quest Copyright © Robin Hobb 1997 Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd Robin Hobb asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. 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Contents Cover (#u6d75419e-c5ee-57e9-980d-d9108c5f9ebc) Title Page (#udca7153c-f934-5431-a741-12a3df366fbd) Copyright (#u38b7b803-b6b9-5287-b858-d5c34f82012e) Map (#uf36a9fe3-0393-5a1f-a726-a7fd860da4ef) Royal Assassin Assassin’s Quest About the Author (#litres_trial_promo) Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) Map (#ulink_e2ab0869-3600-5c0d-9b9f-b3146417a863) (#uc0d16ddb-2a1d-5c94-9cda-520abab912fe) Royal Assassin Book Two of the Farseer Trilogy ROBIN HOBB Dedication (#ulink_9cf60f8f-5a0a-5952-b235-820e6632f080) For Giles and for Raphael and Freddy, the Princes of Assassins Contents Cover (#ue9d7d600-3b1d-55fe-9e8f-fc220d34e419) Title Page (#u8c04b535-0fd4-5dac-a712-c2a71e99a3cc) Dedication (#u941c21d4-05eb-5920-b28b-59180b09f884) Prologue (#u9fee425c-c134-5a7f-8f78-a5ca761d6c2d) One: Siltbay (#udf52c1fd-2daa-5b89-b685-f4413af31387) Two: The Homecoming (#uafe7b510-1021-5ed0-a4b3-69268f9444d1) Three: Renewing Ties (#ud41bb448-3c75-528a-ae37-1faf6108f604) Four: Dilemmas (#u34c9b974-bfd0-5e3a-84c9-a80e7accd1e4) Five: Gambit (#u4fed5bdb-b00f-5284-8a2a-4a12623cfcaf) Six: Forged Ones (#ud1b90de5-05e8-580e-a00e-6e2658a87ab4) Seven: Encounters (#u0c68927f-45eb-5e41-a7e2-a7316fce5e58) Eight: The Queen Awakes (#u8b759c3e-de19-54c0-ae13-06058d61309c) Nine: Guards and Bonds (#uba5e7826-de2e-546e-a7ae-859ad2fe7cbb) Ten: Fool’s Errand (#u729e2cf3-8179-5edf-af23-e20e64354260) Eleven: Lone Wolves (#u849c1b2e-5197-5b68-be8f-9904c6feecb3) Twelve: Tasks (#ua03f3eb5-8610-59c5-86db-80531bdfad59) Thirteen: Hunting (#u1ebb7aef-96a0-52fa-ae65-b30a4bfeea61) Fourteen: Winterfest (#u1961b819-6ec9-5b24-b22b-8a3ba7a31700) Fifteen: Secrets (#u1e7a6855-7202-54cf-b2f9-018a971bc106) Sixteen: Verity’s Ships (#u21482bd4-4619-562a-81e5-bc7bc44575a5) Seventeen: Interludes (#uc01bf855-e322-58b9-85ae-9a88a940acf4) Eighteen: Elderlings (#u09ded93a-a9a7-5320-b35d-cd76e9a02da9) Nineteen: Messages (#litres_trial_promo) Twenty: Mishaps (#litres_trial_promo) Twenty-One: Dark Days (#litres_trial_promo) Twenty-Two: Burrich (#litres_trial_promo) Twenty-Three: Threats (#litres_trial_promo) Twenty-Four: Neatbay (#litres_trial_promo) Twenty-Five: Buckkeep (#litres_trial_promo) Twenty-Six: Skilling (#litres_trial_promo) Twenty-Seven: Conspiracy (#litres_trial_promo) Twenty-Eight: Treasons and Traitors (#litres_trial_promo) Twenty-Nine: Escapes and Captures (#litres_trial_promo) Thirty: Dungeons (#litres_trial_promo) Thirty-One: Torture (#litres_trial_promo) Thirty-Two: Execution (#litres_trial_promo) Thirty-Three: Wolf Days (#litres_trial_promo) Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo) Copyright (#litres_trial_promo) PROLOGUE (#ulink_7dc39dd4-b00f-5b43-badc-a66def5aeccf) Dreams and Awakenings (#ulink_7dc39dd4-b00f-5b43-badc-a66def5aeccf) Why is it forbidden to write down specific knowledge of the magics? Perhaps because we all fear that such knowledge would fall into the hands of one not worthy to use it. Certainly there has always been a system of apprenticeship to ensure that the understanding of magic is passed only to those trained and judged worthy of such knowledge. While this seems a laudable attempt to protect us from unworthy practitioners of arcane lore, it ignores the fact that the magics are not derived from this specific knowledge. The predilection for a certain type of magic is either inborn or lacking. For instance, the ability for the magics known as the Skill is tied closely to blood relationship to the royal Farseer line, though it may also occur as a ‘wild strain’ amongst folk whose ancestors came from both the Inland tribes and the Outislanders. One trained in the Skill is able to reach out to another’s mind, no matter how distant, and know what he is thinking. Those who are strongly Skilled can influence that thinking, or have converse with that person. For the conducting of a battle, or the gathering of information, it is a most useful tool. Folklore tells of an even older magic, much despised now, known as the Wit. Few will admit a talent for this magic, hence it is always said to be the province of the folk in the next valley, or the ones who live on the other side of the far ridge. I suspect it was once the natural magic of those who lived on the land as hunters rather than as settled folk; a magic for those who felt kinship with the wild beasts of the woods. The Wit, it is said, gave one the ability to speak the tongues of the beasts. It was also warned that those who practised the Wit too long or too well became whatever beast they had bonded to. But this may be only legend. There are the Hedge magics, though I have never been able to determine the source of this name, which are both verified and suspect, including palm reading, water gazing, the interpretation of crystal reflections, and a host of other skills that attempt to predict the future. In a separate unnamed category are the magics that cause physical effects, such as invisibility, levitation, giving motion or life to inanimate objects – all the magics of the old legends, from the Flying Chair of the Widow’s Son to the North Wind’s bewitched tablecloth. I know of no people who claim these magics as their own. They seem to be solely the stuff of legend, ascribed to folk living in ancient times or distant places, or beings of mythical or near mythical reputation: dragons, giants, the Elderlings, the Others, pecksies. I pause to clean my pen. My writing wanders from spidery to blobbish on this poor paper. But I will not use good parchment for these words; not yet. I am not sure they should be written. I ask myself, why put this to paper at all? Will not this knowledge be passed down by word of mouth to those who are worthy? Perhaps. But perhaps not. What we take for granted now, the knowing of these things, may be a wonder and a mystery someday to our descendants. There is very little in any of the libraries on magic. I work laboriously, tracing a thread of knowledge through a patchwork quilt of information. I find scattered references, passing allusions, but that is all. I have gathered it, over these last few years, and stored it in my head, always intending to commit my knowledge to paper. I will put down what I know from my own experience, as well as what I have ferreted out. Perhaps to provide answers for some other poor fool, in times to come, who might find himself as battered by the warring of the magics within him as I have been. But when I sit down to the task, I hesitate. Who am I to set my will against the wisdom of those who have gone before me? Shall I set down in plain lettering the methods by which a Wit-gifted one can expand his range, or can bond a creature to himself? Shall I detail the training one must undergo before being recognized as a Skilled one? The hedge wizardries and legendary magics have never been mine. Have I any right to dig out their secrets and pin them to paper like so many butterflies or leaves collected for study? I try to consider what one might do with such knowledge, unjustly gained. It leads me to consider what this knowledge has gained for me. Power, wealth, the love of a woman? I mock myself. Neither the Skill nor the Wit has ever offered any such to me. Or if they did, I had not the sense nor ambition to seize them when offered. Power. I do not think I ever wanted it for its own sake. I thirsted for it, sometimes, when I was ground down, or when those close to me suffered beneath ones who abused their powers. Wealth. I never really considered it. From the moment that I, his bastard grandson, pledged myself to King Shrewd, he always saw to it that all my needs were fulfilled. I had plenty to eat, more education than I sometimes cared for, clothes both simple and annoyingly fashionable, and often enough a coin or two of my own to spend. Growing up in Buckkeep, that was wealth enough and more than most boys in Buckkeep Town could claim. Love? Well. My horse Sooty was fond of me, in her own placid way. I had the true-hearted loyalty of a hound named Nosy, and that took him to his grave. I was given the fiercest of loves by a terrier pup, and it was likewise the death of him. I wince to think of the price willingly paid for loving me. Always I have possessed the loneliness of one raised amidst intrigues and clustering secrets, the isolation of a boy who can not trust the completeness of his heart to anyone. I could not go to Fedwren, the court scribe who praised me for my neat lettering and well-inked illustrations, and confide that I was already apprenticed to the Royal Assassin, and thus could not follow his writing trade. Nor could I divulge to Chade, my master in the diplomacy of the knife, the frustrating brutality I endured trying to learn the ways of the Skill from Galen the Skillmaster. And to no one did I dare speak openly of my emerging proclivity for the Wit, the ancient beast magic, said to be a perversion and a taint to any who used it. Not even to Molly. Molly was that most cherished of items: a genuine refuge. She had absolutely nothing to do with my day to day life. It was not just that she was female, though that was mystery enough to me. I was raised almost entirely in the company of men, bereft not only of my natural mother and father, but of any blood relations who would openly acknowledge me. As a child, my care was entrusted to Burrich, the gruff Stablemaster who had once been my father’s right-hand man. The stable hands and the guards were my daily companions. Then as now, there were women in the guard companies, though not so many then as now. But like their male comrades, they had duties to perform, and lives and families of their own when they were not on watch. I could not claim their time. I had no mother, nor sisters or aunts of my own. There were no women who offered me the special tenderness said to be the province of women. None save Molly. She was but a year or two older than myself, and growing the same way a sprig of greenery forces its way up through a gap in the cobblestones. Neither her father’s near constant drunkenness and frequent brutality nor the grinding chores of a child trying to maintain the pretence of both home and family business could crush her. When I first met her, she was as wild and wary as a fox cub. Molly Nosebleed she was called among the street children. She often bore the marks of the beatings her father gave her. Despite his cruelty, she cared for him. I never understood that. He would grumble and berate her even as she tottered him home after one of his binges and put him to bed. And when he awoke, he never had any remorse for his drunkenness and harsh words. There were only more criticisms: why hadn’t the chandlery been swept and fresh strewing herbs put on the floor? Why hadn’t she tended the bee hives, when they were nearly out of honey to sell? Why had she let the fire go out under the tallow pot? I was mute witness more times than I care to remember. But through it all, Molly grew. She flowered, one sudden summer, into a young woman who left me in awe of her capable ways and womanly charms. For her part, she seemed totally unaware of how her eyes could meet mine and turn my tongue to leather in my mouth. No magic I possessed, no Skill, no Wit, was proof against the accidental touch of her hand against mine, nor could defend me against the awkwardness that overwhelmed me at the quirk of her smile. Should I catalogue her hair flowing with the wind, or detail how the colour of her eyes shifted from dark amber to rich brown depending on her mood and the hue of her gown? I would catch a glimpse of her scarlet skirts and red shawl amongst the market throng, and suddenly be aware of no one else. These are magics I witnessed, and though I might set them down on paper, no other could ever work them with such skill. How did I court her? With a boy’s clumsy gallantries, gaping after her like a simpleton watching the whirling discs of a juggler. She knew I loved her before I did. And she let me court her, although I was a few years younger than she, and not one of the town boys and possessed of small prospects as far as she knew. She thought I was the scribe’s errand boy, a part-time helper in the stables, a keep runner. She never suspected I was the Bastard, the unacknowledged son who had toppled Prince Chivalry from his place in the line of succession. That alone was a big enough secret. Of my magics and my other profession, she knew nothing. Maybe that was why I could love her. It was certainly why I lost her. I let the secrets and failures and pains of my other lives keep me too busy. There were magics to learn, secrets to ferret out, men to kill, intrigues to survive. Surrounded by them, it never occurred to me that I could turn to Molly for a measure of the hope and understanding that eluded me everywhere else. She was apart from these things, unsullied by them. I carefully kept preserved from her any touch of them. I never tried to draw her into my world. Instead, I went to hers, to the fishing and shipping port town where she sold candles and honey in her shop, and shopped in the market and, sometimes, walked on the beaches with me. To me, it was enough that she existed for me to love. I did not even dare to hope she might return that feeling. There came a time when my training in the Skill ground me into a misery so deep I did not think I could survive it. I could not forgive myself for being unable to learn it; I could not imagine that my failure might not matter to others. I cloaked my despair in surly withdrawal. I let the long weeks pass, and never saw her or even sent her word that I thought of her. Finally, when there was no one else that I could turn to, I sought her. Too late. I arrived at the Beebalm Chandlery in Buckkeep Town one afternoon, gifts in hand, in time to see her leaving. Not alone. With Jade, a fine broad-chested seaman, with a bold earring in one ear and the sure masculinity of his superior years. Unnoticed, defeated, I slunk away and watched them walk off arm in arm. I let her go, and in the months that followed, I tried to convince myself that my heart had let her go as well. I wonder what would have happened if I had run after them that afternoon, if I had begged one last word of her. Odd, to think of so many events turning upon a boy’s misplaced pride and his schooled acceptance of defeats. I set her out of my thoughts, and spoke of her to no one. I got on with my life. King Shrewd sent me as his assassin with a great caravan of folk going to witness the pledging of the Mountain princess Kettricken as Prince Verity’s bride. My mission was quietly to cause the death of her older brother, Prince Rurisk, subtly of course, so that she would be left the sole heir to the Mountain throne. But what I found when I arrived there was a web of deceit and lies engineered by my youngest uncle, Prince Regal, who hoped to topple Verity from the line of succession and claim the princess as his own bride. I was the pawn he would sacrifice for this goal; and I was the pawn who instead toppled the game pieces around him, bringing his wrath and vengeance down on myself, but saving the crown and the princess for Prince Verity. I do not think this was heroism. Nor do I think it was petty spite wreaked on one who had always bullied and belittled me. It was the act of a boy becoming a man, and doing what I had sworn to do years before I knew the cost of such an oath. The price was my healthy young body, so long taken for granted. Long after I had defeated Regal’s plot, I lingered in a sickbed in the Mountain Kingdom. But finally a morning came when I awoke and believed that my long illness was finally over. Burrich had decided I was recovered enough to begin the long journey back home to the Six Duchies. Princess Kettricken and her entourage had left for Buckkeep weeks before, when the weather was still fine. Now winter snows already smothered the higher parts of the Mountain Kingdom. If we did not leave Jhaampe soon, we would be forced to winter there. I was up early that morning, doing my final packing, when the first small tremors began. Resolutely, I ignored them. I was just shaky, I told myself, with not yet having eaten breakfast, and the excitement of the journey home. I donned the garments that Jonqui had furnished for our winter journey through the Mountains and across the plains. For me there was a long red shirt, padded with wool. The quilted trousers were green, but embroidered with red at the waist and cuffs. The boots were sacks of soft leather, almost shapeless until my feet were laced inside them, padded with sheared wool and trimmed with fur. They fastened to the feet with long wrappings of leather strips. My trembling fingers made tying them a difficult task. Jonqui had told us they were wonderful for the dry snow of the mountains, but to beware of getting them wet. There was a looking glass in the room. At first, I smiled at my reflection. Not even King Shrewd’s Fool dressed as gaily as this. But above the bright garments, my face was thin and pale, making my dark eyes too large, while my fever-shorn hair, black and bristly, stood up like a dog’s hackles. My illness had ravaged me. But I told myself I was finally on my way home. I turned aside from the mirror. As I packed the few small gifts I had selected to take home to my friends, the unsteadiness grew in my hands. For the last time, Burrich, Hands and I sat down to break fast with Jonqui. I thanked her once again for all she had done towards healing me. I picked up a spoon for the porridge, and my hand gave a twitch. I dropped it. I watched the silvery shape fall and fell after it. The next thing I remember is the shadowy corners of the bedroom. I lay for a long time, not moving or speaking. I went from a state of emptiness to knowing I had had another seizure. It had passed; both body and mind were mine to command once more. But I no longer wanted them. At fifteen years old, an age when most were coming into their full strength, I could no longer trust my body to perform the simplest task. It was damaged, and I rejected it fiercely. I felt savagely vindictive toward the flesh and bone that enclosed me, and wished for some way to express my raging disappointment. Why couldn’t I heal? Why hadn’t I recovered? ‘It’s going to take time, that’s all. Wait until half a year has passed since the day you were damaged. Then assess yourself.’ It was Jonqui the healer. She was sitting near the fireplace, but her chair was drawn back into the shadows. I hadn’t noticed her until she spoke. She rose slowly, as if the winter made her bones ache, and came to stand beside my bed. ‘I don’t want to live like an old man.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Sooner or later, you will have to. At least, I so wish that you will survive that many years. I am old, and so is my brother King Eyod. We do not find it so great a burden.’ ‘I should not mind an old man’s body if the years had earned it for me. But I can’t go on like this.’ She shook her head, puzzled. ‘Of course you can. Healing is tedious sometimes, but to say that you cannot go on … I do not understand. It is, perhaps, a difference in our languages?’ I took a breath to speak, but at that moment Burrich came in. ‘Awake? Feeling better?’ ‘Awake. Not feeling better,’ I grumbled. Even to myself, I sounded like a fretful child. Burrich and Jonqui exchanged glances over me. She came to the bedside, patted my shoulder, and then left the room silently. Their obvious tolerance was galling, and my impotent anger rose like a tide. ‘Why can’t you heal me?’ I demanded of Burrich. He was taken aback by the accusation in my question. ‘It’s not that simple,’ he began. ‘Why not?’ I hauled myself up straight in the bed. ‘I’ve seen you cure all manner of ailments in beasts. Sickness, broken bones, worms, mange … you’re Stablemaster, and I’ve seen you treat them all. Why can’t you cure me?’ ‘You’re not a dog, Fitz,’ Burrich said quietly. ‘It’s simpler with a beast, when it’s seriously ill. I’ve taken drastic measures, sometimes, telling myself, well, if the animal dies, at least it’s not suffering any more, and this may heal it. I can’t do that with you. You’re not a beast.’ ‘That’s no answer! Half the time the guards come to you instead of the healer. You took the head of an arrow out of Den. You laid his whole arm open to do it! When the healer said that Greydin’s foot was too infected and she’d have to lose it, she came to you, and you saved it. And all the time the healer was saying the infection would spread and she’d die and it would be your fault.’ Burrich folded his lips, quelling his temper. If I’d been healthy, I’d have been wary of his wrath. But his restraint with me during my convalescence had made me bold. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and controlled. ‘Those were risky healings, yes. But the folk who wanted them done knew the risks. And,’ he said, raising his voice to cover the objection I’d been about to voice, ‘they were simple things. I knew the cause. Take out the arrow head and haft from his arm and clean it up. Poultice and draw the infection from Greydin’s foot. But your sickness isn’t that simple. Neither Jonqui nor I really know what’s wrong with you. Is it the aftermath of the poison Kettricken fed you when she thought you had come to kill her brother? Is this the effect of the poisoned wine that Regal arranged for you? Or is it from the beating you took afterward? From being near drowned? Or did all those things combine to do this to you? We don’t know, and so we don’t know how to cure you. We just don’t know.’ His voice clenched on his last words, and I suddenly saw how his sympathy for me overlay his frustration. He paced a few steps, then halted to stare into the fire. ‘We’ve talked long about it. Jonqui has much in her mountain lore that I have never heard of before. And I’ve told her of cures I know. But we both agreed the best thing to do was give you time to heal. You’re in no danger of dying that we can see. Possibly, in time, your own body can cast out the last vestiges of the poison, or heal whatever damage was done inside you.’ ‘Or,’ I added quietly, ‘it’s possible that I’ll be this way the rest of my life. That the poison or the beating damaged something permanently. Damn Regal, to kick me like that when I was trussed already.’ Burrich stood as if turned to ice. Then he sagged into the chair in the shadows. Defeat was in his voice. ‘Yes. That is just as possible as the other. But don’t you see we have no choice? I could physick you to try to force the poison out of your body. But if it’s damage, not poison, all I would do was weaken you so that your body’s own healing would take that much longer.’ He stared into the flames, and lifted a hand to touch a streak of white at his temple. I was not the only one who’d fallen to Regal’s treachery. Burrich himself was but newly recovered from a skull blow that would have killed anyone less thick-headed than he. I knew he had endured long days of dizziness and blurred vision. I did not recall he had complained at all. I had the decency to feel a bit of shame. ‘So what do I do?’ Burrich started as if roused from dozing. ‘What we’ve been doing. Wait. Eat. Rest. Be easy on yourself. And see what happens. Is that so terrible?’ I ignored his question. ‘And if I don’t get better? If I just stay like this, where the tremors or fits can come over me at any time?’ His answer was slow in coming. ‘Live with it. Many folk have to live with worse. Most of the time, you’re fine. You’re not blind. You’re not paralyzed. You’ve your wits, still. Stop defining yourself by what you can’t do. Why don’t you consider what you didn’t lose?’ ‘What I didn’t lose? What I didn’t lose?’ My anger rose like a covey of birds taking flight and likewise driven by panic. ‘I’m helpless, Burrich. I can’t go back to Buckkeep like this! I’m useless. I’m worse than useless, I’m a waiting victim. If I could go back and batter Regal into a pulp, that might be worth it. Instead, I will have to sit at table with Prince Regal, to be civil and deferential to a man who plotted to overthrow Verity and kill me as an added spice. I can’t endure him seeing me tremble with weakness, or suddenly fall in a seizure. I don’t want to see him smile at what he has made me; I don’t want to watch him savour his triumph. He will try to kill me again. We both know that. Perhaps he has learned he is no match for Verity, perhaps he will respect his older brother’s reign and new wife. But I doubt he will extend that to me. It’ll be one more way he can strike at Verity. And when he comes, what shall I be doing? Sitting by the fire like a palsied old man, doing nothing. Nothing! All I’ve been trained for, all Hod’s weaponry instruction, all Fedwren’s careful teachings about lettering, even all you’ve taught me about taking care of beasts! All a waste! I can do none of it. I’m just a bastard again, Burrich. And someone once told me that a royal bastard is kept alive only so long as he is useful.’ I was practically shouting, but even in my fury and despair, I did not speak aloud of Chade and my training as an assassin. At that, too, I was useless now. All my stealth and sleight of hand, all the precise ways to kill a man by touch, the painstaking mixing of poisons, all were denied me by my own rattling body. Burrich sat quietly, hearing me out. When my breath and my anger ran out and I sat gasping in my bed, clasping my traitorously trembling hands together, he spoke calmly. ‘So. Are you saying we don’t go back to Buckkeep?’ That put me off balance. ‘We?’ ‘My life is pledged to the man who wears that earring. There’s a long story behind that, one that perhaps I’ll tell you someday. Patience had no right to give it to you. I thought it had gone with Prince Chivalry to his grave. She probably thought it just a simple piece of jewellery her husband had worn, hers to keep or to give. In any wise, you wear it now. Where you go, I follow.’ I lifted my hand to the bauble. It was a tiny blue stone caught up in a web of silver net. I started to unfasten it. ‘Don’t do that,’ Burrich said. The words were quiet, deeper than a dog’s growl. But his voice held both threat and command. I dropped my hand away, unable to question him on this at least. I felt strange that the man who had watched over me since I was an abandoned child now put his future into my hands. Yet there he sat before the fire and waited for my words. I studied what I could see of him in the dance of the firelight. He had once seemed a surly giant to me, dark and threatening, but also a savage protector. Now, for perhaps the first time, I studied him as a man. The dark hair and eyes were prevalent in those who carried Outislander blood, and in this we resembled each other. But his eyes were brown, not black, and the wind brought a redness to his cheeks above his curling beard that bespoke a fairer ancestor somewhere. When he walked, he limped, very noticeably on cold days, the legacy of turning aside a boar that had been trying to kill Chivalry. He was not as big as he had once seemed to me. If I kept on growing, I would probably be taller than he was before another year was out. Nor was he massively muscled, but instead had a compactness to him that was a readiness of both muscle and mind. It was not his size that had made him both feared and respected at Buckkeep, but his black temper and his tenacity. Once, when I was very young, I had asked him if he had ever lost a fight. He had just subdued a wilful young stallion and was in the stall with him, calming him. Burrich had grinned, teeth showing white as a wolf’s. The sweat had stood out in droplets on his forehead and was running down his cheeks into his dark beard. He spoke to me over the side of the stall. ‘Lost a fight?’ he’d asked, still out of breath. ‘The fight isn’t over until you win it, Fitz. That’s all you have to remember. No matter what the other man thinks. Or the horse.’ I wondered if I were a fight he had to win. He’d often told me that I was the last task Chivalry had given him. My father had abdicated the throne, shamed by my existence. Yet he’d given me over to this man, and told him to raise me well. Maybe Burrich thought he hadn’t finished that task yet. ‘What do you think I should do?’ I asked humbly. Neither the words nor the humility came easily. ‘Heal,’ he said after a few moments. ‘Take the time to heal. It can’t be forced.’ He glanced down at his own legs stretched toward the fire. Something not a smile twisted his lips. ‘Do you think we should go back?’ I pressed. He leaned back into the chair. He crossed his booted feet at the ankle and stared into the fire. He took a long time answering. But finally he said, almost reluctantly, ‘If we don’t, Regal will think he has won. And he will try to kill Verity. Or at least do whatever he thinks he must to make a grab for his brother’s crown. I am sworn to my king, Fitz, as are you. Right now that is King Shrewd. But Verity is King-in-Waiting. I don’t think it right that he should have waited in vain.’ ‘He has other soldiers more capable than I.’ ‘Does that free you from your promise?’ ‘You argue like a priest.’ ‘I don’t argue at all. I merely asked you a question. And one other. What do you forsake, if you leave Buckkeep behind?’ It was my turn to fall silent. I did think of my king, and all I had sworn to him. I thought of Prince Verity and his bluff heartiness and open ways with me. I recalled old Chade and his slow smile when I had finally mastered some arcane bit of lore. Lady Patience and her maid Lacey, Fedwren and Hod, even Cook and Mistress Hasty the seamstress. There were not so many folk that had cared for me, but that made them more significant, not less. I would miss all of them if I never went back to Buckkeep. But what leaped up in me like an ember rekindled was my memory of Molly. And somehow, I found myself speaking of her to Burrich, and him just nodding as I spilled out the whole story. When he did speak, he told me only that he had heard that the Beebalm Chandlery had closed when the old drunkard that owned it had died in debt. His daughter had been forced to go to relatives in another town. He did not know what town, but he was certain I could find it out, if I were determined. ‘Know your heart before you do, Fitz,’ he added. ‘If you’ve nothing to offer her, let her go. Are you crippled? Only if you decide so. But if you’re determined that you’re a cripple now, then perhaps you’ve no right to go and seek her out. I don’t think you’d want her pity. It’s a poor substitute for love.’ And then he rose and left me to stare into the fire and think. Was I a cripple? Had I lost? My body jangled like badly-tuned harp strings. That was true. But my will, not Regal’s, had prevailed. My Prince Verity was still in line for the Six Duchies throne, and the Mountain princess was his wife now. Did I dread him smirking over my trembling hands? Could I not smirk back at he who would never be king? A savage satisfaction welled up in me. Burrich was right. I had not lost. But I could make sure that Regal knew I had won. If I had won against Regal, could I not win Molly as well? What stood between her and me? Jade? But Burrich had heard she had left Buckkeep Town, not wed. Gone penniless to live with relatives. Shame upon him, had Jade let her do so. I would seek her out, I would find her and win her. Molly, with her hair loose and blowing, Molly with her bright red skirts and cloak, bold as a red-robber bird, and eyes as bright. The thought of her sent a shiver down my spine. I smiled to myself, and then felt my lips set like a rictus, and the shiver became a shuddering. My body spasmed and the back of my head rebounded sharply off the bedstead. I cried out involuntarily, a gargling wordless cry. In an instant Jonqui was there, calling Burrich back, and then they were both holding down my flailing limbs. Burrich’s body weight was flung on top of me as he strove to restrain my thrashing. And then I was gone. I came out of blackness into light, like surfacing from a deep dive into warm waters. The down of the feather bed cradled me, the blankets were soft and warm. I felt safe. For a moment, all was peaceful. I lay quiescent, almost feeling good. ‘Fitz?’ Burrich asked, leaning over me. The world came back. I knew myself a mangled, pitiful thing, a puppet with half its strings tangled or a horse with a severed tendon. I would never be as I was before; there was no place left for me in the world I had once inhabited. Burrich had said, pity is a poor substitute for love. I wanted pity from none of them. ‘Burrich.’ He leaned closer over me. ‘It wasn’t that bad,’ he lied. ‘Just rest now. Tomorrow …’ ‘Tomorrow you leave for Buckkeep,’ I told him. He frowned. ‘Let’s take it slowly. Give yourself a few days to recover, and then we’ll …’ ‘No.’ I dragged myself up to a sitting position. I put every bit of strength I had into the words. ‘I’ve made a decision. Tomorrow you will go back to Buckkeep. There are people and animals waiting for you there. You’re needed. It’s your home and your world. But it’s not mine. Not any more.’ He was silent for a long moment. ‘And what will you do?’ I shook my head. ‘That’s no longer your concern. Or anyone’s, save mine.’ ‘The girl?’ I shook my head again, more violently. ‘She’s taken care of one cripple already, and spent her youth doing so only to find that he left her a debtor. Shall I go back and seek her out, like this? Shall I ask her to love me, so I can be a burden to her like her father was? No. Alone or wed to another, she’s better off now as she is.’ The silence stretched long between us. Jonqui was busy in a corner of the room, concocting yet another herbal draught that would do nothing for me. Burrich stood over me, black and lowering as a thundercloud. I knew how badly he wanted to shake me, how he longed to cuff the stubbornness from me. But he did not. Burrich did not hit cripples. ‘So,’ he said at last. ‘That leaves only your king. Or do you forget you are sworn as a King’s Man?’ ‘I do not forget,’ I said quietly. ‘And did I believe myself a man still, I would go back. But I am not, Burrich. I am a liability. On the gameboard, I have become but one of those tokens that must be protected. A hostage for the taking, powerless to defend myself or anyone else. No. The last act I can make as a King’s Man is to remove myself, before someone else does and injures my king in the doing.’ Burrich turned aside from me. He was a silhouette in the dim room, his face unreadable by the firelight. ‘Tomorrow we will talk,’ he began. ‘Only to say farewell,’ I interrupted. ‘My heart is firm on this, Burrich.’ I reached up to touch the earring in my ear. ‘If you stay, then so must I.’ There was a fierceness in his low voice. ‘That isn’t how it works,’ I told him. ‘Once, my father told you to stay behind, and raise a bastard for him. Now I tell you to leave, to go to serve a king who still needs you.’ ‘FitzChivalry, I don’t –’ ‘Please.’ I don’t know what he heard in my voice. Only that he was suddenly still. ‘I am so tired. So damnably tired. The only thing I know is that I can’t live up to what every one else thinks I should do. I just can’t do it.’ My voice quavered like an old man’s. ‘No matter what I ought to do. No matter what I am pledged to do. There isn’t enough of me left to keep my word. Maybe that’s not right, but that’s how it is. Every one else’s plans. Every one else’s goals. Never mine. I tried, but …’ The room rocked around me as if someone else were speaking, and I was shocked at what he was saying. But I couldn’t deny the truth of his words. ‘I need to be alone now. To rest,’ I said simply. Both of them just looked at me. Neither one of them spoke. They left the room, slowly, as if hoping I would relent and call them back. I did not. But after they had gone, and I was alone, I permitted myself to breathe out. I felt dizzy with the decision I had made. I wasn’t going back to Buckkeep. What I was going to do, I had no idea. I had swept my broken bits of life from the game table. Now there was room to set out anew what pieces I still had, to plot a new strategy for living. Slowly, I realized I had no doubts. Regrets warred with relief, but I had no doubts. Somehow it was much more bearable to move forward into a life where no one would recall who I had once been. A life not pledged to someone else’s will. Not even my king’s. It was done. I lay back in my bed, and for the first time in weeks, I relaxed completely. Farewell, I thought wearily. I would have liked to wish them all farewell, to stand one last time before Verity and see his brief nod that I had done well. Perhaps I could have made him understand why I did not wish to go back. It was not to be. It was done now, all done. ‘I am sorry, my king,’ I muttered. I stared into the dancing flames in the hearth until sleep claimed me. ONE (#ulink_8ea08d98-1bfc-5985-b574-0dcc17c4dd4f) Siltbay (#ulink_8ea08d98-1bfc-5985-b574-0dcc17c4dd4f) To be the King-in-Waiting, or the Queen-in-Waiting, is to straddle firmly the fence between responsibility and authority. It is said that the position was created to satisfy the ambitions of an heir for power, while schooling him in the exercising of it. The eldest child in the royal family assumes this position upon its sixteenth birthday. From that day on, the King- or Queen-in-Waiting assumes a full share of responsibility for the running of the Six Duchies. Generally, he immediately assumes such duties as the ruling monarch cares for least, and these have varied greatly from reign to reign. Under King Shrewd, Prince Chivalry first became King-in-Waiting. To him, King Shrewd ceded over all that had to do with the borders and frontiers: warfare, negotiations and diplomacy, the discomforts of extended travel and the miserable conditions often encountered on the campaigns. When Chivalry abdicated and Prince Verity became King-in-Waiting, he inherited all the uncertainties of the war with the Outislanders, and the civil unrest this situation created between the Inland and Coastal duchies. All of these tasks were rendered more difficult in that, at any time, his decisions could be overridden by the King. Often he was left to cope with a situation not of his creating, armed only with options not of his choosing. Even less tenable, perhaps, was the position of Queen-in-Waiting Kettricken. Her Mountain ways marked her as a foreigner in the Six Duchies court. In peaceful times, perhaps she would have been received with more tolerance. But the court at Buckkeep seethed with the general unrest of the Six Duchies. The Red Ships from the Outislands harried our shoreline as they had not for generations, destroying far more than they stole. The first winter of Kettricken’s reign as Queen-in-Waiting saw also the first winter raiding we had ever experienced. The constant threat of raids, and the lingering torment of Forged ones in our midst rocked the foundations of the Six Duchies. Confidence in the monarchy was low, and Kettricken had the unenviable position of being an unadmired King-in-Waiting’s outlandish queen. Civil unrest divided the court as the Inland duchies voiced their resentment at taxes to protect a coastline they did not share. The Coastal duchies cried out for warships and soldiers and an effective way to battle the raiders that always struck where we were least prepared. Inland-bred Prince Regal sought to gather power to himself by courting the Inland dukes with gifts and social attentions. King-in-Waiting Verity, convinced that his Skill was no longer sufficient to hold the raiders at bay, put his attentions to building warships to guard the Coastal duchies, with little time for his new queen. Over all, King Shrewd crouched like a great spider, endeavouring to keep power spread amongst himself and his sons, to keep all in balance and the Six Duchies intact. I awakened to someone touching my forehead. With an annoyed grunt, I turned my head aside from the touch. My blankets were weltered around me; I fought my way clear of their restraint and then sat up to see who had dared disturb me. King Shrewd’s Fool perched anxiously on a chair beside my bed. I stared at him wildly, and he drew back from my look. Uneasiness assailed me. The Fool should have been back in Buckkeep, with the King, many miles and days from here. I had never known him to leave the King’s side for more than a few hours or a night’s rest. That he was here boded no good. The Fool was my friend, as much as his strangeness allowed him to be friends with anyone. But a visit from him always had a purpose, and such purposes were seldom trivial or pleasant. He looked as weary as I had ever seen him. He wore an unfamiliar motley of greens and reds and carried a fool’s sceptre with a rat’s head on it. The gay garments contrasted too strongly with his colourless skin, making him a translucent candle wreathed in holly. His clothing seemed more substantial than he did. His fine, pale hair floated from the confines of his cap like a drowned man’s hair in sea water, while the dancing flames of the fireplace shone in his eyes. I rubbed my gritty eyes and pushed some of the hair back from my face. It was damp; I’d been sweating in my sleep. ‘Hello,’ I managed. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here.’ My mouth felt dry, my tongue thick and sour. I’d been sick, I recalled. The details seemed hazy. ‘Where else?’ He looked at me woefully. ‘For every hour you’ve slept, the less rested you seem. Lie back, my lord. Let me make you comfortable.’ He plucked at my pillows fussily, but I waved him away. Something was wrong here. Never had he spoken me so fair. Friends we were, but the Fool’s words to me were always as pithy and sour as half-ripened fruit. If this sudden kindness was a show of pity, I wanted none of it. I glanced down at my embroidered nightshirt, at the rich bedcovers. Something seemed odd about them. I was too tired and weak to puzzle it out. ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked him. He took a breath and sighed. ‘I am tending you. Watching over you while you sleep. I know you think it foolish, but then, I am the Fool. You know then that I must be Foolish. Yet you ask me this same thing every time you awake. Let me then propose something wiser. I beg you, my lord, let me send for another healer.’ I leaned back against my pillows. They were sweat-damp, and smelled sour to me. I knew I could ask the Fool to change them and he would, but I would just sweat anew if he did. It was useless. I clutched at my covers with gnarled fingers and asked him bluntly, ‘Why have you come here?’ He took my hand in his and patted it. ‘My lord, I mistrust this sudden weakness. You seem to take no good from this healer’s ministrations. I fear that his knowledge is much smaller than his opinion of it.’ ‘Burrich?’ I asked incredulously. ‘Burrich? Would that he were here, my lord! He may be the Stablemaster, but for all that, I warrant he is more of a healer than this Wallace who doses and sweats you.’ ‘Wallace? Burrich is not here?’ The Fool’s face grew graver. ‘No, my king. He remained in the mountains, as well you know.’ ‘Your king,’ I said, and attempted to laugh. ‘Such mockery.’ ‘Never, my lord,’ he said gently. ‘Never.’ His tenderness confused me. This was not the Fool I knew, full of twisting words and riddles, of sly jabs and puns and cunning insults. I felt suddenly stretched thin as old rope, and as frayed. Still, I tried to piece things together. ‘Then I am in Buckkeep?’ He nodded slowly. ‘Of course you are.’ Worry pinched his mouth. I was silent, plumbing the full depth of my betrayal. Somehow I had been returned to Buckkeep. Against my will. Burrich had not even seen fit to accompany me. ‘Let me get you some food,’ the Fool begged me. ‘You always feel better after you have eaten.’ He rose. ‘I brought it up hours ago. I’ve kept it warm by the hearth.’ My eyes followed him wearily. At the big hearth he crouched to coax a covered tureen away from the edge of the fire. He lifted the lid and I smelled the rich beef stew. He began to ladle it into a bowl. It had been months since I’d had beef. In the mountains, it was all venison and mutton and goat’s flesh. My eyes wandered wearily about the room. The heavy tapestries, the massive wooden chairs. The heavy stones of the fireplace, the richly worked bed-hangings. I knew this place. This was the King’s bedchamber at Buckkeep. Why was I here, in the King’s own bed? I tried to ask the Fool, but another spoke with my lips. ‘I know too many things, Fool. I can no longer stop myself from knowing them. Sometimes it is as if another controlled my will, and pushed my mind where I would rather it did not go. My walls are breached. It all pours in like a tide.’ I drew a deep breath, but I could not stave it off. First a chill tingling, then as if I were immersed in a swift flowing of cold water. ‘A rising tide,’ I gasped. ‘Bearing ships. Red-keeled ships …’ The Fool’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘In this season, your majesty? Surely not! Not in winter!’ My breath was pressed tight in my chest. I struggled to speak. ‘The winter has crept in too softly. She has spared us both her storms and her protection. Look. Look out there, across the water. See? They come. They come from the fog.’ I lifted my arm to point. The Fool came hastily, to stand beside me. He crouched to peer where I pointed, but I knew he could not see. Still, he loyally placed a hesitant hand on my thin shoulder, and stared as if he could will away the walls and the miles that stood between him and my vision. I longed to be as blind as he. I clasped the long-fingered, pale hand that rested on my shoulder. For a moment I looked down at my withered hand, at the royal signet ring that clung to a bony finger behind a swollen knuckle. Then my reluctant gaze was drawn up and my vision taken afar. My pointing hand indicated the quiet harbour. I struggled to sit up taller, to see more. The darkened town spread out before me like a patchwork of houses and roads. Fog lay in hollows and was thick upon the bay. Weather change coming, I thought to myself. Something stirred in the air that chilled me, cooling the old sweat on my skin so that I shivered. Despite the blackness of the night and the fog, I had no difficulty in seeing everything perfectly. Skill-watching I told myself, and then wondered. I could not Skill, not predictably, not usefully. But as I watched, two ships broke out of the mists and emerged into the sleeping harbour. I forgot what I could or could not do. They were sleek and trim, those ships, and though they were black under the moonlight, I knew their keels were red. Red Ship Raiders from the Outislands. The ships moved like knives through the wavelets, cutting their way clear of the fog, slicing into the protected water of the harbour like a thin blade slicing into a pig’s belly. The oars moved silently, in perfect unison, oarlocks muffled with rags. They came alongside the docks as boldly as honest merchants come to trade. From the first boat, a sailor leaped lightly, carrying a line to make fast to a piling. An oarsman fended her off the dock until the aft line was thrown and made fast as well. All so calmly, so blatantly. The second ship was following their example. The dreaded Red Ships had come into town, bold as gulls, and tied up at their victims’ home dock. No sentry cried out. No watchman blew a horn, or threw a torch onto a waiting heap of pitchpine to kindle a signal fire. I looked for them, and instantly found them. Heads on chests, they were idling at their posts. Good woollen homespun had gone from grey to red sopping up the blood of their slit throats. Their killers had come quietly, overland, sure of each sentry post, to silence every watcher. No one would warn the sleeping town. There had not been that many sentries. There was not much to this little town, scarce enough to deserve a dot on the map. The town had counted on the humbleness of its possessions to shelter it from raids such as this. Good wool they grew there, and they spun a fine yarn, it was true. They harvested and smoked the salmon that came right up their river, and the apples here were tiny but sweet, and they made a good wine. There was a fine clam beach to the west of town. These were the riches of Siltbay, and if they were not great, they were enough to make life treasured by those who lived here. Surely, though, they were not worth coming after with a torch and a blade. What sane man would think a keg of apple wine or a rack of smoked salmon worth a raider’s time? But these were Red Ships, and they did not come to raid for wealth or treasures. They were not after prize breeding cattle or even women for wives or boys for galley slaves. The wool-fat sheep would be mutilated and slaughtered, the smoked salmon trampled underfoot, the warehouses of fleeces and wines torched. They would take hostages, yes, but only to Forge them. The Forge magic would leave them less than human, bereft of all emotions and any but the most basic thoughts. The Raiders would not keep these hostages, but would abandon them here, to work their debilitating anguish upon those who had loved them and called them kin. Stripped of every human sensitivity, Forged ones would scour their homeland as pitilessly as wolverines. This setting of our own kin to prey upon us as Forged ones was the Outislanders’ cruellest weapon. This I already knew as I watched. I had seen the aftermath of other raids. I watched the tide of death rise to inundate the little town. The Outislander pirates leaped from the ship to the docks and flowed up into the village. They trickled silently up the streets in bands of twos and threes, as deadly as poison unfurling in wine. Some few paused to search the other vessels tied to the dock. Most of the boats were small open dories, but there were two larger fishing vessels and one trader. Their crews met swift death. Their frantic struggles were as pathetic as fowl flapping and squawking when a weasel gets into the chicken house. They called out to me with voices full of blood. The thick fog gulped their cries greedily. It made the death of a sailor no more than the keening of a sea bird. Afterwards, the boats were torched, carelessly, with no thought to their value as spoils. These raiders took no real booty. Perhaps a handful of coins if easily found, or a necklace from the body of one they had raped and killed, but little more than that. I could do nothing except watch. I coughed heavily, then found a breath to speak. ‘If only I could understand them,’ I said to the Fool. ‘If only I knew what they wanted. There is no sense to these Red Ships. How can we fight those who war for a reason they will not divulge? But if I could understand them …’ The Fool pursed his pale lips and considered. ‘They partake of the madness of he who drives them. They can only be understood if you share that madness. I myself have no wish to understand them. Understanding them will not stop them.’ ‘No.’ I did not want to watch the village. I had seen this nightmare too often. But only a heartless man could have turned away as if it were a poorly-staged puppet show. The least I could do for my people was to watch them die. It also was the most I could do for them. I was sick and a cripple, an old man far away. No more could be expected from me. So I watched. I watched the little town awaken from soft sleep to the rough grip of a strange hand on the throat or breast, to a knife over a cradle, or the sudden cry of a child dragged from sleep. Lights began to flicker and glow throughout the village; some were candles kindled on hearing a neighbour’s outcry; others were torches or burning houses. Although the Red Ships had terrorized the Six Duchies for over a year, for these folk it became completely real tonight. They had thought they were prepared. They had heard the horror stories, and resolved never to let it happen to them. But still the houses burned and the screams rose to the night sky as if borne on the smoke. ‘Speak, Fool,’ I commanded hoarsely. ‘Remember forward for me. What do they say about Siltbay? A raid on Siltbay, in winter.’ He took a shuddering breath. ‘It is not easy, nor clear,’ he hesitated. ‘All wavers, all is change still. Too much is in flux, your majesty. The future spills out in all directions there.’ ‘Speak any you can see,’ I commanded. ‘They made a song about this town,’ the Fool observed hollowly. He gripped my shoulder still; through my nightshirt, the clutch of his long, strong fingers was cold. A trembling passed between us and I felt how he laboured to continue standing beside me. ‘When it is sung in a tavern, with the refrain hammered out to the beat of ale mugs upon a table, none of this seems so bad. One can imagine the brave stand these folks made, going down fighting rather than surrendering. Not one, not one single person, was taken alive and Forged. Not one.’ The Fool paused. A hysterical note mingled with the levity he forced into his voice. ‘Of course, when you’re drinking and singing, you don’t see the blood. Or smell the burning flesh. Or hear the screams. But that’s understandable. Have you ever tried to find a rhyme for “dismembered child”? Someone once tried “remembered wild” but the verse still didn’t quite scan.’ There was no merriment in his banter. His bitter jests could shield neither him nor me. He fell silent once more, my prisoner doomed to share his painful knowledge with me. I witnessed in silence. No verse would tell of a parent pushing a poison pellet into a child’s mouth to keep him from the Raiders. No one could sing of children crying out with the cramps of the swift, harsh poison, or the women who were raped as they lay dying. No rhyme nor melody could bear the weight of telling of archers whose truest arrows slew captured kinfolk before they could be dragged away. I peered into the interior of a burning house. Through the flames, I watched a ten-year-old boy bare his throat for the slash of his mother’s knife. He held the body of his baby sister, strangled already, for the Red Ships had come, and no loving brother would give her to either the Raiders or the voracious flames. I saw the mother’s eyes as she lifted her children’s bodies and carried them into the flames with her. Such things are better not remembered. But I was not spared the knowledge. It was my duty to know these things, and to recall them. Not all died. Some fled into the surrounding fields and forests. I saw one young man take four children under the docks with him, to cling in the chill water to the barnacled pilings until the raiders left. Others tried to flee and were slain as they ran. I saw a woman in a nightgown slip from a house. Flames were already running up the side of the building. She carried one child in her arms and another clung to her skirts and followed her. Even in the darkness, the light from the fired huts awoke burnished highlights in her hair. She glanced about fearfully, but the long knife she carried in her free hand was up and at the ready. I caught a glimpse of a small mouth set grimly, eyes narrowed fiercely. Then, for an instant, I saw that proud profile limned against firelight. ‘Molly!’ I gasped. I reached a clawed hand to her. She lifted a door and shooed the children down into a root cellar behind the blazing home. She lowered the door silently over them all. Safe? No. They came around the corner, two of them. One carried an axe. They were walking slowly, swaggering and laughing aloud. The soot that smeared their faces made their teeth and the whites of their eyes stand out. One was a woman. She was very beautiful, laughing as she strode. Fearless. Her hair was braided back with silver wire. The flames winked red in it. The Raiders advanced to the door of the root cellar, and the one swung his axe in a great arcing blow. The axe bit deep into the wood. I heard the terrified cry of a child. ‘Molly!’ I shrieked. I scrabbled from my bed, but had no strength to stand. I crawled toward her. The door gave way, and the Raiders laughed. One died laughing as Molly came leaping through the shattered remnants of the door to put her long knife into his throat. But the beautiful woman with the shining silver in her hair had a sword. And as Molly struggled to pull her knife clear of the dying man, that sword was falling, falling, falling. At that instant, something gave way in the burning house with a sharp crack. The structure swayed and then fell in a shower of sparks and an upburst of roaring flames. A curtain of fire soared up between me and the root cellar. I could see nothing through that inferno. Had it fallen across the door of the root cellar and the Raiders attacking it? I could not see. I lunged forth, reaching out for Molly. But in an instant, all was gone. There was no burning house, no pillaged town, no violated harbour, no Red Ships. Only myself, crouching by the hearth. I had thrust my hand into the fire and my fingers clutched a coal. The Fool cried out and seized my wrist to pull my hand from the fire. I shook him off, then looked at my blistered fingers dully. ‘My king,’ the Fool said woefully. He knelt beside me, carefully moved the tureen of soup by my knee. He moistened a napkin in the wine he had poured for my meal, and folded it over my fingers. I let him. I could not feel the burned skin for the great wound inside me. His worried eyes stared into mine. I could scarcely see him. He seemed an insubstantial thing, with the faltering flames of the fireplace showing in his colourless eyes. A shadow like all the other shadows that came to torment me. My burned fingers throbbed suddenly. I clutched them in my other hand. What had I been doing, what had I been thinking? The Skill had come on me like a fit, and then departed, leaving me as drained as an empty glass. Weariness flowed in to fill me, and pain rode it like a horse. I struggled to retain what I had seen. ‘What woman was that? Is she important?’ ‘Ah.’ The Fool seemed even wearier, but struggled to gather himself. ‘A woman at Siltbay?’ He paused as if racking his brains. ‘No. I have nothing. It is all a muddle, my king. So hard to know.’ ‘Molly has no children,’ I told him. ‘It could not have been her.’ ‘Molly?’ ‘Her name is Molly?’ I demanded. My head throbbed. Anger suddenly possessed me. ‘Why do you torment me like this?’ ‘My lord, I know of no Molly. Come. Come back to your bed, and I will bring you some food.’ He helped me to my feet and I tolerated his touch. I found my voice. I floated, the focus of my eyes coming and going. One moment I could feel his hand on my arm, the next it seemed as if I dreamed the room and the men who spoke there. I managed to speak. ‘I have to know if that was Molly. I have to know if she is dying. Fool, I have to know.’ The Fool sighed heavily. ‘It is not a thing I can command my king. You know that. Like your visions, mine rule me, not the reverse. I cannot pluck a thread from the tapestry, but must look where my eyes are pointed. The future, my king, is like a current in a channel. I cannot tell you where one drop of water goes, but I can tell you where the flow is strongest.’ ‘A woman at Siltbay,’ I insisted. Part of me pitied my poor Fool, but another part insisted. ‘I would not have seen her so clearly if she were not important. Try. Who was she?’ ‘She is significant?’ ‘Yes. I am sure of it. Oh, yes.’ The Fool sat cross-legged on the floor. He put his long fingers to his temples and pressed as if trying to open a door. ‘I know not. I don’t understand … All is a muddle, all is a crossroads. The tracks are trampled, the scents gone awry …’ He looked up at me. Somehow I had stood, but he sat on the floor at my feet, looking up at me. His pale eyes goggled in his eggshell face. He swayed from the strain, smiled foolishly. He considered his rat sceptre, went nose to nose with it. ‘Did you know any such Molly, Ratsy? No? I didn’t think you would. Perhaps he should ask someone more in a position to know. The worms, perhaps.’ A silly giggling seized him. Useless creature. Silly riddling soothsayer. Well, he could not help what he was. I left him and walked slowly back to my bed. I sat on the edge of it. I found I was shaking as if with an ague. A seizure, I told myself. I must calm myself or risk a seizure. Did I want the Fool to see me twitching and gasping? I didn’t care. Nothing mattered, except finding out if that was my Molly, and if so, had she perished? I had to know. I had to know if she had died, and if she had died, how she had died. Never had the knowing of something been so essential to me. The Fool crouched on the rug like a pale toad. He wet his lips and smiled at me. Pain sometimes can wring such a smile from a man. ‘It’s a very glad song, the one they sing about Siltbay,’ he observed. ‘A triumphant song. The villagers won, you see. Didn’t win life for themselves, no, but clean death. Well, death anyway. Death, not Forging. At least that’s something. Something to make a song about and hold onto these days. That’s how it is in Six Duchies now. We kill our own so the raiders can’t, and then we make victory songs about it. Amazing what folk will take comfort in when there’s nothing else to hold onto.’ My vision softened. I knew suddenly that I dreamed. ‘I’m not even here,’ I said faintly. ‘This is a dream. I dream that I am King Shrewd.’ He held his pale hand up to the firelight, considered the bones limned so plainly in the thin flesh. ‘If you say so, my liege, it must be so. I too, then, dream you are King Shrewd. If I pinch you, perhaps, shall I awaken myself?’ I looked down at my hands. They were old and scarred. I closed them, watched veins and tendons bulge beneath the papery surface, felt the sandy resistance of my own swollen knuckles. I’m an old man now, I thought to myself. This is what it really feels like to be old. Not sick, where one might get better. Old. When each day can only be more difficult, each month is another burden to the body. Everything was slipping sideways. I had thought, briefly, that I was fifteen. From somewhere came the scent of scorching flesh and burning hair. No, rich beef stew. No, Jonqui’s healing incense. The mingling scents made me nauseous. I had lost track of who I was, of what was important. I scrabbled at the slippery logic, trying to surmount it. It was hopeless. ‘I don’t know,’ I whispered. ‘I don’t understand any of this.’ ‘Ah,’ said the Fool. ‘As I told you. You can only understand a thing when you become it.’ ‘Is this what it means to be King Shrewd then?’ I demanded. It shook me to my core. I had never seen him like this, racked by the pains of age but still relentlessly confronted by the pains of his subjects. ‘Is this what he must endure, day after day?’ ‘I fear it is, my liege,’ the Fool replied gently. ‘Come. Let me help you back to your bed. Surely, tomorrow you will feel better.’ ‘No. We both know I will not.’ I did not speak those terrible words. They came from King Shrewd’s lips, and I heard them, and knew that this was the debilitating truth King Shrewd bore every day. I was so terribly tired. Every part of me ached. I had not known that flesh could be so heavy, that the mere bending of a finger could demand a painful effort. I wanted to rest. To sleep again. Was it I, or Shrewd? I should let the Fool put me to bed, let my king have his rest. But the Fool kept holding that one key morsel of information just above my snapping jaws. He juggled away the one mote of knowledge I must possess to be whole. ‘Did she die there?’ I demanded. He looked at me sadly. He stooped abruptly, picked up his rat sceptre again. A tiny pearl of a tear trickled down Ratsy’s cheek. He focused on it and his eyes went afar again, wandering across a tundra of pain. He spoke in a whisper. ‘A woman in Siltbay. A drop of water in the current of all the women of Siltbay. What might have befallen her? Did she die? Yes. No. Badly burned, but alive. Her arm severed at the shoulder. Cornered and raped while they killed her children, but left alive. Sort of.’ The Fool’s eyes became even emptier. It was as if he read aloud from a roster. His voice had no inflection. ‘Roasted alive with the children when the burning structure fell on them. Took poison as soon as her husband awoke her. Choked to death on smoke. And died of an infection in a sword wound only a few days later. Died of a sword thrust. Strangled on her own blood as she was raped. Cut her own throat after she had killed the children while Raiders were hacking her door down. Survived, and gave birth to a Raider’s child the next summer. Was found wandering days later, badly burned, but recalling nothing. Had her face burned and her hands hacked off, but lived a short …’ ‘Stop!’ I commanded him. ‘Stop it! I beg you, stop.’ He paused and drew a breath. His eyes came back to me, focused on me. ‘Stop it?’ he sighed. He put his face into his hands, spoke through muffling fingers. ‘Stop it? So shrieked the women of Siltbay. But it is done already, my liege. We cannot stop what’s already happening. Once it’s come to pass, it’s too late.’ He lifted his face from his hands. He looked very weary. ‘Please,’ I begged him. ‘Cannot you tell me of the one woman I saw?’ I suddenly could not recall her name, only that she was very important to me. He shook his head, and the small silver bells on his cap jingled wearily. ‘The only way to find out would be to go there.’ He looked up at me. ‘If you command it, I shall do so.’ ‘Summon Verity,’ I told him instead. ‘I have instructions for him.’ ‘Our soldiers cannot arrive in time to stop this raid,’ he reminded me. ‘Only to help to douse the fires and assist the folk there in picking from the ruins what is left to them.’ ‘Then so they shall do,’ I said heavily. ‘First, let me help you return to your bed, my king. Before you take a chill. And let me bring you food.’ ‘No, Fool,’ I told him sadly. ‘Shall I eat and be warm, while the bodies of children are cooling in the mud? Fetch me instead my robe and buskins. And then be off to find Verity.’ The Fool stood his ground boldly. ‘Do you think the discomfort you inflict on yourself will give even one child another breath, my liege? What happened at Siltbay is done. Why must you suffer?’ ‘Why must I suffer?’ I found a smile for the Fool. ‘Surely that is the same question that every inhabitant of Siltbay asked tonight of the fog. I suffer, my Fool, because they did. Because I am king. But more, because I am a man, and I saw what happened there. Consider it, Fool. What if every man in the Six Duchies said to himself, “Well, the worst that can befall them has already happened. Why should I give up my meal and warm bed to concern myself with it?” Fool, by the blood that is in me, these are my folk. Do I suffer more tonight than any one of them did? What is the pain and trembling of one man compared to what happened at Siltbay? Why should I shelter myself, while my folk are slaughtered like cattle?’ ‘But two words are all I need to say to Prince Verity.’ The Fool vexed me with more words. ‘“Raiders” and “Siltbay”, and he knows as much as any man needs to. Let me rest you in your bed, my lord, and then I shall race to him with those words.’ ‘No.’ A fresh cloud of pain blossomed in the back of my skull. It tried to push the sense from my thoughts, but I held firm. I forced my body to walk to the chair beside the hearth. I managed to lower myself into it. ‘I spent my youth defining the borders of the Six Duchies to any who challenged them. Should my life be too valuable to risk now, when there is so little left of it, and all of that riddled with pain? No, Fool. Fetch my son to me at once. He shall Skill for me, since my own strength for it is at an end this night. Together, we shall consider what we see, and make our decisions as to what must be done. Now go. GO!’ The Fool’s feet pattered on the stone floor as he fled. I was left alone with myself. Myselves. I put my hands to my temples. I felt a painful smile crease my face as I found myself. So, boy. There you are. My king slowly turned his attention to me. He was weary, but he reached his Skill towards me to touch my mind as softly as blowing spider web. I reached clumsily, attempting to complete the Skill bond and it all went awry. Our contact tattered, frayed apart like rotten cloth. And then he was gone. I hunkered alone on the floor of my bedchamber in the Mountain Kingdom, uncomfortably close to the hearth fire. I was fifteen, and my nightclothes were soft and clean. The fire in the hearth had burned low. My blistered fingers throbbed angrily. The beginnings of a Skill headache pulsed in my temples. I moved slowly, cautiously, as I rose. Like an old man? No. Like a young man whose health was still mending. I knew the difference now. My soft, clean bed beckoned, like a soft clean tomorrow. I refused them both. I took the chair by the hearth and stared into the flames, pondering. When Burrich came at first light to bid me farewell, I was ready to ride with him. TWO (#ulink_b36e5964-45d2-5c2e-93dd-c0681a967a35) The Homecoming (#ulink_b36e5964-45d2-5c2e-93dd-c0681a967a35) Buckkeep Hold overlooks the finest deep water harbour in the Six Duchies. To the north, the Buck River spills into the sea, and with its waters carries most of the goods exported from the interior Duchies of Tilth and Farrow. Steep black cliffs provide the seat for the castle which overlooks the river mouth, the harbour and the waters beyond. The town of Buckkeep clings precariously to those cliffs, well away from the great river’s flood plain, with a good portion of it built on docks and quays. The original stronghold was a log structure built by the inhabitants of the area as a defence against Outislander raids. It was seized in ancient time, by a Raider named Taker, who with the seizing of the fort became a resident. He replaced the timber structure with walls and towers of black stone quarried from the cliffs themselves, and in the process sank the foundations of Buckkeep deep into the stone. With each succeeding generation of the Farseer line, the walls are fortified and the towers built toller and stouter. Since Taker, the founder of the Farseer line, Buckkeep has never fallen to enemy hands. Snow kissed my face, wind pushed the hair back from my forehead. I stirred from a dark dream to a darker one, to a winterscape in forest land. I was cold, save where the rising heat of my toiling horse warmed me. Beneath me, Sooty was plodding stolidly along through wind-banked snow. I thought I had been riding long. Hands, the stable-boy, was riding before me. He turned in his saddle and shouted something back to me. Sooty stopped, not abruptly, but I was not expecting it, and I nearly slid from the saddle. I caught at her mane and steadied myself. Falling flakes veiled the forest around us. The spruce trees were heavy with accumulated snow, while the interspersed birches were bare black silhouettes in the clouded winter moonlight. There was no sign of a trail. The woods were thick around us. Hands had reined in his black gelding in front of us, and that was why Sooty halted. Behind me Burrich sat his roan mare with the practised ease of the lifelong horseman. I was cold, and shaky with weakness. I looked round dully, wondering why we had stopped. The wind gusted sharply, snapping my damp cloak against Sooty’s flank. Hands pointed suddenly. ‘There!’ He looked back at me. ‘Surely you saw that?’ I leaned forward to peer through snow that fell like fluttering lace curtains. ‘I think so,’ I said, the wind and snow swallowing my words. For an instant I had glimpsed tiny lights, yellow and stationary, unlike the pale blue will o’the wisps that still occasionally plagued my vision. ‘Do you think it’s Buckkeep?’ Hands shouted through the rising wind. ‘It is,’ Burrich asserted quietly, his deep voice carrying effortlessly. ‘I know where we are now. This is where Prince Verity killed that big doe about six years ago. I remember because she leaped when the arrow went in, and tumbled down that gully. It took us the rest of the day to get down there and pack the meat out.’ The gully he gestured to was no more than a line of brush glimpsed through the falling snow. But suddenly it all snapped into place for me. The lie of this hillside, the types of trees, the gully there, and so Buckkeep was that way, just a brief ride before we could clearly see the fortress on the sea-cliffs overlooking the bay and Buckkeep Town below. For the first time in days, I knew with absolute certainty where we were. The heavy overcast had kept us from checking our course by the stars, and the unusually deep snowfall had altered the lay of the land until even Burrich had seemed unsure. But now I knew that home was but a brief ride away. In summer. But I picked up what was left of my determination. ‘Not much farther,’ I told Burrich. Hands had already started his horse. The stocky little gelding surged ahead bravely, breaking trail through the banked snow. I nudged Sooty and the tall mare reluctantly stepped out. As she leaned into the hill, I slid to one side. As I scrabbled futilely at my saddle, Burrich nudged his horse abreast of mine. He reached out, seized me by the back of my collar and dragged me upright again. ‘It’s not much farther,’ he agreed. ‘You’ll make it.’ I managed a nod. It was only the second time he’d had to steady me in the last hour or so. One of my better evenings, I told myself bitterly. I pulled myself up straighter in the saddle, resolutely squared my shoulders. Nearly home. The journey had been long and arduous. The weather had been foul, and the constant hardships had not improved my health. Much of it I remembered like a dark dream; days of jolting along in the saddle, barely cognizant of our path, nights when I lay between Hands and Burrich in our small tent and trembled with a weariness so great I could not even sleep. As we had drawn closer to Buck Duchy, I had thought our travel would become easier. I had not reckoned on Burrich’s caution. At Turlake, we had stopped a night at an inn. I had thought that we’d take passage on a river barge the next day, for though ice might line the banks of the Buck River, its strong current kept a channel clear year round. I went straight to our room, for I had not much stamina. Burrich and Hands were both anticipating hot food and companionship, to say nothing of ale. I had not expected them to come soon to the room. But scarcely two hours had passed before they both came up to ready themselves for bed. Burrich was grim and silent, but after he had gone to bed, Hands whispered to me from his bed how poorly the King was spoken of in this town. ‘Had they known we were from Buckkeep, I doubt they would have spoken so freely. But clad as we are in Mountain garments, they thought us traders or merchants. A dozen times I thought Burrich would challenge one of them. In truth, I do not know how he contained himself. All complain about the taxes for defending the coast. They sneer, saying that for all the taxes they bleed, the Raiders still came unlooked for in autumn, when the weather lasted fine, and burned two more towns.’ Hands had paused, and uncertainly added, ‘But they speak uncommonly well of Prince Regal. He passed through here escorting Kettricken back to Buckkeep. One man at the table called her a great white fish of a wife, fit for the Coast King. And another spoke up, saying that at least Prince Regal bore himself well despite his hardships, and looked ever as a prince should. Then they drank to the Prince’s health and long life.’ A cold settled in me. I whispered back, ‘The two Forged villages. Did you hear which ones they were?’ ‘Whale-jaw up in Bearns. And Siltbay in Buck itself.’ The darkness settled darker around me, and I lay watching it all night. The next morning we left Turlake. On horseback. Overland. Burrich would not even let us keep to the road. I had protested in vain. He had listened to me complain, then taken me aside to demand fiercely, ‘Do you want to die?’ I looked at him blankly. He snorted in disgust. ‘Fitz, nothing has changed. You’re still a royal bastard, and Prince Regal still regards you as an obstacle. He’s tried to be rid of you, not once, but thrice. Do you think he’s going to welcome you back to Buckkeep? No. Even better for him if we never make it back at all. So let’s not make easy targets of ourselves. We go overland. If he or his hirelings want us, they’ll have to hunt us through the woods. And he’s never been much of a hunter.’ ‘Wouldn’t Verity protect us?’ I asked weakly. ‘You’re a King’s Man, and Verity is King-in-Waiting,’ Burrich had pointed out shortly. ‘You protect your king, Fitz. Not the reverse. Not that he doesn’t think well of you, and would do all he could to protect you. But he has weightier matters to attend. Red Ships. A new bride. And a younger brother who thinks the crown would sit better on his own head. No. Don’t expect the King-in-Waiting to watch over you. Do that for yourself.’ All I could think of was the extra days he was putting between me and my search for Molly. But I did not give that reason. I had not told him of my dream. Instead, I said, ‘Regal would have to be crazy to try to kill us again. Everyone would know he was the murderer.’ ‘Not crazy, Fitz. Just ruthless. Regal is that. Let’s not ever suppose that Regal abides by the rules we observe, or even thinks as we do. If Regal sees an opportunity to kill us, he’ll take it. He won’t care who suspects so long as no one can prove it. Verity is our King-in-Waiting. Not our king. Not yet. While King Shrewd is alive and on the throne, Regal will find ways around his father. He will get away with many things. Even murder.’ Burrich had reined his horse aside from the well travelled road, plunged off through drifts and up the unmarked snowy hillside beyond, to strike a straight course for Buckkeep. Hands had looked at me as if he felt ill. But we had followed. And every night when we had slept, bundled all together in a single tent for warmth instead of in beds at a cosy inn, I had thought of Regal. Every floundering step up each hillside, leading our horses more often than not, and during every cautious descent, I had thought of the youngest prince. I tallied every extra hour between Molly and me. The only times I felt strength surge through me were during my day-dreams of battering Regal into ruin. I could not promise myself revenge. Revenge was the property of the crown. But if I could not have revenge, Regal would not have satisfaction. I would return to Buckkeep, and I would stand tall before him, and when his black eye fell upon me, I would not flinch. Nor, I vowed, would Regal ever see me tremble, or catch at a wall for support, or pass a hand before my blurry eyes. He would never know how close he had come to winning it all. So at last we rode to Buckkeep, not up the winding sea-coast road, but from the forested hills behind her. The snow dwindled, then ceased. The night winds blew the clouds aside, and a fine moon made Buckkeep’s stone walls shine black as jet against the sea. Light shimmered yellow in her turrets and at the side gate. ‘We’re home,’ Burrich said quietly. We rode down one last hill, struck the road at last, and rode around to the great gate of Buckkeep. A young soldier stood night-guard. He lowered his pike to block our way and demanded our names. Burrich pushed his hood back from his face, but the lad didn’t move. ‘I’m Burrich, the Stablemaster!’ Burrich informed him incredulously. ‘The Stablemaster here for longer than you’ve been alive, most likely. I feel I should be asking you what your business is here at my gate!’ Before the flustered lad could reply, there was a tumble and rush of soldiers from the guard house. ‘It is Burrich!’ the watch sergeant exclaimed. Burrich was instantly the centre of a cluster of men, all shouting greetings and talking at once while Hands and I sat on our weary horses at the edge of the hubbub. The sergeant, one Blade, finally shouted them to silence, mostly so he could speak his own comments easily. ‘We hadn’t looked for you until spring, man,’ the burly old soldier declared. ‘And even then, we was told you might not be the man that left here. But you look good, you do. A bit cold, and outlandishly dressed, and another scar or two, but yourself for all that. Word was that you was hurt bad, and the Bastard like to die. Plague or poison, the rumours was.’ Burrich laughed and held out his arms that all might admire his Mountain garb. For a moment I saw Burrich as they must have seen him, his purple and yellow quilted trousers and smock and buskins. I no longer wondered at how we had been challenged at the gate. But I did wonder at the rumours. ‘Who said the Bastard would die?’ I demanded curiously. ‘Who’s asking?’ Blade demanded in return. He glanced over my garments, looked me in the eye, and knew me not. But as I sat up straighter on my horse, he gave a start. To this day, I believe he knew Sooty and that was how he recognized me. He did not cover his shock. ‘Fitz? There’s hardly half of you left! You look like you’ve had the blood plague.’ It was my first inkling of just how bad I looked to those who knew me. ‘Who said I had been poisoned, or afflicted with plague?’ I repeated the question quietly. Blade flinched and glanced back over his shoulder. ‘Oh, no one. Well, no one in particular. You know how it is. When you didn’t come back with the others, well, some supposed this and some that, and pretty soon, it was almost like we knew it. Rumours, guard-room talk. Soldiers gossip. We wondered why you didn’t come back, that was all. No one believed anything that was said. We spread too many rumours ourselves to give gossip any credence. We just wondered why you and Burrich and Hands hadn’t come back.’ He finally realized he was repeating himself and fell silent before my stare. I let the silence stretch long enough to make it plain that I didn’t intend to answer this question. Then I shrugged it away. ‘No harm done, Blade. But you can tell them all the Bastard isn’t done for yet. Plagues or poisons, you should have known Burrich would physick me through it. I’m alive and well; I just look like a corpse.’ ‘Oh, Fitz, lad, I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that …’ ‘I said, no harm done, Blade. Let it go.’ ‘Good enough, sir,’ he replied. I nodded, and looked at Burrich to find him regarding me strangely. When I turned to exchange a puzzled glance with Hands, I met the same startlement on his face. I could not guess the reason. ‘Well, good night to you, sergeant. Don’t chide your man with the pike. He did well to stop strangers at Buckkeep’s gate.’ ‘Yes sir. Good night, sir.’ Blade gave me a rusty salute and the great wooden gates swung wide before us as we entered the keep. Sooty lifted her head and some of the weariness fell from her. Behind me, Hands’ horse whinnied softly and Burrich’s snorted. Never before had the road from the keep wall to the stables seemed so long. As Hands dismounted, Burrich caught me by the sleeve and held me back. Hands greeted the drowsy stable-boy who appeared to light our way. ‘We’ve been some time in the Mountain Kingdom, Fitz,’ Burrich cautioned me in a low voice. ‘Up there, no one cares what side of the sheets you were born on. But we’re home now. Here, Chivalry’s son is not a prince, but a bastard.’ ‘I know that.’ I was stung by his directness. ‘I’ve known it all my life. Lived it all my life.’ ‘You have,’ he conceded. A strange look stole over his face, a smile half incredulous and half proud. ‘So why are you demanding reports of the sergeant, and giving out commendations as briskly as if you were Chivalry himself? I scarce believed it, how you spoke, and how those men came to heel. You didn’t even take notice of how they responded to you, you didn’t even realize you’d stepped up and taken command away from me.’ I felt a slow flush creep up my face. All in the Mountain Kingdom had treated me as if I were a prince in fact, instead of a prince’s bastard. Had I so quickly accustomed myself to that higher station? Burrich chuckled at my expression, then quickly grew sober. ‘Fitz, you need to find your caution again. Keep your eyes down and don’t carry your head like a young stallion. Regal will take it as a challenge, and that’s something we aren’t ready to face. Not yet. Maybe not ever.’ I nodded grimly, my eyes on the churned snow of the stable yard. I had become careless. When I reported to Chade, the old assassin would not be pleased with his apprentice. I would have to answer for it. I had no doubt that he would know all about the incident at the gate before he next summoned me. ‘Don’t be a sluggard. Get down, boy.’ Burrich interrupted my musings abruptly. I jumped to his tone and realized that he, too, was having to readjust to our comparative positions at Buckkeep. How many years had I been his stable-boy and ward? Best that we resume those roles as closely as possible. It would save kitchen gossip. I dismounted and, leading Sooty, followed Burrich into his stables. Inside it was warm and close. The blackness and cold of the winter night were shut outside the thick stone wall. Here was home, the lanterns shone yellow and the stalled horses breathed slow and deep. But as Burrich passed, the stables came to life. Not a horse or a dog in the whole place didn’t catch his scent and rouse to give greeting. The Stablemaster was home, and he was greeted warmly by those who knew him best. Two stable-boys soon trailed after us, rattling off simultaneously every bit of news concerning hawk or hound or horse. Burrich was in full command here, nodding sagely and asking a terse question or two as he absorbed every detail. His reserve only broke when his old bitch hound Vixen came walking stiff to greet him. He went down on one knee to hug and thump her and she wiggled puppyishly and tried to lick his face. ‘Now, here’s a real dog,’ he greeted her. Then he stood again, to continue his round. She followed him, hindquarters wobbling with every wag of her tail. I lagged behind, the warmth robbing the strength from my limbs. One boy came hurrying back to leave a lamp with me, and then hastened away to pay court to Burrich. I came to Sooty’s stall and unlatched the door. She entered eagerly, snorting her appreciation. I set my light on its shelf and looked about me. Home. This was home, more than my chamber up in the castle, more than anywhere else in the world. A stall in Burrich’s stable, safe in his domain, one of his creatures. If only I could turn back the days, and burrow into the deep straw and drag a horse blanket over my head. Sooty snorted again, this time rebukingly. She’d carried me all those days and ways, and deserved every comfort I could give her. But every buckle resisted my numbed and weary fingers. I dragged the saddle down from her back and very nearly dropped it. I fumbled at her bridle endlessly, the bright metal of the buckles dancing before my eyes. Finally I closed them and let my fingers work alone to take her bridle off. When I opened my eyes, Hands was at my elbow. I nodded at him, and the bridle dropped from my lifeless fingers. He glanced at it, but said nothing. Instead he poured for Sooty the bucket of fresh water he had brought, and shook out oats for her and fetched an armful of sweet hay with much green still to it. I had taken down Sooty’s brushes when he reached past me and took them from my feeble grip. ‘I’ll do this,’ he said quietly. ‘Take care of your own horse first,’ I chided him. ‘I already did, Fitz. Look. You can’t do a good job on her. Let me do it. You can barely stand up. Go get some rest.’ He added, almost kindly, ‘Another time, when we ride, you can do Stoutheart for me.’ ‘Burrich will have my hide off if I leave my animal’s care for someone else.’ ‘No, he won’t. He wouldn’t leave an animal in the care of someone who can barely stand,’ Burrich observed from outside the stall. ‘Leave Sooty to Hands, boy. He knows his job. Hands, take charge of things here for a bit. When you’ve done with Sooty, check on that spotted mare at the south end of the stables. I don’t know who owns her or where she came from, but she looks sick. If you find it so, have the boys move her away from the other horses and scrub out the stall with vinegar. I’ll be back in a bit after I see FitzChivalry to his quarters. I’ll bring you food, and we’ll eat in my room. Oh. Tell a boy to start us a fire. Probably cold as a cave up there.’ Hands nodded, already busy with my horse. Sooty’s nose was in her oats. Burrich took my arm. ‘Come along,’ he said, just as he spoke to a horse. I found myself unwillingly leaning on him as he walked the long row of stalls. At the door he picked up a lantern. The night seemed colder and darker after the warmth of the stables. As we walked up the frozen path to the kitchens, the snow began to fall again. My mind went swirling and drifting with the flakes. I wasn’t sure where my feet were. ‘It’s all changed, forever, now,’ I observed to the night. My words whirled away with the snowflakes. ‘What has?’ Burrich asked cautiously. His tone bespoke his worry that I might be getting feverish again. ‘Everything. How you treat me. When you aren’t thinking about it. How Hands treats me. Two years ago, he and I were friends. Just two boys working in the stables. He’d never have offered to brush down my horse for me. But tonight, he treated me like some sickly weakling … not even someone he can insult about it. As if I should just expect him to do things like that for me. The men at the gate didn’t even know me. Even you, Burrich. Six months or a year ago, if I took sick, you’d have dragged me up to your loft and dosed me like a hound. And if I’d complained, you’d have had no tolerance for it. Now you walk me up to the kitchen doors and …’ ‘Stop whining,’ Burrich said gruffly. ‘Stop complaining and stop pitying yourself. If Hands looked like you do, you’d do the same for him.’ Almost unwillingly he added, ‘Things change, because time passes. Hands hasn’t stopped being your friend. But you are not the same boy who left Buckkeep at harvest time. That Fitz was an errand boy for Verity, and had been my stable-boy, but wasn’t much more than that. A royal bastard, yes, but that seemed of small importance to any save me. But up at Jhaampe in the Mountain Kingdom, you showed yourself more than that. It doesn’t matter if your face is pale, or if you can barely walk after a day in the saddle. You move as Chivalry’s son should. That is what shows in your bearing, and what those guards responded to. And Hands.’ He took a breath and paused to shoulder the heavy kitchen door open. ‘And I, Eda help us all,’ he added in a mutter. But then, as if to belie his own words, he steered me into the watch-room off the kitchen and unceremoniously dumped me at one of the long benches beside the scarred wooden table. The watch-room smelled incredibly good. Here was where any soldier, no matter how muddy or snowy or drunk, could come and find comfort. Cook always kept a kettle of stew simmering over the fire, and bread and cheese waited on the table, as well as a slab of yellow summer butter from the deep larder. Burrich served us up bowls of hot stew thick with barley and mugs of cold ale to go with the bread and butter and cheese. For a moment I just looked at it, too weary to lift a spoon. But the smell tempted me to one mouthful and that was all it took. Midway through, I paused to shoulder out of my quilted smock and break off another slab of bread. I looked up from my second bowl of stew to find Burrich watching me with amusement. ‘Better?’ he asked. I stopped to think about it. ‘Yes.’ I was warm, fed, and though I was tired, it was a good weariness, one that might be cured by sleep. I lifted my hand and looked at it. I could still feel the tremors, but they were no longer obvious to the eye. ‘Much better.’ I stood, and found my legs unsteady under me. ‘Now you’re fit to report to the King.’ I stared at him in disbelief. ‘Now? Tonight? King Shrewd’s long abed. I won’t get past his door guard.’ ‘Perhaps not, and you should be grateful for that. But you must at least announce yourself there tonight. It’s the King’s decision as to when he will see you. If you’re turned away, then you can go to bed. But I’ll wager that if King Shrewd turns you aside, King-in-Waiting Verity will still want a report. And probably right away.’ ‘Are you going back to the stables?’ ‘Of course.’ He smiled in wolfish self-satisfaction. ‘Me, I’m just the Stablemaster, Fitz. I have nothing to report. And I promised Hands I’d bring him something to eat.’ I watched silently as he loaded a platter. He sliced the bread lengthwise and covered two bowls of the hot stew with a slab of it, and then loaded a wedge of cheese and a thick slice of yellow butter onto the side. ‘What do you think of Hands?’ ‘He’s a good lad,’ Burrich said grudgingly. ‘He’s more than that. You chose him to stay in the Mountain Kingdom and ride home with us, when you sent all the others back with the main caravan.’ ‘I needed someone steady. At that time, you were … very ill. And I wasn’t much better, truth to tell.’ He lifted a hand to a streak of white in his dark hair, testimony to the blow that had nearly killed him. ‘How did you come to choose him?’ ‘I didn’t really. He came to me. Somehow he found where they’d housed us, and then talked his way past Jonqui. I was still bandaged up and scarce able to make my eyes focus. I felt him standing there more than saw him. I asked him what he wanted, and he told me that I needed to put someone in charge, because with me sick and Cob gone, the stable help were getting sloppy.’ ‘And that impressed you.’ ‘He got to the point. No idle questions about me, or you, or what was going on. He had found the thing he could do and come to do it. I like that in a man. Knowing what he can do, and doing it. So I put him in charge. He managed it well. I kept him when I sent the others home because I knew I might need a man who could do that. And also to see for myself what he was. Was he all ambition, or was there a genuine understanding of what a man owes a beast when he claims to own him? Did he want power over those under him, or the well-being of his animals?’ ‘What do you think of him now?’ ‘I am not so young as I once was. I think there still may be a good Stablemaster in Buckkeep Stables when I can no longer manage an ill-tempered stallion. Not that I expect to step down soon. There is still much he needs to be taught. But we are both still young enough, him to learn and me to teach. There is a satisfaction in that.’ I nodded. Once, I supposed, he had planned that spot for me. Now we both knew it would never be. He turned to go. ‘Burrich,’ I said quietly. He paused. ‘No one can replace you. Thank you. For all you’ve done these last few months. I owe you my life. Not just that you saved me from death. But you gave me my life, and who I am. Ever since I was six. Chivalry was my father, I know. But I never met him. You’ve fathered me day in and day out, over a lot of years. I didn’t always appreciate …’ Burrich snorted and opened the door. ‘Save speeches like that for when one of us is dying. Go report, and then go to bed.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ I heard myself say, and knew that he smiled even as I did. He shouldered the door open and bore Hands’ dinner out to the stables for him. He was home there. And this, here, was my home. Time I dealt with that. I took a moment to straighten my damp clothing and run a hand through my hair. I cleared our dishes from the table and then folded my wet smock over my arm. As I made my way from the kitchen to the hall, and then to the Great Hall, I was mystified by what I saw. Did the tapestries glow more brightly than they once had? Had the strewing herbs always smelled so sweet, the carved woodwork by each doorway always gleamed so warmly? Briefly I put it down to my relief at finally being home. But when I paused at the foot of the great stair to take up a candle to light my way up to my chamber, I noticed that the table there was not bespattered with wax, and more, that an embroidered cloth graced it. Kettricken. There was a queen at Buckkeep now. I found myself smiling foolishly. So. This great fortress castle had had a going-over in my absence. Had Verity bestirred himself and his folk before her arrival, or had Kettricken herself demanded this vast scrubbing out? It would be interesting to find out. As I climbed the great staircase, I noticed other things. The ancient soot marks above each sconce were gone. Not even the corners of the steps held dust. There were no cobwebs. The candelabra at each landing were full and bright with candles. And a rack at each landing held blades, ready for defence. So this was what it meant to have a queen in residence. But even when Shrewd’s Queen had been alive, I didn’t recall that Buckkeep had looked or smelled so clean or been so brightly lit. The guard at King Shrewd’s door was a dour-faced veteran I had known since I was six. A silent man, he peered at me closely, then recognized me. He allowed me a brief smile as he asked, ‘Anything critical to report, Fitz?’ ‘Only that I’m back,’ I said, and he nodded sagely. He was used to my coming and going here, often at some very odd hours, but he was not a man to make assumptions or draw conclusions, or even speak to those who might. So he stepped quietly inside the King’s chamber, to pass the word to someone that Fitz was here. In a moment the word came back that the King would summon me at his convenience, but also that he was glad I was safe. I stepped quietly away from his door, making more of his message than if those words had come from any other man. Shrewd never mouthed polite nothings. Further down the same corridor were Verity’s chambers. Here again I was recognized, but when I requested the man let Verity know I was back and wished to report, he replied only that Prince Verity was not within his chamber. ‘In his tower, then?’ I asked, wondering what he would be watching for at this time of year. Winter storms kept our coast safe from raiders for at least these few months of the year. A slow smile stole over the guard’s face. When he saw my puzzled glance, it became a grin. ‘Prince Verity is not in his chambers just now,’ he repeated. And then added, ‘I shall see that he gets your message as soon as he awakes in the morning.’ For a moment longer, I stood, stupid as a post. Then I turned and walked quietly away. I felt a sort of wonder. This, too, was what it meant for there to be a queen in Buckkeep. I climbed another two flights of stairs, and went down the hall to my own chamber. It smelled stale, and there was no fire in the hearth. It was cold with disuse, and dusty. No touch of a woman’s hand here. It seemed as bare and colourless as a cell. But it was still warmer than a tent in the snow, and the feather bed was as soft and deep as I remembered it. I shed my travel-stained garments as I walked toward it. I fell into it and sleep. THREE (#ulink_f2f905b6-c844-51a4-a1a8-cca438770f81) Renewing Ties (#ulink_f2f905b6-c844-51a4-a1a8-cca438770f81) The oldest reference to the mythical Elderlings in the Buckkeep library is a battered scroll. Vague discoloration upon the vellum suggests that it came from a parti-coloured beast, one mottled in a way unfamiliar to any of our hunters. The lettering ink is one derived from squid ink and bell root. It has stood the test of time well, much better than the coloured inks that originally supplied illustrations and illuminations for the text. These have not only faded and bled, but in many places have drawn the attentions of some mite that has gnawed and stiffened the once supple parchment, making parts of the scroll too brittle to unroll. Unfortunately, the damage is concentrated at the innermost parts of the scroll, which deal with portions of King Wisdom’s quest that were not recorded elsewhere. From these fragmented remains, one can glean that sore need drove him to seek the homeland of the Elderlings. His troubles are familiar ones; ships raided his coastline mercilessly. Tatters hint that he rode off toward the Mountain Kingdom; but unfortunately the final stages of his journey and his encounter with the Elderlings seem to have been richly illustrated, for here the parchment is reduced to a lacy web of tantalizing word bits and body parts. We do not know anything of this first encounter. Nor have we even an inkling as to how he induced the Elderlings to become his allies. Many songs, rich in metaphor, tell how the Elderlings descended, like ‘storms’, like ‘tidal waves’, like ‘vengeance gone gold’, and ‘wrath embodied in flesh of stone’ to drive the Raiders away from our shores. Legend also tells us that they swore to Wisdom that if ever the Six Duchies had need of their aid, they would rise again to our defence. One may conjecture; many have, and the variety of legends that surround this alliance are proof of that. But King Wisdom’s scribe’s recounting of the event has been lost to mildew and worms for ever. My chamber had a single tall window that looked out over the sea. In winter a wooden shutter closed out the storm winds, and a tapestry hung over that gave my room an illusion of cosy warmth. So I awakened to darkness, and for a time lay quietly finding myself. Gradually the subtle sounds of the keep filtered in to me. Morning sounds. Very early morning sounds. Home, I realized. Buckkeep. And in the next instant, ‘Molly,’ I said aloud to the darkness. My body was weary and aching still. But not exhausted. I clambered from my bed into the chill of my room. I stumbled to my long disused hearth and kindled a small fire. I needed to bring up more firewood soon. The dancing flames lent the room a fickle yellow light. I took clothing from the chest at the foot of my bed, only to find the garments oddly ill-fitting. My long illness had wasted the muscle from my frame, but I had still somehow managed to grow longer in the legs and arms. Nothing fitted. I picked up my shirt from the day before, but a night in clean bedding had refreshed my nose. I could no longer abide the smell of the travel-stained garment. I dug in my clothes chest again. I found one soft brown shirt that had once been too long in the sleeve for me, and now just fitted. I put it on with my green quilted mountain trousers and buskins. I had no doubt that as soon as I encountered the Lady Patience or Mistress Hasty, I would be attacked and the situation remedied. But not, I hoped, before breakfast and a trip into Buckkeep Town. There were several places there where I might get word of Molly. I found the castle stirring but not yet fully awake. I ate in the kitchen as I had when a child, finding that there, as always, the bread was freshest and the porridge sweetest. Cook exclaimed to see me, one minute commenting on how much I had grown, and the next lamenting how thin and worn I looked. I surmised that before the day was out I would be heartily sick of these observations. As traffic in the kitchen increased, I fled, carrying off a thick slice of bread well buttered and laden with rosehip preserves. I headed back towards my room to get a winter cloak. In every chamber I passed through, I found more and more evidence of Kettricken’s presence. A sort of tapestry, woven of different coloured grasses and representing a mountain scene, now graced the wall of the Lesser Hall. There were no flowers to be had this time of year, but in odd places I encountered fat pottery bowls full of pebbles, and these held bare but graceful branches, or dried thistles and cat tails. The changes were small but unmistakable. I found myself in one of the older sections of Buckkeep, and then climbing the dusty steps to Verity’s watch-tower. It commanded a wide view of our sea-coast, and from its tall windows Verity kept his summer vigil for raiding ships. From here he worked the Skill magic that kept the raiders at bay, or at least gave us some warning of their coming. It was a thin defence at times. He should have had a coterie of underlings trained in the Skill to assist him. But I myself, despite my bastard blood, had never been able to control my random Skill abilities. Galen our Skillmaster had died before he had trained more than a handful in the Skill. There was no one to replace him, and those he had trained lacked a true communion with Verity. So Verity Skilled alone against our enemies. It had aged him before his time. I worried that he would overspend himself upon it, and succumb to the addicting weakness of those who Skilled too much. By the time I reached the top of the spiralling tower steps, I was winded and my legs ached. I pushed at the door and it gave easily on oiled hinges. From long habit, I stepped quietly as I entered the room. I had not really expected to find Verity or anyone else there. The sea storms were our watchmen in winter, guarding our coasts from raiders. I blinked in the sudden grey light of morning that was flooding in from the unshuttered tower windows. Verity was a dark silhouette against a dark storm sky. He did not turn. ‘Shut the door,’ he said quietly. ‘The draught up the stairs makes this room as windy as a chimney.’ I did so, and then stood shivering in the chill. The wind brought the scent of the sea with it, and I breathed it in as if it were life itself. ‘I had not expected to find you here,’ I said. He kept his eyes on the water. ‘Didn’t you? Then why did you come?’ There was amusement in his voice. It jolted me. ‘I don’t really know. I headed back to my room …’ My voice dwindled away as I tried to recall why I had come here. ‘I Skilled you,’ he said simply. I stood silent and thought. ‘I felt nothing.’ ‘I didn’t intend that you should. It is as I told you a long time ago. The Skill can be a soft whisper in a man’s ear. It doesn’t have to be a shout of command.’ He turned slowly to face me, and as my eyes adjusted to the light, my heart leaped with joy at the change I saw in the man. When I had left Buckkeep at harvest time, he had been a withered shadow, worn thin by the weight of his duties and his constant watchfulness. His dark hair was still salted with grey, but there was muscle once more on his stocky frame, and vitality snapped in his dark eyes. He looked every bit a king. ‘Marriage seems to agree with you, my prince,’ I said inanely. That flustered him. ‘In some ways,’ he conceded, as a boyish flush rose on his cheeks. He turned back quickly to his window. ‘Come and see my ships,’ he commanded. It was my turn to be baffled. I stepped to the window beside him and looked out over the harbour, and then over the sea itself. ‘Where?’ I asked in bewilderment. He took me by the shoulders and turned me toward the shipyard. A long barn of a building of new yellow pine had been erected there. Men were coming and going from it as smoke rose from chimneys and forges there. Dark against the snow were several of the immense timbers that had been Kettricken’s bride-offering to him. ‘Sometimes, when I stand up here on a winter morning, I look out to sea and I can almost see the Red Ships. I know they must come. But sometimes, too, I can see the ships we shall have to meet them. They will not find their prey so helpless this spring, my boy. And by next winter I intend to teach them what it is to be raided.’ He spoke with a savage satisfaction that would have been frightening, had I not shared it. I felt my grin mirror his as our eyes met. And then his look changed. ‘You look terrible,’ he offered. ‘As bad as your clothes. Let’s go somewhere warmer and find you some mulled wine and something to eat.’ ‘I’ve eaten,’ I told him. ‘And I’m much better than I was a few months ago, thank you.’ ‘Don’t be prickly,’ he admonished me. ‘And don’t tell me what I already know. Nor lie to me. The climb up the stair has exhausted you, and you’re shivering as you stand there.’ ‘You’re using the Skill on me,’ I accused him, and he nodded. ‘I’ve been aware of your approach for some days now. I tried several times to Skill to you, but could not make you aware of me. I was concerned when you left the road, but I understand Burrich’s concern. I am pleased that he has looked after you so well; not just in bringing you home safe, but in all that went on at Jhaampe. I am at a loss as to how to reward him. It would have to be subtle. Given who was involved, a public recognition would not do. Have you any suggestions?’ ‘Your word of thanks would be all he would accept. He would bridle that you thought he needed more. My own feelings are that no object you gave him would be a match for what he did for me. The way to handle him is to tell him to take his pick of the likely two-year-olds, for his horse is growing old. He’d understand that.’ I considered it carefully. ‘Yes. You might do that.’ ‘Might I?’ Verity asked me dryly. There was an acid edge to the amusement in his voice. I was suddenly amazed at my own boldness. ‘I forgot myself, my prince,’ I said humbly. A smile curved his lips and his hand fell on my shoulder in a heavy pat. ‘Well, I asked you, did I not? For a moment I would have sworn it was old Chivalry instructing me in handling my men, rather than my young nephew. Your trip to Jhaampe has quite changed you, boy. Come. I meant what I said about a warmer spot and a glass of something. Kettricken will be wanting to see you later in the day. And Patience, too, I imagine.’ My heart sank as he heaped the tasks before me. Buckkeep Town pulled at me like a lodestone. But this was my King-in-Waiting. I bowed my head to his will. We left the tower and I followed him down the stairs, speaking of inconsequential things. He told me to tell Mistress Hasty I needed new clothes; I asked after Leon, his wolfhound. He stopped a lad in the corridor and asked him to bring wine and meat pies to his study. I followed him, not up to his chambers, but to a lower room at once familiar and strange. The last time I had been in it, Fedwren the scribe had been using it to sort and dry herbs and shells and roots for the making of his inks. All signs of that had been cleared from it. A fire burned low in the small hearth. Verity poked this up and added wood as I looked around. There was a large carved oak table and two smaller ones, a variety of chairs, a scroll rack, and a battered shelf littered with miscellaneous objects. Spread out on the table was the beginnings of a map of the Chalced States. The corners of it were weighted with a dagger and three stones. Various scraps of parchment that littered the table top were covered with Verity’s hand and preliminary sketches with notes scratched across them. The friendly litter that covered the two smaller tables and several of the chairs seemed familiar. After a moment I recognized it as the layer of Verity’s possessions that had previously been scattered about his bedchamber. Verity rose from awakening the fire and smiled ruefully at my raised eyebrows. ‘My Queen-in-Waiting has small patience with clutter. “How,” she asked me, “Can you hope to create precise lines in the midst of such disorder?” Her own chamber has the precision of a military encampment. So, I hide myself away down here, for I quickly found that in a clean and sparse chamber I could get no work done at all. Besides, it gives me a place for quiet talk, where not all know to seek me.’ He had scarcely finished speaking before the door opened to admit Charim with a tray. I nodded to Verity’s serving-man who not only seemed unsurprised to see me, but had added to Verity’s request a certain type of spice bread that I had always enjoyed. He moved about the room briefly, making perfunctory tidying motions as he shifted a few books and scrolls to free a chair for me, and then vanished again. Verity was so accustomed to him he scarce seemed to notice him, save for the brief smile they exchanged as Charim left. ‘So,’ he said, as soon as the door was fairly shut. ‘Let’s have a full report. From the time you left Buckkeep.’ This was not a simple recounting of my journey and the events of it. I had been trained by Chade to be a spy as well as an assassin. And since my earliest days, Burrich had always demanded that I be able to give a detailed account of anything that went on in the stables in his absence. So as we ate and drank, I gave Verity an accounting of all I had seen and done since I had left the keep. This was followed by my summation of what I had concluded from my experiences, and then by what I suspected from what I had learned. By then, Charim had returned with another meal. While we consumed this, Verity limited our talk to his warships. He could not conceal his enthusiasm for them. ‘Mastfish has come down to supervise the building. I went up to High-downs myself to fetch him. He claimed to be an old man now. “The cold would stiffen my bones; I can’t build a boat in winter any more,” that was the word he sent me. So I set the apprentices work, and I myself went to fetch him. He could not refuse me to my face. When he got here, I took him down to the shipyards. And I showed him the heated shed, big enough to house a warship, built so he might work and not be cold. But that was not what convinced him. It was the white oak that Kettricken brought me. When he saw the timber, he could not wait to put a drawknife to it. The grain is straight and true throughout. The planking is well begun already. They will be lovely ships, swan-necked, sinuous as snakes upon the water.’ Enthusiasm spilled from him. I could already imagine the rising and falling of the oars, the bellying of the square masts when they were underway. Then the dishes and oddments were pushed to one side, and he began to quiz me upon events in Jhaampe. He forced me to reconsider each separate incident from every possible perspective. By the time he was finished with me, I had relived the entire episode and my anger at my betrayal was fresh and vivid once more. Verity was not blind to it. He leaned back in his chair to reach for another log. He flipped it onto the fire, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. ‘You have questions,’ he observed. ‘This time, you may ask them.’ He folded his hands quietly into his lap and waited. I tried to master my emotions. ‘Prince Regal, your brother,’ I began carefully, ‘is guilty of the highest treason. He arranged the killing of your bride’s elder brother, Prince Rurisk. He attempted a plot that would have resulted in your death. His aim was to usurp both your crown and your bride. As little more than a spice, he twice tried to kill me. And Burrich.’ I paused to breathe, forcing my heart and voice back to calmness. ‘You and I both accept those things as true. They would be difficult for us to prove,’ Verity observed mildly. ‘And he relies upon that!’ I spat out, and then turned my face aside from Verity until I could master my anger. The very intensity of it frightened me, for I had not allowed myself to feel it until now. Months ago, when I was using all my wits to stay alive, I had pushed it aside to keep my mind clear. There had followed the wasting months of convalescence as I recovered from Regal’s botched poisoning attempt. Not even to Burrich had I been able to tell all, for Verity had made it clear that he wished no one to know any more about the situation than could be helped. Now I stood before my prince, and trembled with the force of my own anger. My face spasmed suddenly in a violent series of twitches. That dismayed me enough that I was able to force calm upon myself once more. ‘Regal relies upon it,’ I said more quietly. All this while Verity had not budged nor changed expression despite my outburst. He sat gravely at his end of the table, his work-scarred hands composed before him, watching me with dark eyes. I looked down at the tabletop and traced with a fingertip the carved scrollwork on the corner. ‘He does not admire you, that you keep the laws of the kingdom. He sees it as a weakness, as a way to circumvent justice. He may try to kill you again. Almost certainly, he will make an attempt upon me.’ ‘Then we must be careful, we two, mustn’t we?’ Verity observed mildly. I lifted my eyes to look him in the face. ‘That is all you say to me?’ I asked tightly, choking down my outrage. ‘FitzChivalry. I am your prince. I am your King-in-Waiting. You are sworn to me, as much as to my father. And, if it comes to it, you are sworn to my brother as well.’ Verity rose suddenly, to take a pace around the room. ‘Justice. There’s a thing we shall ever thirst after, and ever be parched. No. We content ourselves with law. And this is only more true, the higher a man’s rank rises. Justice would put you next in line for the throne, Fitz. Chivalry was my elder brother. But law says you were born outside of wedlock, and hence can never make any claim to the crown. Some might say I had snatched the throne from my brother’s son. Should I be shocked that my younger brother should want to grab it from me?’ I had never heard Verity speak like this, his voice so even but so fraught with emotion. I kept silent. ‘You think I should punish him. I could. I need not prove his wrongdoing to make life unpleasant for him. I could send him as emissary to Cold Bay, on some contrived errand, and keep him there, in uncomfortable conditions, far from court. I could all but banish him. Or I could keep him here at court, but so load him with unpleasant duties that he has no time for that which amuses him. He would understand he was being punished. So would every noble with half a wit. Those who sympathize with him would rally to his defence. The Inland Duchies could contrive some emergency in his mother’s land that demanded the presence of her son. Once there, he could build further support for himself. He might very well be able to foment the civil unrest he sought before, and found an inland kingdom loyal only to him. Even if he did not achieve that end, he could cause enough unrest to steal the unity I must have if I am to defend our kingdom.’ He stopped speaking. He lifted his eyes and glanced around the room. I followed his gaze. The walls were hung with his maps. There was Bearns, there was Shoaks and here was Rippon. On the opposite wall, Buck, Farrow and Tilth. All done in Verity’s precise hand, every river blue inked, every town named. Here were his Six Duchies. He knew them as Regal never would. He had ridden those roads, helped set the markers of those boundaries. Following Chivalry, he had treated with the folk who bordered our lands. He had swung a sword in defence of it, and known when to set down that sword and negotiate a peace. Who was I to be telling him how to rule at home? ‘What will you do?’ I asked quietly. ‘Keep him. He is my brother. And my father’s son.’ He poured himself more wine. ‘My father’s most cherished, youngest son. I have gone to my father the King, and suggested that Regal might be more content with his lot if he had more to do with the running of the kingdom. King Shrewd has consented to this. I expect to be much occupied with defending our land from the Red Ships. So to Regal will fall the task of raising the revenues we shall need, and he will also be dealing with any other internal crises that may arise. With a circle of nobles to assist him, of course. He is full welcome to deal with their bickering and dissensions.’ ‘And Regal is content with this?’ Verity smiled a thin smile. ‘He cannot say he is not. Not if he wishes to keep the image of a young man adept at ruling and but waiting for opportunity to prove himself.’ He lifted his wine glass and turned to stare into the fire. The only sound in the room was the snapping of the flames as they consumed the wood. ‘When you come to me tomorrow,’ he began. ‘Tomorrow I must have for myself,’ I told him. He set down his wine glass and turned to look at me. ‘Must you?’ he asked in an odd tone. I looked up and met his eyes. I swallowed. I brought myself to my feet. ‘My prince,’ I began formally. ‘I would ask your kind permission to be excused from duties tomorrow, that I may … pursue errands of my own.’ He let me stand for a moment. Then, ‘Oh, sit down, Fitz. Petty. I suppose that was petty of me. Thinking of Regal puts me in such a frame of mind. Certainly you can have the day, boy. If anyone asks, you are on my business. Might I ask what this urgent errand is?’ I looked into the fire at the leaping flames. ‘My friend was living in Siltbay. I need to find out …’ ‘Oh, Fitz.’ There was more sympathy in Verity’s voice than I could stand. A sudden wave of weariness washed over me. I was glad to sit again. My hands began to tremble. I put them below the table and clasped them to still them. I still felt the tremors, but at least no one could see my weakness now. He cleared his throat. ‘Go to your room and rest,’ he said kindly. ‘Do you want a man to ride with you to Siltbay tomorrow?’ I shook my head dumbly, suddenly and miserably certain of what I would discover. The thought made me sick. Another shudder went through me. I tried to breathe slowly, to calm myself and edge back from the fit that threatened. I could not abide the thought of shaming myself that way before Verity. ‘Shame to me, not you, to have ignored how ill you have been.’ He had risen silently. He set his glass of wine before me. ‘The damage you took was taken for me. I am appalled by what I allowed to befall you.’ I forced myself to meet Verity’s eyes. He knew all that I tried to conceal. Knew it, and was miserable with guilt. ‘It is not often this bad,’ I offered. He smiled at me, but his eyes did not change. ‘You are an excellent liar, Fitz. Do not think your training has gone awry. But you cannot lie to a man who has been with you as much as I have, not just these last few days, but often during your illness. If any other man says to you, “I know just how you feel,” you may regard it as a politeness. But from me accept it as truth. And I know that with you it is as it is with Burrich. I shall not offer you the pick of the colts a few months hence. I do offer you my arm, if you wish it, to get back to your room.’ ‘I can manage,’ I said stiffly. I was aware of how he honoured me, but also of how plainly he saw my weakness. I wanted to be alone, to hide myself. He nodded, understanding. ‘Would that you had mastered the Skill. I could offer you strength, just as I have too often taken it from you.’ ‘I could not,’ I muttered, unable to mask how distasteful I would find the drawing off of another man’s strength to replace my own. I instantly regretted the moment of shame I saw in my prince’s eyes. ‘I, too, could once speak with such pride,’ he said quietly. ‘Go get some rest, boy.’ He turned slowly aside from me. He busied himself setting out his inks and his vellum once more. I left quietly. We had been closeted for the whole day. Outside, it was full dark. The castle had the settled air of a winter’s evening. The tables cleared, the folk would be gathered about the hearths in the Great Hall. Minstrels might be singing, or a puppeteer moving his gangly charges through a story. Some folk would watch while fletching arrows, some would be plying needles, children would be spinning tops or matching markers or drowsing against their parents’ knees or shoulders. All was secure. Beyond the walls the winter storms blew and kept us safe. I walked with a drunkard’s caution, avoiding the common areas where folk had gathered for the evening. I folded my arms and hunched my shoulders as if chilled, and so stilled the trembling in my arms. I climbed the first flight of stairs slowly, as if lost in thought. On the landing I permitted myself to pause for a count of ten, then forced myself to begin the next flight. But as I set my foot to the first step, Lacey came bounding down. A plump woman more than a score of years older than myself, she still moved down the steps with a child’s skipping gait. As she reached the bottom, she seized me with a cry of ‘There you are!’ as if I were a pair of shears she’d misplaced from her sewing basket. She clutched my arm firmly and turned me toward the hall. ‘I’ve been up and down those stairs a dozen times today if I’ve been once. My, you’ve got taller. Lady Patience has not been at all herself and it’s your fault. At first she expected you to tap on the door any moment. She was so pleased you were finally home.’ She paused to look up at me with her bright bird eyes. ‘That was this morning,’ she confided. Then, ‘You have been ill! Such circles under your eyes.’ Without giving me a chance to reply, she went on, ‘By early afternoon, when you hadn’t arrived, she began to be insulted and a bit cross. By dinner she was in such a temper over your rudeness she could scarcely eat. Since then, she’s decided to believe the rumours about how sick you’ve been. She’s sure that you’ve either collapsed somewhere, or that Burrich has kept you down in the stables cleaning up after horses and dogs despite your health. Now here we are, in you go. I have him, my lady.’ And she whisked me into Patience’s chambers. Lacey’s chatter had an odd undertone to it, as if she avoided something. I entered hesitantly, wondering if Patience herself had been ill or if some misfortune had befallen her. If either were so, then it hadn’t affected her living habits at all. Her chambers were much as they always were. All her greenery had grown and twined and dropped leaves. A new layer of sudden interests overlay all the discarded ones in the room. Two doves had been added to her menagerie. A dozen or so horseshoes were scattered about the room. A fat bayberry candle burned on the table, giving off a pleasant scent, but dripping wax onto some dried flowers and herbs on a tray beside it. Some oddly carved little sticks in a bundle were also threatened. They appeared to be fortune telling sticks such as the Chyurda used. As I entered, her tough little terrier bitch came up to greet me. I stooped to pat her, then wondered if I could stand again. To cover my delay, I carefully picked up a tablet from the floor. It was a rather old one, and probably rare, on the use of the fortune telling sticks. Patience turned away from her loom to greet me. ‘Oh, get up and stop being ridiculous,’ she exclaimed at seeing me crouch. ‘Going down on one knee is idiocy. Or did you think it would make me forget how rude you’ve been in not coming to see me right away. What’s that you’ve brought me? Oh, how thoughtful! How did you know I’d been studying them? You know, I’ve searched all the castle’s libraries and not found much on the predicting sticks at all!’ She took the tablet from my hand and smiled up at me at the supposed gift. Over her shoulder, Lacey winked at me. I gave a minuscule shrug in return. I glanced back at Lady Patience, who set the tablet upon a teetering stack of tablets. She turned back to me. For a moment she regarded me warmly, then she called up a frown to her face. Her brows gathered over her hazel eyes, while her small straight mouth held a firm line. The effect of her reproving look was rather spoiled by the fact that she came just to my shoulder now, and that she had two ivy leaves stuck in her hair. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, and boldly plucked them from the unruly dark curls. She took them from my hand seriously, as if they were important and set them on top of the tablet. ‘Where have you been, all these months, when you were needed here?’ she demanded. ‘Your uncle’s bride arrived months ago. You’ve missed the formal wedding, you’ve missed the feasting and the dancing and the gathering of the nobles. Here I am, expending all my energies to see that you are treated as the son of a prince, and there you are, avoiding all your social obligations. And when you do get home, you don’t come to see me, but go all about the keep where anyone else might talk to you, dressed like a ragged tinker. Whatever possessed you to cut your hair like that?’ My father’s wife, once horrified to discover that he had sired a bastard before they were wed, had gone from abhorring me to aggressively bettering me. Sometimes that was more difficult to deal with than if she had ostracized me. Now she demanded, ‘Had you no thought that you might have social duties here that were more important than gallivanting about with Burrich looking at horses?’ ‘I am sorry, my lady.’ Experience had taught me never to argue with Patience. Her eccentricity had delighted Prince Chivalry. It drove me to distraction on a good day. Tonight I felt overwhelmed by it. ‘For a time, I was ill. I did not feel well enough to travel. By the time I recovered, the weather delayed us. I am sorry to have missed the wedding.’ ‘And that was all? That was the sole reason for your delay?’ She spoke sharply, as if suspecting some heinous deception. ‘It was.’ I answered gravely. ‘But I did think of you. I have something for you, out in my packs. I haven’t brought them up from the stable yet, but I will tomorrow.’ ‘What is it?’ she demanded, curious as a child. I took a deep breath. I desperately wished for my bed. ‘It’s a sort of a herbal. A simple one, for they are delicate, and the more ornate ones would not have stood up to the trip. The Chyurda don’t use tablets or scrolls for teaching herbs as we do. Instead, this is a wooden case. When you open it, you will discover tiny wax models of the herbs, tinted to the correct colours and scented with each herb to make it easier to learn them. The lettering is in Chyurda, of course, but I still thought you would enjoy it.’ ‘It sounds quite interesting,’ she said, and her eyes shone. ‘I look forward to seeing it.’ ‘Shall I bring him a chair, my lady? He does look as if he has been ill,’ Lacey interjected. ‘Oh, of course, Lacey. Sit down, boy. Tell me, what was your illness?’ ‘I ate something, one of the foreign herbs, and had a strong reaction to it.’ There. That was truthful. Lacey brought me a small stool and I sat gratefully. A wave of weariness passed through me. ‘Oh. I see.’ She dismissed my illness. She took a breath, glanced about, then suddenly demanded, ‘Tell me. Have you ever considered marriage?’ The abrupt change in subject was so like Patience that I had to smile. I tried to put my mind to the question. For a moment I saw Molly, her cheeks reddened with the wind that teased her dark hair loose. Molly. Tomorrow, I promised myself. Siltbay. ‘Fitz! Stop that! I won’t have you staring through me as if I were not here. Do you hear me? Are you well?’ With an effort I called myself back. ‘Not really,’ I answered honestly. ‘It’s been a tiring day for me …’ ‘Lacey, fetch the boy a cup of elderberry wine. He does look worn. Maybe this isn’t the best time for talk,’ Lady Patience decided falteringly. For the first time, she really looked at me. Genuine concern grew in her eyes. ‘Perhaps,’ she suggested softly, after a moment, ‘I do not know the full tale of your adventures.’ I looked down at my padded mountain buskins. The truth hovered inside me, then fell and was drowned in the danger of her knowing all that truth. ‘A long journey. Bad food. Dirty inns with sour beds and sticky tables. That sums it up. I don’t think you really want to hear all the details.’ An odd thing happened. Our eyes met, and I knew she saw my lie. She nodded slowly, accepting the lie as necessary, and looked aside. I wondered how many times my father had told her similar lies. What did it cost her to nod? Lacey put the cup of wine into my hand firmly. I lifted it, and the sweet sting of the first sip revived me. I held it in both hands and managed to smile at Patience over it. ‘Tell me,’ I began, and despite myself, my voice quavered like an old man’s. I cleared my throat to steady it. ‘How have you been? I imagine that having a queen here at Buckkeep has made your life much busier. Tell me of all I have missed.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, as if pricked with a pin. Now it was Patience’s turn to look aside. ‘You know what a solitary creature I am. My health is not always strong. To stay up late, dancing and talking leaves me abed for two days afterward. No. I have presented myself to the Queen and sat at table with her a time or two. But she is young and busy and caught up in her new life. And I am old and odd, and my life is full of my own interests …’ ‘Kettricken shares your love of growing things,’ I ventured. ‘She would probably be most interested …’ A sudden tremor rattled my bones and my teeth chattered to stillness. ‘I am just … a bit cold,’ I excused myself and lifted my wine cup again. I took a gulp instead of a sip I had intended. My hands shook and wine sloshed over my chin and down my shirt front. I jumped up in dismay and my traitorous hands let go the cup. It struck the carpet and rolled away leaving a trail of dark wine like blood. I sat down again abruptly and clasped my arms around myself to try to still my shaking. ‘I am very tired,’ I attempted. Lacey came at me with a cloth and dabbed at me until I took it from her. I wiped my chin and blotted most of the wine from my shirt. But when I crouched down to mop up what had spilled, I almost pitched forward onto my face. ‘No, Fitz, forget the wine. We can tidy up. You are tired, and half sick. Just take yourself up to bed. Come and see me when you’ve rested. I’ve something serious to discuss with you, but it will keep another night. Now off you go, boy. Off to bed.’ I stood, grateful for the reprieve, and made my cautious courtesies. Lacey saw me as far as the door, and then stood watching after me anxiously as far as the landing. I tried to walk as if the walls and floors weren’t wavering. I paused at the stairs to give her a small wave, and then started up them. Three steps up and out of her sight, I stopped to lean on the wall and catch my breath. I lifted my hands to shield my eyes from the brilliant candlelight. Dizziness was washing over me in waves. When I opened my eyes, my vision was wreathed in rainbow fogs. I closed them tight and pressed my hands to them. I heard a light step coming down the stairs towards me. It paused two steps above me. ‘Are you all right, sir?’ someone asked uncertainly. ‘A bit too much to drink,’ I lied. Certainly the wine I had dumped over myself made me smell like a drunk. ‘I’ll be fine in a moment.’ ‘Let me help you up the stairs. A stumble here might be dangerous.’ There was starched disapproval in the voice now. I opened my eyes and peered through my fingers. Blue skirts. Of the sensible fabric that all the servants wore. No doubt she’d had to deal with drunks before. I shook my head, but she ignored that, just as I would have in her position. I felt a strong hand grip my upper arm firmly, while her other arm encircled my waist. ‘Let’s just get you up the stairs,’ she encouraged me. I leaned on her, not wanting to, and stumbled up to the next landing. ‘Thank you,’ I muttered, thinking she would leave me now, but she kept her grip. ‘Are you sure you belong on this level? The servants’ quarters are the next flight up, you know.’ I managed a nod. ‘Third door. If you don’t mind.’ She was silent for longer than a moment. ‘That’s the Bastard’s room.’ The words were flung like a cold challenge. I did not flinch to the words as I would have once. I did not even lift my head. ‘Yes. You may go now.’ I dismissed her as coldly. Instead she stepped closer. She seized my hair, jerked my head up to face her. ‘Newboy!’ she hissed in fury. ‘I should drop you right here.’ I jerked my head up. I could not make my eyes focus on her eyes, but all the same, I knew her, knew the shape of her face and how her hair fell forward on her shoulders, and her scent, like a summer afternoon. Relief crashed over me like a wave. It was Molly, my Molly the candle-maker. ‘You’re alive!’ I cried out. My heart leaped in me like a hooked fish. I took her in my arms and kissed her. At least, I attempted to. She stiff-armed me away, saying gruffly, ‘I shall never kiss a drunk. That’s one promise I’ve made to myself and shall always keep. Nor be kissed by one.’ Her voice was tight. ‘I’m not drunk, I’m … sick,’ I protested. The surge of excitement had made my head spin more than ever. I swayed on my feet. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. You’re here and safe.’ She steadied me. A reflex she had learned taking care of her father. ‘Oh. I see. You’re not drunk.’ Disgust and disbelief mingled in her voice. ‘You’re not the scriber’s boy, either. Nor a stable-hand. Is lying how you always begin with people? It seems to be how you always end.’ ‘I didn’t lie,’ I said querulously, confused by the anger in her voice. I wished I could make my eyes meet hers. ‘I just didn’t tell you quite … it’s too complicated. Molly, I’m just so glad you’re all right. And here in Buckkeep! I thought I was going to have to search …’ She still gripped me, holding me on my feet. ‘I’m not drunk. Really. I did lie just now, because it was embarrassing to admit how weak I am.’ ‘And so you lie.’ Her voice cut like a whip. ‘You should be more embarrassed to lie, Newboy. Or is lying permitted to a prince’s son?’ She let go of me and I sagged against a wall. I tried to get a grip on my whirling thoughts while keeping my body vertical. ‘I’m not a prince’s son,’ I said at last. ‘I’m a bastard. That’s different. And yes, that was too embarrassing to admit, too. But I never told you I wasn’t the Bastard. I just always felt, when I was with you, I was Newboy. It was nice, having a few friends who looked at me and thought, “Newboy” instead of “the Bastard”.’ Molly didn’t reply. Instead she grabbed me, much more roughly than before, by my shirtfront and hauled me down the hall to my room. I was amazed at how strong women were when they were angry. She shouldered the door open as if it were a personal enemy and propelled me toward my bed. As soon as I was close, she let go and I fell against it. I righted myself and managed to sit down. By clutching my hands tightly together and gripping them between my knees, I could control my trembling. Molly stood glaring at me. I couldn’t precisely see her. Her outline was blurred, her features a smear, but I could tell by the way she stood that she was furious. After a moment, I ventured, ‘I dreamed of you. While I was gone.’ She still didn’t speak. I felt a bit braver. ‘I dreamed you were at Siltbay. When it was raided.’ My words came out tight with my effort to keep my voice from shaking. ‘I dreamed of fires, and Raiders attacking. In my dream, there were two children you had to protect. It seemed as if they were yours.’ Her silence held like a wall against my words. She probably thought I was ten kinds of an idiot, babbling about dreams. And why, oh why, of all the people in the world who could have seen me so unmanned, why did it have to be Molly? The silence had grown long. ‘But you were here, at Buckkeep and safe.’ I tried to steady my quavering voice. ‘I’m glad you’re safe. But what are you doing at Buckkeep?’ ‘What am I doing here?’ Her voice was as tight as mine. Anger made it cold, but I thought it was hedged with fear, too. ‘I came looking for a friend.’ She paused and seemed to struggle for a bit. When she spoke again, her voice was artificially calm, almost kind. ‘You see, my father died and left me a debtor. So my creditors took my shop from me. I went to stay with relatives, to help with the harvest, to earn money to start again. In Siltbay. Though how you came to know of it, I cannot even guess. I earned a bit and my cousin was willing to loan me the rest. The harvest had been good. I was to come back to Buckkeep the next day. But Siltbay was raided. I was there, with my nieces …’ Briefly, her voice trailed away. I remembered with her. The ships, the fire, the laughing woman with the sword. I looked up at her and could almost focus on her. I could not speak. But she was looking off, over my head. She spoke on calmly. ‘My cousins lost everything they owned. They counted themselves lucky, for their children survived. I couldn’t ask them to loan me money still. Truth was, they couldn’t even have paid me for the work I had done, if I had thought to ask. So I came back to Buckkeep, with winter closing in, and no place to stay. And I thought, I’ve always been friends with Newboy. If there’s anyone I could ask to loan me money to tide me over, it would be him. So I came up to the keep, and asked for the Scriber’s boy. But everyone shrugged and sent me to Fedwren. And Fedwren listened as I described you, and frowned, and sent me to Patience.’ Molly paused significantly. I tried to imagine that meeting, but shuddered away from it. ‘She took me on as a lady’s maid,’ Molly said softly. ‘She said it was the least she could do, after you had shamed me.’ ‘Shamed you?’ I jerked upright. The world rocked around me and my blurry vision dissolved into sparks. ‘How? How shamed you?’ Molly’s voice was quiet. ‘She said you had obviously won my affections, and then left me. Under my false assumption that you would someday be able to marry me, I’d let you court me.’ ‘I didn’t …’ I faltered, and then: ‘We were friends. I didn’t know you felt any more than that …’ ‘You didn’t?’ She lifted her chin; I knew that gesture. Six years ago, she would have followed it with a punch to my stomach. I still flinched. But she just spoke more quietly when she said, ‘I suppose I should have expected you to say that. It’s an easy thing to say.’ It was my turn to be nettled. ‘You’re the one who left me, with not even a word of farewell. And with that sailor, Jade. Do you think I don’t know about him? I was there, Molly. I saw you take his arm and walk away with him. Why didn’t you come to me, then, before leaving with him?’ She drew herself up. ‘I had been a woman with prospects. Then I became, all unwittingly, a debtor. Do you imagine that I knew of the debts my father had incurred, and then ignored? Not till after he was buried did the creditors come knocking. I lost everything. Should I have come to you as a beggar, hoping you’d take me in? I’d thought that you’d cared about me. I believed that you wanted … El damn you, why do I have to admit this to you!’ Her words rattled against me like flung stones. I knew her eyes were blazing, her cheeks flushed. ‘I thought you did want to marry me, that you did want a future with me. I wanted to bring something to it, not come to you penniless and prospectless. I’d imagined us with a little shop, me with my candles and herbs and honey, and you with your scriber’s skills … And so I went to my cousin, to ask to borrow money. He had none to spare, but arranged for my passage to Siltbay, to talk to his elder brother Flint. I’ve told you how that ended. I worked my way back here on a fishing boat, Newboy, gutting fish and putting them down in salt. I came back to Buckkeep like a beaten dog. And I swallowed my pride and came up here that day, and found out how stupid I was, how you’d pretended and lied to me. You are a bastard, Newboy. You are.’ For a moment, I listened to an odd sound, trying to comprehend what it was. Then I knew. She was crying, in little catches of her breath. I knew if I tried to stand and go to her, I’d fall on my face. Or I’d reach her, and she’d knock me flat. So stupidly as any drunk, I repeated, ‘Well, what about Jade then? Why did you find it so easy to go to him? Why didn’t you come to me first?’ ‘I told you! He’s my cousin, you moron!’ Her anger flared past her tears. ‘When you’re in trouble, you turn to your family. I asked him for help, and he took me to his family’s farm, to help out with the harvest.’ A moment of silence. Then, incredulously, ‘What did you think? That I was the type of woman who could have another man on the side?’ Icily. ‘That I would let you court me, and be seeing someone else?’ ‘No. I didn’t say that.’ ‘Of course you would.’ She said it as if it suddenly all made sense. ‘You’re like my father. He always believed I lied, because he told so many lies himself. Just like you. “Oh, I’m not drunk,” when you stink of it and you can barely stand. And your stupid story: “I dreamed of you at Siltbay.” Everyone in town knew I went to Siltbay. You probably heard the whole story tonight, while you were sitting in some tavern.’ ‘No, I didn’t, Molly. You have to believe me.’ I clutched at the blankets on the bed to keep myself upright. She had turned her back on me. ‘No. I don’t! I don’t have to believe anyone any more.’ She paused, as if considering something. ‘You know, once, a long time ago, when I was a little girl. Before I even met you.’ Her voice was getting oddly calmer. Emptier, but calmer. ‘It was at Spring-fest. I remember when I’d asked my daddy for some pennies for the fair booths, he’d slapped me and said he wouldn’t waste money on foolish things like that. And then he’d kicked me in the shop and gone drinking. But even then I knew how to get out of the shop. I went to the fair booths anyway, just to see them. One was an old man telling fortunes with crystals. You know how they do. They hold the crystal to a candle’s light, and tell your future by how the colours fall across your face.’ She paused. ‘I know,’ I admitted to her silence. I knew the type of hedge wizard she meant. I’d seen the dance of coloured lights across a woman’s close-eyed face. Right now I only wished I could see Molly clearly. I thought if I could meet her eyes, I could make her see the truth inside me. I wished I dared stand, to go to her and try to hold her again. But she thought me drunk, and I knew I’d fall. I would not shame myself in front of her again. ‘A lot of the other girls and women were getting their fortunes told. But I didn’t have a penny, so I could only watch. But after a bit, the old man noticed me. I guess he thought I was shy. He asked me if I didn’t want to know my fortune. And I started crying, because I did, but I didn’t have a penny. Then Brinna the fish-wife laughed, and said there was no need for me to pay to know it. Everyone knew my future already. I was the daughter of a drunk, I’d be the wife of a drunk, and the mother of drunks.’ She whispered, ‘Everyone started laughing. Even the old man.’ ‘Molly,’ I said. I don’t think she even heard me. ‘I still don’t have a penny,’ she said slowly. ‘But at least I know I won’t be the wife of a drunk. I don’t think I even want to be friends with one.’ ‘You have to listen to me. You’re not being fair!’ My traitorous tongue slurred my words. ‘I –’ The door slammed. ‘– didn’t know you liked me that way,’ I said stupidly to the cold and empty room. The shaking overtook me in earnest. But I wasn’t going to lose her that easily again. I rose and managed two strides before the floor rocked beneath me and I went to my knees. I remained there a bit, head hanging like a dog. I didn’t think she’d be impressed if I crawled after her. She’d probably kick me. If I could even find her. I crawled back to my bed instead, and clambered back onto it. I didn’t undress, but just dragged the edge of my blanket over me. My vision dimmed, closing in black from the edges, but I didn’t sleep right away. Instead, I lay there and thought what a stupid boy I had been last summer. I had courted a woman, thinking that I was walking out with a girl. Those three years difference in age had mattered so much to me, but in all the wrong ways. I had thought she had seen me as a boy, and despaired of winning her. So I had acted like a boy, instead of trying to make her see me as a man. And the boy had hurt her, and yes, deceived her, and in all likelihood, lost her forever. The dark closed down, blackness everywhere but for one whirling spark. She had loved the boy, and foreseen a life together for us. I clung to the spark and sank into sleep. FOUR (#ulink_0bc55f41-aef8-50f8-a3b5-54bc6ceae62b) Dilemmas (#ulink_0bc55f41-aef8-50f8-a3b5-54bc6ceae62b) As regards the Wit and the Skill, I suspect that every human has at least some capacity. I have seen women rise abruptly from their tasks, to go into an adjacent room where an infant is just beginning to awake. Cannot this be some form of the Skill? Or witness the wordless cooperation that arises among a crew that has long tended the same vessel. They function, without spoken words, as closely as a coterie, so that the ship becomes almost a beast alive, and the crew her life force. Other folk sense an affinity for certain animals, and express it in a crest or in the names they bestow upon their children. The Wit opens one to that affinity. The Wit allows awareness of all animals, but folklore insists that most Wit users eventually develop a bond with one certain animal. Some tales insist that users of the Wit eventually took on the ways and finally the form of the beasts they bonded to. These tales, I believe, we can dismiss as scare tales to discourage children from Beast magic. I awoke in the afternoon. My room was cold. My sweaty clothes clung to me. I staggered downstairs to the kitchen, ate something, went out to the bath house, began trembling, and went back up to my room. I got back into my bed, shaking with cold. Later, someone came in and talked to me. I don’t remember what was said, but I do remember being shaken. It was unpleasant, but I could ignore it and did. I awoke in early evening. There was a fire in my hearth, and a neat pile of firewood in the hod. A little table had been drawn up near my bed, and some bread and meat and cheese was set out on a platter upon an embroidered cloth with tatted edges. A fat pot with brewing herbs in the bottom was waiting for water from the very large kettle steaming over the fire. A washtub and soap were set out on the other side of the hearth. A clean nightshirt had been left across the foot of my bed; it wasn’t one of my old ones. It might actually fit me. My gratitude outweighed my puzzlement. I managed to get out of bed and take advantage of everything. Afterwards, I felt much better. My dizziness was replaced by a feeling of unnatural lightness, but that quickly succumbed to the bread and cheese. The tea had a hint of elfbark in it; I instantly suspected Chade and wondered if he were the one who’d tried to wake me. But no, Chade only summoned me at night. I was dragging the clean nightshirt over my head when the door opened quietly. The Fool came slipping into my room. He was in his winter motley of black and white, and his colourless skin seemed even paler because of it. His garments were made of some silky fabric, and cut so loosely that he looked like a stick swathed in them. He’d grown taller, and even thinner, if that were possible. As always, his white eyes were a shock, even in his bloodless face. He smiled at me, and then waggled a pale pink tongue derisively. ‘You,’ I surmised, and gestured round. ‘Thank you.’ ‘No,’ he denied. His pale hair floated out from beneath his cap in a halo as he shook his head. ‘But I assisted. Thank you for bathing. It makes my task of checking on you less onerous. I’m glad you’re awake. You snore abominably.’ I let this comment pass. ‘You’ve grown,’ I observed. ‘Yes. So have you. And you’ve been sick. And you slept quite a long time. And now you are awake and bathed and fed. You still look terrible. But you no longer smell. It’s late afternoon now. Are there any other obvious facts you’d like to review?’ ‘I dreamed about you. While I was gone.’ He gave me a dubious look. ‘Did you? How touching. I can’t say I dreamed of you.’ ‘I’ve missed you,’ I said, and enjoyed the brief flash of surprise on the Fool’s face. ‘How droll. Does that explain why you’ve been playing the fool yourself so much?’ ‘I suppose. Sit down. Tell me what’s been happening while I was gone.’ ‘I can’t. King Shrewd is expecting me. Rather, he isn’t expecting me, and that is precisely why I must go to him now. When you feel better, you should go and see him. Especially if he isn’t expecting you.’ He turned abruptly to go. He whisked himself out the door, then leaned back in abruptly. He lifted the silver bells at the end of one ridiculously long sleeve, and jingled them at me. ‘Farewell, Fitz. Do try to do a bit better at not letting people kill you.’ The door closed silently behind him. I was left alone. I poured myself another cup of tea and sipped at it. My door opened again. I looked up, expecting the Fool. Lacey peeked in and announced, ‘Oh, he’s awake,’ and then, more severely, demanded, ‘Why didn’t you say how tired you were? It’s fair scared me to death, you sleeping a whole day round like that.’ She did not wait to be invited, but bustled into the room, clean linens and blankets in her arms and Lady Patience on her heels. ‘Oh, he is awake!’ she exclaimed to Lacey, as if she had doubted it. They ignored my humiliation at confronting them in my nightshirt. Lady Patience seated herself on my bed while Lacey fussed about the room. There was not much to do in my bare chamber, but she stacked my dirty dishes, poked at my fire, tich-tiched over my dirty bath water and scattered garments. I stood at bay by the hearth while she stripped my bed, made it up afresh, gathered my dirty clothes over her arm with a disdainful sniff, glanced about, and then sailed out the door with her plunder. ‘I was going to tidy that up,’ I muttered, embarrassed, but Lady Patience didn’t appear to notice. She gestured imperiously at the bed. Reluctantly I got into the bed. I don’t believe I have ever felt more at a disadvantage. She emphasized it by leaning over and tucking the covers around me. ‘About Molly,’ she announced abruptly. ‘Your behaviour that night was reprehensible. You used your weakness to lure her to your room. And upset her no end with your accusations. Fitz, I will not allow it. If you were not so sick, I would be furious with you. As it is, I am gravely disappointed. I cannot think what to say about how you deceived that poor girl, and led her on. So I will simply say that it will happen no more. You shall behave honourably to her, in every way.’ A simple misunderstanding between Molly and me had suddenly become a serious matter. ‘There’s been a mistake here,’ I said, trying to sound competent and calm. ‘Molly and I need to straighten it out. By talking together, privately. I assure you, for your peace of mind, that it is not at all what you seem to think it is.’ ‘Bear in mind who you are. The son of a prince does not …’ ‘Fitz,’ I reminded her firmly. ‘I am FitzChivalry. Chivalry’s bastard.’ Patience looked stricken. I felt again how much I had changed since I had left Buckkeep. I was not a boy any more for her to supervise and correct. She had to see me as I was. Still, I tried to soften my tone as I pointed out, ‘Not the proper son of Prince Chivalry, my lady. Only your husband’s bastard.’ She sat on the foot of my bed and looked at me. Her hazel eyes met mine squarely and held. I saw past her giddiness and distractibility, into a soul capable of more pain and vaster regret than I had ever suspected. ‘How do you think I could ever forget that?’ she asked quietly. My voice died in my throat as I sought for an answer. I was rescued by Lacey’s return. She had recruited two serving maids and a couple of small boys. The dirty water from my bath and my dishes were whisked away by them, while Lacey set out a tray of small pastries and two more cups, and measured out fresh brewing herbs for another pot of tea. Patience and I were silent until the serving folk left the room. Lacey made the tea, poured cups for all, and then settled herself with her ever-present tatting. ‘It is precisely because of who you are that this is more than a misunderstanding.’ Patience launched back into the topic, as if I had never dared interrupt. ‘If you were just Fedwren’s apprentice, or a stable-hand, then you would be free to court and marry however you wished. But you are not, FitzChivalry Farseer. You are of the royal blood. Even a bastard,’ she stumbled slightly on the word, ‘of that line must observe certain customs. And practise certain discretions. Consider your position in the royal household. You must have the king’s permission to marry. Surely you are aware of that. Courtesy to King Shrewd demanded that you inform him of your intention to court, so that he might consider the case’s merits, and tell you if it pleased him or not. He would consider it. Is it a good time for you to wed? Does it benefit the throne? Is the match an acceptable one, or is it likely to cause scandal? Will your courting interfere with your duties? Are the lady’s bloodlines acceptable? Does the King wish you to have offspring?’ With each question she posed, I felt the shock go deeper. I lay back on my pillows and stared at the bed hangings. I had never really set out to court Molly. From a childhood friendship, we had drifted to a deeper companionship. I had known how my heart wished it to go, but my head had never stopped to consider it. She read my face plainly. ‘Remember, too, FitzChivalry, that you have already sworn an oath to another. Your life belongs to your king already. What would you offer Molly if you wed her? His leavings? The bits of time that he did not demand? A man whose duty is sworn to a king has little time for anyone else in his life.’ Tears stood suddenly in her eyes. ‘Some women are willing to take what such a man can honestly offer, and content themselves with it. For others, it is not enough. Could never be enough. You must …’ she hesitated, and it seemed as if the words were wrung from her. ‘You must consider that. One horse cannot bear two saddles. However much he may wish to …’ Her voice dwindled off on the last words. She closed her eyes as if something hurt her. Then she took a breath and went on briskly, as if she had never paused. ‘Another consideration, FitzChivalry. Molly is, or was, a woman of prospects. She has a trade, and knows it well. I expect she will be able to re-establish herself, after a time of hiring out. But what about you? What do you bring her? You write a fair hand, but you cannot claim a full scriber’s skills. You are a good stable-hand, yes, but that is not how you earn your bread. You are a prince’s bastard. You live in the keep, you are fed, you are clothed. But you have no fixed allowance. This could be a comfortable chamber, for one person. But did you expect to bring Molly here to live with you? Or did you seriously believe the King would grant you permission to leave Buckkeep? And if he did, then what? Will you live with your wife and eat the bread she earns with the work of her hands, and do naught? Or would you be content to learn her trade, and be a help to her?’ She finally paused. She did not expect me to answer any of her questions. I did not try. She took a breath and resumed. ‘You have behaved as a thoughtless boy. I know you meant no harm, and we must see that no harm comes of it. To anyone. But, most especially to Molly. You have grown up amidst the gossip and intrigues of the royal court. She has not. Will you let it be said she is your concubine, or worse, a keep whore? For long years now, Buckkeep has been a man’s court. Queen Desire was … the Queen, but she did not hold court as Queen Constance did. We have a queen at Buckkeep again. Already, things are different here, as you will discover. If you truly hope to make Molly your wife, she must be brought into this court one step at a time. Or she will find herself an outcast among politely nodding people. I am speaking plainly to you, FitzChivalry. Not to be cruel to you. But far better I am cruel to you now than that Molly live a lifetime of casual cruelty.’ She spoke so calmly, her eyes never leaving my face. She waited until I asked hopelessly, ‘What must I do?’ For a moment she looked down at her hands. Then she met my eyes again. ‘For now, nothing. I mean exactly that. I have made Molly one of my serving-women. I am teaching her, as best I can, the ways of the court. She is proving an apt student, as well as a most pleasant teacher for me in the matters of herbs and scent-making. I am having Fedwren teach her letters, something she is most eager to learn. But for now, that is all that must be happening. She must be accepted by the women of the court as one of my ladies – not the bastard’s woman. After a time, you may begin to call upon her. But for now it would be unseemly for you to see her alone, or even seek to see her at all.’ ‘But I need to speak to her alone. Just once, just briefly, then I promise I’ll abide by your rules. She thinks I deliberately deceived her, Patience. She thinks I was drunk last night. I have to explain …’ But Patience was shaking her head before the first sentence was out of my mouth, and continued until I faltered to a halt. ‘We have already had a sprinkling of rumours, because she came here seeking you. Or so the gossip was. I have crushed it, assuring everyone that Molly came to me because she was facing difficulties and her mother had been a tiring woman to Lady Heather during the time of Queen Constance’s court. Which is true, and hence she does have the right to seek me out, for was not Lady Heather a friend to me when I first came to Buckkeep?’ ‘Did you know Molly’s mother?’ I asked curiously. ‘Not really. She had left, to marry a chandler, before I came to Buckkeep. But I did know Lady Heather, and she was kind to me.’ She dismissed my question. ‘But couldn’t I come to your chambers, and speak to her there, privately, and …’ ‘I will not have a scandal!’ she declared firmly. ‘I will not tempt a scandal. Fitz, you have enemies at court. I will not let Molly become their victim for their aims of hurting you. There. Have I spoken plainly enough at last?’ She had spoken plainly, and of things of which I had believed her ignorant. How much did she know of my enemies? Did she think it merely social? Though that would be enough at court. I thought of Regal, and his sly witticisms, and how he could turn and speak softly to his hangers-on at a feast and all would smirk to one another and add soft-voiced comments to the Prince’s criticism. I thought how I would have to kill him. ‘By the set of your jaw, I see you understand.’ Patience arose, setting her teacup on the table. ‘Lacey. I believe we should leave FitzChivalry to rest now.’ ‘Please, at least tell her not to be angry with me,’ I begged. ‘Tell her I wasn’t drunk last night. Tell her I never meant to deceive her, or to cause her any harm.’ ‘I will carry no such message! Nor shall you, Lacey! Don’t think I didn’t see that wink. Both of you, I insist that you will be decorous. Remember this, FitzChivalry, I expect you to get some rest tonight.’ They left me. Although I tried to catch Lacey’s eyes and win her alliance, she refused to glance at me. The door closed behind them and I leaned back on my pillows. I tried not to let my mind rattle against the restrictions Patience had set upon me. Annoying as it was, she was right. I could only hope that Molly would see my behaviour as thoughtless rather than deceitful or conniving. I arose from my bed and went to poke at the fire. Then I sat on the hearth and looked about my chamber. After my months in the Mountain Kingdom, it seemed a bleak place indeed. The closest my chamber came to decoration was a rather dusty tapestry of King Wisdom befriending the Elderlings. It had come with the chamber, as had the cedar chest at the foot of my bed. I stared up at the tapestry critically. It was old and moth-eaten; I could see why it had been banished to here. When I had been younger, it had given me nightmares. Woven in an old style, King Wisdom appeared strangely elongated, while the Elderlings bore no resemblance to any creatures I had ever seen. There was a suggestion of wings on their bulging shoulders. Or perhaps that was meant to be a halo of light surrounding them. I leaned back on the hearth to consider them. I dozed. I awakened to a draught on my shoulder. The secret door beside the hearth that led up to Chade’s domain was wide open and beckoning. I arose stiffly, stretched, and went up the stone stairs. Thus had I first gone, so long ago, clad then as I was now in just my nightshirt. I had followed a frightening old man with a pocked visage and eyes sharp and bright as a raven’s. He had offered to teach me to kill people. He had also offered, wordlessly, to be my friend. I had accepted both offers. The stone steps were cold. Here there were still cobwebs and dust and soot above the sconces on the walls. So the housekeeping hadn’t extended to this staircase. Nor to Chade’s quarters. They were as chaotic, disreputable and comfortable as ever. At one end of his chamber was his working hearth, bare stone floors and an immense table. The usual clutter overflowed it: mortars and pestles, sticky dishes of meat scraps for Slink the weasel, pots of dried herbs, tablets and scrolls, spoons and tongs, and a blackened kettle, still sending a reeking smoke curling into the chamber. But Chade was not there. No, he was at the other end of the chamber, where a fatly cushioned chair faced a hearth with a dancing fire. Carpets overlay one another over the floor there, and an elegantly carved table held a glass bowl of autumn apples and a decanter of summer wine. Chade was ensconced in the chair, a partially unrolled scroll held to the light as he read it. Did he hold it farther from his nose than once he had, and were his spare arms more desiccated? I wondered if he had aged in the months I had been away, or if I had simply not noticed before. His grey woollen robe looked as well worn as ever, and his long grey hair overlay its shoulders and seemed the same colour. As always, I stood silent until he deigned to look up and recognize my presence. Some things changed, but some things did not. He finally lowered the scroll and looked my way. He had green eyes, and their lightness was always surprising in his Farseer face. Despite the pox-like scars that stippled his face and arms, his bastard bloodlines were almost as plain marked as mine. I suppose I could have claimed him as a great-uncle, but our apprentice to master relationship was closer than a blood-tie. He looked me over and I self-consciously stood straighter under his scrutiny. His voice was grave as he commanded, ‘Boy, come into the light.’ I advanced a dozen steps and stood apprehensively. He studied me as intently as he had studied the scroll. ‘Were we ambitious traitors, you and I, we would make sure folk marked your resemblance to Chivalry. I could teach you to stand as he stood; you already walk as he did. I could show you how to add lines to your face to make you appear older. You have most of his height. You could learn his catch phrases, and the way he laughed. Slowly, we could gather power, in quiet ways, with none even recognizing what they were conceding. And one day, we could step up and take power.’ He paused. Slowly I shook my head. Then we both smiled, and I came to sit on the hearth stones by his feet. The warmth of the fire on my back felt good. ‘It’s my trade, I suppose.’ He sighed and took a sip of his wine. ‘I have to think of these things, for I know that others will. One day, sooner or later, some petty noble will believe it an original idea and approach you with it. Wait and see if I am not right.’ ‘I pray you are wrong. I have had enough of intrigues, Chade, and not fared as well at that game as I had expected to.’ ‘You did not do badly, with the hand you were dealt. You survived.’ He looked past me into the fire. A question hung between us, almost palpably. Why had King Shrewd revealed to Prince Regal that I was his trained assassin? Why had he put me in the position of reporting to and taking orders from a man who wished me dead? Had he traded me away to Regal, to distract him from his other discontents? And if I had been a sacrificial pawn, was I still being dangled as bait and a distraction to the younger prince? I think not even Chade could have answered all my questions, and to ask any of them would have been blackest betrayal of what we were both sworn to be: King’s Men. Both of us long ago had given our lives into Shrewd’s keeping, for the protection of the royal family. It was not for us to question how he chose to spend us. That way lay treason. So Chade lifted the summer wine and filled a waiting glass for me. For a brief time we conversed of things that were of no import to any save us, and all the more precious for that. I asked after Slink the weasel, and he haltingly offered sympathy over Nosy’s death. He asked a question or two that let me know he was privy to everything I had reported to Verity, and a lot of stable gossip as well. I was filled in on the minor gossip of the keep, and all the doings I had missed among the lesser folk while I was gone. But when I asked him what he thought of Kettricken our Queen-in-Waiting, his face grew grave. ‘She faces a difficult path. She comes to a queenless court, where she herself is and yet is not the Queen. She comes in a time of hardship, to a kingdom facing both Raiders and civil unrest. But most difficult for her is that she comes to a court that does not understand her concept of royalty. She had been besieged with feasts and gatherings in her honour. She is used to walking out among her own people, to tending her own gardens and looms and forge, to solving disputes and sacrificing herself to spare her people hardship. Here, she finds, her society is solely the nobility, the privileged, the wealthy. She does not understand the consumption of wine and exotic foods, the display of costly fabrics in dress, the flaunting of jewels that are the purpose of these gatherings. And so she does not “show well”. She is a handsome woman, in her way. But she is too big, too heartily muscled, too fair amongst the Buckkeep women. She is like a charger stabled among hunters. Her heart is good, but I do not know if she will be sufficient to the task, boy. In truth, I pity her. She came here alone, you know. Those few who accompanied her here have long since returned to the mountains. So she is very alone here, despite those who court her favour.’ ‘And Verity,’ I asked, troubled. ‘He does nothing to allay that loneliness, nothing to teach her of our ways?’ ‘Verity has little time for her,’ Chade said bluntly. ‘He tried to explain this to King Shrewd before the marriage was arranged, but we did not listen to him. King Shrewd and I were beguiled with the political advantages she offered. I forgot there would be a woman here, in this court, day after day. Verity has his hands full. Were they just a man and a woman, and given time, I think they could genuinely care for one another. But here and now, they must devote all their efforts to appearance. Soon an heir will be demanded. They have no time to get to know one another, let alone care for one another.’ He must have seen the pain in my face, for he added, ‘That’s how it has always been for royalty, boy. Chivalry and Patience were the exception. And they bought their happiness at the cost of political advantages. It was unheard of, for the King-in-Waiting to marry for love. I’m sure you’ve heard over and over how foolish a thing it was.’ ‘And I’d always wondered if he’d cared.’ ‘It cost him,’ Chade said quietly. ‘I don’t think he regretted his decision. But he was King-in-Waiting. You don’t have that latitude.’ Here it came. I’d suspected he’d know everything. And useless to hope he’d say nothing. I felt a slow flush steal up my face. ‘Molly.’ He nodded slowly. ‘It was one thing when it was down in town, and you were more or less a boy. That could be ignored. But now you’re being seen as a man. When she came here asking after you, it started tongues wagging and folk speculating. Patience was remarkably agile at hushing the rumours and taking charge of the situation. Not that I’d have kept the woman here, had it been left to me. But Patience handled it well enough.’ ‘The woman …’ I repeated, stung. If he’d said ‘the whore’ I couldn’t have felt it more sharply. ‘Chade, you misjudge her. And me. It began as a friendship, a long time ago, and if anyone was at fault in … how things went, it was me, not Molly. I’d always thought that the friends I made in town, that the time I spent there as “Newboy” belonged to me.’ I faltered to a halt, hearing only the foolishness of my words. ‘Did you think you could lead two lives?’ Chade’s voice was soft but not gentle. ‘We belong to the King, boy. King’s Men. Our lives belong to him. Every moment, of every day, asleep or awake. You have no time for your own concerns. Only his.’ I shifted slightly, to look into the fire. I considered what I knew of Chade in that light. I met him here, by darkness, in these isolated chambers. I had never seen him out and about around Buckkeep. No one spoke his name to me. Occasionally, disguised as Lady Thyme, he ventured forth. Once we had ridden together through the night, to that first awful Forging at Forge. But even that had been at the King’s command. What did Chade have for a life? A chamber, good food and wine, and a weasel for a companion. He was Shrewd’s older brother. But for his bastardy, he would be upon the throne. Was his life a foreshadowing of what mine was to be? ‘No.’ I hadn’t spoken, but as I looked up into Chade’s face, he guessed my thoughts. ‘I chose this life, boy. After a mishandled potion exploded and scarred me. I was handsome, once. And vain. Almost as vain as Regal. When I ruined my face, I wished myself dead. For months, I did not stir out of my chambers. When I finally went forth, it was in disguises, not Lady Thyme, not then, no. But disguises that covered my face and my hands. I left Buckkeep. For a long time. And when I came back, that handsome young man I had been was dead. I found myself more useful to the family, now that I was dead. There is much more to that story, boy. But know that I chose the way I live. It was not something Shrewd forced me into. I did it myself. Your future may be different. But do not imagine it is yours to command.’ Curiosity prodded me. ‘Is that why Chivalry and Verity knew of you, but not Regal?’ Chade smiled in an odd way. ‘I was a sort of a kindly step-uncle to the two older boys, if you can believe it. I watched over them, in some ways. But once I was scarred, I kept myself even from them. Regal never knew me. His mother had a horror of the pox. I think she believed all the legends of the pocked-man, harbinger of disaster and misfortune. For that matter, she had an almost superstitious dread of anyone who was not whole. You see it in Regal’s reaction to the Fool. She would never keep a club-footed maid or even a serving-man with a missing finger or two. So. When I returned, I was never introduced to the lady, or the child she bore. When Chivalry became King-in-Waiting to Shrewd, I was one of the things revealed to him. I was shocked to find he recalled me, and had missed me. He brought Verity to see me that evening. I had to scold him over that. It was difficult to make them understand they could not come calling on me anytime they chose. Those boys.’ He shook his head and smiled at his memories. I can not explain the twinge of jealousy I felt. I called the conversation back to myself. ‘What do you think I should do?’ Chade pursed his lips, sipped his wine, and thought. ‘For now, Patience has given you good advice. Ignore or avoid Molly, but not obviously. Treat her as if she were a new scullery maid: courteously, if you encounter her, but not familiarly. Do not seek her out. Devote yourself to the Queen-in-Waiting. Verity will be glad of your distracting her. Kettricken will be glad of a friendly face. And if your intent is to win permission to marry Molly, the Queen-in-Waiting could be a powerful ally. As you divert Kettricken, watch over her as well. Bear in mind there are those whose interests do not support Verity having an heir. Those same ones who would not be enthused about your having children. So be wary and alert. Keep your guard up.’ ‘Is that all?’ I asked, daunted. ‘No. Get some rest. Deadroot was what was used on you, by Regal?’ I nodded and he shook his head, narrowing his eyes. Then he looked me squarely in the face. ‘You are young. You may be able to recover, mostly. I’ve seen one other man survive it. But he trembled the rest of his life. I see the small signs of it on you yet. It will not show much, except to those who know you well. But do not overtire yourself. Weariness will bring on tremblings and blurred vision. Push yourself, and you will have fits. You do not want anyone to know you have a weakness. The best course is to conduct your life in such a way the weakness never shows.’ ‘Was that why there was elfbark in the tea?’ I asked needlessly. He raised an eyebrow at me. ‘Tea?’ ‘Perhaps it was the Fool’s doing. I awoke to food and tea in my room …’ ‘And if it had been Regal’s doing?’ It took a moment for the realization to dawn. ‘I could have been poisoned.’ ‘But you weren’t. Not this time. No, it was neither I nor the Fool. It was Lacey. There is someone deeper than you credit. The Fool discovered you, and something possessed him to tell Patience. While she was flustering, Lacey quietly ordered it all done. I think that privately she considers you as scatter-brained as her mistress. Give her the slightest opening, and she will move in and organize your life. Good as her intentions are, you cannot allow that, Fitz. An assassin needs privacy. Get a latch for your door.’ ‘Fitz?’ I wondered aloud. ‘It is your name. FitzChivalry. As it seems to have lost its sting with you, I will use it now. I was beginning to weary of “boy”.’ I bowed my head. We went on to talk of other things. It was an hour or so until morning when I left his windowless chambers and returned to my own. I went back to bed, but sleep eluded me. I had always stifled the hidden anger I felt at my position at court. Now it smouldered within me so that I could not rest. I threw off my blankets and dressed in my outgrown clothes, left the keep, and walked down into Buckkeep Town. The brisk wind off the water blew damp cold like a wet slap in the face. I pulled my cloak more tightly around myself and tugged up my hood. I walked briskly, avoiding icy spots on the steep roadway down to town. I tried not to think, but I found that the brisk pumping of my blood was warming my anger more than my flesh. My thoughts danced like a reined-in horse. When I had first come to Buckkeep Town, it had been a busy, grubby little place. In the last decade it had grown and adopted a veneer of sophistication, but its roots were only too plain. The town clung to the cliffs below Buckkeep Castle, and when those cliffs gave way to the rocky beaches, the warehouses and sheds were built out on docks and pilings. The good deep anchorage that sheltered below Buckkeep attracted merchant vessels and traders. Further to the north, where the Buck River met the sea, there were gentler beaches and the wide river to carry trading barges far inland to the Inland Duchies. The land closest to the river mouth was susceptible to flooding, and the anchorage unpredictable as the river shifted in its course. So the folk of Buckkeep Town lived crowded together on the steep cliffs above the harbour like the birds on Egg Bluffs. It made for narrow, badly cobbled streets that wound back and forth across the steepness as they made their way down to the water. The houses, shops and inns clung humbly to the cliff face, endeavouring to offer no resistance to the winds that were almost constant there. Higher up the cliff, the more ambitious homes and businesses were of timber, with their foundations cut into the stone itself. But I knew little of that stratum. I had run and played as a child among the humbler shops and sailors’ inns that fronted almost on the water itself. By the time I reached this area of Buckkeep Town, I was reflecting ironically that both Molly and I would have been better off had we never become friends. I had compromised her reputation, and if I continued my attentions, she would most likely become a target for Regal’s malice. As for myself, the anguish I had felt at believing she had blithely left me for another was but a scratch compared to the bleeding now at knowing she thought I had deceived her. I came out of my bleak thoughts to realize that my traitorous feet had carried me to the very door of her chandlery. Now it was a tea and herb shop. Just what Buckkeep Town needed, another tea and herb shop. I wondered what had become of Molly’s bee hives. It gave me a pang to realize that for Molly the sense of dislocation must be ten times, no, a hundred times worse. I had so easily accepted that Molly had lost her father, and with him her livelihood and her prospects. So easily accepted the change that made her a servant in the keep. A servant. I clenched my teeth and kept walking. I wandered the town aimlessly. Even in my bleak mood, I noticed how much it had changed in the last six months. Even on this cold winter day, it bustled. The construction of the ships had brought more folk, and more folk meant more trade. I stopped in a tavern where Molly, Dirk, Kerry and I had used to share a bit of brandy now and then. The cheapest blackberry brandy was usually what we got. I sat by myself and drank my short beer in silence, but around me tongues wagged and I learned much. It was not just the ship construction which had bolstered Buckkeep Town’s prosperity; Verity had put out a call for sailors to man his warships. The call had been amply answered, by men and women from all of the Coastal Duchies. Some came with a grudge to settle, to avenge those killed or Forged by the Raiders. Others came for the adventure, and the hope of booty, or simply because, in the ravaged villages, they had no other prospects. Some were from fisher or merchant families, with sea time and water skills. Other were the former shepherds and farmers of ravaged villages. It mattered little. All had come to Buckkeep Town, eager to shed Red Ship blood. For now, many were housed in what had once been warehouses. Hod, the Buckkeep Weapons-master, was giving them weapons training, winnowing out those she thought might be suitable for Verity’s ships. The others would be offered hire as soldiers. These were the extra fold that swelled the town and crowded the inns and taverns and eating places. I heard complaints, too, that some of those who came to man the warships were immigrant Outislanders, displaced from their own land by the very Red Ships that now menaced our coasts. They, too, claimed to be eager for revenge, but few Six Duchies folk trusted them, and some businesses in town would not sell to them. It gave an ugly charged undercurrent to the busy tavern. There was a snickering discussion of an Outislander who had been beaten on the docks the day before. No one had called the town patrol. When the speculation became even uglier, that these Outislanders were all spies and that burning them out would be a wise and sensible precaution, I could no longer stomach it, and left the tavern. Was there nowhere I could go to be free of suspicions and intrigues, if only for an hour? I walked alone through the wintry streets. A storm was blowing up. The merciless wind prowled the twisting streets, promising snow. The same angry cold twisted and churned inside me, switching from anger to hatred to frustration and back to anger again, building to an unbearable pressure. They had no right to do this to me. I had not been born to be their tool. I had a right to live my life freely, to be who I was born to be. Did they think they could bend me to their will, use me however they would, and I would never retaliate? No. A time would come. My time would come. A man hurried toward me, face shrouded in his hood against the wind. He glanced up and our eyes met. He blanched and turned aside, to hurry back the way he had come. Well, and so he might. I felt my anger building to an unbearable heat. The wind whipped at my hair and sought to chill me, but I only strode faster, and felt the strength of my hatred grow hotter. It lured me and I followed it like the scent of fresh blood. I turned a corner and found myself in the market. Threatened by the coming storm, the poorer merchants were packing up their goods from their blankets and mats. Those with stalls were fastening their shutters. I strode past them. People scuttled out of my way. I brushed past them, not caring how they stared. I came to the animal vendor’s stall, and stood face to face with myself. He was gaunt, with bleak dark eyes. He glared at me balefully, and the waves of hatred pulsing out from him washed over me in greeting. Our hearts beat to the same rhythm. I felt my upper lip twitch, as if to snarl up and bare my pitiful human teeth. I straightened my features, battened my emotion back under control. But the caged wolf cub with the dirty grey coat stared up at me, and lifted his black lips to reveal all his teeth. I hate you. All of you. Come, come closer. I’ll kill you. I’ll rip out your throat after I hamstring you. I’ll feast on your entrails. I hate you. ‘You want something?’ ‘Blood,’ I said quietly. ‘I want your blood.’ ‘What?’ I jerked my eyes from the wolf up to the man. He was greasy and dirty. He stank, by El, how he reeked. I could smell sweat and rancid food and his own droppings on him. He was swaddled in poorly-cured hides, and the stench of them hung about him as well. He had little ferret eyes, cruel dirty hands and a oak stick bound in brass that hung at his belt. It was all I could do to keep from seizing that hated stick and splattering his brains out with it. He wore thick boots on his kicking feet. He stepped too close to me and I gripped my cloak to keep from killing him. ‘Wolf,’ I managed to get out. My voice sounded guttural, choking. ‘I want the wolf.’ ‘You certain, boy? He’s a mean one.’ He nudged the cage with his foot and I sprang at it, clashing my teeth against the wooden bars, bruising my muzzle again, but I didn’t care, if I could get just one grip on his flesh, I’d tear it loose or never let go. No. Get back, get out of my head. I shook my head to clear it. The merchant regarded me strangely. ‘I know what I want.’ I spoke flatly, refusing the wolf’s emotions. ‘Do you, eh?’ The man stared at me, judging my worth. He’d charge what he thought I could afford. My outgrown clothes didn’t please him, nor my youth. But I surmised he’d had the wolf for a while. He’d hoped to sell him as a cub. Now, with the wolf needing more food and not getting it, the man would probably take whatever he could get. As well for me. I didn’t have much. ‘What do you want him for?’ the man asked casually. ‘Pits,’ I said nonchalantly. ‘He’s scrawny but there might be a bit of sport left in him.’ The wolf suddenly flung himself against the bars, jaws wide, teeth flashing. I’ll kill them, I’ll kill them all, rip their throats out, tear their bellies open … Be silent, if you want your freedom. I mentally gave him a push and the wolf leaped back as if stung by a bee. He retreated to the far corner of his cage and cowered there, teeth bared, but tail down between his legs. Uncertainty flooded him. ‘Dog fights, eh? Oh, he’ll put up a good fight.’ The merchant nudged at the cage again with a thick boot, but the wolf didn’t respond. ‘He’ll win you a lot of coin, this one will. He’s meaner than a wolverine.’ He kicked the cage, harder. The wolf cowered smaller. ‘Oh, he certainly looks as if he will,’ I said disdainfully. I turned aside from the wolf as if I’d lost interest. I studied the caged birds behind him. The pigeons and doves looked as if they were cared for, but two jays and a crow were crowded into a filthy cage littered with rotting scraps of meat and bird droppings. The crow looked like a beggar man in black tatters of feathers. Pick at the bright bug, I suggested to the birds. Perhaps you’ll find a way out. The crow perched wearily where he was, head sunk deep in his feathers, but one jay fluttered to a higher perch and began to tap and tug at the metal pin that held the cage fastened. I glanced back at the wolf. ‘I hadn’t intended to fight him anyway. I was only going to throw him to the dogs to warm them up. A bit of blood primes them for a fight.’ ‘Oh, but he’d make you a fine fighter. Here, look at this. This is what he done to me but a month gone. And me trying to give him food when he went for me.’ He rolled back a sleeve to bare a grimy wrist striped with livid slashes, but half-healed still. I leaned over as if mildly interested. ‘Looks infected. Think you’ll lose your hand?’ ‘S’not infected. Just slow healing, that’s all. Look here, boy, a storm’s coming up. I got to put my wares in my cart and haul off before it hits. Now, you going to make me an offer for that wolf? He’ll make you a fine fighter.’ ‘He might make bear bait, but not much more than that. I’ll give you, oh, six coppers.’ I had a grand total of seven. ‘Coppers? Boy, we’re talking silvers here, at least. Look, he’s a fine animal. Feed him up a bit, he’ll get bigger and meaner. I could get six coppers for his hide alone, right now.’ ‘Then you’d best do it, before he gets any mangier. And before he decides to take your other hand off.’ I leaned closer to the cage, pushing as I did so, and the wolf cowered more deeply. ‘Looks sick to me. My master would be furious with me, if I brought him in and the dogs got sick from killing him.’ I glanced up at the sky. ‘Storm is coming. I’d better be off.’ ‘One silver, boy. And that’s giving him to you.’ At that moment the jay succeeded in pulling the pin. The cage door swung open and he hopped to the door’s edge. I casually stepped between the man and the cage. Behind me, I heard the jays hop out to the top of the pigeons’ cage. Door’s open I pointed out to the crow. I heard him rattle his pathetic feathers. I caught up the pouch at my belt, hefted it thoughtfully. ‘A silver? I don’t have a silver. But it’s no matter, really. I just realized I’ve no way to cart him home with me. Best I don’t buy him.’ Behind me, the jays took flight. The man blazed out a curse and lunged past me toward the cage. I managed to get entangled with him so that we both fell. The crow had made it as far as the cage door. I shook myself clear of the merchant and jumped to my feet, jarring the cage to spook the bird out into the free air. He beat his wings laboriously, but they carried him to the roof of a nearby inn. As the merchant lumbered to his feet, the crow opened his threadbare wings and cawed derisively. ‘There’s a whole cage full of my wares gone!’ he began accusingly, but I caught up my cloak and pointed to a tear in it. ‘My master’s going to be angry with this!’ I exclaimed, and matched him glare for glare. He glanced up at the crow. The bird had huffed its feathers against the storm and sidled into the shelter of a chimney. He’d never catch that bird again. Behind me, the wolf whined suddenly. ‘Nine coppers!’ the merchant offered suddenly, desperately. He’d sold nothing that day, I’d wager. ‘I told you, I’ve no way to take him home!’ I countered. I tugged up my hood, glanced at the sky. ‘Storm’s here,’ I announced as the thick wet flakes began to fall. This would be nasty weather, too warm to freeze, too cold to melt. By daylight, the streets would be shining with ice. I turned to go. ‘Give me your six damned coppers then!’ the merchant bellowed in frustration. I fumbled them out hesitatingly. ‘And will you cart him to where I live?’ I asked as he snatched them out of my hand. ‘Carry him yourself, boy. You’ve robbed me and you know it.’ With that he seized up his cage of doves and pigeons and heaved it into the cart. The empty crow’s cage followed. He ignored my angry remonstrance as he climbed up on the seat and shook the pony’s reins. The old beast dragged the creaking cart off, into the thickening snow and dusk. The market around us was abandoned. The only traffic now was folk hurrying home through the storm, collars and cloaks tight against the wet wind and blowing snow. ‘Now what am I to do with you?’ I asked the wolf. Let me out. Free me. I can’t. Not safe. If I turned a wolf loose here in the heart of town, he’d never find his way to the woods alive. There were too many dogs that would pack up to bring him down, too many men who would shoot him for his hide. Or for being a wolf. I bent toward the cage, intending to heft it and see how heavy it was. He lunged at me, teeth bared. Get back! I was instantly angry. It was contagious. I’ll kill you. You’re the same as he was, a man. You’d keep me in this cage, would you? I’ll kill you, I’ll rip your belly out and tussle with your guts. You’ll get BACK! I pushed at him, hard, and he cowered away again. He snarled and whined his confusion at what I had done, but he shrank away from me into the corner of his cage. I seized the cage, lifted it. It was heavy, and the frantic shifting of his weight didn’t make it any easier. But I could carry it. Not very far, and not for long. But if I took it in stages, I could get him out of the town. Full grown, he’d probably weigh as much as I did. But he was skinny, and young. Younger than I had guessed at first glance. I heaved the cage up, held it against my chest. If he went for me now, he could do some damage. But he only whined and cowered back from me into the far corner. It made it very awkward to carry him. How did he catch you? I hate you. How did he catch you? He remembered a den, and two brothers. A mother who brought him fish. And blood and smoke and his brothers and mother became smelly hides for the boot man. He was dragged out last and thrown into a cage that smelled like ferrets, and kept alive on carrion. And hate. Hate was what he had throve upon. You were whelped late, if your mother was feeding you on the fish runs. He sulked at me. All the roads were uphill, and the snow was starting to stick. My worn boots slid on the icy cobbles, and my shoulders ached with the awkward burden of the cage. I feared I would start trembling. I had to stop frequently to rest. When I did, I firmly refused to think about what I was doing. I told myself that I would not bond with this wolf, or any other creature. I had promised myself. I was just going to feed this cub up and then turn him loose somewhere. Burrich need never know. I would not have to face his disgust. I hefted the cage up again. Who would have thought such a mangy little cub could be so heavy? Not mangy. Indignant. Fleas. The cage is full of fleas. So I wasn’t imagining that itching on my chest. Wonderful. I’d have to bathe again tonight, unless I wanted to share my bed with vermin for the rest of the winter. I had reached the edge of Buckkeep Town. From here, there were only a scattering of houses, and the road would be steeper. Much steeper. Once again, I lowered the cage to the snowy ground. The cub huddled in it, small and miserable without anger and hate to sustain him. He was hungry. I made a decision. I’m going to take you out. I’m going to carry you. Nothing from him. He watched me steadily as I worked the catch on the cage and swung the door open. I had thought he would charge past me and vanish into the night and the falling snow. Instead he crouched where he was. I reached into the cage and seized him by the scruff to drag him out. In a flash he was on me, driving into my chest, jaws going wide for my throat. I got my arm up just in time to shove my forearm crossways into his jaws. I kept my grip on the scruff of his neck and pushed my arm hard into his mouth, deeper than he liked. His hind legs tore at my belly, but my jerkin was thick enough to divert most of the damage. In an instant we were rolling over and over in the snow, both snapping and snarling like mad things. But I had the weight and the leverage and the experience of tussling with dogs for years. I got him on his back and held him there, helpless, while his head thrashed back and forth and he called me vile names that humans have no words for. When he had exhausted himself I leaned forward over him. I gripped his throat and leaned down to stare into his eyes. This was a physical message he understood. I added to it. I am the Wolf. You are the Cub. You WILL obey me! I held him there staring into his eyes. He quickly looked away, but still I held him, until he looked back up at me and I saw the change in them. I let go of him and stood up and stepped away. He lay still. Get up. Come here. He rolled over and came to me, belly low to the ground, tail between his legs. When he got close to me, he fell over on his side and then showed his belly. He whined softly. After a moment I relented. It’s all right. We just had to understand each other. I don’t intend to hurt you. Come with me now. I reached over to scratch his chest, but when I touched him, he yelped. I felt the red flash of his pain. Where are you hurt? I saw the brass-bound club of the cage man. Everywhere. I tried to be gentle as I felt him over. Old scabs, lumps on his ribs. I stood, and kicked the cage savagely aside from our path. He came and leaned against my leg. Hungry. Cold. So tired. His feelings were bleeding over into mine again. When I touched him, it was difficult to separate my thoughts from his. Was it my outrage over how he had been treated, or his own? I decided it didn’t matter. I gathered him up carefully and stood. Without the cage, held close to my chest, he didn’t weigh nearly as much. He was mostly fur and long, growing bones. I regretted the force I’d used on him, but also knew that it was the only language he would have recognized. ‘I’ll take care of you,’ I forced myself to say aloud. Warm, he thought gratefully, and I took a moment to pull my cloak over him. His senses were feeding mine. I could smell myself, a thousand times stronger than I wanted to. Horses and dogs and wood smoke and beer and a trace of Patience’s perfume. I did my best to block out my awareness of his senses. I snugged him to me and carried him up the steep path to Buckkeep. I knew of a disused cottage. An old pig man had once lived in it, out back behind the granaries. No one lived there now. It was too tumbledown, and too far from everyone else at Buckkeep. But it would suit my purposes. I’d put him there, with some bones to gnaw and some boiled grain, and some straw to bed down in. A week or two, maybe a month, and he’d be healed up and strong enough to care for himself. Then I’d take him out west of Buckkeep and turn him loose. Meat? I sighed. Meat, I promised. Never had any beast sensed my thoughts so completely, or expressed his own to me so clearly. It was good that we would not be around one another for long. Very good that he’d be leaving soon. Warm, he contradicted me. He set his head on my shoulder and fell asleep, his muzzle snuffling damply against my ear. FIVE (#ulink_c8d90d1d-a67b-5f19-8a42-9eca91415ba3) Gambit (#ulink_c8d90d1d-a67b-5f19-8a42-9eca91415ba3) Certainly there is an ancient code of conduct, and certainly its customs were harsher than ours today. But I would venture that we have not wandered so far from those customs, so much as put a veneer over them. A warrior’s word is still his bond, and among those who serve side by side, there is nothing so foul as one who lies to his comrade, or leads him into dishonour. The laws of hospitality still forbid those who have shared salt at a man’s table to shed blood on his floor. Winter deepened around Buckkeep Castle. The storms came in off the sea, to pound us with icy fury and then depart. Snow usually fell in their wake, great dumps of it that iced the battlements like sweet paste on nut cakes. The great darks of the long nights grew longer, and on clear nights the stars burnt cold over us. After my long journey home from the Mountain Kingdom, the ferocity of the winter didn’t threaten me as it once had. As I went my daily rounds to the stable and to the old pig hut, my cheeks might burn with cold and my eyelashes cling together with frost, but I always knew that home and a warm hearth were close by. The storms and the deep colds that snarled at us like wolves at the door were also the watch beasts that kept the Red Ships away from our shores. Time dragged for me. I called on Kettricken each day, as Chade had suggested, but our restiveness was too much alike for us. I am sure I irritated her as much as she did me. I dared not spend too many hours with the cub, lest we bond. I had no other fixed duties. There were too many hours to the day, and all were filled with my thoughts of Molly. Nights were the worst, for then my sleeping mind was beyond my control, and my dreams were full of my Molly, my bright-red-skirted candle-maker, now gone so demure and drab in serving-girl blue. If I could not be near her by day, my dreaming self courted her with an earnestness and energy that my waking self had never mustered the courage for. When we walked the beaches after a storm, her hand was in mine. I kissed her competently, without uncertainty, and met her eyes with no secrets to hide. No one could keep her from me. In my dreams. At first, Chade’s training of me seduced me into spying upon her. I knew which room on the servants’ floor was hers, I knew which window was hers. I learned, without intention, the hours of her comings and goings. It shamed me to stand where I might hear her step upon the stairs and catch a brief glimpse of her going out on her market errands, but try as I might, I could not forbid myself to be there. I knew who her friends were among the serving-women. Though I might not speak to her, I could greet them, and have a chance bit of talk with them, hoping always for some stray mention of Molly. I yearned after her hopelessly. Sleep eluded me, and food held no interest for me. Nothing held any interest for me. I was sitting one evening in the guard-room off the kitchen. I had found a place in the corner where I could lean against the wall and prop my boots up on the opposite bench to discourage company. A mug of ale that had gone warm hours ago sat in front of me. I lacked even the ambition to drink myself into a stupor. I was looking at nothing, attempting not to think when the bench was jerked out from under my propped feet. I nearly fell from my seat, then recovered to see Burrich seating himself opposite me. ‘What ails you?’ he asked without niceties. He leaned forward and pitched his voice for me alone. ‘Have you had another seizure?’ I looked back at the table. I spoke as quietly. ‘A few trembling fits, but no real seizures. They only seem to come on me if I strain myself.’ He nodded gravely, then waited. I looked up to find his dark eyes on me. The concern in them touched something in me. I shook my head, my voice suddenly gone. ‘It’s Molly,’ I said after a moment. ‘You haven’t been able to find where she went?’ ‘No. She’s here, at Buckkeep, working as a maid for Patience. But Patience won’t let me see her. She says …’ Burrich’s eyes had widened at my first words. Now he glanced around us, then tossed his head at the door. I arose and followed him as he led me back to his stables, and then up to his room. I sat down at his table, before his hearth, and he brought out his good Tilth brandy and two cups. Then he set out his leather mending tools. And his perpetual pile of harness to be mended. He handed me a halter that needed a new strap. For himself, he laid out some fancy work on a saddle-skirt. He drew up his own stool and looked at me. ‘This Molly. I’ve seen her then, in the washer-courts with Lacey? Carries her head proud? Red glint to her coat?’ ‘Her hair.’ I corrected him grudgingly. ‘Nice wide hips. She’ll bear easily,’ he said with approval. I glared at him. ‘Thank you,’ I said icily. He shocked me by grinning. ‘Get angry. I’d rather you were that than self-pitying. So. Tell me.’ And I told him. Probably much more than I would have in the guard-room, for here we were alone, the brandy went warm down my throat, and the familiar sights and smells of his room and work were all around me. Here, if anywhere in my life, I had always been safe. It seemed safe to reveal to him my pain. He did not speak or make any comments. Even after I had talked myself out, he kept his silence. I watched him rub dye into the lines of the buck he had incised in the leather. ‘So. What should I do?’ I heard myself ask. He set down his work, drank off his brandy, and then refilled his cup. He looked about his room. ‘You ask me, of course, because you have noted my rare success at providing myself with a fond wife and many children?’ The bitterness in his voice shocked me, but before I could react to it, he gave a choked laugh. ‘Forget I said that. Ultimately, the decision was mine, and done a long time ago. FitzChivalry, what do you think you should be doing?’ I stared at him morosely. ‘What made things go wrong in the first place?’ When I did not reply, he asked me, ‘Did not you yourself just tell me that you courted her as a boy, when she considered your offer a man’s? She was looking for a man. So don’t go sulking about like a thwarted child. Be a man.’ He drank down half his brandy, then refilled both our cups. ‘How?’ I demanded. ‘The same way you’ve shown yourself a man elsewhere. Accept the discipline, live up to the task. So you cannot see her. If I know anything of women, it does not mean she does not see you. Keep that in mind. Look at yourself. Your hair looks like a pony’s winter coat, I’ll wager you’ve worn that shirt a week straight and you’re thin as a winter-foal. I doubt you’ll regain her respect that way. Feed yourself up, groom yourself daily, and in Eda’s name get some exercise instead of moping about the guard-room. Set yourself some tasks and get onto them.’ I nodded slowly to the advice. I knew he was right. But I could not help protesting. ‘But all of that will do me no good if Patience will still not permit me to see Molly.’ ‘In the long run, my boy, it is not about you and Patience. It is about you and Molly.’ ‘And King Shrewd,’ I said wryly. He glanced up at me quizzically. ‘According to Patience, a man cannot be sworn to a king and give his heart fully to a woman as well. “You cannot put two saddles on one horse,” she told me. This from a woman who married a King-in-Waiting, and was content with whatever time he had for her.’ I reached to hand Burrich the mended halter. He did not take it. He had been in the act of lifting his brandy cup. He set it down on the table so sharply that the liquid leaped and slopped over the edge. ‘She said that to you?’ he asked me hoarsely. His eyes bored into mine. I nodded slowly. ‘She said it would not be honourable to expect Molly to be content with whatever time the King left to me as my own.’ Burrich leaned back in his chair. A chain of conflicting emotions dragged across his features. He looked aside into the hearth fire, and then back at me. For a moment he seemed on the verge of speaking. Then he sat up, drank off his brandy in one gulp and abruptly stood. ‘It’s too quiet up here. Let’s go down to Buckkeep Town, shall we?’ The next day I arose and ignored my pounding heart to set myself the task of not behaving like a love-sick boy. A boy’s impetuosity and carelessness were what had lost her to me. I resolved to attempt a man’s restraint. If biding my time was my only path to her, I would take Burrich’s advice and use that time well. So I arose each day early, before even the morning cooks were up. In the privacy of my room, I stretched and then worked through sparring drills with an old stave. I would work myself into sweat and dizziness, and then go down to the baths to steam myself. Slowly, very slowly, my stamina began to return. I gained weight and began to rebuild the muscle on my bones. The new clothing that Mistress Hasty had inflicted on me began to fit. I was still not free of the tremors that sometimes assailed me. But I had fewer seizures, and always managed to return to my rooms before I could shame myself by falling. Patience told me that my colour was better, while Lacey delighted in feeding me at every opportunity. I began to feel myself again. I ate with the guards each morning, where quantity consumed was always of more importance than manners. Breakfast was followed with a trip to the stables, to take Sooty out for a snowy canter to keep her in condition. When I returned her to the stables, there was a comfort in taking care of her myself. Before our misadventures in the Mountain Kingdom, Burrich and I had been on bad terms over my use of the Wit. I had been all but barred from the stables. So there was more than satisfaction in rubbing her down and seeing to her grain myself. There was the busyness of the stables, the warm smells of the beasts and the gossip of the keep as only the stable-hands could tell it. On fortunate days, Hands or Burrich would take time to stop and talk with me. And on other days, busy days, there was the bittersweet satisfaction of seeing them conferring over a stallion’s cough, or doctoring the ailing boar that some farmer had brought up to the keep. On those days they had little time for pleasantries, and without intending it, excluded me from their circle. It was as it had to be. I had moved on to another life. I could not expect the old one to be held ajar for me forever. That thought did not prevent a pang of guilt as I slipped away each day to the disused cottage behind the granaries. Wariness always stalked me. My new peace with Burrich had not existed so long that I took it for granted; it was only too fresh in my memory exactly how painful losing his friendship had been. If Burrich ever suspected that I had returned to using the Wit, he would abandon me just as swiftly and completely as he had before. Each day I asked myself exactly why I was willing to gamble his friendship and respect for the sake of a wolf cub. My only answer was, I had no choice. I could no more have turned aside from Cub than I could have walked away from a starved and caged child. To Burrich, the Wit that sometimes left me open to the minds of animals was a perversion, a disgusting weakness in which no true man indulged. He had all but admitted to the latent ability for it, but staunchly insisted that he never used it himself. If he did, I had never caught him at it. The opposite was never true. With uncanny perception, he had always known when I was drawn to an animal. As a boy, my indulgence in the Wit with a beast had usually led to a rap on the head or a sound cuff to rouse me back to my duties. When I had lived with Burrich in the stables, he had done everything in his power to keep me from bonding to any animal. He had succeeded always, save twice. The keen pain of losing my bond companions had convinced me Burrich was right. Only a fool would indulge in something that inevitably led to such loss. So I was a fool, rather than a man who could turn aside from the plea of a beaten and starved cub. I pilfered bones and meat scraps and crusts, and did my best so that no one, not even Cook or the Fool, knew of my activity. I took elaborate pains to vary the times of my visits each day, and to take every day a different path to avoid creating too beaten a trail to the back cottage. Hardest had been smuggling clean straw and an old horse blanket out of the stables. But I had managed it. No matter when I arrived, I found Cub waiting for me. It was not just the watchfulness of an animal awaiting food. He sensed when I began my daily hike back to the cottage behind all the granaries and awaited me. He knew when I had ginger cakes in my pocket, and too quickly became fond of them. Not that his suspicions of me had vanished. No. I felt his wariness, and how he shrank in on himself each time I stepped within reach of him. But every day that I did not strike him, every bit of food I brought him was one more plank of trust in the bridge between us. It was a link I did not want to establish. I tried to be sternly aloof from him, to know him through the Wit as little as possible. I feared he might lose the wildness that he would need to survive on his own. Over and over I warned him, You must keep yourself hidden. Every man is a danger to you, as is every hound. You must keep yourself within this structure, and make no sound if anyone is near. At first it was easy for him to obey. He was sadly thin, and would fall immediately upon the food I brought and devour it all. Usually he was asleep in his bedding before I left the cottage, or jealously eyeing me as he lay gnawing a treasured bone. But as he was fed adequately, and had room to move, and lost his fear of me, the innate playfulness of a cub began to reassert itself. He took to springing upon me in mock attacks as soon as the door was opened, and expressing delight in knuckly beef bones with snarls and tusslings inflicted on them. When I rebuked him for being too noisy, or for the tracks that betrayed his night romp in the snowy field behind the cottage, he would cower before my displeasure. But I noted as well the masked savagery in his eyes at those times. He did not concede mastery to me. Only a sort of pack seniority. He bided his time until his decisions should be his own. Painful as it was sometimes, it was as it needed to be. I had rescued him with the firm intent of returning him to freedom. A year from now, he would be but one more wolf howling in the distance at night. I told him this repeatedly. At first, he would demand to know when he would be taken from the smelly keep and the confining stone walls that fenced it. I would promise him soon, as soon as he was fed to strength again, as soon as the deepest snows of winter were past and he could fend for himself. But as weeks passed, and the storms outside reminded him of the snugness of his bed and the good meat filled out on his bones, he asked less often. Sometimes I forgot to remind him. Loneliness ate at me from inside and out. At night I would wonder what would happen if I crept upstairs and knocked at Molly’s door. By day I held myself back from bonding to the small cub who depended so completely on me. There was only one other creature in the keep who was as lonely as I was. ‘I am sure you have other duties. Why do you come to call on me each day?’ Kettricken asked me in the forthright Mountain way. It was mid-morning, on a day following a night of storm. Snow was falling in fat flakes and despite the chill, Kettricken had ordered the window shutters opened so she might watch it. Her sewing chamber overlooked the sea, and I thought she was fascinated by the immense and restless waters. Her eyes were much the same colour as the water that day. ‘I had thought to help time pass more pleasantly for you, my Queen-in-Waiting.’ ‘Passing time,’ she sighed. She cupped her chin in her hand and leaned on her elbow to stare pensively out at the falling snow. The sea wind tangled in her pale hair. ‘It is an odd language, yours. You speak of passing time as in the mountains we speak of passing wind. As if it were a thing to be rid of.’ Behind us, her two ladies tittered apprehensively, then bent their heads industriously over their needlework again. Kettricken herself had a large embroidery frame set up, with the beginning of mountains and a waterfall in it. I had not noticed her making much progress on it. Her other ladies had not presented themselves today, but had sent pages with excuses as to why they could not attend her. Headaches, mostly. She did not seem to understand that she was being slighted by their inattention. I did not know how to explain it to her, and on some days I wondered if I should. Today was one of those days. I shifted in my chair and crossed my legs the other way. ‘I meant only that in winter, Buckkeep can become a tedious place. The weather keeps us within doors so much, there is little that is amusing.’ ‘That is not the case down at the shipwrights’ sheds,’ she informed me. Her eyes had a strangely hungry look. ‘There it is all bustle, with every bit of daylight used in the setting of the great timbers and the bending of the planks. Even when the day is dim or wild with storm, within the sheds shipbuilders are still hewing and shaping and planing wood. At the metal forges, they make chains and anchors. Some weave stout canvas for sails, and others cut and sew it. Verity walks about there, overseeing it all. While I sit here with fancywork, and prick my fingers and strain my eyes to knot in flowers and birds’ eyes. So that when I am finished, it can be set aside with a dozen other prettyworks.’ ‘Oh, not set aside, no, never, my lady,’ one of her women burst in impulsively. ‘Why, your needlework is much treasured when you gift it out. In Shoaks there is a framed bit in Lord Shemshy’s private chambers, and Duke Kelvar of Rippon …’ Kettricken’s sigh cut short the woman’s compliment. ‘I would I worked at a sail instead, with a great iron needle or a wooden fid, to grace one of my husband’s ships. There would be a work that was worthy of my time, and his respect. Instead, I am given toys to amuse me, as if I were a spoiled child that did not understand the value of time well spent.’ She turned back to her window. I noticed then that the smoke rising from the shipyards was as easily visible as the sea. Perhaps I had mistaken the direction of her attention. ‘Shall I send for tea and cakes, my lady?’ one of her ladies inquired hopefully. Both of them sat with their shawls pulled up over their shoulders. Kettricken did not appear to notice the chill sea air spilling in the open window, but it could not have been pleasant for those two to sit and ply their needles in it. ‘If you wish them,’ Kettricken replied disinterestedly. ‘I do not hunger or thirst. Indeed, I fear I will grow fat as a penned goose, sitting at needlework and nibbling and sipping all day. I long to do something of significance. Tell me true, Fitz. If you did not feel required to call upon me, would you be sitting idly in your chambers? Or doing fancy work at a loom?’ ‘No. But then, I am not the Queen-in-Waiting.’ ‘Waiting. Ah, I understand well now that part of my title.’ A bitterness I had never heard from her before crept into her voice. ‘But Queen? In my land, as well you know, we do not say Queen. Were I there now, and ruling instead of my father, I would be called Sacrifice. More, I would be Sacrifice. To whatever was to the good of my land and my people.’ ‘Were you there now, in the deep of winter, what would you be doing?’ I asked, thinking only to find a more comfortable area of conversation. It was a mistake. She grew silent and stared out the window. ‘In the mountains,’ she said softly, ‘there was never time to be idle. I was the younger of course, and most of the duties of Sacrifice fell upon my father and my older brother. But, as Jonqui says, there is always enough work to go round and some to spare. Here, in Buckkeep, all is done by servants, out of sight, and one sees only the results, the tidied chamber, the meal on the table. Perhaps it is because this is such a populous place.’ She paused a moment and her eyes went afar. ‘In Jhaampe, in winter, the hall and the town itself grow quiet. Snows fall thick and heavy, and great cold closes in on the land. The lesser used trails disappear for the winter. Wheels are replaced by runners. Visitors to the city have long gone home by now. In the palace at Jhaampe, there is only the family, and those who choose to stay and help them. Not serve them, no, not exactly. You have been to Jhaampe. You know there are none who only serve, save for the royal family. In Jhaampe, I would rise early, to fetch the water for the household porridge, and to take my turn at the stirring of the kettle. Keera and Sennick and Jofron and I would make the kitchen lively with talk. And all the young ones dashing about, bringing in the firewood and setting out the plates and talking of a thousand things.’ Her voice faltered, and I listened to the silence of her loneliness. After a bit she went on, ‘If there was work to be done, heavy or light, we all joined in it. I have helped to bend and lash the branches for a barn. Even in the deep of winter, I have helped to clear snow and raise new roof arches for a family devastated by a fire. Do you think a Sacrifice cannot hunt down a cranky old bear that has turned to killing goats, or strain against a rope to help brace a bridge battered by flood waters?’ She looked at me with real pain in her eyes. ‘Here, in Buckkeep, we do not risk our queens,’ I told her simply. ‘Another shoulder can brace a rope, we have dozens of hunters who would vie for the honour of dispatching a cattle killer. We have but one queen. There are things a queen can do that no other can.’ Behind us in the room, her ladies had all but forgotten her. One had summoned a page, and he had returned with sweet cakes and steaming tea in a pot. They chatted together, warming their hands about their tea-cups. Briefly I looked at them, to remember well what ladies had chosen to attend their queen. Kettricken, I was coming to see, might not be the easiest of queens to attend upon. Kettricken’s little maid, Rosemary, sat on the floor by the tea-table, dreamy-eyed, a sweet cake clasped in her small hands. I suddenly wished I were eight years old again and could join her there. ‘I know what you speak of,’ Kettricken said bluntly. ‘I am here to bear an heir to Verity. It is a duty I do not avoid, for I do not consider it a duty, but a pleasure. I only wish I were sure my lord shared my sentiments. Always he is away and about the town on business. I know where he is today; down there, watching his ships arise from planks and timbers. Could I not be with him with no danger to myself? Surely, if only I can bear his heir, only he can sire it. Why must I be confined here while he immerses himself in the task of protecting our people? That is a task I should be sharing as Sacrifice for the Six Duchies.’ Accustomed as I had become to Mountain forthrightness in my time there, I was still shocked at how bluntly she spoke. It made me overbold in my reply. I found myself rising to lean past her and pull the shutters tight over the draughty window. I took advantage of the closeness to whisper fiercely, ‘If you think that is the only duty that our queens bear, you are gravely mistaken, my lady. To speak as plainly as you have, you neglect your duties to your ladies, who are here this day only to attend upon you and converse with you. Think. Could they not be doing this same needlework in the cosiness of their own chambers, or in the company of Mistress Hasty? You sigh after what you perceive as a more important task; but before you is a task the King himself cannot do. You are here to do it. Rebuild the court at Buckkeep. Make it a desirable and attractive place to be. Encourage his lords and ladies to vie for his attention; make them eager to support him in his endeavours. It has been long since there was a congenial queen in this castle. Instead of looking down at a ship that other hands are more capable of building, take up the task you are given, and suit yourself to it.’ I finished re-draping the tapestry that covered the shutters and helped to seal out the cold of the sea storms. I then stepped back and met my queen’s eyes. To my chagrin, she was as chastened as if she were a milkmaid. Tears stood in her pale eyes, and her cheeks were as red as if I had slapped her. I glanced at her ladies, who were still taking tea and chatting. Rosemary, unwatched, was taking the opportunity to poke at the tarts carefully to see what was inside them. No one appeared to have noticed anything amiss. But I was learning rapidly how adept court ladies were at such dissimulation, and feared speculation as to what the Bastard might have said to the Queen-in-Waiting to bring tears to her eyes. I cursed my clumsiness, and reminded myself that however tall Kettricken might be, she was not much older than myself, and in a foreign place alone. I should not have spoken to her, but should instead have presented the problem to Chade, and let him manipulate someone into explaining it to her. Then it dawned on me that he had already selected someone to explain such things to her. I met her eyes again and ventured a nervous smile. Quickly she followed my glance to the ladies, and as swiftly returned decorum to her face. My heart surged with pride in her. ‘What do you suggest?’ she asked quietly. ‘I suggest,’ I said humbly, ‘that I am ashamed at how boldly I have spoken to my queen. I ask her forgiveness. But I suggest, also, that she show these two royal ladies some special mark of royal favour, to reward them for their faithfulness.’ She nodded her comprehension. ‘And that favour might be?’ she asked softly. ‘A private gathering with their queen in her personal chambers, perhaps for a special minstrel or puppeteer. It matters not what entertainment you provide; only that those who have not chosen to attend you as faithfully be excluded.’ ‘That sounds like something Regal would do.’ ‘Probably. He is very adept at creating lackeys and hangers-on. But he would do it spitefully, to punish those who had not danced attendance upon him.’ ‘And I?’ ‘And you, my Queen-in-Waiting, you do it as a reward to those who have. With no thought of punishing those who have not, but only of enjoying the company of those who obviously reciprocate that feeling.’ ‘I see. And the minstrel?’ ‘Mellow. He has a most gallant way of singing to every lady in the room.’ ‘Will you see if he is free this evening?’ ‘My lady,’ I had to smile. ‘You are the Queen-in-Waiting. You honour him to request his presence. He will never be too busy to attend upon you.’ She sighed again, but it was a smaller sigh. She nodded her dismissal of me, and rose to advance smiling upon her ladies, begging them to excuse her wandering thoughts this morning, and then asking if they might also attend her this evening in her own chambers. I watched them exchange glances and smile, and knew we had done well. I noted their names to myself. Lady Hopeful and Lady Modesty. I bowed my way out of the room, my departure scarcely noticed. So I came to be advisor to Kettricken. It was a not a role I relished, to be companion and instructor, to be the whisperer that told her what steps she next must dance. In truth, it was an uncomfortable task. I felt I diminished her by my chiding, and that I corrupted her, teaching her the spidery ways of power in the web of the court. She was right. These were Regal’s tricks. If she worked them with higher ideals and kinder ways than Regal did, my intentions were selfish enough for both of us. I wanted her to gather power into her hands, and with it bind the throne firmly to Verity in the minds of one and all. Early each evening, I was expected to call on Lady Patience. She and Lacey both took these visits quite seriously. Patience considered me completely at her disposal, as if I were her page still, and thought nothing of requiring me to copy some ancient scroll for her onto her precious red paper, or to demand that I show her my improvement in playing the sea pipes. She always took me to task for not showing enough effort in that area, and would spend the better part of an hour confusing me whilst attempting to instruct me in it. I tried to be tractable and polite, but felt entrapped in their conspiracy to keep me from seeing Molly. I knew the wisdom of Patience’s course, but wisdom does not allay loneliness. Despite their efforts to keep me from her, I saw Molly everywhere. Oh, not her person, no, but in the scent of the fat bayberry candle burning so sweetly, in the cloak left draped over a chair, even the honey in the honey cakes tasted of Molly to me. Will you think me a fool that I sat close by the candle and smelled its scent, or took the chair that I might lean against her snow-damped cloak as I sat? Sometimes I felt as Kettricken did, that I was drowning in what was required of me, and that there was nothing left in my life that was for me alone. I reported weekly to Chade upon Kettricken’s progress in court intrigue. Chade it was who warned me that suddenly the ladies most enamoured of Regal were courting favour with Kettricken as well. And so I must warn her, who to treat courteously, but no more than that, and whom to genuinely smile upon. Sometimes I thought to myself that I would rather be quietly killing for my king than to be so embroiled in all these secretive schemes. But then King Shrewd summoned me. The message came very early one morning, and I made haste to dress myself to attend my king. This was the first time he had summoned me to his presence since I had returned to Buckkeep. It had made me uneasy to be ignored. Was he displeased with me, over what had happened at Jhaampe? Surely he would have told me so directly. Still. Uncertainty gnawed me. I tried to make great haste to wait upon him, and yet to take special care with my appearance. I ended up doing poorly at both. My hair, shorn for fever when I was in the mountains, had grown back as bushy and unmanageable as Verity’s. Worse, my beard was beginning to bristle as well. Twice Burrich had told me that I had better decide to wear a beard, or to attend more closely to my shaving. As my beard came in as patchy as a pony’s winter coat, I diligently cut my face several times that morning, before deciding that a bit of bristle would be less noticeable than all the blood. I curried my hair back from my face, and wished I could bind it back in a warrior’s tail. I set into my shirt the pin that Shrewd had so long ago given me to mark me as his. Then I hurried to attend my king. As I strode hastily down the hall to the King’s door, Regal stepped abruptly from his own doorway. I halted not to run into him, and then felt trapped there, staring at him. I had seen him several times since I had returned, but it had always been across a hall, or a passing glimpse of him while I was engaged in some task. Now we stood, scarce an arm’s length apart, and stared at one another. Almost, we could have been mistaken for brothers, I realized with shock. His hair was curlier, his features finer, his bearing more aristocratic. His garments were peacock’s feathers compared to my wren colours, and I lacked silver at my throat and on my hands. Still, the stamp of the Farseers was plain on us both: we shared Shrewd’s jaw and the fold of his eyelids and the curve of his lower lip. Neither of us would ever compare to Verity’s widely-muscled build, but I would come closer than he would. Less than a decade of years separated our ages. Only his skin separated me from his blood. I met his eyes and wished I could spill his guts upon the clean swept floor. He smiled, a brief showing of white teeth. ‘Bastard,’ he greeted me pleasantly. His smile grew sharper. ‘Or, that is, Master Fits. A fitting name you’ve taken to yourself.’ His careful pronunciation left no room for doubting his insult. ‘Prince Regal,’ I replied, and let my tone make the words mean the same as his. I waited with an icy patience I had not known I owned. He had to strike me first. For a time we held our positions, eyes locked. Then he glanced down, to flick imaginary dust from his sleeve. He strode past me. I did not step aside for him. He did not jostle me as once he would have. I took a breath and walked on. I did not know the guardsman at the door, but he waved me into the King’s chamber. I sighed and set myself another task. I would learn names and faces again. Now that the court was swelling with folk come to see the new queen, I found myself being recognized by people I didn’t know. ‘That’d be the Bastard, by the look of him,’ I’d heard a baconmonger say to his apprentice the other day outside the kitchen doors. It made me feel vulnerable. Things were changing too fast for me. King Shrewd’s chamber shocked me. I had expected to find the windows ajar to the brisk winter air, to find Shrewd up and dressed and alert at table, as keen as a captain receiving reports from his lieutenants. Always he had been so, a sharp old man, strict with himself, an early riser, Shrewd as his name. But he was not in his sitting room at all. I ventured to the entry of his bedchamber, peered within the open door. Inside, the room was half in shadow still. A servant rattled cups and plates at a small table drawn up by the great curtained bed. He glanced at me, then away, evidently thinking I was a serving-boy. The air was still and musty, as if the room were disused or had not been aired in a long time. I waited a time for the servant to let King Shrewd know I had come. When he continued to ignore me, I advanced warily to the edge of the bed. ‘My king?’ I made bold to address him when he did not speak. ‘I have come as you bid me.’ Shrewd was sitting up in the curtained shadows of his bed, well propped with cushions. He opened his eyes when I spoke. ‘Who … ah. Fitz. Sit, then. Wallace, bring him a chair. A cup and plate, too.’ As the servant moved to his bidding, King Shrewd confided to me, ‘I do miss Cheffers. With me for so many years, and I never had to tell him what I wanted done.’ ‘I remember him, my lord. Where is he, then?’ ‘A cough took him. He caught it in the autumn, and it never left him. It slowly wore him away, until he couldn’t take a breath without wheezing.’ I recalled the servant. He had not been a young man, but not so old either. I was surprised to hear of his death. I stood silently, wordless, while Wallace brought the chair and a plate and cup for me. He frowned disapprovingly as I seated myself, but I ignored it. He would soon enough learn that King Shrewd designed his own protocol. ‘And you, my king? Are you well? I cannot recall that I ever knew you to keep to your bed in the morning.’ King Shrewd made an impatient noise. ‘It is most annoying. Not a sickness really. Just a giddiness, a sort of dizziness that sweeps down upon me if I move swiftly. Every morning I think it gone, but when I try to rise, the very stones of Buckkeep rock under me. So I keep to my bed, and eat and drink a bit, and then rise slowly. By midday I am myself. I think it has something to do with the winter cold, though the healer says it may be from an old sword cut, taken when I was not much older than you are now. See, I bear the scar still, though I thought the damage long healed.’ King Shrewd leaned forward in his curtained bed, lifting with one shaky hand a sheaf of his greying hair from his left temple. I saw the pucker of the old scar and nodded. ‘But, enough. I did not summon you for consultations about my health. I suspect you guess why you are here?’ ‘You would like a complete report of the events at Jhaampe?’ I guessed. I glanced about for the servant, saw Wallace hovering near. Cheffers would have departed to allow Shrewd and me to talk freely. I wondered how plainly I dared speak before his new man. But Shrewd waved it aside. ‘It is done, boy,’ he said heavily. ‘Verity and I have consulted. Now we let it go. I do not think there is much you could tell me that I do not know, or guess already. Verity and I have spoken at length. I … regret … some things. But. Here we are, and here is always the place we must start from. Eh?’ Words swelled in my throat, nearly choking me. Regal, I wanted to say to him. Your son who tried to kill me, your bastard grandson. Did you speak at length with him, also? And was it before or after you put me into his power? But, as clearly as if Chade or Verity had spoken to me, I knew suddenly I had no right to question my king. Not even to ask if he had given my life over to his youngest son. I clenched my jaws and held my words unuttered. Shrewd met my eyes. His eyes flickered to Wallace. ‘Wallace. Take yourself to the kitchens for a bit. Or wherever you wish that is not here.’ Wallace looked displeased, but he turned with a sniff and departed. He left the door ajar behind him. At a sign from Shrewd, I arose and shut it. I returned to my seat. ‘FitzChivalry,’ he said gravely. ‘This will not do.’ ‘Sir.’ I met his eyes for a moment, then looked down. He spoke heavily. ‘Sometimes, ambitious young men do foolish things. When they are shown the error of their ways, they apologize.’ I looked up suddenly, wondering if he expected an apology from me. But he went on, ‘I have been tendered such an apology. I have accepted it. Now we go on. In this, trust me,’ he said, and he spoke gently but it was not a request. ‘Least said is soonest mended.’ I leaned back in my chair. I took a breath, sighed it carefully out. In a moment I had mastered myself. I looked up at him with an open face. ‘May I ask why you have called me, my king?’ ‘An unpleasantness,’ he said distastefully. ‘Duke Brawndy of Bearns thinks I should resolve it. He fears what may follow if I do not. He does not think it … political to take direct action himself. So I have granted the request, but grudgingly. Have not we enough to face with the Raiders at our doorstep, without internal strife? Still. They have the right to ask it of me, and I the duty to oblige any who asks. Once more you will bear the King’s Justice, Fitz.’ He told me concisely of the situation in Bearns. A young woman from Sealbay had come to Ripplekeep to offer herself to Brawndy as a warrior. He had been pleased to accept her, for she was both well-muscled and adept, skilled at staves, bows and blades. She was beautiful as well as strong, small and dark and sleek as a sea otter. She had been a welcome addition to his guard, and soon was a popular figure in his court as well. She had, not charm, but that courage and strength of will that draws others to follow. Brawndy himself had grown fond of her. She enlivened his court and instilled new spirit in his guard. But lately she had begun to fancy herself a prophetess and soothsayer. She claimed to have been chosen by El the sea-god for a higher destiny. Her name had been Madja, her parentage unremarkable, but now she had renamed herself, in a ceremony of fire, wind and water, and called herself Virago. She ate only meat she had taken herself, and kept in her rooms nothing that she had not either made herself or won by show of arms. Her following was swelling, and included some of the younger nobles as well as many of the soldiers under her command. To all she preached the need to return to El’s worship and honour. She espoused the old ways, advocating a rigorous, simple life that glorified what a person could win by her own strength. She saw the Raiders and Forging as El’s punishment for our soft ways, and blamed the Farseer line for encouraging that softness. At first she had spoken circumspectly of such things. Of late, she had become more open, but never so bold as to voice outright treason. Still, there had been bullock sacrifices on the sea cliffs, and she had blood-painted a number of young folk and sent them out on spirit-quests as in the very old days. Brawndy had heard rumours that she sought a man worthy of herself, who would join her to throw down the Farseer throne. They would rule together, to begin the time of the Fighter and put an end to the days of the Farmer. According to Bearns, quite a number of young men were ready to vie for that honour. Brawndy wished her stopped, before he himself had to accuse her of treason and force his men to choose between Virago and himself. Shrewd offered the opinion that her following would probably drop off drastically were she to be bested at arms, or have a severe accident or become victim to a wasting illness that depleted her strength and beauty. I was forced to agree that was probably so, but observed that there were many cases where folks who died became like gods afterwards. Shrewd said certainly, if the person died honourably. Then, abruptly, he changed the topic. In Ripplekeep, on Seal Bay, there was an old scroll that Verity wished copied, a listing of all those from Bearns who had served the King in the Skill, as coterie members. It was also said that at Ripplekeep there was a relic from the days of the Elderling defence of that city. Shrewd wished me to leave on the morrow, to go to Seal Bay and copy the scrolls and to view the relic and bring him a report of it. I would also convey to Brawndy the King’s best wishes and his certainty that the Duke’s unease would soon be put to rest. I understood. As I stood to leave, Shrewd raised a finger to bid me pause. I stood, waiting. ‘And do you feel I am keeping my bargain with you?’ he asked. It was the old question, the one he had always asked me after our meetings when I was a boy. It made me smile. ‘Sir, I do,’ I said as I always had. ‘Then see that you keep your end of it as well.’ He paused, then added, as he never had before, ‘Remember, FitzChivalry. Any injury done to one of my own is an injury to me.’ ‘Sir?’ ‘You would not injure one of mine, would you?’ I drew myself up. I knew what he asked for, and I ceded it to him. ‘Sir, I will not injure one of yours. I am sworn to the Farseer line.’ He nodded slowly. He had wrung an apology from Regal, and from me my word that I would not kill his son. He probably believed he had made peace between us. Outside his door, I paused to push the hair back from my eyes. I had just made a promise, I reminded myself. I considered it carefully and forced myself to look at what it could cost me to keep it. Bitterness flooded me, until I compared what it would cost me should I break it. Then I found the reservations in myself, crushed them firmly. I formed a resolve, to keep my promise cleanly to my king. I had no true peace with Regal, but at least I could have that much peace with myself. The decision left me feeling better, and I strode purposefully down the hall. I had not replenished my stocks of poisons since I had returned from the mountains. Nothing green showed outside now. I’d have to steal what I needed. The wool dyers would have some I might use, and the healer’s stock would yield me others. My mind was busy with this planning as I started down the stairs. Serene was coming up the stairs. When I saw her, I halted where I was. The sight of her made me quail as Regal had not. It was an old reflex. Of all Galen’s coterie, she was now the strongest. August had retired from the field, gone far inland to live in orchard country and be a gentleman there. His Skill had been entirely blasted out of him during the final encounter that marked the end of Galen. Serene was now the key Skill-user of the coterie. In summers, she remained at Buckkeep, and all the other members of the coterie, scattered to towers and keeps up and down our long coast, channelled all their reports to the King through her. During winter, the entire coterie came to Buckkeep to renew their bonds and fellowship. In the absence of a Skillmaster, she had assumed much of Galen’s status at Buckkeep. She had also assumed, with great enthusiasm, Galen’s passionate hatred of me. She reminded me too vividly of past abuses, and inspired in me a dread that would not yield to logic. I had avoided her since my return but now her gaze pinned me. The staircase was more than sufficiently wide to allow two people to pass, unless one person deliberately planted herself in the middle of a step. Even looking up at me, I felt she had the advantage. Her bearing had changed since we had been Galen’s students together. Her whole physical appearance reflected her new position. Her midnight blue robe was richly embroidered. Her long midnight hair was bound back intricately with burnished wire strung with ivory ornaments. Silver graced her throat and ringed her fingers. But her femininity was gone. She had adopted Galen’s ascetic values, for her face was thinned to bone, her hands to claws. As he had, she burned with self-righteousness. It was the first time she had accosted me directly since Galen’s death. I halted above her, with no idea of what she wanted from me. ‘Bastard,’ she said flatly. It was a naming, not a greeting. I wondered if that word would ever lose its sting with me. ‘Serene,’ I said, as tonelessly as I could manage. ‘You did not die in the mountains.’ ‘No. I did not.’ Still she stood there, blocking my way. Very quietly she said, ‘I know what you did. I know what you are.’ Inside, I was quivering like a rabbit. I told myself it was probably taking every bit of Skill strength she had to impose this fear on me. I told myself that it was not my true emotion, but only what her Skill suggested I should feel. I forced words from my throat. ‘I, too, know what I am. I am a King’s Man.’ ‘You are no kind of a man at all,’ she asserted calmly. She smiled up at me. ‘Some day everyone will know that.’ Fear feels remarkably like fear, regardless of the source. I stood, making no response. Eventually, she stepped aside to allow me to pass. I made a small victory of that, though in retrospect there was little else she could have done. I went to ready things for my trip to Bearns, suddenly glad to leave the keep for a few days. I have no good memories of that errand. I met Virago, for she was herself a guest at Ripplekeep while I was there doing my scribe tasks. She was as Shrewd had described her, a handsome woman, well-muscled, who moved lithe as a little hunting cat. She wore the vitality of her health like a glamour. All eyes followed her when she was in a room. Her chastity challenged every male who followed her. Even I felt myself drawn to her, and agonized about my task. Our very first evening at table together, she was seated across from me. Duke Brawndy had made me very welcome indeed, even to having his cook prepare a certain spicy meat dish I was fond of. His libraries were at my disposal, as were the services of his lesser scribe. His youngest daughter had even extended her shy companionship to me. I was discussing my scroll errand with Celerity, who surprised me with her soft-spoken intelligence. Midway through the meal, Virago remarked quite clearly to her dining companion that at one time bastards were drowned at birth. The old ways of El demanded it, she said. I could have ignored the remark, had she not leaned across the table to smilingly ask me, ‘Have you never heard of that custom, Bastard?’ I looked up to Duke Brawndy’s seat at the head of the table, but he was engaged in a lively discussion with his eldest daughter. He didn’t even glance my way. ‘I believe it is as old as the custom of one guest’s courtesy to another at their host’s table,’ I replied. I tried to keep my eyes and voice steady. Bait. Brawndy had seated me across the table from her as bait. Never before had I been so blatantly used. I steeled myself to it, tried to set personal feelings aside. At least I was ready. ‘Some would say it was a sign of the degeneracy of the Farseer line, that your father came unchaste to his wedding bed. I, of course, would not speak against my king’s family. But tell me. How did your mother’s people accept her whoredom?’ I smiled pleasantly. I suddenly had fewer qualms about my task. ‘I do not recall much of my mother or her kin,’ I offered conversationally. ‘But I imagine they believed as I do: better to be a whore, or the child of a whore, than a traitor to one’s king.’ I lifted my wine glass and turned my eyes back to Celerity. Her dark blue eyes widened and she gasped as Virago’s belt knife plunged into Brawndy’s table but inches from my elbow. I had expected it and did not flinch. Instead, I turned to meet her eyes. Virago stood in her table place, eyes blazing and nostrils flared. Her heightened colour enflamed her beauty. I spoke mildly. ‘Tell me. You teach the old ways, do you not? Do you not then hold to the one that forbids the shedding of blood in a house in which you are a guest?’ ‘Are you not unbloodied?’ she asked by way of reply. ‘As are you. I would not shame my duke’s table, by letting it be said that he had allowed guests to kill one another over his bread. Or do you care as little for your courtesy to your duke as you do your loyalty to your king?’ ‘I have sworn no loyalty to your soft Farseer king,’ she hissed. Folk shifted, some uncomfortably, some for a better vantage. So some had come to witness her challenge me, at Brawndy’s table. All of this had been as carefully planned as any battle campaign. Would she know how well I had planned also? Did she suspect the tiny package in my cuff? I spoke boldly, pitching my voice to carry. ‘I have heard of you. I think that those you tempt to follow you into treachery would be wiser to go to Buckkeep. King-in-Waiting Verity has issued a call for those skilled in arms to come and man his new warships and bear those arms against the Outislanders, who are enemy to us all. That, I think, would be a better measure of a warrior’s skill. Is not that more honourable a pursuit than to turn against leaders one has sworn to, or to waste bull’s blood down a cliff-side by moonlight, when the same meat might go to feed our kin despoiled by Red Ships?’ I spoke passionately, and my voice grew in volume as she stared at how much I knew. I found myself caught up in my own words, for I believed them. I leaned across the table, over Virago’s plate and cup, to thrust my face close to hers as I asked, ‘Tell me, brave one. Have you ever lifted arms against one who was not your own countryman? Against a Red Ship crew? I thought not. Far easier to insult a host’s hospitality, or maim a neighbour’s son than to kill one who came to kill our own.’ Words were not Virago’s best weapon. Enraged, she spat at me. I leaned back, calmly, to wipe my face clean. ‘Perhaps you would care to challenge me, in a more appropriate time and place. Perhaps a week hence, on the cliffs where you so boldly slew the cow’s husband? Perhaps I, a scribe, might present you more of a challenge than your bovine warrior did?’ Duke Brawndy suddenly deigned to notice the disturbance. ‘FitzChivalry! Virago!’ he rebuked us. But our gazes remained locked, my hands planted to either side of her place setting as I leaned to confront her. I think the man beside her might have challenged me also, had not Duke Brawndy then slammed his salt bowl against the table, near shattering it, and reminded us forcefully that this was his table and his hall and he’d have no blood shed in it. He, at least, was capable of honouring both King Shrewd and the old ways at once, and suggested we attempt to do the same. I apologized most humbly and eloquently, and Virago muttered her pardons. The meal resumed, and the minstrels sang, and over the next few days I copied the scroll for Verity and viewed the Elderling relic, which looked like nothing to me so much as a glass vial of very fine fish scales. Celerity seemed more impressed with me than I was comfortable with. The other side of that coin was facing the old animosity in the faces of those who sided with Virago. It was a long week. I never had to fight my challenge, for before the week was out, Virago’s tongue and mouth had broken out in the boils and sores that were the legendary punishment for one who lied to arms companions and betrayed spoken vows. She scarce was able to drink, let alone eat, and so disfiguring was her affliction that all those close to her forsook her company for fear, it spread to them as well. Her pain was such that she could not go forth into the cold to fight, and there was no one willing to stand her challenge for her. I waited on the cliffs for a challenger who never came. Celerity waited with me, as did perhaps a score of minor nobles that Duke Brawndy had urged to attend me. We made casual talk, and drank entirely too much brandy to keep ourselves warm. As evening fell, a messenger from the keep came to tell us that Virago had left Ripplekeep, but not to face my challenge. She had ridden away, inland. Alone. Celerity clasped her hands together, and then astonished me with a hug. We returned chilled but merry to enjoy one more meal at Ripplekeep before my departure for Buckkeep. Brawndy sat me at his left hand, and Celerity beside me. ‘You know,’ he observed to me, towards the end of the meal. ‘Your likeness to your father becomes more remarkable every year.’ All of the brandy in Bearns could not have defeated the chill his words sent through me. SIX (#ulink_0a88f5b1-52a2-5079-9b7e-8583503f7f16) Forged Ones (#ulink_0a88f5b1-52a2-5079-9b7e-8583503f7f16) The two sons of Queen Constance and King Shrewd were Chivalry and Verity. Only two years separated their births, and they grew up as close as two brothers can be. Chivalry was the eldest, and the first to assume the title of King-in-Waiting on his sixteenth birthday. He was almost immediately dispatched by his father to deal with a border dispute with the Chalced States. From that time on, he was seldom at Buckkeep for more than a few months at a time. Even after Chivalry had married, he was seldom allowed to spend his days at rest. It was not so much that there were so many border uprisings at that time as that Shrewd seemed intent on formalizing his boundaries with all his neighbours. Many of these disputes were settled with the sword, though as time went on, Chivalry became more astute at employing diplomacy first. Some said that assigning Chivalry to this task was the plot of his stepmother Queen Desire, who hoped to send him to his death. Others say it was Shrewd’s way of putting his eldest son out of his new Queen’s sight and authority. Prince Verity, condemned by his youth to remain at home, made formal application to his father every month to be allowed to follow his brother. All of Shrewd’s efforts to interest him in responsibilities of his own were wasted. Prince Verity performed the tasks given him, but never let anyone think for a moment that he would not rather be with his older brother. At last, on Verity’s twentieth birthday, after six years of requesting monthly to be allowed to follow his brother, Shrewd reluctantly conceded to him. From then, until the day four years later when Chivalry abdicated and Verity assumed the title of King-in-Waiting, the two princes worked as one in formalizing boundaries, treaties and trade agreements with the lands bordering the Six Duchies. Prince Chivalry’s talent was for dealing with people, as individuals or as a folk. Verity’s was for the detail of agreements, the precise maps that delineated agreed borders, and the supporting of his brother in his authority both as a soldier and as a prince. Prince Regal, youngest of Shrewd’s sons and his only child with Queen Desire, spent his youth at home at court, where his mother made every effort to groom him as a candidate for the throne. I travelled home to Buckkeep with a sense of relief. It was not the first time I had performed such a task for my king, but I had never developed a relish for my work as an assassin. I was glad at how Virago had insulted me and baited me, for it had made my task bearable. And yet, she had been a very beautiful woman, and skilled warrior. It was a waste, and I took no pride in my work, save that I had obeyed my king’s command. Such were my thoughts as Sooty carried me up the last rise toward home. I looked up the hill, and scarce could believe what I saw. Kettricken and Regal on horseback, riding side by side. Together. They looked like an illustration from one of Fedwren’s best vellums. Regal was in scarlet and gold with glossy black boots and black gloves. His riding cloak was flung back from one shoulder, to display the brilliant contrast of the colours as they billowed in the morning wind. The wind had brought a redness of the outdoors to his cheeks, and tousled his black hair from its precise arrangement of curls. His dark eyes shone. Almost, he looked a man, I thought, astride the tall black horse that carried itself so well. He could be this if he chose, rather than the languid prince with always a glass of wine in hand and a lady beside him. Another waste. Ah, but the lady beside him was another matter. Compared to the entourage that followed them, she showed as a rare and foreign blossom. She rode astride in loose trousers, and no Buckkeep dyeing vat had produced that crocus purple. Her trousers were adorned with intricate embroideries in rich colours, and tucked securely into her boot-tops. Her boots came almost to her knee; Burrich would have approved that practicality. She wore, not a cloak, but a short jacket of voluminous white fur, with a high collar to shield her neck from the wind. A white fox, I guessed, from the tundra on the far side of the mountains. Her hands were gloved in black. The wind had played with her long yellow hair, streaming it out and tangling it over her shoulders. Upon her head was a knitted cap of every bright colour I could imagine. She sat her horse high and forward, in the Mountain style, and it made Softstep think she must prance instead of walk. The chestnut mare’s harness was a-jingle with tiny silver bells, ringing sharp as icicles in the brisk morning. She brought to mind an exotic warrior from a northern clime or an adventurer from some ancient tale. It set her apart from her ladies, in their voluminous skirts and cloaks, not as a high-born and well-adorned woman shows her status among those less royal, but almost as a hawk would appear caged with song birds. I was not sure she should show herself so to her subjects. Prince Regal rode at Kettricken’s side, smiling and talking to her. Their conversation was lively, spiced often with laughter. As I approached, I let Sooty slow her pace. Kettricken reined in, smiling and would have stopped to give me greeting, but Prince Regal nodded icily and kneed his horse to a trot. Kettricken’s mare, not to be left behind, tugged at her bit and kept pace with him. I received as brisk a greeting from those who trailed after the Queen and Prince. I halted to watch them pass, and then continued up to Buckkeep with an uneasy heart. Kettricken’s face had been animated, her pale cheeks pink with the cold air, and her smile at Regal had been as genuinely merry as the occasional smiles she still gave me. Yet I could not believe she would be so gullible as to trust him. I pondered this while I unsaddled Sooty and rubbed her down. I had bent down to check her hooves when I felt Burrich watching me over the wall of the stall. I asked him, ‘For how long?’ He knew what I was asking. ‘He began a few days after you left. He brought her down here one day, and spoke me fair, saying he thought it quite a shame that the Queen was spending all her days shut up in the keep. She was used to such an open and hearty life up in the mountains. He claimed he had allowed her to persuade him to teach her to ride as we rode here in the lower lands. Then he had me saddle Softstep with the saddle Verity had made for his queen, and off they went. Well, what was I to do or say?’ he asked me fiercely as I turned to look at him questioningly. ‘It is as you have said before. We are King’s Men. Sworn. And Regal is a prince of the Farseer House. Even if I were faithless enough to refuse him, there was my Queen-in-Waiting, expecting me to fetch her horse for her and saddle her.’ A slight motion of my hand reminded Burrich that his words sounded close to treason. He stepped into the stall beside me, to scratch behind Sooty’s ear pensively as I finished with her. ‘You could do nothing else,’ I conceded. ‘But I must wonder what his real intent is. And why she suffers him.’ ‘His intent? Perhaps just to wriggle his way back into favour with her. It is no secret that she pines in the castle. Oh, she is fair spoken to all. But there is too much honesty in her for her to make others believe she is happy when she is not.’ ‘Perhaps,’ I conceded grudgingly. I lifted my head as suddenly as a dog does when his master whistles. ‘I have to go. King-in-Waiting Verity …’ I let the words trail away. I did not have to let Burrich know I had been summoned by the Skill. I slung my saddlebags with the arduously copied scrolls inside to my shoulder and headed up to the castle. I did not pause to change my clothes, or even to warm myself at the kitchen fires, but went straight to Verity’s map-room. The door was ajar, and I tapped once and then entered. Verity leaned over a map secured to his table. He scarcely glanced up to acknowledge me. Steaming mulled wine already awaited me, and a generous platter of cold meats and bread stood on a table near the hearth. After a bit, he straightened up. ‘You block too well,’ Verity said by way of greeting. ‘I have been trying to get you to hurry for the past three days, and when do you finally know you are Skilled? When you are standing in my own stables. I tell you, Fitz, we must find time to teach you some sort of control over your Skill.’ But I knew even as he spoke that there would never be that time. Too many other things demanded his attention. As always, he immediately plunged into his concern. ‘Forged ones,’ he said. I felt a chill of foreboding run up my spine. ‘The Red Ships have struck again? This deep in winter?’ I asked incredulously. ‘No. At least we are still spared that. But it seems that the Red Ships can leave us and go home to their hearths, and still leave their poison among us.’ He paused. ‘Well, go on. Warm yourself and eat. You can chew and listen at the same time.’ As I helped myself to the mulled wine and food, Verity lectured me. ‘It is the same problem as before. Reports of Forged ones, robbing and despoiling, not just travellers, but isolated farms and houses. I have investigated, and must give credence to the reports. Yet the attacks are happening far from the sites of any raids; and in every case the folk claim there are not one or two Forged ones, but groups of them, acting in concert.’ I considered for a moment, swallowed, then spoke. ‘I don’t think Forged ones are capable of acting in bands or even as partners. When one encounters them, one finds they have no sense of … community. Of shared humanity. They can speak, and reason, but only selfishly. They are as wolverines would be if given human tongues. They care for nothing but their own survival. They see each other only as rivals for food or comfort of any kind.’ I refilled my mug, grateful for the spreading warmth of the wine. At least it pushed aside the physical cold. The chill thought of the bleak isolation of the Forged ones it could not touch. It was the Wit that had let me discover this about Forged ones. So deadened were they to all sense of kinship with the world that I could scarcely sense them at all. The Wit gave me a certain access to that web which bound all creatures together; but the Forged ones were separate from that net, as isolated as stones, as hungry and merciless as an unthinking storm or a river in flood. To encounter one unexpectedly was as startling to me as if a stone rose up to attack me. But Verity only nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yet even wolves, animals as they are, attack as a pack. As do tearfish on a whale. If these animals can band together to bring down food, why not the Forged ones?’ I set down the bread I had picked up. ‘Wolves and tearfish do as they do by their nature, and share the flesh with their young. They do not kill, each for his own meat, but for meat for the pack. I have seen them in groups, but they do not act together. The time I was attacked by more than one Forged one, the only thing that saved me was that I was able to turn them against each other. I dropped the cloak they desired, and they fought over it. And when they came after me again, they more got in one another’s way than helped one another.’ I fought to keep my voice steady as the memory of that night rose up in me. Smithy had died that night, and I had first killed. ‘But they do not fight together. That is what is beyond the Forged ones; the idea of co-operating so that all might benefit.’ I looked up to find Verity’s dark eyes full of sympathy. ‘I had forgotten that you have had some experience fighting them. Forgive me. I don’t dismiss it. There is just so much besieging me lately.’ His voice dwindled away and he seemed to be listening to something far away. After a moment he came back to himself. ‘So. You believe they cannot cooperate. And yet it seems to be happening. See, here,’ and he brushed his hand lightly over a map spread out on his table. ‘I have been marking the places of the complaints, and keeping track of how many are said to be there. What do you think of this?’ I went to stand beside him. Standing next to Verity was now like standing next to a different sort of hearth. The strength of the Skill radiated from him. I wondered if he strove to hold it in check, if it always threatened to spill out of him and spread his consciousness over the whole kingdom. ‘The map, Fitz,’ he recalled me, and I wondered how much he knew of my thoughts. I forced myself to concentrate on the task at hand. The map showed Buck, done in wondrous detail. Shallows and tide flats were marked along the coast, as well as inland landmarks and lesser roads. It was a map made lovingly, by a man who had walked and ridden and sailed the area. Verity had used bits of red wax as markers. I studied them, trying to see what his real concern was. ‘Seven different incidents.’ He reached to touch his markers. ‘Some within a day’s ride of Buckkeep. But we have had no raids that close, so where would these Forged ones be coming from? They might be driven away from their home villages, true, but why would they converge upon Buckkeep?’ ‘Perhaps these are desperate people pretending to be Forged ones when they go out to steal from their neighbours?’ ‘Perhaps. But it is troubling that the incidents are happening closer and closer to Buckkeep. There are three different groups, from what the victims say. But each time there is a report of a robbery or a barn broken into or a cow butchered in the field, the group responsible seems to have moved closer to Buckkeep. I can think of no reason for Forged ones to do such a thing. And,’ he halted me as I began to speak, ‘the descriptions of one group match those of another attack, reported over a month ago. If these are the same Forged ones, they have come a long way in that time.’ ‘It does not seem like Forged ones,’ I said and then, carefully, I asked, ‘Do you suspect a conspiracy of some kind?’ Verity snorted bitterly. ‘Of course. When do I not suspect conspiracies any more? But for this, at least, I think I can look further afield than Buckkeep to find the source.’ He halted abruptly, as if hearing how bluntly he had spoken. ‘Look into it for me, Fitz, will you? Ride out and about a bit, and listen. Tell me what they say in the taverns, and tell me what sign you find on the roads. Gather gossip of other attacks, and keep track of the detail. Quietly. Can you do that for me?’ ‘Of course. But why quietly? It seems to me that if we alerted folk, we would hear more swiftly of what goes on.’ ‘We would hear more, that’s true. More of rumours, and much more of complaint. So far these are individual complaints. I am the only one, I think, who has put together a pattern from them. I do not want Buckkeep itself up in arms, complaining that the King cannot even protect his capital city. No. Quietly, Fitz. Quietly.’ ‘Just look into it quietly.’ I did not voice it as a question. Verity gave his broad shoulders a small shrug. But it was more like a man shifting a burden than dislodging a load. ‘Put a stop to it where you can.’ His voice was small and he looked into the fire. ‘Quietly, Fitz. Very quietly.’ I nodded my head slowly. I had had these kinds of assignments before also. Killing Forged ones did not bother me as much as killing a man did. Sometimes I tried to pretend I was laying a restless soul to peace, putting a family’s anguish to a final end. I hoped I would not become too adept at lying to myself. It was a luxury an assassin could not afford. Chade had warned me that I must always remember what I truly was. Not an angel of mercy, but a killer who worked for the good of the King. Or the King-in-Waiting. It was my duty to keep the throne secure. My duty. I hesitated, then spoke. ‘My prince. As I was coming back, I saw our Queen-in-Waiting Kettricken. She was riding out with Prince Regal.’ ‘They make a handsome pair, do they not? And does she sit her horse well?’ Verity could not entirely keep bitterness from his voice. ‘Aye. But in the Mountain style still.’ ‘She came to me, saying she wished to learn to ride our tall lowland horses better. I commended the idea. I did not know she would choose Regal as a riding master.’ Verity leaned over his map, studying detail that was not there. ‘Perhaps she hoped you would teach her.’ I spoke thoughtlessly, to the man, not the prince. ‘Perhaps.’ He sighed suddenly. ‘Oh, I know she did. Kettricken is lonely, sometimes. Often.’ He shook his head. ‘She should have been married to a younger son, to a man with time on his hands. Or to a king whose kingdom was not on the verge of war and disaster. I do not do her justice, Fitz. I know this. But she is so … young. Sometimes. And when she is not being so young, she is so fanatically patriotic. She burns to sacrifice herself for the Six Duchies. Always I have to hold her back, to tell her that it is not what the Six Duchies need. She is like a gadfly. There is no peace in her for me, Fitz. Either she wants to be romped like a child, or she is quizzing me on the very details of some crisis I am trying to set aside for a few moments.’ I thought suddenly of Chivalry’s single-minded pursuit of the frivolous Patience, and caught a glimpse of his motives. A woman who was an escape for him. Who would Verity have chosen, had he been allowed to choose for himself? Probably someone older, a placid woman possessed of inner self worth and peace. ‘I grow so tired,’ Verity said softly. He poured himself more mulled wine, and stepped to the hearth to sip at it. ‘Do you know what I wish?’ It wasn’t really a question. I didn’t even bother to reply. ‘I wish your father were alive, and King-in-Waiting. And I his right-hand man still. He would be telling me what tasks I must tackle, and I would be doing as he asked. I would be at peace with myself, no matter how hard my work, for I would be sure he knew best. Do you know how easy it is, Fitz, to follow a man you believe in?’ He looked up at last to meet my eyes. ‘My prince,’ I said quietly. ‘I believe I do.’ For a moment, Verity was very still. Then, ‘Ah,’ he said. He held my eyes with his, and I did not need the warmth of his Skilling to feel the gratitude he sent me. He stepped away from the hearth, drew himself up straighter. My King-in-Waiting stood before me once more. He dismissed me with a tiny motion, and I went. As I climbed the stairs to my room, for the first time in my life I wondered if I should not be grateful to have been born a bastard. SEVEN (#ulink_f9691adf-d710-5af7-b8f5-af07184c721b) Encounters (#ulink_f9691adf-d710-5af7-b8f5-af07184c721b) It has always been the custom and the expectancy that when a king or queen of Buckkeep wed, the royal spouse would bring an entourage of his or her own as attendants. Such had been the case with both of Shrewd’s queens. But when Queen Kettricken of the Mountains came to Buckkeep, she came as Sacrifice, as was her country’s custom. She came alone, with no women or men to attend her, not even a maid to be a confidante. No person in Buckkeep was there to give the comfort of familiarity to her in her new home. She began her reign surrounded completely by strangers, not just at her own social level, but extending down to servants and guards as well. As time progressed, she gathered friends to her, and found servants as well who suited her, though at first the idea of having a person whose life work was to wait on her was a foreign and distressing concept to her. Cub had missed my company. Before I departed for Bearns, I had left him the carcass of a deer, well frozen and concealed behind the hut. It should have been ample to feed him for the time I was gone. But in true wolf fashion, he had gorged, and slept, and gorged and slept again, until the meat was gone. Two days ago, he informed me, leaping and dancing about me. The interior of the hut was a litter of well-gnawed bones. He greeted me with frantic enthusiasm, doubly informed by the Wit and his nose of the fresh meat I brought. He fell upon it ravenously and paid me no mind at all as I gathered his chewed bones into a sack. Too much of this type of litter would draw rats, and the keep rat-hounds would follow. I couldn’t chance that. I watched him surreptitiously as I tidied, saw the rippling of muscles in his shoulders as he braced his forefeet against the chunk of meat and tore a piece of flesh free. I noted, too, that all but the thickest deer bones had been cracked and licked clean of marrow. This was cub’s play no longer, but the work of a powerful young animal. The bones he had cracked were thicker than the bones in my arm. But why would I turn on you? You bring the meat. And ginger cakes. His thought was laden with meaning. This was the way of a pack. I, an elder, brought meat to feed Cub, a young one. I was the hunter, bringing him back a portion of my kill. I quested toward him and found that, for him, our separateness was fading. We were pack. It was a concept I had never encountered before, going deeper than companion or partner. I feared that to him it meant what bonding did to me. I could not permit it. ‘I am a human. You are a wolf.’ I spoke the words aloud, knowing he would get their meaning from my thoughts, but trying to force him to know in all his senses our differences. Outwardly. Inside, we are pack. He paused and licked his nose complacently. Blood dotted his forepaws. ‘No. I feed you and protect you here. But only for a time. When you are able to hunt for yourself, I will take you to a far place and leave you there.’ I have never hunted. ‘I will teach you.’ That, too, is of the pack. You will teach me, and I will hunt with you. We will share many kills and much rich meat. I will teach you to hunt, and then I will set you free. I am already free. You do not hold me here, save that I will it. He lolled his tongue out over white teeth, laughing at my assumption. You are arrogant, Cub. And ignorant. So teach me. He turned his head sideways to let his back teeth scissor meat and tendon from the bone he was working on. It is your pack duty. We are not pack. I have no pack. My allegiance is to my king. If he is your leader, then he is mine also. We are pack. As his belly filled, he was becoming more and more complacent about it. I changed tactics. Coldly I told him, I am of a pack that you cannot be part of. In my pack, all are humans. You are not a human. You are a wolf. We are not pack. A stillness welled in him. He did not try to reply. But he felt, and what he felt chilled me. Isolation, and betrayal. Loneliness. I turned and left him there. But I could not hide from him how hard it was for me to leave him like that, nor conceal the deep shame at refusing him. I hoped he sensed also that I believed it was what was best for him. Much, I reflected, as Burrich had felt it was best for me when he took Nosy away from me because I had bonded to the puppy. The thought burned me and I did not just hasten away, I fled. Evening was falling as I returned to the keep and made my way up the stairs. I visited my room for certain bundles I had left there, and then made my way downstairs again. My traitorous feet slowed as I passed the second landing. I knew that very shortly Molly would be coming this way, bearing away the tray and dishes from Patience’s meal. Patience seldom chose to dine in the hall with the other lords and ladies of the keep, preferring the privacy of her own rooms and Lacey’s easy companionship. Her shyness had begun to take on overtones of reclusiveness lately. But it was not concern over that which kept me loitering on the stairs. I heard the tap of Molly’s feet coming down the hall, I knew I should move on, but it had been days since I had even glimpsed her. Celerity’s shy flirtations had only made me more acutely aware of how I missed Molly. Surely it could not be too much for me to simply wish her ‘good evening’ as I might any other servant girl. I knew I should not, I knew that if Patience heard of it, I would be rebuked. And yet … I pretended to be studying a tapestry on the landing, a tapestry that had hung there since before I had ever come to Buckkeep. I heard her footsteps approaching. I heard them slow. My heart was thundering high in my chest, the palms of my hands were moist with sweat as I turned to see her. ‘Good evening,’ I managed, between a squeak and a whisper. ‘Good evening to you,’ she said with great dignity. Her head went up a notch higher, her chin firmed. Her hair had been tamed into two thick braids and pinned about her head like a crown. Her dress of simple blue had a collar of delicate white lace, and there were lace cuffs to it as well. I knew whose fingers had worked that scalloped pattern. Lacey treated her well and gifted her with the work of her hands. That was good to know. Molly did not falter as she passed me. Her eyes skittered sideways to me once, and I could not forebear to smile, and at my smile a blush so warm suffused her face and throat that almost I felt the heat of it. Her mouth went into a firmer line. As she turned and descended the stairs, her scent wafted back to me, lemon balm and ginger riding on the sweeter scent that was simply Molly’s own. Female. Nice. Vast approval. I leaped as if stung and spun about, expecting foolishly to discover Cub behind me. He was not, of course. I quested out, but he was not with me in my mind. I quested further, found him dozing on his straw in the hut. Don’t do that, I warned him. Stay out of my mind, unless I bid you be with me. Consternation. What is it you bid me do? Do not be with me, except when I wish you to. Then how would I know when you wished me to be with you? I will seek your mind when I want you. A long quiet. And I shall seek yours when I want you, he offered. Yes, this is pack. To call when one needs help, and to be always ready to hear such a call. We are pack. No! That is not what I am telling you. I am saying you must keep out of my mind when I do not wish you to be there. I do not wish to be always sharing thoughts with you. You make no sense at all. Shall I only breathe when you are not snuffing the air? Your mind, my mind, it is all the pack mind. Where else shall I think, but here? If you do not wish to hear me, do not listen. I stood dumbfounded, trying to make sense of the thought. I realized I was staring off into space. A serving-boy had just wished me good evening, and I had offered no response. ‘Good evening,’ I replied, but he had already passed me. He glanced back in puzzlement, to see if he was summoned, but I waved him on. I shook my head to clear it of cobwebs, and started down the hall to Patience’s room. I would discuss it with Cub later, and make him understand. And soon, he would be off on his own, out of touch, out of mind. I pushed the experience aside. I tapped at Patience’s door and was admitted. I saw that Lacey had gone on one of her periodic rampages, and restored a sort of order to the room. There was even a cleared chair to sit upon. They were both glad to see me. I told them of my trip to Bearns, avoiding any mention of Virago. I knew that eventually Patience would hear of it, and confront me about it, and I would then assure her that gossip had greatly exaggerated our encounter. I hoped that would work. In the meantime, I had brought gifts back with me. Tiny ivory fish, drilled to be strung as beads or attached to a garment for Lacey, and for Patience amber and silver earrings. An earthenware pot of wintergreen berries preserved and sealed with a lid of wax. ‘Wintergreen? I’ve no taste for wintergreen.’ Patience was puzzled when I offered it to her. ‘Haven’t you?’ I feigned puzzlement. ‘I thought you told me it was a flavour and scent you missed from your childhood. Did not you have an uncle who brought you wintergreen?’ ‘No. I recall no such conversation.’ ‘Perhaps it was Lacey, then?’ I asked sincerely. ‘Not I, master. Stings my nose to taste it, though it has a nice scent in the air.’ ‘Ah, well, then. My mistake.’ I set it aside on the table. ‘What, Snowflake? Not pregnant again?’ This I addressed to Patience’s white terrier who had finally decided to come forth and sniff at me. I could sense her doggy little mind puzzling over Cub’s scent on me. ‘No, she’s just getting fat,’ Lacey interjected for her, stooping to scratch her behind the ears. ‘My lady leaves sweetmeats and cakes about on plates, and Snowflake is always getting at them.’ ‘You know you shouldn’t let her. It’s very bad for her teeth and coat,’ I rebuked Patience, and she replied that she knew it, but Snowflake was too old to be taught better. The conversation rambled from there, and it was another hour before I stretched and told them I must be going, to try once more to report to the King. ‘I was earlier turned aside from his door,’ I mentioned. ‘Though not by any guard. His man Wallace came to the door when I knocked, to refuse me entry. When I asked why there was no guard on the King’s door, he said they had been relieved of that duty. He had assumed it himself, the better to keep things quiet for the King.’ ‘The King’s not well, you know,’ Lacey offered. ‘I’ve heard that he’s seldom seen out of his chambers before noon. Then, when he comes forth, he is like a man possessed, full of energy and appetite, but by early evening, he fades again, and begins to shuffle and mumble his words. He takes his dinner in his rooms, and cook says the tray comes back as full as it went up. It’s quite a worry.’ ‘It is,’ I agreed, and made my departure, almost dreading to hear more. So the King’s health was now talk for the keep. That was not good. I must ask Chade about it. And I must see for myself. In my earlier attempt to report to the King, I had encountered only the officious Wallace. Wallace had been most brusque with me, as if I were come simply to pass the time of day, rather than to report after a mission. He behaved as if the King were the most delicate of invalids and took it upon himself to keep any one from bothering him. Wallace, I decided, had not been very well taught as to what the duties of his position were. He was a most annoying man. As I tapped, I was wondering how long it would take Molly to find the wintergreen. She must know I had meant it for her, it was a taste she had always been greedy for when we were children. Wallace came to the door and opened it a crack to peer out. He frowned at discovering me. He swung the door wider, but filled the opening with his body, as if my glimpsing the King might do him harm. He gave me no greeting, only demanded, ‘Did not you come before, earlier today?’ ‘Yes. I did. At that time you told me King Shrewd slept. And so I have come again, to make my report.’ I tried to keep my tone civil. ‘Ah. It is important, this report?’ ‘I think the King can judge if it is, and send me away if he thinks I waste his time. I suggest you tell him I am here.’ I smiled belatedly, trying to soften the sharpness of my tone. ‘The King has little energy. I try to see that he expends it only where it is needed.’ He wasn’t moving from the door. I found myself sizing him up, wondering if I could just shoulder past him. That would create a commotion, and if the King were ill, I did not wish that. Someone tapped on my shoulder, but when I turned to look, no one was there. Turning back, I found the Fool in front of me, between Wallace and me. ‘Are you his physician, then, to make such judgements?’ The Fool took up my conversation for me. ‘For surely, you would be an excellent one. You physick me merely with your looks, and your words dispel your wind as well as mine. How physicked then must our dear king be, who languishes all day in your presence?’ The Fool bore a tray covered with a napkin. I smelled good beef broth and egg bread warm from the oven. His winter motley of black and white he had made merry with enamelled bells and a garland of holly banded his cap. His Fool’s sceptre was tucked up under his arm. A rat again. This one had been set atop the wand as if prancing. I had observed him holding long conversations with it in front of the Great Hearth, or on the steps before the King’s throne. ‘Begone, Fool! You’ve been in here twice today already. The King has already gone to his bed. He has no need of you.’ The man spoke sternly. But Wallace was the one who retreated, without intending to. I saw he was one of those people who could not meet the Fool’s pale eyes, and quailed from the touch of his white hand. ‘Twice shall be thrice, Wall Ass, dear, and your presence replaced with my presents. Toddle off hence, and tell Regal all your tattling. If walls have ears, then so must you, for you’ve already the Wall’s Ass. Such ears are filled to overflowing with the King’s business. You might physick our dear prince while you enlighten him. For the darkness of his glance, methinks, betokens that his bowels have backed up so far as to blind him.’ ‘Dare you speak so of the Prince?’ Wallace sputtered. The Fool was already inside the door and I on his heels. ‘He shall hear of this.’ ‘Speak so? Speak, sow. I doubt not that he hears all that you do. Do not vent your wind at me, Wall Ass dear. Save that for your prince who delights in such puffing. He is at his smokes now, I believe, and you might gust at him and he shall drowse and nod and think you speak wisely and your airs most sweet.’ The Fool continued his advance as he nattered on, the laden tray like a shield before him. Wallace gave ground readily, and the Fool forced him back, through the sitting room and into the King’s bedchamber. There the Fool set the tray down at the King’s bedside, while Wallace retreated to the other door of the chamber. The Fool’s eyes grew brighter. ‘Ah, not abed at all, our king, unless you’ve hidden him under coverlets, Wall Ass, my sweet. Come out, come out, my king, my Shrewd one. King Shrewd you are, not king of shrews to hide and creep about the walls and under the bedding.’ The Fool began to poke so assiduously about amongst the obviously empty bed and coverlets, and to send his rat sceptre peeping up amongst the bed curtains so that I could not contain my laughter. Wallace leaned back against the inner door, as if to guard it from us, but at that instant it opened from within, and he all but tumbled into the King’s arms. He sat down heavily on the floor. ‘Mind him!’ the Fool observed to me. ‘See how he seeks to put himself in my place before the King’s feet, and to play the fool with his clumsy pratfalls. Such a man deserves the title fool, but not the post!’ Shrewd stood there, robed as for rest, a frown of vexation on his face. He looked down in puzzlement at Wallace on the floor, and up at the Fool and me waiting for him, and then dismissed whatever the situation was. He spoke to Wallace as he scrabbled to his feet. ‘This steam does me no good at all, Wallace. It but makes my head ache all the more, and leaves a foul taste in my mouth as well. Take it away, and tell Regal I think his new herb might drive flies away, but not sickness. Take it away now, before it stinks up this room as well. Ah, Fool, you are here. And Fitz, you have finally come to report as well. Come in, sit down. Wallace, do you hear me? Remove that wretched pot! No, do not bring it through here, take it out the other way.’ And with a wave of his hand, Shrewd swatted the man away as if he had been an annoying fly. Shrewd shut the door to his bathing room firmly, as if to keep the stink from spreading into his bedchamber, and came to take a straight-backed chair by the fire. In a moment the Fool had drawn a table up beside it, the cloth covering the food had become a tablecloth, and he had set out food for the King as prettily as any serving-maid could have done. Silverware and a napkin appeared, a sleight of hand that had even Shrewd smiling, and then the Fool folded himself up on the hearth, knees nearly to his ears, chin cupped in his long-fingered hands, pale skin and hair picking up red tones from the fire’s dancing flames. His every move was as graceful as a dancer’s and the pose he struck now was artful as well as comical. The King reached down to smooth his flying hair as if the Fool were a kitten. ‘I told you I was not hungry, Fool.’ ‘That you did. But you did not tell me not to bring food.’ ‘And if I had?’ ‘Then I should tell you this is not food, but a steaming pot such as Wall Ass afflicts you with, to fill your nostrils with a scent at least more pleasing than his. And this be not bread, but a plaster for your tongue, which you should apply at once.’ ‘Ah.’ King Shrewd drew his table a bit closer, and took up a spoonful of the soup. Barley shouldered against bits of carrot and meat in it. Shrewd tasted, and then began to eat. ‘Am I not at least as good a physician as Wall Ass?’ the Fool purred, well pleased with himself. ‘Well you know Wallace is not a physician, but simply my servant.’ ‘Well I know it, and well do you, but Wall Ass knows it not, and hence you are not well.’ ‘Enough of your nattering. Step up, Fitz, don’t stand there grinning like a simpleton. What have you to tell me?’ I glanced at the Fool, and then decided I would insult neither King nor Fool by asking if I could report freely in front of him. So I did, a simple report, with no mention of my more clandestine actions other than their results. Shrewd listened gravely, and at the end he had no comment, other than to rebuke me mildly for poor manners at the duke’s table. He then asked if Duke Brawndy of Bearns seemed well and content with the peace in his duchy. I replied that he had when I left. Shrewd nodded. Then he requested the scrolls I had copied. These I took out and displayed for him, and was rewarded by a compliment on the gracefulness of my handiwork. He told me to take them to Verity’s map-room, and be sure Verity knew of them. He asked if I had viewed the Elderling’s relic. I described it to him in detail. And all the while the Fool perched on the hearthstones and watched us silent as an owl. King Shrewd ate his soup and bread under the Fool’s watchful eyes as I read the scroll aloud to him. When I was finished, he sighed and leaned back in his chair. ‘So, let’s see this scroll-work of yours,’ he commanded and, puzzled, I surrendered it to him. Once more he looked it over carefully, then re-rolled it. As he gave it back to me, he said, ‘You’ve a graceful way with a pen, boy. Well-lettered and well done. Take it to Verity’s map-room, and see that he knows of it.’ ‘Of course, my king,’ I faltered, confused. I did not understand his motive in repeating himself, and was unsure if he were waiting for some other response from me. But the Fool was rising, and I caught from him something less than a glance; not quite the lift of an eyebrow, not quite the turn of a lip, but enough to bid me to silence. The Fool gathered up the dishes, all the while making merry talk with the King, and then both of us were dismissed together. As we left, the King was staring into the flames. Out in the hall, we exchanged glances more openly. I began to speak, but the Fool commenced to whistle, and did not cease until we were halfway down the stairs. Then he paused, and caught at my sleeve, and we halted on the stairway, betwixt floors. I sensed he had chosen this spot carefully. None could see or hear us speak here, save that we saw them also. Still, it was not even the Fool that spoke to me, but the rat upon the sceptre. He brought it up before my nose, and squeaked in the rat’s voice, ‘Ah, but you and I, we must remember whatever he forgets, Fitz, and keep it safe for him. It costs him much to show as strong as he did tonight. Do not be deceived about that. What he said to you, twice, you must cherish and obey, for it means he held it twice as hard in his mind to be sure he would say it to you.’ I nodded and resolved to deliver the scroll that very night to Verity. ‘I do not much care for Wallace,’ I commented to the Fool. ‘’Tis not Wall’s Ass you should have a care for, but Wall’s Ears,’ he replied solemnly. Abruptly he balanced the tray on one long-fingered hand, lofted it high over his head, and went capering off down the stairs before me, leaving me alone to think. I delivered the scroll that night, and in the days that followed, I took up the tasks Verity had assigned me earlier. I used fat sausage and smoked fish as the vehicles for my poisons, wrapped in small bundles. These I might easily scatter as I fled, in the hopes there would be sufficient for all who pursued me. Each morning I studied the map in Verity’s map-room, and then saddled Sooty and took myself and my poisons out where I thought it most likely I would be set upon by Forged ones. Remembering my previous experiences, I carried a short sword on these riding expeditions, something that afforded both Hands and Burrich some amusement at first. I gave it out that I was scouting for game in case Verity wished to plan a winter hunt. Hands accepted it easily, Burrich with a tightened mouth that showed he knew I lied, and knew also that I could not tell him the truth. He did not pry, but neither did he like it. Twice in ten days I was set upon by Forged ones, and twice fled easily, letting my poisoned provisions tumble from my saddlebags as I went. They fell upon them greedily, scarcely unwrapping the meat before stuffing it into their mouths. I returned to each site the following day, to document for Verity how many I had slain and the details of their appearances. The second group did not match any description we had received. We both suspected this meant there were more Forged ones than we had heard. I did my task, but I took no pride in it. Dead, they were even more pitiful than alive. Ragged, thin creatures, frostbitten and battered by fights amongst themselves they were, and the savagery of the quick, harsh poisons I used twisted their bodies into caricatures of men. Ice glistened on their beards and eyebrows, and the blood from their mouths made red clumps like frozen rubies in the snow. Seven Forged ones I killed this way, and then heaped the frozen bodies with pitchpine, and poured oil on them and set them aflame. I cannot say which I found most distasteful, the poisoning, or the concealing of my deed. Cub had initially begged to go with me when he understood that I was riding out each day after feeding him, but at one point, as I stood over the frozen stick-men I had slain, I heard, This is not hunting, this. This is no pack’s doing. This is man’s doing. His presence was gone before I could rebuke him for intruding into my mind again. In the evenings I returned to the keep, to hot, fresh food and warm fires, dry clothes and a soft bed, but the spectres of those Forged ones stood between me and these comforts. I felt myself a heartless beast that I could enjoy such things after spreading death by day. My only easement was a prickly one, that at night when I slept, I dreamed of Molly, and walked and talked with her, unhaunted by Forged ones or their frost-rimed bodies. Came a day I rode out later than I had intended, for Verity had been in his map-room and had kept me overlong in talk. A storm was coming up, but it did not seem too severe. I had not intended to go far that day, but I found fresh sign instead of my prey, a larger group of them than I had expected. The gathering clouds stole the light from the sky more swiftly than I had expected and the sign led me down game trails where Sooty and I found it slow going. When I finally glanced up from my tracking, admitting that they had eluded me this day, I found myself much farther from Buckkeep than I had intended and well off any travelled road. The wind began to blow, a nasty cold one that foretold snow to follow. I wrapped my cloak more tightly about myself and turned Sooty’s head toward home, relying on her to pick her path and pace. Darkness fell before we’d gone far, and snow with it. Had I not traversed this area so frequently of late, I would surely have been lost. But we pressed on, going always, it seemed, into the teeth of the wind. The cold soaked right through me, and I began to shiver. I feared the shivering might actually be the beginnings of trembling and a fit such as I had not suffered for a long time. I was grateful when the winds finally tore a rent in the cloud cover, and moonlight and starlight leaked through to grey our way. We made a better pace then, despite the fresh snow that Sooty waded through. We broke out of a thin birch forest onto a hillside that lightning had burned off a few years ago. The wind was stronger here with nothing to oppose it, and I gathered my cloak and turned up the collar again. I knew that once I crested the hill, I would see the lights of Buckkeep, and that another hill away and a vale would find a well-used road to take me home. So I was of better cheer as we cut our way across the hill’s smooth flank. Sudden as thunder, I heard the hoofbeats of a horse struggling to make speed, but somehow encumbered. Sooty slowed, then threw back her head and whinnied. At the same moment I saw a horse and rider break out of the cover, downhill of me and to the south. The horse carried a rider, and two other people clung to it, one to its breast strap and one to the rider’s leg. Light glinted on a blade that rose and fell, and with a cry the man clutching at the rider’s leg fell away to wallow and shriek in the snow. But the other figure had caught the horse’s headstall, and as he tried to drag the beast to a halt, two other pursuers burst from the trees to converge on the struggling horse and rider. The moment of recognizing Kettricken is inseparable from the moment I set heels to Sooty. What I saw made no sense to me, but that did not prevent my responding. I did not ask myself what my Queen-in-Waiting was doing out here, at night, unaccompanied and set upon by robbers. Rather, I found myself admiring how she kept her seat and set her horse to wheeling as she kicked and slashed at the men who tried to drag her down. I drew my sword as we closed on the struggle, but I do not recall that I made any sound. My recollection of the whole struggle is a strange one, a battle of silhouettes, done in black and white like a Mountain shadow play, soundless save for the grunts and cries of the Forged as one after another they fell. Kettricken had slashed one across the face, blinding him with blood, but still he clung to her and tried to drag her from the saddle. The other ignored the plight of his fellows, tugging instead at saddlebags that probably carried no more than a bit of food and brandy packed for a day’s ride. Sooty took me in close to the one gripping Softstep’s headstall. I saw it was a woman and then my sword was into her and out again, as soulless an exercise as chopping wood. Such a peculiar struggle. I could sense Kettricken, the fright of her horse and Sooty’s battle-trained enthusiasm, but from her attackers, nothing. Nothing at all. No anger throbbed, no pain of their wounds shrieked for attention. To my Wit, they were not there at all, any more than the snow or the wind that likewise opposed me. I watched as in a dream as Kettricken seized her attacker by the hair and leaned his head back that she might cut his throat. Blood spilled black in the moonlight, drenching her coat and leaving a sheen on the chestnut’s neck and shoulder before he fell back to spasm in the snow. I swung my short sword at the last one, but missed. Kettricken did not. Her short knife danced in, and punched through jerkin and ribcage and into his lung, and out again as swift. She kicked him away. ‘To me!’ she said simply into the night, and put heels to her chestnut, driving Softstep straight up the hill. Sooty ran with her nose at Kettricken’s stirrup, and so we crested the hill together, glimpsing the lights of Buckkeep briefly before we plunged down the other side. There was brush at the bottom of the slope, and a creek hidden by the snow, so I kicked Sooty into the lead and turned Softstep before she could blunder into it and fall. Kettricken said nothing as I turned her horse, but let me take the lead as we entered the forest on the other side of the stream. I moved us as swiftly as I dared, expecting always figures to shout and leap out at us. But we made the road at last, just as the clouds closed up again, stealing the moonlight from us. I slowed the horses and let them breathe. For some time we travelled in silence, both intently listening for any sounds of pursuit. After a time, we felt safer, and I heard Kettricken let out her pent breath in a long, shaky sigh. ‘Thank you, Fitz,’ she said simply, but could not keep her voice quite steady. I made no comment, half-expecting that at any moment she would burst into weeping. I would not have blamed her. Instead she gradually gathered herself, tugging her clothes straight, wiping her blade on her trousers and then re-sheathing it at her waist. She leaned forward to pat Softstep’s neck and murmur words of praise and comfort to the horse. I felt Softstep’s tension ease and admired Kettricken’s skill to have so swiftly gained the confidence of the tall horse. ‘How came you here? Seeking me?’ she asked at last. I shook my head. Snow was beginning to fall again. ‘I was out hunting, and went farther than I had intended. It was but good fortune that brought me to you.’ I paused, then ventured, ‘Did you get lost? Will there be riders searching for you?’ She sniffed, and took a breath. ‘Not exactly,’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘I went out riding with Regal. A few others rode with us, but when the storm began to threaten, we all turned back to Buckkeep. The others rode on before us, but Regal and I came more slowly. He was telling me a folk tale from his home duchy, and we let the others ride ahead, that I should not have to hear it through their chatter.’ She took a breath and I heard her swallow back the last of the night’s terror. Her voice was calmer when she went on. ‘The others were far ahead of us, when a fox started up suddenly from the brush by the path. “Follow me, if you’d like to see real sport!” Regal challenged me, and he turned his horse from the path and set off after the animal. Whether I would or no, Softstep sprang after them. Regal rode like a mad thing, all stretched out on his horse, urging it on with a quirt.’ There was consternation, and wonder, but also a stain of admiration in her voice as she described him. Softstep had not answered the rein. At first she had been fearful of their pace, for she did not know the terrain, and feared that Softstep would stumble. So she had tried to rein in her mount. But when she had realized that she could no longer see the road or the others, and that Regal was far ahead of her, she had given Softstep her head in the hopes of catching up, with the predictable result that as the storm closed in, she had lost her way completely. She had turned back to retrace her trail to the road, but the falling snow and blowing wind had quickly erased it. At last she had given Softstep the bit, trusting her horse to find her way home. Probably she would have, if those wild men had not set upon her. Her voice dwindled away into silence. ‘Forged ones,’ I told her quietly. ‘Forged ones,’ she repeated in a wondering voice. Then, more firmly, ‘They have no heart left. So it was explained to me.’ I felt more than saw her glance. ‘Am I so poor a Sacrifice that there are folk who would kill me?’ In the distance we heard the winding of a horn. Searchers. ‘They would have set upon any that crossed their paths,’ I told her. ‘For them, there was no thought that it was their Queen-in-Waiting they attacked. I doubt greatly that they knew who you were at all.’ I closed my jaws firmly before I could add that such was not the case with Regal. If he had not intended her harm, neither had he kept her from coming to it. I did not believe he had ever intended to show her ‘sport’ in chasing a fox across snowy hills in the twilight. He had meant to lose her. And done so handily. ‘I think my lord will be very wroth with me,’ she said woeful as a child. As if in answer to her prediction, we rounded the shoulder of the hill and saw men on horseback bearing torches coming toward us. We heard the horn again, more clearly, and in a few moments we were among them. They were the forerunners of the main search party, and a girl set out at once galloping back to tell the King-in-Waiting that his queen had been found. In the light of the torches, Verity’s guards exclaimed and swore over the blood that glinted yet on Softstep’s neck, but Kettricken kept her composure as she assured them that none of it was hers. She spoke quietly of the Forged ones who had set upon her and what she had done to defend herself. I saw admiration of her growing among the soldiers. I heard then for the first time that the boldest attacker had dropped out of a tree upon her. Him she had slain first. ‘Four she done, and not a scratch upon her!’ exulted one grizzled veteran, and then, ‘Begging your pardon, my lady queen. No disrespect meant!’ ‘It might have been a different tale had not Fitz come to free my horse’s head,’ Kettricken said quietly. Their respect for her grew as she did not glory in her triumph, but made sure I received my due as well. They congratulated her loudly, and spoke angrily of scouring the woods tomorrow all about Buckkeep. ‘It shames us all as soldiers, that our own queen cannot ride forth safely!’ declared one woman. She set her hand to the hilt of her blade, and swore on it to have it blooded with Forged blood by the morrow. Several others followed her example. The talk grew loud, bravado and relief at the Queen’s safety fuelling it. It became a triumphal procession home, until Verity arrived. He came at a dead gallop, on a horse lathered both by distance and speed. I knew then that the search had not been a brief one, and could only guess at how many roads Verity had travelled since he had received word that his lady was missing. ‘How could you be so foolish as to go so far astray!’ were his first words to her. His voice was not tender. I saw her head lose its proud lift, and heard the muttered comments of the man closest to me. From there nothing went well. He did not scold her before his men, but I saw him wince as she told him plainly what had become of her and how she had killed to defend herself. He was not pleased to have her speak so plainly of a band of Forged ones, brave enough to attack the Queen, and scarce out of Buckkeep’s shadow. That which Verity had sought to keep quiet would be on everyone’s lips tomorrow, with the added fillip that it had been the Queen herself they’d dared to attack. Verity shot me a murderous glance, as if it were all my doing, and roughly commandeered fresh horses from two of his guard to take himself and his queen back to Buckkeep. He whisked her away from them, carrying her back to Buckkeep at a gallop as if arriving there sooner would somehow make the breach of safety less real. He seemed not to realize he had denied his guard the honour of bringing her safely home. I myself rode back slowly with them, trying not to hear the disgruntled words of the soldiers. They did not quite criticize the King-in-Waiting, but complimented the Queen more on her spirit and thought it sad she’d not been welcomed back with an embrace and a kind word or two. If any gave thought to Regal’s behaviour, they did not speak it aloud. Later that night, in the stables, after I’d seen to Sooty, I helped Burrich and Hands put Softstep and Truth, Verity’s horse, to rights. Burrich grumbled at how hard both beasts had been used. Softstep had taken a minor scratch during the attack, and her mouth was sore bruised from fighting for her head, but neither animal would take permanent hurt. Burrich sent Hands off to fix a warm mash of grain for them both. Only then did he quietly tell how Regal had come in, given his horse over for stabling, and gone up to the keep without so much as mentioning Kettricken. Burrich himself had been alerted by a stable-boy, asking where Softstep was. When Burrich had set about to find out, and made so bold as to ask Regal himself, Regal had replied that he had thought she had stayed on the road and come in with her attendants. So Burrich had been the one to sound the alarm, with Regal very vague as to where he had actually left the road, and what direction the fox had led him, and presumably Kettricken. ‘He’s covered his tracks well,’ Burrich muttered to me as Hands came back with the grain. I knew he did not refer to the fox. My feet were leaden as I made my way up to the keep that night, and my heart as well. I did not want to imagine what Kettricken was feeling, nor did I care to consider what the talk was in the guard-room. I pulled off my clothes and fell into bed, and instantly into a sleep. Molly was waiting for me in my dreams, and the only peace I knew. I was awakened a short time later, by someone pounding on my latched door. I arose and opened it to a sleepy page, who’d been sent to fetch me to Verity’s map-room. I told him I knew the way and sent him back to bed. I dragged my clothes on hastily and raced down the stairs, wondering what disaster had befallen us now. Verity was waiting for me there, the hearth fire almost the only light in the room. His hair was rumpled and he had thrown a robe on over his nightshirt. Plainly he had just come from his bed himself, and I braced myself for whatever news he’d received. ‘Shut the door!’ he commanded me tersely. I did and then came to stand before him. I could not tell if the glint in his eyes were anger or amusement as he demanded, ‘Who is Lady Red Skirts, and why do I dream of her every night?’ I could not find my tongue. Desperately I wondered just how privy to my dreams he had been. Embarrassment dizzied me. Had I stood naked before the whole court, I could not have felt more exposed. Verity turned his face aside and gave a cough that might have started as a chuckle. ‘Come, boy, it is not as if I cannot understand. I did not wish to be privy to your secret; rather you have thrust it upon me, especially so these last few nights. And I need my sleep, not to start up in bed fevered with your … admiration for this woman.’ He stopped speaking abruptly. My flaming blush was warmer than any hearth fire. ‘So,’ he said uncomfortably. Then, ‘Sit down. I am going to teach you to guard your thoughts as well as you guard your tongue.’ He shook his head. ‘Strange, Fitz, that you can block my Skilling so completely from your mind at times, but spill your most private desires out like a wolf howling into the night. I suppose it springs from what Galen did to you. Would we could undo that. But as we can’t, I shall teach you what I can whenever I can.’ I had not moved. Suddenly neither of us could look at the other. ‘Come here,’ he repeated gruffly. ‘Sit down here with me. Look into the flames.’ And in the space of an hour, he gave me an exercise to practise, one that would keep my dreams to myself, or more likely, ensure that I had no dreams at all. With a sinking heart I realized I would lose even the Molly of my imagination as surely as I’d lost the real one. He sensed my glumness. ‘Come, Fitz, it will pass. Keep a rein on yourself and endure. It can be done. May come a day when you will wish your life to be as empty of women as it is now. As I do.’ ‘She didn’t mean to get lost, sir.’ Verity shot me a baleful glance. ‘Intentions cannot be exchanged for results. She is Queen-in-Waiting, boy. She must always think, not once, but thrice, before she takes action.’ ‘She told me that Softstep followed Regal’s horse, and would not respond to the rein. You can fault Burrich and I for that; we’re supposed to have trained that horse.’ He sighed suddenly. ‘I suppose so. Consider yourself rebuked, and tell Burrich to find my lady a less spirited horse to ride until she is a better horsewoman.’ He sighed again, deeply. ‘I suppose she will consider that a punishment from me. She will look at me sadly with those great blue eyes, but speak not a word against it. Ah, well. It cannot be helped. But did she have to kill, and then to speak of it so blithely? What will my people think of her?’ ‘She scarcely had a choice, sir. Would it have been better for her to die? As to what folk will think … well. The soldiers who first found us thought her plucky. And capable. Not bad qualities for a queen, sir. The women, especially, in your guard spoke warmly of her as we returned. They see her as their queen now, much more than if she were a weeping, quailing thing. They will follow her without question. In times like these, perhaps a queen with a knife will give us more heart than a woman who drapes herself in jewels and hides behind walls.’ ‘Perhaps,’ Verity said quietly. I sensed he did not agree. ‘But now all shall know, most vividly, of the Forged ones who are gathering about Buckkeep.’ ‘They shall know, too, that a determined person can defend herself from them. And from the talk of your guard as we came back, I think there shall be far fewer Forged ones a week hence.’ ‘I know that. Some will be slaying their own kin. Forged or not, it is Six Duchies blood we are shedding. I had sought to avoid having my guard kill my own people.’ A small silence fell between us, as we both reflected he had not scrupled to set me to that same task. Assassin. That was the word for what I was. I had no honour to preserve, I realized. ‘Not true, Fitz.’ He answered my thought. ‘You preserve my honour. And I honour you for that, for doing what must be done. The ugly work, the hidden work. Do not be shamed that you work to preserve the Six Duchies. Do not think I do not appreciate such work simply because it must remain secret. Tonight, you saved my queen. I do not forget that either.’ ‘She needed little saving, sir. I believe that even alone, she would have survived.’ ‘Well. We won’t wonder about that.’ He paused, then said awkwardly, ‘I must reward you, you know.’ When I opened my mouth to protest, he held up a forbidding hand. ‘I know you require nothing. I know, too, that there is already so much between us that nothing I could give you would be sufficient for my gratitude. But most folk know nothing of that. Will you have it said in Buckkeep Town that you saved the Queen’s life, and the King-in-Waiting acknowledged you not at all? But I am at a loss to know what to gift you with … it should be something visible, and you must carry it about with you for a while. That much I know of statecraft, at least. A sword? Something better than the piece of iron you were carrying tonight?’ ‘It’s an old blade Hod told me to take to practise with,’ I defended myself. ‘It works.’ ‘Obviously. I shall have her select a better one for you, and do a bit of fancywork on the hilt and scabbard. Would that do it?’ ‘I think so,’ I said awkwardly. ‘Well. Let’s back to bed, shall we? And I shall be able to sleep now, won’t I?’ There was no mistaking the amusement in his voice now. My cheeks burned anew. ‘Sir. I have to ask …’ I fumbled the hard words out. ‘Do you know who I was dreaming about?’ He shook his head slowly. ‘Do not fear you have compromised her honour. I know only that she wears blue skirts, but you see them as red. And that you love her with an ardency that is appropriate to youth. Do not struggle to stop loving her. Only to stop Skilling it about at night. I am not the only one open to such Skilling, though I believe I am the only one who would recognize your signature on the dream so plain. Still, be cautious. Galen’s coterie is not without Skill, even if they use it clumsily and with little strength. A man can be undone when his enemies learn what is dearest to him from his Skill dreams. Keep your guard up.’ He gave an inadvertent chuckle. ‘And hope your Lady Red Skirts has no Skill in her blood, for if she does at all, she must have heard you all these many nights.’ And having put that unsettling thought into my head, he dismissed me back to my chambers and bed. I did not sleep again that night. EIGHT (#ulink_dbb85e76-209a-5175-8c1f-d37ba21cbf4b) The Queen Awakes (#ulink_dbb85e76-209a-5175-8c1f-d37ba21cbf4b) Oh, some folk ride to the wild boar hunt Or for elk they nock their arrows. But my love rode with the Vixen Queen To lay to rest our sorrows. She did not dream of fame that day Nor fear what pain might find her. She rode to heal her people’s hearts And my love rode behind her. The Vixen Queen’s Hunt The whole keep was astir early the next day. There was a fevered, almost festival air in the courtyard as Verity’s personal guard and every warrior who had no scheduled duties that day massed for a hunt. Tracking hounds bayed restively, while the pull-down dogs with their massive jaws and barrel chests huffed excitedly and tested their restraints. Bets were already being set on who would hunt most successfully. Horses pawed the earth, bow-strings were checked, while pages ran helter-skelter everywhere. Inside the kitchen, half the cooking staff was busy putting up packages of food for the hunters to take with them. Soldiers young and old, male and female strutted and laughed aloud, bragging of past confrontations, comparing weapons, building spirit for the hunt. I had seen this a hundred times, before a winter hunt for elk, or bear. But now there was an edge to it, a rank smell of bloodlust on the air. I heard snatches of conversations, words that made me queasy: ‘… no mercy for that dung …’, ‘… cowards and traitors, to dare to attack the Queen …’, ‘… shall pay dearly. They don’t deserve a swift death …’ I ducked hastily back into the kitchen, threaded my way through an area busy as a stirred ant-hill. Here, too, I heard the same sorts of sentiments voiced, the same craving for revenge. I found Verity in his map-room. I could tell he had washed and dressed himself afresh this day, but he wore last night as plainly as a dirty robe. He was attired for a day inside, amongst his papers. I tapped lightly at the door, although it stood ajar. He sat in a chair before the fire, his back to me. He nodded, but did not look up at me as I entered. For all his stillness, there was a charged air to the room, the gathering of a storm. A tray of breakfast rested on a table beside his chair, untouched. I came and stood quietly beside him, almost certain I had been Skilled here. As the silence grew longer, I wondered if Verity himself knew why. At length I decided to speak. ‘My prince. You do not ride with your guard today?’ I ventured. It was as if I had opened a floodgate. He turned to look at me; the lines in his face had been graven deeper over night. He looked haggard, sickened. ‘I do not, I dare not. How could I countenance such a thing, this hunting down of our own folk and kin! And yet what is my alternative? To hide and mope within the keep walls, while others go out to avenge this insult to my Queen-in-Waiting! I dare not forbid my men to uphold their honour. So I must behave as if I am unaware of what goes on in the courtyard. As if I am a simpleton, or a laggard, or a coward. There will be a ballad written about this day, I doubt it not. What shall it be called? Verity’s Massacre of the Witless? Or Queen Kettricken’s Sacrifice of the Forged ?’ His voice rose on every word, and before he was half done, I had stepped to the door and shut it firmly. I looked about the room as he ranted, wondering who else besides myself was hearing these words. ‘Did you sleep at all, my prince? I asked when he had run down. He smiled with bleak amusement. ‘Well you know what put an end to my first attempt at rest. My second was less … engaging. My lady came to my chamber.’ I felt my ears begin to warm. Whatever he was about to tell me, I did not want to hear it. I had no wish to know what had passed between them last night. Quarrel or amendment, I wanted to know nothing of it. Verity was merciless. ‘Not weeping, as you might think she would. Not for comfort. Not to be held against night fears, or reassured of my regard. But sword-stiff as a rebuked sergeant, to stand at the foot of the bed and beg my pardon for her transgressions. Whiter than chalk and hard as oak …’ His voice trailed off, as if realizing he betrayed too much of himself. ‘She foresaw this hunting mob, not I. She came to me in the middle of the night, asking what must we do? I had no answer for her, any more than I do now …’ ‘At least she foresaw this,’ I ventured, hoping to bring some respite from his anger for Kettricken. ‘And I did not,’ he said heavily. ‘She did. Chivalry would have. Oh, Chivalry would have known it would happen from the moment she went missing, and would have had all sorts of contingency plans. But I did not. I thought only to bring her swiftly home, and hope not too many heard of it. As if such a thing could be! And so today I think to myself that if ever the crown does come to rest on my brow, it will be in a most unworthy place.’ This was a Prince Verity I had never seen before, a man with his confidence in tatters. I finally saw how poor a match Kettricken was for him. It was not her fault. She was strong, and raised to rule. Verity often said himself he had been raised as a second son. The right sort of woman would have steadied him like a sea anchor, helped him rise to assume his kingship. A woman who had come weeping to his bed, to be cuddled and reassured, would have let him arise certain he was a man and fit to be a king. Kettricken’s discipline and restraint made him doubt his own strength. My prince was human, I suddenly perceived. It was not reassuring. ‘You should at least come out and speak to them,’ I ventured. ‘And say what? “Good hunting”? No. But you go, boy. Go and watch and bring me word of what is happening. Go now. And shut my door. I have no desire to see anyone else until you return with word of what goes on.’ I turned and did as he bid me. As I left the Great Hall and went down the passage to the courtyard, I encountered Regal. He was seldom up and about this early, and he looked as if his arising this morning had been no choice of his. His clothing and hair were well arranged, but all the tiny primping touches were missing: no earring, no carefully-folded and pinned silk at his throat, and the only jewellery was his signet ring. His hair was combed, but not scented and curled. And his eyes were networked in red. Fury rode him. As I sought to pass him, he seized me and jerked me to face him. That, at least, was his intention. I did not resist, but merely laxed my muscles. And found, to my delight and amazement, that he could not move me. He turned to face me, eyes blazing, and found out that he must look up, ever so slightly, to glare at me eye to eye. I had grown and put on weight. I had known that, but had never considered this delightful side-effect. I stopped the grin before it reached my mouth, but it must have showed in my eyes. He gave me a violent shove, and I allowed it to rock me. A bit. ‘Where’s Verity?’ he snarled. ‘My prince?’ I queried, as if not grasping what he desired. ‘Where is my brother? That wretched wife of his …’ He broke off, strangling on his anger. ‘Where is my brother usually at this time of day?’ he finally managed. I did not lie. ‘Some days he goes early to his tower. Or he may be breakfasting, I suppose. Or in the baths …’ I offered. ‘Useless bastard,’ Regal dismissed me, and whirled, to hurry off in the direction of the tower. I hoped the climb would amuse him. As soon as he was out of sight, I broke into a run, not to waste the precious time I had gained. The moment I entered the courtyard, the reason for Regal’s fury was made clear. Kettricken stood upon a wagon seat, and every head was turned up toward her. She wore the same clothes she had the night before. By daylight, I could see how a spray of blood had marked the sleeve of the white fur jacket, and how a heavier plume of it had soaked and stained her purple trousers. She was booted and hatted, ready to ride. A sword was buckled at her hip. Dismay rose in me. How could she? I glanced about, wondering what she had been saying. Every face was turned to her, eyes wide. I had emerged into a moment of utter silence. Every man and woman seemed to be holding their breath, awaiting her next words. When they came, they were uttered in a speaking voice, calmly, but so silent was the crowd that her clear voice carried in the cold air. ‘This is not a hunt, I say,’ Kettricken repeated gravely. ‘Put aside your merriment and boasts. Remove from your bodies every bit of jewellery, every sign of rank. Let your hearts be solemn and consider what we do.’ Her words were accented still with the flavour of the mountains, but a cool part of my mind observed how carefully chosen was each word, how balanced each phrase. ‘We do not go to hunt,’ she repeated, ‘but to claim our casualties. We go to lay to rest those the Red Ships have stolen from us. The Red Ships have taken the hearts of the Forged ones, and left their bodies to stalk us. None the less, those we put down today are of the Six Duchies. Our own. ‘My soldiers, I ask of you that no arrow be loosed today, no blow struck save for a clean kill. I know you skilled enough to do this. We have all suffered enough. Let each death today be as brief and merciful as we can manage, for all our sakes. Let us clench our jaws, and remove that which infects us with as much resolve and regret as if we severed a maimed limb from a body. For such is what we do. Not vengeance, my people, but surgery, to be followed by a healing. Do as I say, now.’ For some few minutes she stood still and looked down at us all. As in a dream, folk began to move. Hunters removed feathers and ribbons, tokens and jewellery from their garments and handed them to pages. The mood of merriment and boasting had evaporated. She had stripped that protection away, forced all to consider truly what they were about to do. No one relished it. All were poised, waiting to hear what she would say next. Kettricken kept her absolute silence and stillness, so that each eye was perforce drawn back to her. When she saw she had the attention of all, she spoke again. ‘Good,’ she praised us quietly. ‘And now, heed my words well. I desire horse-drawn litters, or wagons … whatever you of the stable judge best. Pad them well with straw. No body of our folk will be left to feed foxes or be pecked by crows. They will be brought back here, names noted if known, and prepared for the pyre that is the honour of those fallen in battle. If families be known and be near, they shall be summoned to the mourning. To those who live far, word will be sent, and the honours due those who have lost their blood-kin as soldiers.’ Tears ran unchecked, untouched down her cheeks. They glinted in the early winter sunlight like diamonds. Her voice thickened as she turned to command another group. ‘My cooks and serving-folk! Set all tables in the Great Hall, and prepare a funeral feast. Set the Lesser Hall with water and herbs and clean garments, that we may prepare the bodies of our folk for burning. All others, leave your ordinary duties. Fetch wood and build a pyre. We shall return, to burn our dead and mourn them.’ She gazed about, meeting every eye. Something in her face set. She drew the sword from her belt and pointed it aloft in an oath. ‘When we have done with our grieving, we shall make ready to avenge them! Those who have taken our folk shall know our wrath!’ Slowly she lowered her blade, sheathed it cleanly. Again her eyes commanded us. ‘And now, we ride, my folk!’ My flesh stood up in goose-bumps. Around me, men and women were mounting horses and a hunt was forming up. With impeccable timing, Burrich was suddenly beside the wagon, with Softstep saddled and awaiting her rider. I wondered where he had got the black and red harness, the colours of grief and vengeance. I wondered if she had ordered it, or if he had simply known. She stepped down, onto her horse’s back, then settled into the saddle and Softstep stood steady despite the novel mount. She lifted her hand, and it held a sword. The hunt surged forth behind her. ‘Stop her!’ hissed Regal behind me, and I spun to find that both he and Verity stood at my back, completely unnoticed by the crowd. ‘No!’ I dared to breathe aloud. ‘Cannot you feel it? Do not spoil it. She’s given them all something back. I don’t know what it is, but they have been sore missing it for a long time.’ ‘It is pride,’ Verity said, his deep voice a rumble. ‘What we have all been missing, and I most of all. There rides a queen,’ he continued in soft amazement. Was there a shade of envy there as well? He turned slowly and went quietly back into the keep. Behind us a babble of voices arose, and folk hastened to do as she had bidden them. I walked behind Verity, near stunned by what I had witnessed. Regal pushed past me, to leap in front of Verity and confront him. He was quivering with outrage. My prince halted. ‘How can you have allowed this to happen? Have you no control over that woman at all? She makes mockery of us! Who is she, to thus issue commands and take out an armed guard from the keep! Who is she, to decree all this so highhandedly?’ Regal’s voice cracked in his fury. ‘My wife,’ Verity said mildly. ‘And your Queen-in-Waiting. The one you chose. Father assured me you would choose a woman worthy to be a queen. I think you picked better than you knew.’ ‘Your wife? Your undoing, you ass! She undermines you, she cuts your throat as you sleep! She steals their hearts, she builds her own name! Cannot you see it, you dolt? You may be content to let that mountain vixen steal the crown, but I am not!’ I turned aside hastily and bent to retie my shoe, so I could not witness that Prince Verity struck Prince Regal. I did hear something very like the crack of an open-handed blow to a man’s face and a bitten-off cry of fury. When I looked up, Verity was standing as quietly as before, while Regal hunkered forward with a hand over his nose and mouth. ‘King-in-Waiting Verity will brook no insults to Queen-in-Waiting Kettricken. Or even to himself. I said my lady had reawakened pride in our soldiers. Perhaps she has stirred mine as well.’ Verity looked mildly surprised as he considered this. ‘The King will hear of this!’ Regal took his hand away from his face, looked aghast at the blood on it. He held it up, shaking, to show Verity. ‘My father will see this blood you have shed!’ he quavered, and choked on the blood coursing from his nose. He leaned forward slightly and held his bloody hand away from himself, so as not to spoil his clothing with a stain. ‘What? You intend to bleed all the way to this afternoon, when our father arises? If you can manage that, come and show me as well!’ To me, ‘Fitz! Have you nothing better to do than stand about gaping? Be off with you. See that my lady’s commands are well obeyed!’ Verity turned and strode off down the corridor. I made haste to obey and to take myself out of Regal’s range. Behind us, he stamped and cursed like a child in the midst of a tantrum. Neither of us turned back to him, but I at least hoped that no servants had marked what had transpired. It was a long and peculiar day about the keep. Verity made a visit to King Shrewd’s rooms, and then kept himself to his map-room. I know not what Regal did. All folk turned out to do the Queen’s bidding, working swiftly, but almost silently, gossiping quietly amongst themselves as they prepared the one hall for food and the other for bodies. One great change I marked. Those women who had been most faithful to the Queen now found themselves attended, as if they were shadows of Kettricken. And these nobly born women suddenly did not scruple to come themselves to the Lesser Hall, to supervise the preparing of the herb scented water, and the laying out of towels and linens. I myself helped with the fetching of wood for the required pyre. By late afternoon, the hunt returned. They came quietly, riding in solemn guard around the wagons they escorted. Kettricken rode at their head. She looked tired, and frozen in a way that had nothing to do with the cold. I wanted to go to her, but did not steal the honour as Burrich came to take her horse’s head and assist her dismount. Fresh blood spattered her boots and Softstep’s shoulders. She had not ordered her soldiers to do that which she would not do herself. With a quiet command, Kettricken dismissed the guard to wash themselves, to comb hair and beards, and to return freshly clothed to the hall. As Burrich led Softstep away, Kettricken stood briefly alone. A sadness greyer than anything I had ever felt emanated from her. She was weary. So very weary. I approached her quietly. ‘If you have need, my lady queen,’ I said softly. She did not turn. ‘I must do this myself. But be close, in case I need you.’ She spoke so quietly I am sure none heard her but myself. Then she moved forward, and the waiting keep folk parted before her. Heads bobbed as she acknowledged them gravely. She walked silently through the kitchens, nodding at the food she saw prepared, and then paced through the Great Hall, once more nodding approval of all she saw there. In the Lesser Hall, she paused, then removed her gaily knit cap and her jacket, to reveal underneath a simple soft shirt of purple linen. The cap and jacket she gave over to a page, who looked stunned by the honour. She stepped to the head of one of the tables, and began to fold her sleeves back. All movement in the hall ceased as heads turned to watch her. She looked up to our amazed regard. ‘Bring in our dead,’ she said simply. The pitiful bodies were carried in, a heart-breaking stream of them. I did not count how many. More than I had expected, more than Verity’s reports had led us to believe. I followed behind Kettricken, and carried the basin of warm, scented water as she moved from body to body, and gently bathed each ravaged face and closed tormented eyes forever. Behind us came others, a snaking procession as each body was undressed gently, completely bathed, hair combed, and wound in clean cloth. At some point I became aware that Verity was there, a young scribe beside him, going from body to body, taking down the names of those few who were recognized, writing briefly of every other. One name I supplied him myself: Kerry. The last Molly and I had known of this street boy, he had gone off as a puppeteer’s apprentice. He’d ended his days as little more than a puppet. His laughing mouth was stilled forever. As boys, we’d run errands together, to earn a penny or two. He’d been beside me the first time I got puking drunk, and laughed until his own stomach betrayed him. He’d wedged the rotten fish in the trestles of the tavern-keeper’s table, the one who had accused us of stealing. The days we had shared I alone would remember now. I suddenly felt less real. Part of my past, Forged away from me. When we were finished, and stood silently looking at the tables of bodies, Verity stepped forward, to read his tally aloud in the silence. The names were few, but he did not neglect those unknown. ‘A young man, newly bearded, dark hair, the scars of fishing on his hands …’ he said of one, and of another, ‘A woman, curly haired and comely, tattooed with the puppeteers’ guild sign.’ We listened to the litany of those we had lost, and if any did not weep, they had hearts of stone. As a people, we lifted our dead and carried them to the funeral pyre, to set them carefully upon this last bed. Verity himself brought the torch for the kindling, but he handed it to the Queen who waited beside the pyre. As she set flame to the pitch-laden boughs, she cried out to the dark skies, ‘You shall not be forgotten!’ All echoed her with a shout. Blade, the old sergeant, stood beside the pyre with shears, to take from every soldier a finger’s length lock of hair, a symbol of the mourning for a fallen comrade. Verity joined the queue, and Kettricken stood behind him, to offer up a pale lock of her own hair. There followed a night such as I had never known. Most of Buckkeep Town came to the keep that night, and were admitted without question. All followed the Queen’s example and kept a watching fast until the pyre had burned itself to ash and bone. Then the Great Hall and the Lesser were filled, and planks laid as tables outside in the courtyard for those who could not crowd within. Kegs of drink were rolled out, and such a setting out of bread and roasted meat and other viands as I had not even imagined that Buckkeep possessed. Later I was to learn that much of it had simply come up from the town, unsought but offered freely. The King descended, as he had not for some weeks, to sit in his throne at the high table and preside over the gathering. The Fool came too, to stand beside and behind his chair and accept from his plate whatever the King offered. But this night he made not merry for the King; his fool’s prattle was stilled, and even the bells on his cap and sleeves had been tied in strips of fabric to mute them. Only once did our eyes meet that night, but for me, the glance carried no discernible message. To the King’s right was Verity, to his left Kettricken. Regal was there, too, of course, in so sumptuous a costume of black that only the colour denoted any sort of mourning. He scowled and sulked and drank, and I suppose for some his surly silence passed for grieving. For me, I could sense the anger seething within him, and knew that someone, somewhere would pay for what he saw as insult to himself. Even Patience was there, her appearance as rare as the King’s, and I sensed the unity of purpose we displayed. The King ate but little. He waited until those at the high table were filled before he arose to speak. As he spoke, his words were repeated at the lower tables, and in the Lesser Hall, and even outside in the courtyard by minstrels. He spoke briefly of those we had lost to the Red Ships. He said nothing of Forging, or of the day’s task of hunting down and killing the Forged ones. He spoke instead as if they had but recently died in a battle against the Red Ships, and said only that we must remember them. Then, pleading fatigue and grief, he left the table to return to his own chambers. Then it was that Verity arose. He did little more than to repeat Kettricken’s words of earlier, that we grieved now, but when the grieving was over, we must make ready our vengeance. He lacked the fire and passion of Kettricken’s earlier speech, but I could see all at table responding to it. Folk nodded and began to talk amongst themselves, while Regal sat and glowered silently. Verity and Kettricken left the table late that night, she on his arm, and they made sure that all marked how they left together. Regal remained, drinking and muttering to himself. I myself slipped away shortly after Verity and Kettricken left, to seek my own bed. I made no attempt to fall asleep, but only flung myself on my bed to stare into the fire. When the concealed door opened, I rose immediately to ascend to Chade’s chambers. I found him ajitter with an infectious excitement. There was even a pinkness to his pale cheeks about his pock scars. His grey hair was wild, his green eyes glittered like gems. He was pacing about his chambers, and as I entered, he actually seized me in a rough embrace. He stepped back and laughed aloud at my shocked expression. ‘She was born to rule! Born to it, and somehow now she has awakened to it! It could not have come at a better time! She may yet save us all!’ His exultation was unholy in its glee. ‘I know not how many folk died today,’ I rebuked him. ‘Ah! But not in vain! At least not in vain! Those were not wasted deaths, FitzChivalry. By El and Eda, Kettricken has the instinct and the grace! I had not suspected it in her. Now had we still your father alive, boy, and him paired with her on the throne, we could have a pair as could cup the whole world in their hands.’ He took another sip of his wine and paced again about his chambers. I had never seen him so elated. He all but capered. A covered basket rested on a table close to hand, and its contents had been set out on a cloth. Wine, cheese, sausages, pickles and bread. So even here in his tower, Chade shared the funeral feast. Slink the weasel popped up from the other side of the table, to regard me past the food with avaricious eyes. Chade’s voice broke me from my thoughts. ‘She has an ample share of what Chivalry had. The instinct for seizing the moment and turning it to advantage. She took an unavoidable, unmentionable situation and made high tragedy of what might have been simple slaughter in lesser hands. Boy, we have a queen, a queen again at Buckkeep!’ I felt slightly repulsed by his joy. And, for an instant, cheated. Hesitantly, I asked, ‘Do you think, really, that the Queen did as she did for show? That it was all a calculated political move?’ He halted in his tracks, considered briefly. ‘No. No, FitzChivalry, I believe she acted from her heart. But that does not make it any less tactically brilliant. Ah, you think me heartless. Or callous in my ignorance. The truth is, I know only too well. Know far better than you what today meant to us. I know men died today. I even know that six of our own force took injuries, mostly minor, in today’s action. I can tell you how many Forged ones fell, and within a day or so, I expect to know most of their names. Names already listed by me, included in the tallies of all the Red Ships have done to us. It will be I, boy, who sees that the purses of blood-gold are paid to surviving kin. Those families will be told the King regards their fallen as the equal of any of his soldiers who fall in battle with the Red Ships. And entreats their aid in taking vengeance for them. They will not be pleasant letters to pen, Fitz. But pen them I shall, in Verity’s own hand, for Shrewd’s signature. Or did you think I did naught but kill for my king?’ ‘I beg pardon. It was just that you seemed so merry when first I entered …’ I began. ‘And merry I am! As you should be. We have been rudderless and drifted, pounded by the waves and pushed by every wind. And now, comes a woman, to take the tiller and cry the course. I find it a course full to my liking! As shall everyone in the kingdom who has sickened these past years from being always on our knees. We rise, boy, we rise to fight!’ I saw then how his ebullience was borne on the wave of his fury and his grief. I remembered the expression he had worn when first we rode into Forge town on that black day and saw what the Raiders had left of our folk. He had told me then that I would learn to care, that it was in my blood. With a rush I felt the rightness of his sentiment, and seized up a glass to join him. Together we toasted our queen. Then Chade grew more sober, and divulged the reason for his summons. The King, Shrewd himself, had once more repeated his order that I watch over Kettricken. ‘I’ve been meaning to speak to you about that; that Shrewd sometimes now repeats an order already given or a comment already made.’ ‘I’m aware enough of that, Fitz. What can be done, is. But the King’s health is another topic for another time. For now, I myself assure you that his repetition was not the rattling of a sickly mind. No. The King made this request again today, as he was preparing himself to descend to dinner. He repeats it to make sure your efforts will be redoubled. He sees, as I do, that by arousing folk to follow her, the Queen puts herself more at risk. Though he would not speak it so plain. Be on your guard for her safety.’ ‘Regal,’ I snorted. ‘Prince Regal?’ Chade queried. ‘He is who we have to fear, especially now that the Queen has taken a place of power.’ ‘I said nothing of the kind. Nor should you,’ Chade observed quietly. His voice was calm but his face was severe. ‘Why not?’ I challenged him. ‘Why may not we, at least once, speak plain to one another?’ ‘To one another, we might, if we were entirely alone and it concerned only you and I. But such is not the case. We are King’s Men sworn, and King’s Men do not entertain even thoughts of treason, let alone …’ There was a gagging noise, and Slink disgorged himself. On the table, beside the food basket. He snorted, spraying drops of moisture. ‘Greedy little wretch! Choked yourself, did you?' Chade rebuked him unconcernedly. I found a rag to clean up the mess. But when I got there, Slink was lying on his side, panting, while Chade poked at the vomit with a skewer. I nearly retched myself. He waved my rag aside, picking up Slink instead and handing me the shivering creature. ‘Calm him, and get water down him,’ he directed me tersely. ‘Go on, old man, go to Fitz, he’ll see to you.’ This to the weasel. I carried him over by the fire, where he promptly puked all down my shirt. At closer range, the smell was overpowering. As I set him down and pulled my shirt off, I caught an underlying scent, more bitter than vomit even. Even as I opened my mouth to speak, Chade confirmed my suspicions. ‘Varta leaves. Crushed fine. The spiciness of the sausage would conceal the taste well. Let’s hope the wine wasn’t poisoned as well, or we’re both dead.’ Every hair on my body stood up in horror. Chade looked up to see me frozen, and pushed gently past me to pick Slink up. He offered him a saucer of water and looked pleased when Slink sampled it. ‘I think he’ll live. The little pig stuffed his mouth full, and got a better taste of it than a human would have. Up it came. The stuff on the table looks chewed, but not digested. I think the taste made him gag, not the poison.’ ‘I hope so,’ I said faintly. Every one of my nerves was tuned to an inner waiting. Had I been poisoned? Did I feel sleepy, nauseous, dizzy? Was my mouth numb, dry, watering? I broke out in a sudden sweat and began to tremble. Not again. ‘Stop it,’ Chade said quietly. ‘Sit down. Drink some water. You’re doing this to yourself, Fitz. That bottle was well sealed with an old cork. If the wine was poisoned, it was done years ago. I know of few men with the patience to poison a bottle of wine, and then age it. I think we’re fine.’ I drew a shaky breath. ‘But such was not someone’s intent. Who brought your food?’ Chade gave a snort. ‘I prepared my own food, as always. But that on the table was from a gift basket left for Lady Thyme. From time to time, folk seek to curry favour with her, as it is rumoured she has the King’s ear. I did not think my masquerade woman a likely target for poison.’ ‘Regal,’ I said again. ‘I told you he believes she is the King’s poisoner. How could you have been so careless? You know he blames Lady Thyme for his mother’s death! Shall we be so polite as to let him kill us all? He will not stop until the throne is his.’ ‘And I tell you again, I will hear nothing of treason!’ Chade all but shouted the words. He sat down in his chair and cradled Slink in his lap. The little beast sat up, tidied his whiskers, and then curled up again to compose himself for sleep. I watched Chade’s pale hand, the standing tendons, the paper skin, as he stroked his small pet. He looked only at the weasel, his face closed. After a moment, he spoke more calmly. ‘I think our king was right. We should all redouble our caution. And not just for Kettricken. Or ourselves.’ He lifted tortured eyes to mine. ‘Watch over your women, boy. Neither innocence nor ignorance is any protection against this night’s work. Patience, Molly, even Lacey. Find a way, a subtle way, to give Burrich warning as well.’ He sighed, asked of no one, ‘Have we not enemies enough outside our walls?’ ‘Aplenty,’ I assured him. But I said no more of Regal to him. He shook his head. ‘This is an ill way for me to begin a journey.’ ‘A journey? You?’ I was incredulous. Chade almost never left the keep. ‘Where?’ ‘Where I need to go. Now I think I need almost as much to stay.’ He shook his head to himself. ‘Take care of yourself while I’m gone, boy. I won’t be about to watch over you.’ And that was as much as he would tell me. When I left him, he was still staring into the fire, his lax hands sheltering Slink. I went down the stairs on jelly legs. The attempt on Chade had shaken me more than anything ever had. Not even the secret of his existence had been enough to shield him. And there were other, easier targets, just as close to my heart. I damned the bravado that had earlier let me make Regal aware of how much stronger I had grown. I had been a fool to tempt him to attack me, I should have known he would find a less obvious target. In my room, I changed hastily into fresh clothing. Then I left my chamber, climbed the stairs and went straight to Molly’s bedchamber. I tapped lightly on the door. No answer. I did not tap louder. It lacked but an hour or two until dawn, most of the keep was exhausted, abed. Still, I had no desire to rouse the wrong person to see me at Molly’s door. Yet I had to know. Her door was latched, but it was a simple one. I slipped it in a matter of seconds, and made note to myself that she would have a better one before tomorrow night. Soft as shadow, I entered her room and drew the door closed behind me. A fire had burned low in the hearth. Its lingering embers cast an uncertain haze of light. I stood still a moment, letting my eyes adjust, then I moved carefully into the room, staying away from the hearth light. I could hear the steady sleep rhythm of Molly’s breath from her bed. It should have been enough for me. But I teased myself that she might be fevered and sinking even now into a death sleep from poison. I promised myself that I would do no more than touch her pillow, just to see if her skin were fevered or normal. No more than that. I drifted to the bedside. I could just make out her shape under the covers in the dim light. She smelled heathery and warm and sweet. Healthy. No feverish poison victim slept here. I knew I should go. ‘Sleep well,’ I breathed. Silently she sprang up at me. The ember light ran red along the blade in her hand. ‘Molly!’ I cried as I parried her knife hand aside with the back of my forearm. She froze, her other hand drawn back in a fist, and for an instant all in the room was silent and motionless. Then, ‘Newboy!’ she hissed furiously, and punched me in the belly with her left hand. As I doubled over, gasping for air, she rolled from the bed. ‘You idiot! You frightened me to death! What do you think you’re about, rattling at my latch and sneaking about in my room! I should call the keep guardsmen to put you out!’ ‘No!’ I begged, as she threw wood on the fire, and then kindled a candle at it. ‘Please. I’ll go. I meant no harm or offence. I just wanted to be sure you were all right.’ ‘Well, I’m not!’ she stormed in a whisper. Her hair was confined for the night into two thick braids, reminding me sharply of the little girl I had met so long ago. A girl no longer. She caught me staring at her. She threw a heavier robe about her shoulders and belted it at her waist. ‘I’m a shaking wreck! I shan’t sleep another wink tonight! You’ve been drinking, haven’t you? Are you drunk, then? What do you want?’ She advanced on me with the candle as if it were a weapon. ‘No,’ I assured her. I drew myself upright and tugged my shirt straight. ‘I promise you, I’m not drunk. And truly, I had no bad intentions. But … something happened tonight, something that made me worry that something bad might happen to you, so I thought I had best come and make sure you were all right, but I knew Patience would not approve, and I certainly didn’t want to go waking up the whole keep, so I thought I would just slip in and …’ ‘Newboy. You’re babbling,’ she informed me icily. It was true. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, and sat down on the corner of the bed. ‘Don’t get comfortable,’ she warned me. ‘You were just leaving. Alone, or with the keep guards. Your choice.’ ‘I’ll go,’ I promised, standing hastily. ‘I just wanted to be sure you were all right.’ ‘I’m fine,’ she said testily. ‘Why wouldn’t I be fine? I’m as fine tonight as I was last night, as I have been for the last thirty nights. On none of them were you inspired to come and inspect my health. So why tonight?’ I took a breath. ‘Because on some nights threats are more obvious than others. Bad things happen, that make me take stock of what worse things could happen. On some nights, it is not the healthiest thing to be the beloved of a bastard.’ The lines of her mouth went as flat as her voice as she asked, ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ I took a breath, determined that I would be as honest with her as I was able. ‘I cannot tell you what happened. Only that it made me believe you might be in danger. You will have to trust …’ ‘That isn’t the part I meant. What do you mean, beloved of a bastard? How do you dare to call me that?’ Her eyes were bright with anger. I swear that my heart thudded to a halt in my chest. The cold of death swept through me. ‘It is true, I have no right,’ I said haltingly. ‘But neither is there any way I could stop caring for you. And whether or not I have the right to name you my beloved would not deter those who might seek to injure me by striking at you. How can I say I love you so much that I wish I did not love you, or at least could refrain from showing that I loved you, because my love puts you in such danger and have those words be true?’ Stiffly, I turned to go. ‘And how could I possibly dare to say I made sense of your last statement and have it be true?’ Molly wondered aloud. Something in her voice made me turn around. For a moment we just looked at one another. Then she burst out laughing. I stood, affronted and grim, as she came to me, still laughing. Then she put her arms around me. ‘Newboy. You take a most roundabout path to finally declare you love me. To break into my room, and then to stand there, tying your tongue in knots about the word love. Could not you simply have said it, a long time ago?’ I stood stupid in the circle of her arms. I looked down at her. Yes, I realized dully, I had grown that much taller than she. ‘Well?’ she prompted, and for a moment I was puzzled. ‘I love you, Molly.’ So easy to say, after all. And such a relief. Slowly, cautiously, I put my arms around her. She smiled up at me. ‘And I love you.’ So, finally, I kissed her. In the moment of that kiss, somewhere near Buckkeep a wolf lifted up his voice in a joyous ululation that set every hound to baying and every dog to barking in a chorus that rang against the brittle night sky. NINE (#ulink_8a997745-2781-5ad0-a5c0-c55b39f46b76) Guards and Bonds (#ulink_8a997745-2781-5ad0-a5c0-c55b39f46b76) Oftentimes I understand and commend Fedwren’s stated dream. Had he his way, paper would he as common as bread and every child would learn his letters before he was thirteen. But even were it so, I do not think this would bring to pass all he hopes. He mourns for all the knowledge that goes into a grave each time a man dies, even the commonest of men. He speaks of a time to come when a blacksmith’s way of setting a shoe, or a shipwright’s knack for pulling a drawknife would be set down in letters, that any who could read could learn to do as well. I do not believe it is so, or ever will be. Some things may be learned from words on a page, but some skills are learned first by a man’s hand and heart, and later by his head. I have believed this ever since I saw Mastfish set the fish-shaped block of wood that he was named after into Verity’s first ship. His eyes had seen that mastfish before it existed, and he set his hands to shaping what his heart knew must be. This is not a thing that can be learned from words on a page. Perhaps it cannot be learned at all, but comes, as does the Skill or the Wit, from the blood of one’s forebears. I returned to my own chamber and sat watching the dying embers in my hearth, waiting for the rest of the keep to awaken. I should have been exhausted. Instead, I almost trembled with the energy rushing through me. I fancied that if I sat very still, I could still feel the warmth of Molly’s arms around me. I knew precisely where her cheek had touched mine. A very faint scent of her clung to my shirt from our brief embrace, and I agonized over whether to wear the shirt that day, to carry that scent with me, or to set it aside carefully in my clothing chest, to preserve it. I did not think it a foolish thing at all to care so much about that. Looking back, I smile, but it is at my wisdom, not my folly. Morning brought storm winds and falling snow to Buckkeep Castle, but to me it only made all inside the cosier. Perhaps it would give us all a chance to recover ourselves from yesterday. I did not want to think about those poor ragged bodies, or bathing the still, cold faces. Nor of the roaring flames and heat that had consumed Kerry’s body. We could all use a quiet day inside the keep. Perhaps the evening would find all gathered about the hearths, for storytelling, music and conversation. I hoped so. I left my chambers to go to Patience and Lacey. I tormented myself, knowing well the exact moment when Molly would descend the stairs to fetch a breakfast tray for Patience, and also when she would ascend the stairs carrying it. I could be on the stairs or in the hallway as she passed. It would be a minor thing, a coincidence. But I had no question that there were those who had been set to watching me, and they would make note of such ‘coincidences’ if they occurred too often. No. I had to heed the warnings that both the King and Chade had given me. I would show Molly I had a man’s self-control and forbearance. If I must wait before I could court her, then I would. So I sat in my room and agonized until I was sure that she would have left Patience’s chambers. Then I descended, to tap upon the door. As I waited for Lacey to open it, I reflected that redoubling my watch upon Patience and Lacey was easier said than done. But I had a few ideas. I had begun last night, by extracting a promise from Molly that she would bring up no food she had not prepared herself, or taken fresh from the common serving pots. She had snorted at this, for it had come after a most ardent goodbye. ‘Now you sound just like Lacey,’ she had rebuked me, and gently closed the door in my face. She opened it a moment later, to find me still staring at it. ‘Go to bed,’ she chided me. Blushing, she added, ‘And dream of me. I hope I have plagued your dreams lately as much as you have mine.’ Those words sent me fleeing down to my room, and every time I thought of it, I blushed again. Now, as I entered Patience’s room, I tried to put all such thoughts from my mind. I was here on business, even if Patience and Lacey must believe it a social call. Keep my mind on my tasks. I cast my eyes over the latch that had secured the door, and found it well to my liking. No one would be slipping that with a belt knife. As for the window, even if anyone had scaled the outer wall to it, they must burst through not only stoutly-barred wooden shutters, but a tapestry, and then rank upon rank of pots of plants, soldiered in rows before the closed window. It was a route no professional would willingly choose. Lacey resettled herself with a bit of mending while Patience greeted me. Lady Patience herself was seemingly idle, seated on the hearth before the fire as if she were but a girl. She poked at the coals a bit. ‘Did you know,’ she asked me suddenly, ‘that there is a substantial history of strong queens at Buckkeep? Not just those born as Farseers, either. Many a Farseer prince has married a woman whose name came to overshadow his in the telling of deeds.’ ‘Do you think Kettricken will become such a queen?’ I asked politely. I had no idea where this conversation would lead. ‘I do not know,’ she said softly. She stirred the coals idly again. ‘I know only that I would not have been one.’ She sighed heavily, then lifted her eyes to say almost apologetically, ‘I am having one of those mornings, Fitz, when all that fills my head is what might have been and what could have been. I should never have allowed him to abdicate. I’d wager he’d be alive today, if he had not.’ There seemed little reply I could make to such a statement. She sighed again, and drew on the hearth stones with the ash-coated poker. ‘I am a woman of longings today, Fitz. While everyone else yesterday was stirred to amazement at what Kettricken did, it awakened in me the deepest discontent with myself. Had I been in her position, I would have hidden away in my chamber. Just as I do now. But your grandmother would not have. Now there was a Queen. Like Kettricken in some ways. Constance was a woman who spurred others to action. Other women especially. When she was queen, over half our guard was female. Did you know that? Ask Hod about her some time. I understand that Hod came with her when Constance came here to be Shrewd’s queen.’ Patience fell silent. For a few moments, she was so quiet I thought she had finished speaking. Then she added softly, ‘She liked me, Queen Constance did.’ She smiled almost shyly. ‘She knew I did not care for crowds. So, sometimes, she would summon me, and only me, to come and attend her in her garden. And we would not even speak much, but only work quietly in the soil and the sunlight. Some of my pleasantest memories of Buckkeep are of those times.’ She looked up at me suddenly. ‘I was just a little girl then. And your father was just a boy, and we had not ever really met. My parents brought me to Buckkeep, the times they came to court, even though they knew I did not much care for all the folderol of court life. What a woman Queen Constance was, to notice a homely, quiet little girl, and give her of her time. But she was like that. Buckkeep was a different place then, a much merrier court. Times were safer, and all was more stable. But then Constance died, and her infant daughter with her, of a birth fever. And Shrewd remarried a few years later, and …’ She paused and sighed again suddenly. Then her lips firmed. She patted the hearth beside her. ‘Come and sit here. There are things we must speak of.’ I did as she bid me, likewise sitting on the hearthstones. I had never seen Patience so serious, nor so focused. All of this, I felt, was leading up to something. It was so different from her usual fey prattle that it almost frightened me. Once I was seated, she motioned me closer. I scooted forward until I was nearly in her lap. She leaned forward and whispered, ‘Some things are best not spoken of. But there comes a time when they must be raised. FitzChivalry, my dear, do not think me mean-spirited. But I must warn you that your Uncle Regal is not as well disposed toward you as you might believe.’ I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Patience was instantly indignant. ‘You must attend me!’ she whispered more urgently. ‘Oh, I know he is gay and charming and witty. I know what a flatterer he can be, and I have marked well how all the young women of the court flutter their fans at him, and how all the young men mimic his clothes and mannerisms. But underneath those fine feathers there is much ambition. And I am afraid there is suspicion there, and jealousy, also. I have never told you this. But he was totally opposed to my undertaking your schooling, as well as to your learning to Skill. Sometimes I think it is as well that you failed at that, for had you succeeded, his jealousy would have known no bounds.’ She paused, and finding that I was listening with a sober face, she went on, ‘These are unsettled times, Fitz. Not just because of the Red Ships that harry our shores. It is a time when any b … born as you were should be careful. There are those who smile fairly at you, but may be your enemy. When your father was alive, we relied that his influence would be enough to shelter you. But after he was … he died, I realized that as you grew, you would be more and more at risk, the closer you came to manhood. So, when I decently could, I forced myself to come back to court, to see if there truly was need. I found there was, and I found you worthy of my help. So I vowed to do all I could to educate and protect you.’ She allowed herself a brief smile of satisfaction. ‘I would say I had done fairly well by you so far. But,’ and she leaned closer, ‘comes a time when even I will not be able to protect you. You must begin to take care of yourself. You must recall your lessons from Hod, and review them with her often. You must be cautious of what you eat and drink, and be wary of visiting isolated places alone. I hate to put these fears into you, FitzChivalry. But you are almost a man now, and must begin to think of such things.’ Laughable. Almost a farce. So I could have seen it, to have this sheltered, reclusive woman speaking to me so earnestly of the realities of the world I had survived in since I was six. Instead, I found tears stinging the corners of my eyes. I had always been mystified as to why Patience had come back to Buckkeep, to live a hermit’s life in the midst of a society she obviously did not care for. Now I knew. She had come for me, for my sake. To protect me. Burrich had sheltered me. So had Chade, and even Verity in his way. And of course Shrewd had claimed me as his own, very early. But all of them, in one way and another, had stood to gain by my survival. Even Burrich would have seen it as a great loss of pride if someone had managed to murder me while I was under his protection. Only this woman, who by all rights should have abhorred me, had come to shelter me for my sake alone. She was so often foolish and meddlesome and sometimes most annoying. But as our eyes met, I knew she had breached the final wall I had kept between us. I greatly doubted that her presence had done anything to deter bad will toward me; if anything, her interest in me must have been a constant reminder to Regal of who had fathered me. But it was not the deed, but the intention that moved me. She had given up her quiet life, her orchards and gardens and woods, to come here, to a damp castle of stone on the sea-cliffs, to a court full of folk she cared nothing about, to watch over her husband’s bastard. ‘Thank you,’ I said quietly. And meant it with all my heart. ‘Well,’ she turned aside from my look quickly. ‘Well. You are welcome, you know.’ ‘I know. But the truth was, I came here this morning thinking that perhaps someone should warn you and Lacey to be careful of yourselves. Times are unstable here, and you might be seen as an … obstacle.’ Now Patience laughed aloud. ‘I! I? Funny, dowdy, foolish old Patience? Patience, who cannot keep an idea fixed in her head for more than ten minutes? Patience, all but made mad by her husband’s death? My boy, I know how they talk of me. No one perceives of me as a threat to anyone. Why, I am but another fool here at the court, a thing to be made sport of. I am quite safe, I assure you. But, even if I were not, I have the habits of a lifetime to protect me. And Lacey.’ ‘Lacey?’ I could not keep incredulity from my voice nor a grin from my face. I turned to exchange a wink with Lacey. Lacey glared at me as if affronted by my smile. Before I could even unfold from the hearth, she sprang up from her rocking chair. A long needle, stripped of its eternal yarn, prodded my jugular vein, while the other probed a certain space between my ribs. I very nearly wet myself. I looked up at a woman I suddenly knew not at all, and dared not make a word. ‘Stop teasing the child,’ Patience rebuked her gently. ‘Yes, Fitz, Lacey. The most apt pupil that Hod ever had, even if she did come to Hod as a grown woman.’ As Patience spoke, Lacey took her weapons away from my body. She reseated herself, and deftly re-threaded her needles into her work. I swear she didn’t even drop a stitch. When she was finished, she looked up at me. She winked. And went back to her knitting. I remembered to start breathing again. A very chastened assassin left their apartments sometime later. As I made my way down the hall, I reflected that Chade had warned me I was underestimating Lacey. I wondered wryly if this was his idea of humour, or of teaching me greater respect for seemingly mild folk. Thoughts of Molly pushed their way into my mind. I resolutely refused to give into them, but could not resist lowering my face to catch that faint scent of her on the shoulder of my shirt. I took the foolish smile from my face and set off to locate Kettricken. I had duties. I’m hungry. The thought intruded without warning. Shame flooded me. I had taken Cub nothing yesterday. I had all but forgotten him in the sweep of the day’s events. A day’s fast is nothing. Besides, I found a nest of mice beneath a corner of the cottage. Do you think I cannot care for myself at all? But something more substantial would be pleasing. Soon, I promised him. There is a thing I must do first. In Kettricken’s sitting chamber, I found only two young pages, ostensibly tidying, but giggling as I came in. Neither of them knew anything. I next tried Mistress Hasty’s weaving room, as it was a warm and friendly chamber where many of the keep women gathered. No Kettricken, but Lady Modesty was there. She told me that her mistress had said she needed to speak with Prince Verity this morning. Perhaps she was with him. But Verity was not in his chambers, nor his map-room. Charim was there, however, sorting through sheets of vellum and separating them by quality. Verity, he told me, had arisen very early and immediately set out for his boat-shed. Yes, Kettricken had been there this morning, but it had been after Verity left, and once Charim had told her he was gone, she too had departed. Where? He was not certain. By this time I was starving, and I excused my trip to the kitchen on the grounds that gossip always grew thickest there. Perhaps someone there would know where our Queen-in-Waiting had gone. I was not worried, I told myself. Not yet. The kitchens of Buckkeep were at their best on a cold and blustery day. Steam from bubbling stews mingled with the nourishing aroma of baking bread and roasting meat. Chilled stable-boys loitered there, chatting with the kitchen help and pilfering fresh baked rolls and the ends of cheeses, tasting stews and disappearing like mist if Burrich appeared in the door. I cut myself a slab of cold meal pudding from the morning’s cooking, and reinforced it with honey and some bacon ends that Cook was rendering down for crackling. As I ate, I listened to the talk. Oddly enough, few people spoke directly of the previous day’s events. I grasped it would take a while for the keep to come to terms with all that had happened. But there was something there, a feeling almost of relief. I had seen that before, in a man who had had his maimed foot removed, or the family that finally finds their drowned child’s body. To confront finally the worst there is, to look it squarely in the face and say, ‘I know you. You have hurt me, almost to death, but still, I live. And I will go on living.’ That was the feeling I got from the folk of the keep. All had finally acknowledged the severity of our injuries from the Red Ships. Now there was a sense that we might begin to heal, and to fight back. I did not wish to make direct inquiries down here as to where the Queen might be. As luck would have it, one of the stable-boys was speaking of Softstep. Some of the blood I had seen on the horse’s shoulder the previous day had been her own, and the boys were talking of how the horse had snapped at Burrich when he tried to work on her shoulder, and how it had taken two of them to hold her head. I wangled my way into the conversation. ‘Perhaps a horse of less temperament would be a better mount for the Queen? I suggested. ‘Ah, no. Our queen likes Softstep’s pride and spirit. She said so herself, to me, when she was down in the stables this morning. She came herself, to see the horse, and to ask when she might be ridden again. She spoke directly to me, she did. So I told her, no horse wanted to be ridden on a day such as this, let alone with a gashed shoulder. And Queen Kettricken nodded, and we stood talking there, and she asked how I had lost my tooth.’ ‘And you told her a horse had thrown his head back when you were exercising him! Because you didn’t want Burrich to know we’d been wrestling up in the hayloft and you’d fallen into the grey colt’s stall!’ ‘Shut up! You’re the one who pushed me, so it was your fault as much as mine!’ And the two were off, pushing and scuffling with each other, until a shout from Cook sent them tumbling from the kitchen. But I had as much information as I needed. I headed out for the stables. I found it a colder and nastier day outside than I had expected. Even within the stables, the wind found every crack and came shrieking through the doors each time one was opened. The horses’ breath steamed in the air, and stablemates leaned companionably close for the warmth they could share. I found Hands, and asked where Burrich was. ‘Cutting wood,’ he said quietly. ‘For a funeral pyre. He’s been drinking since dawn, too.’ Almost this drove my quest from my mind. I had never known such a thing to be. Burrich drank, but in the evenings, when the day’s work was done. Hands read my face. ‘Vixen. His old bitch hound. She died in the night. Yet I have never heard of a pyre for a dog. He’s out behind the exercise pen now.’ I turned toward the pen. ‘Fitz!’ Hands warned me urgently. ‘It will be all right, Hands. I know what she meant to him. The first night he had care of me, he put me in a stall beside her, and told her to guard me. She had a pup beside her, Nosy …’ Hands shook his head. ‘He said he wanted to see no one. To send him no questions today. No one to talk to him. He’s never given me an order like that.’ ‘All right,’ I sighed. Hands looked disapproving. ‘As old as she was, he should have expected it. She couldn’t even hunt with him any more. He should have replaced her a long time ago.’ I looked at Hands. For all his caring for the beasts, for all his gentleness and good instincts, he couldn’t really know. Once, I had been shocked to discover my Wit sense as a separate sense. Now to confront Hands’ total lack of it was to discover his blindness. I just shook my head, and dragged my mind back to my original errand. ‘Hands, have you seen the Queen today?’ ‘Yes, but it was a while ago.’ His eyes scanned my face anxiously. ‘She came to me, and asked if Prince Verity had taken Truth out of the stables and down to town. I told her no, that the Prince had come to see him, but had left him in the stables today. I told her the streets would be all iced cobbles. Verity would not risk his favourite on a surface like that. He walks down to Buckkeep Town as often as not these days, though he comes through the stable almost every day. He told me it’s an excuse to be out in the air and the open.’ My heart sank. With a certainty that was like a vision, I knew that Kettricken had followed Verity into Buckkeep Town. On foot? With no one accompanying her? On this foul day? While Hands berated himself for not foreseeing the Queen’s intention, I took Sidekick, a well-named but sure-footed mule, from his stall. I dared not take the time to go back to my room for warmer clothes. So I borrowed Hands’ cloak to supplement mine, and dragged the reluctant animal out of the stables and into the wind and falling snow. Are you coming now? Not now, but soon. There is something I must see to. May I go, too? No. It isn’t safe. Now be quiet and stay out of my thoughts. I stopped at the gate to question the guard most bluntly. Yes, a woman on foot had come this way this morning. Several of them, for there were some whose trades made this trip necessary, no matter the weather. The Queen? The men on watch exchanged glances. No one replied. I suggested perhaps there had been a woman, heavily-cloaked, and hooded well? White fur trimming the hood? A young guard nodded. Embroidery on the cloak, white and purple at the hem? They exchanged uncomfortable glances. There had been a woman like that. They had not known who she was, but now that I suggested those colours, they should have known … In a coldly level voice, I berated them as dolts and morons. Unidentified folk passed unchallenged through our gates? They had looked on white fur and purple embroidery, and never even guessed it might be the Queen? And none had seen fit to accompany her? None chose to be her guard? Even after yesterday? A fine place was Buckkeep these days, when our queen had not even a foot soldier at her heels when she went out walking in a snowstorm down to Buckkeep Town. I kicked Sidekick and left them settling blame amongst themselves. The going was miserable. The wind was in a fickle mood, changing directions as often as I found a way to block it with my cloak. The snow not only fell, the wind caught up the frozen crystals from the ground and swirled it up under my cloak at every opportunity. Sidekick was not happy, but he plodded along through the thickening snow. Beneath the snow, the uneven trail to town was glazed with treacherous ice. The mule became resigned to my stubbornness and trudged disconsolately along. I blinked the clinging flakes from my eyelashes and tried to urge him to greater speed. Images of the Queen, crumpled in the snow, the blowing flakes covering her over, kept trying to push into my mind. Nonsense! I told myself firmly. Nonsense. I was on the outskirts of Buckkeep Town before I overtook her. I knew her from behind, even if she had not been wearing her purple and white. She strode through the drifting snow with a fine indifference, her mountain-bred flesh as immune to the cold as I was to salt-breeze and damp. ‘Queen Kettricken! Lady! Please, wait for me!’ She turned and, as she caught sight of me, smiled and waited. I slid from Sidekick’s back as I came abreast of her. I had not realized how worried I was until the relief flooded through me at seeing her unharmed. ‘What are you doing out here, alone, in this storm?’ I demanded of her, and belated added, ‘My lady.’ She looked about her as if just noticing the falling snow and gusting wind, then turned back to me with a rueful grin. She was not the least bit chilled or uncomfortable: to the contrary, her cheeks were rosy with her walk, and the white fur around her face set off her yellow hair and blue eyes. Here, in this whiteness, she was not pale and colourless, but tawny and pink, blue eyes sparkling. She looked more vital than I had seen her in days. Yesterday she had been Death astride a horse, and Grief washing the bodies of her slain. But today, here, in the snow, she was a merry girl, escaped from keep and station to go hiking through the snow. ‘I go to find my husband.’ ‘Alone? Does he know you are coming, and like this, afoot?’ She looked startled. Then she tucked in her chin and bridled just like my mule. ‘Is he not my husband? Do I need an appointment to see him? Why should not I go afoot and alone? Do I seem so incompetent to you that I might become lost on the road to Buckkeep Town? She set off walking again, and I was forced to keep pace with her. I dragged the mule along with me. Sidekick was not enthused. ‘Queen Kettricken,’ I began, but she cut me off. ‘I grow so weary of this.’ She halted abruptly and turned to face me. ‘Yesterday, for the first time in many days, I felt as if I were alive and had a will of my own. I do not intend to let that slip away from me. If I wish to visit my husband at his work, I shall. Well do I know that not one of my ladies would care for this outing, in this weather and afoot, or otherwise. So I am alone. And my horse was injured yesterday, and the footing here is not kind to a beast anyway. So I do not ride. All of this makes sense. Why have you followed me and why do you question me?’ She had chosen bluntness as the weapon, so I took it up as well. But I took a breath and tuned my voice to courtesy before I began. ‘My lady queen, I followed to be sure you had not come to any harm. Here, with only a mule’s ears to hear us, I will speak plainly. Have you so swiftly forgotten who tried to topple Verity from the throne in your own Mountain Kingdom? Would he hesitate to plot here as well? I think not. Do you believe it an accident you were lost and astray in the woods two nights ago? I do not. And do you think that your actions yesterday were pleasing to him? Quite the contrary. What you do for the sake of your people, he sees as your ploy to take power to yourself. So he sulks and mutters and decides you are a greater threat than before. You must know all this. So why do you set yourself out as a target, here where an arrow or a knife could find you with such ease and no witnesses?’ ‘I am not so easy a target as that,’ she defied me. ‘It would take an excellent archer indeed to make an arrow fly true in these shifting winds. As for a knife, well, I’ve a knife, too. To strike me, one must come where I can strike back.’ She turned and strode off again. I followed relentlessly. ‘And where would that lead? To your killing a man. And all the keep in an uproar, and Verity chastising his guard, that you could be so endangered? And what if the killer were better with a knife than you? What consequence for the Six Duchies if I were now pulling your body out of a drift? I swallowed and added, ‘My queen.’ Her pace slowed, but her chin was still up as she asked softly. ‘What consequence for me if I sit day after day in the keep, growing soft and blind as a grub? FitzChivalry, I am not a game piece, to sit my space on the board until some player sets me in motion. I am … there’s a wolf watching us!’ ‘Where?’ She pointed, but he had vanished like a swirl of snow, leaving only a ghostly laughter in my mind. A moment later a trick of the wind brought his scent to Sidestep. The mule snorted and tugged at his lead rope. ‘I did not know we had wolves so near!’ Kettricken marvelled. ‘Just a town dog, my lady. Probably some mangy, homeless beast out to sniff and paw through the village midden-heap. He is nothing to fear.’ You think not? I’m hungry enough to eat that mule. Go back and wait. I shall come soon. The midden-heap is nowhere near here. Besides, it’s full of seagulls and stinks of their droppings. And other things. The mule would be fresh and sweet. Go back, I tell you. I’ll bring you meat later. ‘FitzChivalry?’ This from Kettricken, warily. I snapped my eyes back to her face. ‘I beg pardon, my lady. My mind wandered.’ ‘Then that anger in your face is not for me? ‘No. Another has … crossed my will this day. For you, I have concern, not anger. Will not you mount Sidekick and let me take you back to the keep?’ ‘I wish to see Verity.’ ‘My queen, it will not please him, to see you come so.’ She sighed and grew a bit smaller inside her cloak. She looked aside from me as she asked more quietly, ‘Have you never wished to pass your time in someone’s presence, Fitz, whether they welcomed you or not? Cannot you understand my loneliness …’ I do. ‘To be his Queen-in-Waiting, to be Sacrifice for Buckkeep, this I know I must do well. But there is another part of me … I am woman to his man and wife to his husbanding. To that I am sworn as well, and am more willing than dutiful to it. But he comes seldom to me, and when he does, he speaks little and leaves soon.’ She turned back to me. Tears sparkled suddenly on her eyelashes. She dashed them away and a note of anger crept into her voice. ‘You spoke once of my duty, of doing what only a queen can do for Buckkeep. Well, I shall not get with child lying alone in my bed night after night!’ ‘My queen, my lady, please,’ I begged her. Heat rose in my face. She was merciless. ‘Last night, I did not wait. I went to his door. But the guard claimed he was not there. That he had gone to his tower.’ She looked aside from me. ‘Even that work is preferable to how he must labour in my bed.’ Not even that bitterness could cover the hurt under her words. I reeled with the things I did not want to know. The cold of Kettricken alone in her bed. Verity, drawn to Skill at night. I did not know which was worse. My voice shook as I said, ‘You must not tell me these things, my queen. To speak of this to me is not right …’ ‘Then let me go and speak to him. He is the one who needs to hear this, I know. And I am going to speak it! If he will not come to me for his heart’s sake, then he must come for his duty.’ This makes sense. She is the one who must bear if the pack is to increase. Stay out of this. Go home. Home! A derisive bark of laughter in my mind. Home is a pack not a cold, empty place. Listen to the female. She speaks well. We should all go, to be with him who leads. You fear foolishly for this bitch. She hunts well, with a keen tooth, and her kills are clean. I watched her yesterday. She is worthy of he who leads. We are not pack. Be silent. I am. At the corner of my eye, I caught a flash of movement. I turned quickly, but there was nothing there. I turned back to find Kettricken standing silent before me still. But I sensed the spark of anger that had spirited her was now damped in pain. It bled her resolve from her. I spoke quietly through the wind. ‘Please, lady, let me take you back to Buckkeep.’ She did not reply, but pulled her hood up around her face and tightened it to hide most of her face. Then she walked to the mule and mounted and suffered me to lead the beast back to the keep. It seemed a longer, colder walk in her subdued silence. I was not proud of the change I had wrought in her. To take my mind from it, I quested out about me carefully. It did not take me long to find Cub. He stalked and shadowed us, drifting like smoke through the tree cover, using the windblown drifts and falling snow to hide himself. I could never once actually swear that I saw him. I caught motion from the corner of my eye, a tiny bit of his scent on the wind. His instincts served him well. Think you I am ready to hunt? Not until you are ready to obey. I made my reply severe. What then shall I do when I hunt alone, packless one? He was stung, and angry. We were drawing near to the outer wall of Buckkeep. I wondered how he had got outside the keep without passing through a gate. Shall I show you? A peace offering. Perhaps later. When I come with meat. I felt his assent. He was no longer pacing us, but had raced off ahead, and would be at the cottage when I got there. The guards at the gate abashedly challenged me. I identified myself formally, and the sergeant had the wit not to insist that I identify the lady with me. In the courtyard I halted Sidekick that she might dismount and offered her my hand. As she climbed down, I all but felt eyes on me. I turned, and saw Molly. She carried two buckets of water fresh drawn from the well. She stood still, looking at me, poised like a deer before flight. Her eyes were deep, her face very still. When she turned aside, there was a stiffness to her carriage. She did not glance at us again as she crossed the courtyard and went toward the kitchen entrance. I felt a cold foreboding inside me. Then Kettricken let go of my hand and gathered her cloak more closely about herself. She did not look at me either, but only said softly, ‘Thank you, FitzChivalry.’ She walked slowly toward the door. I returned Sidekick to the stable and saw to him. Hands came by and raised an eyebrow at me. I nodded, and he went on about his work. Sometimes, I think that was what I liked best about Hands, his ability to leave alone that which was not his concern. I made bold my heart for that which I did next. I went out behind the exercise pens. There was a thin trail of smoke rising and a nasty scent of scorching meat and hair. I walked toward it. Burrich stood next to the fire, watching it burn. The wind and snow kept trying to put it out, but Burrich was determined it would burn well. He glanced at me as I came up but would not look at me or speak to me. His eyes were black hollows full of dumb pain. It would turn to anger if I dared speak to him. But I had not come for him. I took my knife from my belt and cut from my head a finger’s-length lock of hair. I added it to the pyre, and watched as it burned. Vixen. A most excellent bitch. A memory came to me and I spoke it aloud. ‘She was there the first time Regal ever looked at me. She lay beside me and snarled up at him.’ After a moment, Burrich nodded to my words. He, too, had been there. I turned and slowly walked away. My next stop was the kitchen, to filch a number of meat bones left over from yesterday’s wake. They were not fresh meat, but they’d have to do. Cub was right. He’d have to be put out on his own soon, to hunt for himself. Seeing Burrich’s pain had renewed my resolve. Vixen had lived a long life, for a hound, but still too short for Burrich’s heart. To bond to any animal was to promise oneself that future pain. My heart had been broken sufficient times already. I was still pondering the best way to do this as I approached the cottage. I lifted my head suddenly, getting only the briefest precognition, and then his full weight hit me. He had come, swift as an arrow, speeding over the snow, to fling his weight against the backs of my knees, shouldering me down as he passed. The force of his momentum threw me onto my face in the snow. I lifted my head and got my arms under me as he wheeled tightly and raced up to me again. I flung up an arm but he ploughed over me again, sharp claws digging into my flesh for purchase as he ran. Got you, got you, got you! Glorious exuberance. Halfway to my feet, and he hit me again, full in my chest. I flung up a forearm to shield my throat and face and he seized it in his jaws. He growled deeply as he mock-worried it. I lost my balance under his attack and went down in the snow. This time I kept a grip on him, hugging him to me, and we rolled over and over and over. He nipped me in a dozen places, some painful, and all the time, Fun, fun, fun, got you, got you, and got you again! Here, you’re dead, here, I broke your forepaw, there your blood runs out! Got you, got you, got you! Enough! Enough! and finally, ‘Enough!’ I roared, and he let go of me and leaped away. He fled over the snow, bounding ridiculously, to fling himself in a circle and come racing back at me. I flung my arms up to shelter my face, but he only seized my bag of bones and raced off with it, daring me to follow. I could not let him win so easily. So I leaped after him, tackling him, seizing the bag of bones, and it degenerated into a tugging match, at which he cheated by letting go suddenly, nipping me on the forearm hard enough to numb my hand, and then grabbing the bag again. I gave chase again. Got you. A tug on the tail. Got you! I kneed his shoulder, pushing him off balance. Got the bones! And for an instant I had them and was running. He hit me full square in the back, all four paws, and drove me face down in the snow, seized the trove and was off again. I do not know how long we played. We had flung ourselves finally down in the snow to rest and lay panting together in thoughtless simplicity. The sacking of the bag was torn in places, the bones peeking through, and Cub seized one, to shake and drag it from the clinging folds. He set upon it, scissoring the meat and then pinning the bone down with his paws as his jaws cracked the knuckly cartilage on the end. I reached for the sack and tugged at a bone, a good meaty one, a thick marrowbone and drew it forth. And abruptly was a man again. Like awaking from a dream, like the popping of a soap bubble, and Cub’s ears twitched and he turned to me as if I had spoken. But I had not. I had only separated my self from his. Abruptly I was cold, snow had got inside the tops of my boots and at my waist and collar. There were standing welts on my forearms and hands where his teeth had dragged over my flesh. My cloak was torn in two places. And I felt as groggy as if I were just coming out of a drugged sleep. What’s wrong? Real concern. Why did you go away? I can’t do this. I can’t be like this, with you. This is wrong. Puzzlement. Wrong? If you can do it, how can it be wrong? I am a man, not a wolf. Sometimes, he agreed. But you don’t have to be all the time. Yes, I must. I don’t want to be bonded with you like this. We cannot have this closeness. I have to set you free, to live the life you were meant to live. I must live the life I was meant for. A derisive snort, a sneer of fangs. This is it, brother. We are as we are. How can you claim to know what life I was meant to lead, let alone threaten to force me into it? You cannot even accept what you are meant to be. You deny it even as you are it. All your quibbling is nonsense. As well forbid your nose to snuff, or your ears to hear. We are as we do. Brother. I did not drop my guard. I did not give him leave. But he swept through my mind like a wind sweeps through an unshuttered window and fills a room. The night and the snow. Meat in our jaws. Listen, snuff, the world is alive tonight and so are we! We can hunt until dawn, we are alive and the night and the forest are ours! Our eyes are keen, our jaws are strong, and we can run down a buck and feast before morning. Come! Come back to what you were born to be! A moment later, I came to myself. I was on my feet, standing, and I was trembling from head to foot. I lifted my hands and looked at them, and suddenly my own flesh seemed foreign and confining, as unnatural as the clothes I wore. I could go. I could go, now, tonight, and travel far to find our own kind, and no one would ever be able to follow us, let alone find us. He offered me a moonlit world of blacks and whites, of food and rest, so simple, so complete. Our eyes were locked, and his were lambent green and beckoning to me. Come. Come with me. What have the likes of us to do with men and all their petty plotting? There is not one mouthful of meat to be had in all their wrangling, no clean joys in their scheming, and never a simple pleasure taken unthinkingly. Why do you choose it? Come, come away! I blinked. Snowflakes clung to my eyelashes, and I was standing in the dark, chilled and shaking. A short distance from me, a wolf stood up and shook himself all over. Tail out flat, ears up, he came to me, and rubbed his head along my leg and with his nose gave my cold hand a flip. I went down on one knee and hugged him, felt the warmth of his ruff against my hands, the solidity of his muscle and bone. He smelled good, clean and wild. ‘We are what we are, brother. Eat well,’ I told him. I rubbed his ears briefly, and then stood. As he picked up the sack of bones to drag them into the den he’d scuffed out under the cottage, I turned away. The lights of Buckkeep were almost blinding, but I went toward them anyway. I could not have said why just then. But I did it. TEN (#ulink_c074374a-f66d-5b09-be31-ad499700b8a6) Fool’s Errand (#ulink_c074374a-f66d-5b09-be31-ad499700b8a6) In times of peace, the teaching of the Skill was restricted to those of royal blood, to keep the magic more exclusive and reduce the chance of it being turned against the King. Thus, when Galen became apprentice to Skillmaster Solicity, his duties consisted of assisting in completing the training of Chivalry and Verity. No others were receiving instruction at that time. Regal, a delicate child, was judged by his mother to be too sickly to withstand the rigours of the Skill training. Thus, after Solicity’s untimely death, Galen came to the title of Skillmaster, but had few duties. Some, at least, felt that the time he had served as apprentice to Solicity was insufficient to be the full training of a Skillmaster. Others have averred that he never possessed the Skill strength necessary to be a true Skillmaster. In any case, during those years he had no opportunity to prove himself, and disprove his critics. There were no young princes or princesses to train during the years that Galen was Skillmaster. It was only with the Red Ship raids that it was decided that the circle of those trained in the Skill must be expanded. A proper coterie had not existed for years. Tradition tells us that in previous troubles with the Outislanders, it was not unusual for three, or even four coteries to exist. These usually consisted of six to eight members, mutually chosen, well suited to be bonded among themselves, and with at least one member possessing a strong affinity with the reigning monarch. This key member reported directly to the monarch all that his coterie members relayed to him, if they were a messaging, or information-gathering coterie. Other coteries existed to pool strength and extend to the monarch their Skilling resources as he might need them. The key members in these coteries were often referred to as a King’s or Queen’s Man or Woman. Very rarely, such a one existed independent of any coterie or training, but simply as one who had such an affinity for the monarch that strength could be tapped, usually by a physical touch. From this key member, the monarch could draw endurance as needed to sustain a Skilling effort. By custom, a coterie was named after its key member. Thus we have legendary examples such as Crossfire’s Coterie. Galen chose to ignore all tradition in the creation of his first and only coterie. Galen’s Coterie came to be named after the Skillmaster who fashioned it, and retained that name even after his death. Rather than creating a pool of Skilled ones and letting a coterie emerge from it, Galen himself selected those who would be members of it. The coterie lacked the internal bonding of the legendary groups, and their truest affinity was to the Skillmaster rather than to the King. Thus, the key member, initially August, reported to Galen fully as often as he reported to King Shrewd or King-in-Waiting Verity. With the death of Galen and the blasting of August’s Skill sense, Serene rose to be key member of Galen’s Coterie. The other surviving members of the group were Justin, Will, Carrod and Burl. By night I ran as a wolf. The first time I thought it a singularly vivid dream. The wide stretch of white snow with the inky tree shadows spilled on it, the elusive scents on the cold wind, the ridiculous fun of bounding and digging after shrews that ventured out of their winter burrows. I awoke clear-minded and good-tempered. But the next night I dreamed again as vividly. I awoke knowing that when I blocked from Verity and hence myself my dreams of Molly, I left myself wide to the wolf’s night thoughts. Here was a whole realm where neither Verity nor any Skilled one could follow me. It was a world bereft of court intrigues or plotting, of worries and plans. My wolf lived in the present. I found his mind clean of the cluttering detail of memories. From day to day, he carried only that necessary to his survival. He did not remember how many shrews he had killed two nights ago, but only larger things, such as which game yielded the most rabbits to chase or where the spring ran swift enough that it never iced over. This, then, was when and how I first showed him how to hunt. We did not do so well at first. I still arose very early each morning, to take him food as needed. I told myself that it was but a small corner of my life that I kept for myself. It was as the wolf had said, not a thing I did, but something I was. Besides, I promised myself, I would not let this joining become a full bond. Soon, very soon, he would be able to hunt for himself, and I would send him away to be free. Sometimes I told myself that I permitted him into my dreams only that I might teach him to hunt, the sooner to set him free. I refused to consider what Burrich would think of such a thing. I returned from one of my early morning expeditions to find two soldiers sparring with one another in the kitchen yard. They had staves and were good-naturedly insulting one another as they huffed and shifted and traded whacks in the cold clear air. The man I did not know at all, and for a moment I thought both were strangers. Then the woman of the pair caught sight of me. ‘Ho! FitzChivalry. A word with you!’ she called, but without retiring her stave. I stared at her, trying to place her. Her opponent missed a parry and she clipped him sharply with her stave. As he hopped, she danced back and laughed aloud, an unmistakable high-pitched whinny. ‘Whistle?’ I asked incredulously. The woman I had just addressed flashed her famous gap-toothed smile, caught her partner’s stave a ringing blow and danced back again. ‘Yes?’ she asked breathlessly. Her sparring partner, seeing her occupied, courteously lowered his stave. Whistle immediately darted hers at him. With so much skill he almost looked lazy, his stave leaped up to counter hers. Again she laughed and held up her hand to ask a truce. ‘Yes,’ she repeated, this time turning to me. ‘I’ve come … that is, I’ve been chosen to come and ask a favour of you.’ I gestured at the clothes she wore. ‘I don’t understand. You’ve left Verity’s guard?’ She gave a tiny shrug, but I could see the question delighted her. ‘But not to go far. Queen’s Guard. Vixen badge. See?’ She tugged the front of the short white jacket she wore to hold the fabric taut. Good sensible woollen homespun, I saw, and saw too the embroidered snarling white fox on a purple background. The purple matched the purple of her heavy woollen trousers. The loose cuff had been tucked into knee-boots. Her partner’s garb matched hers. Queen’s Guard. In light of Kettricken’s adventure, the uniform made sense. ‘Verity decided she needed a guard of her own?’ I asked delightedly. The smile faded a bit from Whistle’s face. ‘Not exactly,’ she hedged, and then straightened as if reporting to me. ‘We decided she needed a Queen’s Guard. Me and some of the others that rode with her the other day. We got to talking about … everything, later. About how she handled herself out there. And back here. And how she came here, all alone. We talked about it then, that someone should get permission to form up a guard for her. But none of us really knew how to approach it. We knew it was needed, but no one else seemed to be paying much attention … but then last week, at the gate, I heard you got pretty hot about how she’d gone out, on foot and alone, and no one at her back. Well you did! I was in the other room, and I heard!’ I bit back my protest, nodded curtly, and Whistle went on. ‘So. Well, we just did. Those of us who felt we wanted to wear the purple and white just said so. It was a pretty even split. It was time to take in some new blood anyway; most of Verity’s guard was getting a bit long in the tooth. And soft, from too much time in the keep. So we reformed, giving rank to some who should have made it long ago, if there’d been any openings to fill, and taking in some recruits to fill in where needed. It all worked out perfectly. These newcomers will give us something to hone our skills on while we teach them. The Queen will have her own guard, when she wants one. Or needs one.’ ‘I see.’ I was beginning to get an uneasy feeling. ‘And what was the favour you wanted of me?’ ‘Explain it to Verity. Tell the Queen she has a guard.’ She said the words simply and quietly. ‘This walks close to disloyalty,’ I said just as simply. ‘Soldiers of Verity’s own guard, setting aside his colours to take on his queen’s …’ ‘Some might see it that way. Some might speak it that way.’ Her eyes met mine squarely, and the smile was gone from her face. ‘But you know it is not. It’s a needed thing. Your … Chivalry would have seen it, would have had a guard for her before she even arrived here. But King-in-Waiting Verity … well, this is no disloyalty to him. We’ve served him well, because we love him. Still do. This is those who’ve always watched his back, falling back and reforming to watch his back even better. That’s all. He’s got a good queen, is what we think. We don’t want to see him lose her. That was all. We don’t think any the less of our King-in-Waiting. You know that.’ I did. But still. I looked away from her plea, shook my head and tried to think. Why me? a part of me demanded angrily. Then I knew, that in the moment I’d lost my temper and berated the guard for not protecting their queen, I’d volunteered for this. Burrich had warned me about not remembering my place. ‘I will speak to King-in-Waiting Verity. And to the Queen, if he approves this.’ Whistle flashed her smile again. ‘We knew you’d do it for us. Thanks, Fitz.’ As quickly she was spinning away from me, stave at the ready as she danced threateningly toward her partner, who gave ground grudgingly. With a sigh, I turned away from the courtyard. I had thought Molly would be fetching water at this time. I’d hoped for a glimpse of her. But she was not, and I left feeling disappointed. I knew I should not play at such games, but some days I could not resist the temptation. I left the courtyard. The last few days had become a special sort of self-torture for me. I refused to allow myself to see Molly again, but could not resist shadowing her. So I was in the kitchen but a moment after she had left, fancying I could still catch the trace of her perfume in the air. Or I stationed myself in the Great Hall of an evening, and tried to be where I could watch her without being noticed. No matter what amusement was offered, minstrel or poet or puppeteer, or just folk talking and working on their handicrafts, my eyes would be drawn always to wherever Molly might be. She looked so sober and demure in her dark blue skirts and blouse, and she had never a glance for me. Always she spoke with the other keep women, or on the rare evenings when Patience chose to descend, she sat beside her and attended to her with a focus of attention that denied I even existed. Sometimes I thought my brief encounter with her had been a dream. But at night I could go back to my room, and take out the shirt I had hidden in the bottom of my clothes chest, and if I held it close to my face, I fancied I could still smell the faint trace of her perfume upon it. And so I endured. A number of days had passed since we had burned the Forged ones on their funeral pyre. In addition to the formation of the Queen’s Guard, other changes were afoot within and without the keep. Two other master boat-builders, unsummoned, had come to volunteer their skills for the building of the ships. Verity had been delighted. But even more so had Queen Kettricken been moved, for it was to her that they presented themselves, saying that they desired to be of service. Their apprentices came with them, to swell the ranks of those working in the shipyards. Now the lamps burned both before dawn and after the sun’s setting, and work proceeded at a breakneck pace. So Verity was away all the more, and Kettricken, when I called on her, was more subdued than ever. I tempted her with books or outings to no avail. She spent most of her time sitting near idle at her loom, growing more pale and listless with every passing day. Her dark mood infected those ladies who attended her, so that to visit her room was as cheery as keeping a death watch. I had not expected to find Verity in his study, and was not disappointed. He was down at the boat-sheds, as always. I left word with Charim to ask that I be summoned whenever Verity might have the time to see me. Then, with a resolve to keep myself busy and to do as Chade suggested, I returned to my room. I took both dice and tally sticks with me, and headed for the Queen’s chambers. I had resolved to teach her some of the games of chance that the lords and ladies were fond of, in the hopes that she might expand her circle of entertainments. I also hoped, with less expectation, that such games might draw her to socialize more widely and to depend less on my companionship. Her bleak mood was beginning to burden me with its oppressiveness, so that I often heartily wished to be away from her. ‘Teach her to cheat first. Only, just tell her that’s how the game is played. Tell her the rules permit deception. A bit of sleight of hand, easily taught, and she could clean Regal’s pockets for him a time or two before he dared suspect her. And then what could he do? Accuse Buckkeep’s lady of cheating at dice?’ The Fool, of course. At my elbow, companionably pacing alongside me, his rat sceptre jouncing lightly on his shoulder. I did not startle physically, but he knew that, once more, he had taken me by surprise. His amusement shone in his eyes. ‘I think our Queen-in-Waiting might take it amiss if I so misinformed her. Why do you not come with me instead, to brighten her spirits a bit? I shall set aside the dice, and you can juggle for her,’ I suggested. ‘Juggle for her? Why, Fitz, that is all I do, all day long, and you see it as but my foolery. You see my work and deem it play, while I see you work so earnestly at playing games you have not yourself devised. Take a Fool’s advice on this. Teach the lady not dice, but riddles, and you will both be the wiser.’ ‘Riddles? That’s a Bingtown game, is it not?’ ‘’Twere one played well at Buckkeep these days. Answer me this one, if you can. How does one call a thing when one does not know how to call it?’ ‘I have never been any good at this game, Fool.’ ‘Nor any other of your blood-line, from what I have heard. So answer this. What has wings in Shrewd’s scroll, a tongue of flame in Verity’s book, silver eyes in the Relltown Vellums, and gold-scaled skin in your room?’ ‘That’s a riddle?’ He looked at me pityingly. ‘No. A riddle is what I just asked you. That’s an Elderling. And the first riddle was, how do you summon one?’ My stride slowed. I looked at him more directly, but his eyes were always difficult to meet. ‘A riddle, or a serious question?’ ‘Is that a riddle? Or a serious question?’ ‘Yes.’ The Fool was grave. I stopped in mid-stride, completely bemuddled. I glared at him. In answer, he went nose to nose with his rat sceptre. They simpered at one another. ‘You see, Ratsy, he knows no more than his uncle or his grandfather. None of them knows how to summon an Elderling.’ ‘By the Skill,’ I said impetuously. The Fool looked at me strangely. ‘You know this?’ ‘I suspect it is so.’ ‘Why?’ ‘I don’t know. Now that I consider it, I do not think it likely. King Wisdom made a long journey to find the Elderlings. If he could simply have Skilled to them, why didn’t he?’ ‘Indeed. But sometimes there is truth in impetuosity. So riddle me this, boy. A king is alive. Likewise a prince. And both are Skilled. But where are those who trained alongside the King, or those who trained before him? How come we to this, this paucity of Skilled ones at a time when they are so grievously needed?’ ‘Few are trained in times of peace. Galen didn’t see fit to train any, up until his last year. And the coterie he created …’ I paused suddenly, and though the corridor was empty, I suddenly did not want to speak any more about it. I had always kept whatever Verity told me about the Skill in confidence. The Fool pranced in a sudden circle about me. ‘If the shoe does not fit, one cannot wear it, no matter who made it for you,’ he declared. I nodded grudgingly. ‘Exactly.’ ‘And he who made it is gone. Sad. So sad. Sadder than hot meat on the table and red wine in your glass. But he who is gone was made by someone in turn.’ ‘Solicity. But she is also gone.’ ‘Ah. But Shrewd is not. Nor Verity. It seems to me, that if there are two she created still breathing, there ought to be others. Where are they?’ I shrugged. ‘Gone. Old. Dead. I don’t know.’ I forced my impatience down, tried to consider his question. ‘King Shrewd’s sister, Merry. August’s mother. She would have been trained, perhaps, but she is long dead. Shrewd’s father, King Bounty was the last to have a coterie, I believe. But very few folk of that generation are still alive.’ I halted my tongue. Verity had once told me that Solicity had trained as many in the Skill as she could find the talent in. Surely there must be some of them left alive; they would be no more than a decade or so older than Verity … ‘Dead, too many of them, if you ask me. I do know.’ The Fool interjected an answer to my unspoken question. I looked at him blankly. He stuck his tongue out at me, waltzed away from me a bit. He considered his sceptre, chucked the rat lovingly under the chin. ‘You see, Ratsy, it is as I told you. None of them know. None of them are smart enough to ask.’ ‘Fool, cannot you ever speak plain?’ I cried out in frustration. He halted as suddenly as if struck. In mid-pirouette, he lowered his heels to the floor and stood like a statue. ‘Would it help at all?’ he asked soberly. ‘Would you listen to me if I came to you and did not speak in riddles? Would that make you pause and think and hang upon every word, and ponder those words later, in your chamber? Very well then. I shall try. Do you know the rhyme, Six Wisemen went to Jhaampe-town?’ I nodded, as confused as ever. ‘Recite it for me.’ ‘Six Wisemen went to Jhaampe-town, climbed a hill and never came down, turned to stone and flew away…’ The old nursery rhyme eluded me suddenly. ‘I don’t recall it at all. It’s nonsense anyway, one of those rhyming things that sticks in your head but means nothing.’ ‘That, of course, is why it is enscrolled with the knowledge verses,’ the Fool concluded. ‘I don’t know!’ I retorted. I suddenly felt irritated beyond endurance. ‘Fool, you are doing it again. All you speak is riddles, ever! You claim to speak plain, but your truth eludes me.’ ‘Riddles, dear Fitzy-fitz, are supposed to make folk think. To find new truth in old saws. But, be that as it may … Your brain eludes me. How shall I reach it? Perhaps if I came to you, by dark of night, and sang under your window: Bastard princeling, Fitz my sweet, You waste your hours to your own defeat. You work to stop, you strive to refrain, When all your effort should go to a gain.’ He had flung himself to one knee, and plucked nonexistent strings on his sceptre. He sang quite lustily, and even well. The tune belonged to a popular love ballad. He looked at me, sighed theatrically, wet his lips and continued mournfully, ‘Why does a Farseer look never afar, Why dwells he completely in things as they are? Your coasts are besieged, your people beset. I warn and I urge, but they all say, “not yet!” Oh bastard princeling, gentle Fitz, Will you delay until chopped to bits?’ A passing servant girl paused to stand bemused and listen. A page came to the door of one chamber and peeped out at us, grinning widely. A slow flush began to heat my cheeks, for the Fool’s expression was both tender and ardent as he looked up at me. I tried to walk casually away from him, but he followed me on his knees, clutching at my sleeve. I was forced to stand, or engage in a ridiculous struggle to free myself. I stood, feeling foolish. He simpered a smile up at me. The page giggled, and down the hall I heard two voices conferring in amusement. I refused to lift my eyes to see who was so enjoying my discomfort. The Fool mouthed a kiss up at me. He let his voice sink to a confidential whisper as he sang on: ‘Will fate seduce you to her will? Not if you struggle with all your Skill. Summon your allies, locate the trained, Consummate all from which you’ve refrained. There’s a future not yet fashioned Founded by your fiery passions. If you use your Wits to win You’ll save the duchies for your kin. Thus begs a Fool, on bended knee, Let not a darkness come to be. Let not our peoples go to dust When Life in you has placed this trust.’ He paused, then sang loudly and jovially: ‘And if you choose to let this pass Like so much farting from your ass, Behold my reverence for thee, Feast eyes on what men seldom see!’ He suddenly released my cuff, to tumble away from me in a somersault that somehow reached a finish with his presentation of his bare buttocks to me. They were shockingly pale, and I could conceal neither my amazement nor affront. The Fool vaulted to his feet, suitably clothed again, and Ratsy on his sceptre bowed most humbly to all who had paused to watch my humiliation. There was general laughter and a scattering of applause. His performance had left me speechless. I looked aside and tried to walk past him, but with a bound the Fool blocked my passage once again. The Fool abruptly assumed a stern stance and addressed all who still grinned. ‘Fie and shame upon you all, to be so merry! To giggle and point at a boy’s broken heart! Do not you know the Fitz has lost one most dear to him? Ah, he hides his grief beneath his blushes, but she has gone to her grave and left his passion unslaked. That most stubbornly chaste and virulently flatulent of maidens, dear Lady Thyme, has perished. Of her own stench, I doubt it not, though some say it came of eating spoiled meat. But spoiled meat, you say, has a most foul odour, to warn off any from consuming it. Such we can say of Lady Thyme also, and so perhaps she smelt it not, or deemed it but the perfume of her fingers. Mourn not, poor Fitz, another shall be found for you. To this I shall devote myself, this very day! I swear it, by Sir Ratsy’s skull. And now, I bid you hasten on your tasks, for in truth I have delayed mine much too long. Fare well, poor Fitz. Brave, sad heart! To put so bold a face on your desolation! Poor disconsolate youth! Ah, Fitz, poor poor Fitz …’ And he wandered off down the hall from me, shaking his head woefully, and conferring with Ratsy as to which elderly dowager he should court on my behalf. I stared in disbelief after him. I felt betrayed, that he could make so public a spectacle of me. Sharp-tongued and flighty as the Fool could be, I had never expected to be the public butt of one of his jokes. I kept waiting for him to turn around, and say some last thing that would make me understand what had just happened. He did not. When he turned a corner, I perceived that my ordeal was finally at an end. I proceeded down the hallway, fuming with embarrassment and dazed with puzzlement at the same time. The doggerel of his rhymes had stored his words in my head, and I knew that I would ponder his love song much in days to come, to try and worry out the meanings hidden there. But Lady Thyme? Surely he would not say such a thing, were it not ‘true’. But why would Chade allow his public personage to die in such a way? What poor woman’s body would be carried out as Lady Thyme, no doubt to be carted off to distant relatives for burial? Was this his method of beginning his journey, a way to leave the keep unseen? But again, why let her be dead? So that Regal might believe he had succeeded in his poisoning? To what end? Thus bemused, I finally came to the doors of Kettricken’s chamber. I stood in the hall a moment, to recover my aplomb and compose my face. Suddenly the door across the hall flung open and Regal strode into me. His momentum jostled me aside, and before I could recover myself, he grandly offered, ‘It’s all right, Fitz. I scarcely expect an apology from one so bereaved as yourself.’ He stood in the hallway, straightening his jerkin as the young men following him emerged from his chamber, tittering in amusement. He smiled round at them, and then leaned close to me to ask, in a quietly venomous voice, ‘Where will you suckle up now that the old whore Thyme is dead? Ah, well. I am sure you will find some other old woman to coddle you. Or are you come to wheedle up to a younger one, now?’ He dared to smile at me, before he spun on his heel and strode off in a fine flutter of sleeves, trailed by his three sycophants. The insult to the Queen poisoned me into rage. It came with a suddenness such as I had never experienced. I felt my chest and throat swell with it. A terrible strength rushed through me; I know my upper lip lifted in a snarl. From afar I sensed, What? What is it? Kill it! Kill it! Kill it! I took a step, the next would have been a spring, and I know my teeth would have sunk into the place where throat meets shoulder. But, ‘FitzChivalry,’ said a voice, full of surprise. Molly’s voice! I turned to her, my emotions wrenching from rage to delight at seeing her. But as swiftly she was turning aside, saying, ‘Beg pardon, my lord,’ and brushing past me. Her eyes were down, her manner that of a servant. ‘Molly?’ I called, stepping after her. She paused. When she looked back at me, her face was empty of emotion, her voice neutral. ‘Sir? Had you an errand for me? ‘An errand?’ Of course. I glanced about us, but the corridor was empty. I took a step toward her, pitched my voice low for her ears only. ‘No. I’ve just missed you so, Molly, I…’ ‘This is not seemly, sir. I beg you to excuse me.’ She turned, proudly, calmly, and walked away from me. ‘What did I do?’ I demanded, in angry consternation. I did not really expect an answer. But she paused. Her blue-clothed back was straight, her head erect under her tatted hair-cloth. She did not turn back to me, but said quietly, to the corridor. ‘Nothing. You did nothing at all, my lord. Absolutely nothing.’ ‘Molly!’ I protested, but she turned the corner and was gone. I stood staring after her. After a moment, I realized I was making a sound somewhere between a whine and a growl. Let us go hunting instead. Perhaps, I found myself agreeing. That would be the best thing. To go hunting, to kill, to eat, to sleep. And to do no more than that. Why not now? I don’t really know. I composed myself and knocked at Kettricken’s door. It was opened by little Rosemary who dimpled a smile at me as she invited me in. Once within, Molly’s errand here was evident. Kettricken was holding a fat green candle under her nose. On the table were several others. ‘Bayberry,’ I observed. Kettricken looked up with a smile. ‘FitzChivalry. Welcome. Come in and be seated. May I offer you food? Wine?’ I stood looking at her. A sea change. I felt her strength, knew she stood in the centre of herself. She was dressed in a soft grey tunic and leggings. Her hair was dressed in her customary way. Her jewellery was simple, a single necklace of green and blue stone beads. But this was not the woman I had brought back to the keep a few days ago. That woman had been distressed, angry, hurt and confused. This Kettricken welled serenity. ‘My queen,’ I began, hesitantly. ‘Kettricken,’ she corrected me calmly. She moved about the room, setting some of the candles on shelves. It was almost a challenge in that she did not say more. I came further into her sitting room. She and Rosemary were the only occupants. Verity had once complained to me that her chambers had the precision of a military encampment. It had not been an exaggeration. The simple furnishings were spotlessly clean. The heavy tapestries and rugs that furnished most of Buckkeep were missing here. Simple mats of straw were on the floor, and frames supported parchment screens painted with delicate sprays of flowers and trees. There was no clutter at all. In this room, all was finished and put away, or not yet begun. That is the only way I can describe the stillness I felt there. I had come in a roil of conflicting emotions. Now I stood still and silent, my breathing steadying and my heart calming. One corner of the chamber had been turned into an alcove walled with the parchment screens. Here there was a rug of green wool on the floor, and low padded benches such as I had seen in the mountains. Kettricken placed the green bayberry candle behind one of the screens. She kindled it with a flame from the hearth. The dancing candlelight behind the screen gave the life and warmth of a sunrise to the painted scene. Kettricken walked around to sit on one of the low benches within the alcove. She indicated the bench opposite hers. ‘Will you join me?’ I did. The gently-lit screen, the illusion of a small private room and the sweet scent of bayberry surrounded me. The low bench was oddly comfortable. It took me a moment to recall the purpose of my visit. ‘My queen, I thought you might like to learn some of the games of chance we play at Buckkeep. So you could join in when the other folk are amusing themselves.’ ‘Perhaps another time,’ she said kindly. ‘If you and I wish to amuse ourselves, and if it would please you to teach me the game. But for those reasons only. I have found the old adages to be true. One can only walk so far from one’s true self before the bond either snaps, or pulls one back. I am fortunate. I have been pulled back. I walk once more in trueness to myself, FitzChivalry. That is what you sense today.’ ‘I don’t understand.’ She smiled. ‘You don’t need to.’ She fell silent again. Little Rosemary had gone to sit by the hearth. She took up her slate and chalk as if to amuse herself. Even that child’s normal merriment seemed placid today. I turned back to Kettricken and waited. But she only sat looking at me, a bemused smile on her face. After a moment or two, I asked, ‘What are we doing? ‘Nothing,’ Kettricken said. I copied her silence. After a long time, she observed, ‘Our own ambitions and tasks that we set for ourselves, the framework we attempt to impose upon the world is no more than a shadow of a tree cast across the snow. It will change as the sun moves, be swallowed in the night, sway with the wind and when the smooth snow vanishes, it will lie distorted upon the uneven earth. But the tree continues to be. Do you understand that?’ She leaned forward slightly to look into my face. Her eyes were kind. ‘I think so,’ I said uneasily. She gave me a look almost of pity. ‘You would if you stopped trying to understand it, if you gave up worrying about why this is important to me, and simply tried to see if it is an idea that has worth in your own life. But I do not bid you to do that. I bid no one do anything here.’ She sat back again, a gentle loosening that made her straight spine seem effortless and restful. Again, she did nothing. She simply sat across from me and unfurled herself. I felt her life brush up against me and flow around me. It was but the faintest touching, and had I not experienced both the Skill and the Wit, I do not think I would have sensed it. Cautiously, as softly as if I assayed a bridge made of cobweb, I overlay my senses on hers. She quested. Not as I did, toward a specific beast, or to read what might be close by. I discarded the word I had always given to my sensing. Kettricken did not seek after anything with her Wit. It was as she said, simply a being, but it was being a part of the whole. She composed herself and considered all the ways the great web touched her, and was content. It was a delicate and tenuous thing and I marvelled at it. For an instant I too relaxed. I breathed out. I opened myself, Wit wide to all. I discarded all caution, all worry that Burrich would sense me. I had never done anything to compare it to before. Kettricken’s reaching was as delicate as droplets of dew sliding down a strand of spider web. I was like a dammed flood, suddenly released, to rush out to fill old channels to overflowing and to send fingers of water investigating the lowlands. Let us hunt! The wolf, joyfully. In the stables, Burrich straightened from cleaning a hoof, to frown at no one. Sooty stamped in her stall. Molly shrugged away and shook out her hair. Across from me, Kettricken started and looked at me as if I had spoken aloud. A moment more I was held, seized from a thousand sides, stretched and expanded, illuminated pitilessly. I felt it all, not just the human folk with their comings and goings, but every pigeon that fluttered in the eaves, every mouse that crept unnoticed behind the wine kegs, every speck of life, that was not and never had been a speck, but had always been a node on the web of life. Nothing alone, nothing forsaken, nothing without meaning, nothing of no significance, and nothing of importance. Somewhere, someone sang, and then fell silent. A chorus filled in after that solo, other voices, distant and dim, saying, What? Beg pardon? Did you call? Are you here? Do I dream? They plucked at me, as beggars pluck at a stranger’s sleeves, and I suddenly felt that if I did not draw away, I could come unravelled like a piece of fabric. I blinked my eyes, seeing myself inside myself again. I breathed in. No time had passed. A single breath, a wink of an eye. Kettricken looked askance at me. I appeared not to notice. I reached up to scratch my nose. I shifted my weight. I resettled myself firmly. I let a few more minutes pass before I sighed and shrugged apologetically. ‘I do not understand the game, I am afraid,’ I offered. I had succeeded in annoying her. ‘It is not a game. You don’t have to understand it, or “do” it. Simply stop all else, and be.’ I made a show of making another effort. I sat still for several moments, then fidgeted absently with my cuff until she looked at me doing it. Then I cast my eyes down as if ashamed. ‘The candle smells very sweet,’ I complimented her. Kettricken sighed and gave up on me. ‘The girl who makes them has a very keen awareness of scents. She can almost bring me my gardens and surround me with their fragrances. Regal brought me one of her honeysuckle tapers, and after that I sought out her wares myself. She is a serving-girl here, and does not have the time or resources to make too many. So I count myself fortunate when she brings them to offer to me.’ ‘Regal,’ I repeated. Regal speaking to Molly. Regal knowing her well enough to know of her candle-making. Everything inside me clenched with foreboding. ‘My queen, I think I distract you from what you wish to be doing. That is not my desire. May I leave you now, to return again when you wish to have company?’ ‘This exercise does not exclude company, FitzChivalry.’ She looked at me sadly. ‘Will not you try again to let go? For a moment, I thought … No? Ah, then, I let you go.’ I heard regret and loneliness in her voice. Then she straightened herself. She took a breath, breathed it out slowly. I felt again her consciousness thrumming in the web. She has the Wit, I thought to myself. Not strong, but she has it. I left her room quietly. There was a tiny bit of amusement to wondering what Burrich would think if he knew. Much less amusing to recall how she had been alerted to me when I quested out with the Wit. I thought of my night hunts with the wolf. Would soon the Queen begin to complain of strange dreams? A cold certainty welled up in me. I would be discovered. I had been too careless, too long. I knew that Burrich could sense when I used the Wit. What if there were others? I could be accused of beast magic. I found my resolve and hardened myself to it. Tomorrow, I would act. ELEVEN (#ulink_d803304a-4365-5bf3-a7ee-23bdd0df7842) Lone Wolves (#ulink_d803304a-4365-5bf3-a7ee-23bdd0df7842) The Fool will always remain one of Buckkeep’s great mysteries. It is almost possible to say that nothing definite is known of him. His origin, age, sex and race have all been the subject of conjecture. Most amazing is how such a public person maintained such an aura of privacy. The questions about the Fool will always outnumber the answers. Did he ever truly possess any mystical powers, any prescience, any magic at all, or was it merely that his quick wits and razor tongue made it seem as if he knew all before it came to pass? If he did not know the future, he appeared to, and by his calm assumption of foreknowledge, he swayed many of us to help him shape the future as he saw fit. White on white. An ear twitched, and that minute movement betrayed all. You see? I prompted him. I scent. I see. I flicked my eyes toward the prey. No more a movement than that. It was sufficient. I see! He leaped, the rabbit started, and Cub went floundering after it. The rabbit ran lightly over the unpacked snow, while Cub had to surge and bound and leap through it. The rabbit darted elusively, this way, that way, around the tree, around the clump of bushes, into the brambles. Had he stayed in there? Cub snuffed hopefully, but the density of the thorns turned his sensitive nose back. It’s gone. I told him. Are you sure? Why didn’t you help? I can’t run down game in loose snow. I must stalk and spring only when one spring is sufficient. Ah. Enlightenment. Consideration. There are two of us. We should hunt as a pair. I could start game and drive it toward you. You could be ready, to leap out and snap its neck. I shook my head slowly. You must learn to hunt alone, Cub. I will not always be with you, in mind or in flesh. A wolf is not meant to hunt alone. Perhaps not. But many do. As you will. But I did not intend that you should start with rabbits. Come on. He fell in at my heels, content to let me lead. We had left the keep before winter light had even greyed the skies. Now they were blue and open, clear and cold above us. The trail we were following was no more than a soft, shouldered groove in the deep snow. I sank calf-deep at every step. About us, the forest was a winter stillness, broken only by the occasional dart of a small bird, or the far-off cawing of a crow. It was open forest, mostly saplings with the occasional giant which had survived the fire that had cleared this hillside. It was good pasturage for goats in summer. Their sharp little hooves had cut the trail we were now following. It led to a simple stone hut and a tumbledown corral and shelter for the goats. It was used only in summer. Cub had been delighted when I went to get him this morning. He had shown me his roundabout path for slipping past the guards. An old cattle gate, long bricked up, was his egress. Some shift of the earth had unsettled the stone and mortar blocking it, creating a crack wide enough for him to slip through. The beaten-down snow showed me that he had used it often. Once outside the walls, we had ghosted away from the keep, moving like shadows in the not-light of stars and moon on white snow. Once safely away from the keep, Cub had turned the expedition into stalking practice. He raced ahead to lie in wait, to spring out and tag me with a splayed paw or a sharp nip, and then race away in a great circle, to attack me from behind. I had let him play, welcoming the exertion that warmed me, as well as the sheer joy of the mindless romping. Always, I kept us moving, so that by the time the sun and light found us, we were miles from Buckkeep, in an area seldom visited during the winter. My spotting of the white rabbit against the white snow had been pure happenstance. I had even humbler game in mind for his first solo hunt. Why do we come here? Cub demanded as soon as we came in sight of the hut. To hunt, I said simply. I halted some distance away. The wolf sank down beside me, waiting. Well, go ahead, I told him. Go and check for game sign. Oh, this is worthy hunting, this. Sniffing about some man den for scraps. Disdainful. Not scraps. Go and look. He surged forward, and then angled toward the hut. I watched him go. Our dream hunts together had taught him much, but now I wished him to hunt entirely independently of me. I did not doubt that he could do it. I chided myself that demanding this proof was just one more procrastination. He stayed in the snowy brush as much as he could. He approached the hut cautiously, ears alert and nose working. Old scents. Humans. Goats. Cold and gone. He froze an instant, then took a careful step forward. His motions now were calculated and precise. Ears forward, tail straight, he was totally intent and focused. MOUSE.’ He sprang and had it. He shook his head, a quick snap, and then let the little animal go flying. He caught it again as it came down. Mouse! He announced gleefully. He flipped his kill up into the air and danced up after it on his hind legs. He caught it again, delicately, in his small front teeth, and tossed it up again. I radiated pride and approval at him. By the time he had finished playing with his kill, the mouse was little more than a sodden rag of fur. He gulped it down finally in a single snap, and came bounding back to me. Mice! The place is riddled with them. Their smell and sign are everywhere all about the hut. I thought there would be plenty here. The shepherds complain about them, that the mice overrun this place and spoil their provisions in the summer. I guessed they would winter here, too. Surprisingly fat, for this time of year, Cub opined, and was off again with a bound. He hunted with frantic enthusiasm, but only until his hunger was sated. Then it was my turn to approach the hut. Snow had drifted up against the rickety wooden door, but I shouldered it open. The interior was dismal. Snow had sifted in through the thatched roof and lay in streaks and stripes on the frozen dirt floor. There was a rudimentary hearth and chimney, with a kettle hook. A stool and a wooden bench were the only furnishings. There was still a bit of firewood left beside the hearth, and I used it to build a careful fire on the blackened stones. I kept it small, just enough to warm myself and to thaw the bread and meat I had packed with me. Cub came for a taste of that, more for the sharing than for any hunger. He made a leisurely exploration of the hut’s interior, then lifted his nose abruptly from the corner he’d been sniffing. He advanced a few steps toward me, then stopped, standing stiff-legged. His eyes met mine and held. The wilds were in their darkness. You’re abandoning me here. Yes. There is food in plenty here. In a while, I will come back to be sure you are all right. I think you will be fine here. You will teach yourself to hunt. Mice at first, and then larger game … You betray me. You betray pack. No. We are not pack. I am setting you free, Cub. We are becoming too close. That is not good, for either of us. I warned you, long ago, that I would not bond. We can have no part of each other’s lives. It is better for you to go off, alone, to become what you were meant to be. I was meant to be a member of a pack. He levelled his stare at me. Will you tell me that there are wolves near here, ones who will accept an intruder into their territory and make me part of their pack? I was forced to look aside from him. No. There are no wolves here. One would have to travel many days to come to a place wild enough for wolves to run freely. Then what is there here for me? Food. Freedom. Your own life, independent of mine. Isolation. He bared his teeth at me, and then abruptly turned aside. He circled past me, a wide circle as he went to the door. Men, he sneered. Truly you are not pack, but man. He paused in the open door to look back at me. Men it is who think they can rule others’ lives, but have no bonds to them. Do you think that to bond or not to bond is for you alone to decide? My heart is my own. I give it where I will. I will not give it to one who thrusts me aside. Nor will I obey one who denies pack and bond. Do you think I will stay here and snuff about this men’s lair, to snap at the mice who have come for their leavings, to be like the mice, things that live on the droppings of men? No. If we are not pack, then we are not kin. I owe you nothing, and least of all obedience. I shall not stay here. I shall live as I please. A slyness to his thoughts. He was hiding something, but I guessed it. You shall do as you wish, Cub, but for one thing. You shall not follow me back to Buckkeep. I forbid it. You forbid? You forbid? Forbid the wind to blow past your stone den then, or the grass to grow in the earth around it. You have as much right. You forbid. He snorted and turned away from me. I hardened my will, and spoke a final time to him. ‘Cub!’ I said in my man voice. He turned back to me, startled. His small ears went back at my tone. Almost he sneered his teeth at me. But before he could, I repelled at him. It was a thing I had always known how to do, as instinctively as one knows to pull the finger back from the flame. It was a force I had used but seldom, for once Burrich had turned it against me, and I did not always trust it. This was not a push, such as I had used on him when he was caged. I put force into it, the mental repulsing becoming almost a physical thing as he recoiled from me. He leaped back a stride then stood splay-legged on the snow, ready for flight. His eyes were shocked. ‘GO!’ I shouted at him, man’s word, man’s voice, and at the same time repelled him again with every bit of Wit I had. He fled, not gracefully, but leaping and scrabbling away through the snow. I held myself within myself, refusing to follow him with my mind and make sure that he did not stop. The repelling was a breaking of that bond, not only a withdrawing of myself from him, but a pushing back of every tie he had to me. Severed. And better to let them remain that way. Yet as I stood staring at the patch of brush where he had disappeared, I felt an emptiness that was very like to cold, a tingling itch of something lost, something missing. I have heard men speak so of an amputated limb, a physical groping about for a part gone forever. I left the hut and began my hike home. The farther I walked, the more I hurt. Not physically, but that is the only comparison I have. As raw and flayed as if stripped of skin and meat. It was worse than when Burrich had taken Nosy, for I had done it to myself. The waning afternoon seemed chillier than the dark of dawn had. I tried to tell myself that I did not feel ashamed. I had done what was necessary, as I had with Virago. I pushed that thought aside. No. Cub would be fine. He would be better off than if he were with me. What life would it be for that wild creature, skulking about, always in danger of discovery, by the keep dogs or hunters or anyone who might spot him? He might be isolated, he might be lonely, but he would be alive. Our connection was severed. There was an insistent temptation to quest out about me, to see if I could sense him still, to grope and find if his mind still touched mine at all. I resisted it sternly, and sealed my thoughts against his as firmly as I could. Gone. He would not follow me. Not after I had repelled him like that. No. I tramped on and refused to look back. Had I not been so deep in thought, so intent on remaining isolated inside myself, I might have had some warning. But I doubt it. The Wit was never any use against Forged ones. I do not know if they stalked me, or if I blundered right past their hiding-place. The first I knew of them was when the weight hit my back and I went down face-first in the snow. At first I thought it was Cub, come back to challenge my decision. I rolled and came almost to my feet before another one seized hold of my shoulder. Forged ones, three males, one young, two large and once well-muscled. My mind recorded it all quickly, categorizing them as neatly as if this were one of Chade’s exercises. One big one with a knife, the others had sticks. Torn and filthy clothing. Faces reddened and peeling from the cold, filthy beards, shaggy hair. Faces bruised and cut. Did they fight amongst themselves, or had they attacked someone else before me? I broke the one’s grip, and leaped back, trying to get as clear of them as I could. I had a belt knife. It was not a long blade, but it was all I had. I had thought I would not need any weapon today; I had thought there were no more Forged ones anywhere near Buckkeep. They circled wide of me, keeping me in the centre of their ring. They let me get my knife clear. It didn’t seem to worry them. ‘What do you want? My cloak?’ I undid the catch and let it fall. One’s eyes followed it down, but none of them leaped for it as I had hoped. I shifted, turning, trying to watch all three at once, trying to have none of them completely behind me. It wasn’t easy. ‘Mittens?’ I stripped them from my hands, tossed them as a pair toward the one who appeared youngest. He let them fall at his feet. They grunted as they shuffled, rocking on their feet, watching me. No one wanted to be the first to attack. They knew I had a knife; whoever went first would meet the blade. I took a step or two toward an opening in the ring. They shifted to block my escape. ‘What do you want?’ I roared at them. I spun around, trying to look at each of them, and for a moment locked eyes with one. There was less in his eyes than there had been in Cub’s. No clean wildness, only the misery of physical discomfort and want. I stared at him and he blinked. ‘Meat.’ He grunted as if I had wrung the word from him. ‘I have no meat, no food at all. You’ll get nothing from me but a fight!’ ‘You,’ huffed another, in a parody of laughter. Mirthless, heartless. ‘Meat!’ I had paused a moment too long, looked too long at one, for another sprang suddenly to my back. He flung his arms around me, pinning one of my arms, and then suddenly, horribly, his teeth sank into my flesh where my neck met my shoulder. Meat. Me. A horror beyond thought engulfed me and I fought. I fought just as I had the first time I had battled Forged ones, with a mindless brutality that rivalled their own. The elements were my only ally, for they were ravaged by cold and privation. Their hands were clumsy with cold, and if we were all powered by the frenzy for survival, at least mine was new and strong within me while theirs had been worn down by the brutality of their current existence. I left flesh in the mouth of that first attacker, but tear myself free I did. That I recall. The rest is not so clear. I cannot put it in order. I broke off my knife in the young one’s ribs. I recall a thumb gouging into my eye, and the snap when I dislocated it from its socket. Locked in a struggle with one, another pounded me across the shoulders with his stick, until I managed to turn his mate to meet the blow. I don’t recall that I felt the pain of that pounding, and the torn flesh at my neck seemed but a warm spot where blood flowed. I had no sense of damage to myself, no daunting of my desire to kill them all. I could not win. There were too many. The young one was down in the snow, coughing blood, but one was throttling me while the other tried to jerk the sword free from its entanglement in my flesh and sleeve. I was kicking and flailing, trying uselessly to inflict any sort of damage on my attackers while the edges of the world grew black and the sky began to spin. Brother! He came, slashing teeth and weight hitting our tangled struggle like a battering ram. We all went down in the snow then, and the impact loosened the Forged one’s grip enough that I caught a whistle of air into my lungs. My head cleared, and suddenly I had heart to fight again, to ignore pain and damage, to fight! I swear I saw myself, face purpled from strangling, the rich blood streaming and soaking and the smell so maddening. I bared my teeth. Then Cub bore the one down and away from me. He attacked him with a speed no man could match, slashing and snapping and leaping clear before the grasping hands could seize his coat. He darted back in suddenly. I know that I knew when Cub’s jaws closed in his throat. I felt that death rattle in my own jaws and the swift, spurting blood that drenched my muzzle and flowed out over my jowls. I shook my head, my teeth tearing flesh, setting all the life loose to run free down his stinking garments. Then was a time of nothing. Then I was sitting in the snow, back against a tree. Cub was lying in the snow not far from me. His forepaws were dappled with blood. He was licking his legs clean, a careful, slow, thorough licking. I lifted my sleeve to my mouth and chin. I wiped away blood. It was not mine. I knelt forward suddenly in the snow, to spit out beard hairs, and then to vomit, but not even the acid taste of my bile could cleanse the dead man’s flesh and blood from my mouth. I glanced at his body, looked away. His throat was torn out. For a terrible instant I could recall how I had chewed down, the tendons of his throat taut against my teeth. I shut my eyes tight. I sat very still. Cold nose against my cheek. I opened my eyes. He sat beside me, regarding me. Cub. Nighteyes, he corrected me. My mother named me Nighteyes. I was the last of my litter to get my eyes open. He snuffed, then sneezed suddenly. He looked around at the fallen men. I followed his gaze unwillingly. My knife had taken the young one, but he had not died quickly. The other two … I killed faster, Nighteyes observed quietly. But I have not the teeth of a cow. You did well, for your kind. He stood up and shook himself. Blood, both cold and warm, spattered my face. I gasped and wiped it away, then realized the significance. You’re bleeding. So are you. He pulled the blade out of you to put it in me. Let me look at it. Why? The question hung between us in the cold air. Night was about to find us. Overhead the tree branches had gone black against the evening sky. I did not need the light to see him. I did not even need to see him. Do you need to see your ear to know it is part of you? As useless to deny that part of my flesh was mine as to deny Nighteyes. We are brothers. We are pack, I conceded. Are we? I felt a reaching, a groping, a tugging for my attention. I let myself recall that I had felt this before and denied it. Now I did not. I gave him my focus, my undivided attention. Nighteyes was there, hide and tooth, muscle and claw, and I did not avoid him. I knew the sword thrust in his shoulder and felt how it had gone between two big muscles there. He held his paw curled to his chest. I hesitated, and then felt his hurt that I would hesitate. So I paused no longer, but reached out to him as he had to me. Trust is not trust until it is complete. So close were we, I do not know which of us offered this thought. For an instant I had a double awareness of the world as Nighteye’s perceptions overlay my own, his scenting of the bodies, his hearing telling me of scavenger foxes already creeping closer, his eyes making no difficulty of the fading light. Then the duality was gone, and his senses were mine, and mine his. We were bonded. Cold was settling, on the land and into my bones. We found my cloak, clotted with frost, but I shook it out and put it on. I did not try to fasten it, but kept it wide away from where I had been bitten. I managed to drag my mittens on despite my injured forearm. ‘We’d better go,’ I told him softly. ‘When we get home, I’ll see to cleaning and bandaging us. But first, we’d better get there and get warm.’ I felt his assent. He walked beside me as we went, not behind me. He lifted his nose once, to snuff deeply of the fresh air. A cold wind had come up. Snow began to fall. That was all. His nose brought me the knowledge that I need fear no more Forged ones. The air was clean save for the stench of those behind us, and even that was fading, turning into carrion smell, mingling with the scavenger foxes come to find them. You were wrong, he observed. Neither of us hunts very well alone. Sly amusement. Unless you thought you were doing well before I came along? ‘A wolf is not meant to hunt alone,’ I told him. I tried for dignity. He lolled his tongue at me. Don’t fear, little brother. I’ll be here. We continued walking through the crisp white snow and the stark black trees. Not much farther to home, he comforted me. I felt his strength mingling with mine as we limped on. It was nearly noon when I presented myself at Verity’s map-room door. My forearm was snugly bandaged and invisible inside a voluminous sleeve. The wound itself was not that severe, but it was painful. The bite between my shoulder and neck was not so easily concealed. I had lost flesh there, and it had bled profusely. When I had seen it with a looking glass the night before, I was nearly sick. Cleaning it had made it bleed even more profusely: there was a chunk of me gone. Well, and if Nighteyes had not intervened, more of me would have followed that mouthful. I cannot explain how sickening I found that thought. I had managed to get a dressing on it, but not a very good one. I had pulled my shirt high and fastened it in place to conceal the bandaging. It chafed painfully against the wound, but it concealed it. Apprehensively, I tapped on the door, and was clearing my throat as it opened. Charim told me Verity was not there. There was a worry deep in his eyes. I tried not to share it. ‘He can’t leave the boat-builders to that work, can he?’ Charim shook his head to my banter. ‘No. Up in his tower,’ the old servant said shortly. I turned aside as he shut the door slowly. Well, Kettricken had told me as much. I had tried to forget that part of our conversation. Dread crept through me as I sought the tower stairs. Verity had no reason to be in this tower. This tower was where he Skilled from in summers, when the weather was fine and the Raiders harried our shores. There was no reason to be up there in winter, especially with the wind howling and the snow dropping as it was today. No reason save the terrible attraction of the Skill itself. I had felt that lure, I reminded myself as I gritted my teeth and began the long climb to the top. I had known, for a time, the heady exuberance of the Skill. Like the clotted memory of long-ago pain, Galen the Skillmaster’s words came back to me. ‘If you are weak,’ he had threatened us, ‘if you lack focus and discipline, if you are indulgent and inclined to pleasure, you will not master the Skill. Rather, the Skill will master you. Practise the denial of all pleasures to yourself, deny all weaknesses that tempt you. Then, when you are as steel, perhaps you will be ready to encounter the lure of the Skill and turn aside from it. If you give into it, you will become as a great babe, mindless and drooling.’ Then he had schooled us, with privations and punishments that went far past any sane level. Yet when I had encountered the Skill joy, I had not found it the tawdry pleasure Galen had implied. Rather, it had been the same rush of blood and thunder of heart that sometimes music brought to me, or a sudden flight of bright pheasant in an autumn wood, or even the pleasure of taking a horse perfectly over a difficult jump, that instant when all things come into balance, and for a moment turn together as perfectly as birds wheeling in flight. The Skill gave that to one, but not for just a moment. Rather it lasted for as long as a man could sustain it, and became stronger and purer as one’s ability with the Skill refined; or so I believed. My own abilities with the Skill had been permanently damaged in a battle of wills with Galen. The defensive mental walls I had erected were such that not even someone as strongly Skilled as Verity could always reach me. My own ability to reach out of myself had become an intermittent thing, skittish and flighty as a frightened horse. I paused outside Verity’s door. I took a very deep breath, then breathed it out slowly, refusing to let the blackness of spirit settle on me. Those things were over, that time was gone. No sense railing to myself about it. As was my old habit, I entered without knocking, lest the noise break Verity’s concentration. He should not have been Skilling. He was. The shutters of the window were open and he leaned out on the sill. Wind and snow swirled throughout the room, speckling his dark hair and dark blue shirt and jerkin. He was breathing in deep, long steady breaths, a cadence somewhere between a very deep sleep and that of a runner at rest and catching his wind. He seemed oblivious of me. ‘Prince Verity?’ I said softly. He turned to me, and his gaze was like heat, like light, like wind in my face. He Skilled into me with such force that I felt driven out of myself, his mind possessing mine so completely that there was no room left to be myself in it. For a moment I was drowning in Verity, and then he was gone, withdrawing so rapidly that I was left stumbling and gasping like a fish deserted by a high wave. In a step he was beside me, catching my elbow and steadying me on my feet. ‘I’m sorry,’ he apologized. ‘I was not expecting you. You startled me.’ ‘I should have knocked, my prince,’ I replied, and then gave a quick nod to him that I could stand. ‘What’s out there, that you watch so intently?’ He glanced aside from me. ‘Not much. Some boys on the cliffs, watching a pod of whales sporting. Two of our own boats, fishing halibut. Even in this weather, though not enjoying it much.’ ‘Then you are not Skilling for Outislanders …’ ‘There are not any out there, this time of year. But I keep a watch.’ He glanced down at my forearm, the one he had just released, and changed the subject. ‘What happened to you?’ ‘That’s what I came to see you about. Forged ones attacked me. Out on the face of the ridge, the one where the spruce hen hunting is good. Near the goatherd’s shed.’ He nodded quickly, his dark brows knitting. ‘I know the area. How many? Describe them.’ I sketched my attackers for him quickly and he nodded briefly, unsurprised. ‘I had a report of them, four days ago. They should not be this close to Buckkeep this soon; not unless they are consistently moving in this direction, every day. Are they finished?’ ‘Yes. You expected this?’ I was aghast. ‘I thought we had wiped them out.’ ‘We wiped out the ones who were here then. There are others, moving in this direction. I have been keeping track of them by the reports, but I had not expected them to be so close so soon.’ I struggled briefly, got my voice under control. ‘My prince, why do we simply keep track of them? Why do not we … take care of this problem?’ Verity made a small noise in his throat and turned back to his window. ‘Sometimes one has to wait, and let the enemy complete a move, in order to discover what the full strategy is. Do you understand me?’ ‘The Forged ones have a strategy? I think not, my prince. They were …’ ‘Report to me in full,’ Verity directed, without looking at me. I hesitated briefly, then launched into a complete retelling. Towards the end of the struggle, my account became a bit incoherent. I let the words die on my lips. ‘But I did manage to break his grip on me. And all three of them died there.’ He did not take his eyes from the sea. ‘You should avoid physical struggles, FitzChivalry. You always seem to get hurt in them.’ ‘I know, my prince,’ I admitted humbly. ‘Hod did her best with me …’ ‘But you were not really trained to be a fighter. You have other talents. And those are the ones you should be putting to use to preserve yourself. Oh, you’re a competent swordsman, but you’ve not the brawn and weight to be a brawler. At least, not yet. And that is what you always seem to revert to in a fight.’ ‘I was not offered the selection of weapons,’ I said, a bit testily, and then added, ‘my prince.’ ‘No. You won’t be.’ He seemed to speak from afar. A slight tension in the air told me that he Skilled out even as we spoke. ‘Yet I’m afraid I must send you out again. I think you are perhaps right. I have watched what is happening long enough. The Forged ones are converging on Buckkeep. I cannot fathom why, and yet perhaps knowing that is not as important as preventing them from attaining their goal. You will again undertake the removal of this problem, Fitz. Perhaps this time I can keep my own lady from becoming involved in it. I understand that if she wishes to go riding, she now has a guard of her own?’ ‘As you have been told, sir,’ I told him, cursing myself for not coming to speak to him sooner of the Queen’s Guard. He turned to regard me levelly. ‘The rumour I heard was that you had authorized the creation of such a guard. Not to steal your glory, but when such rumour reached me, I let it be supposed that I had requested it of you. As, I suppose, I did. Very indirectly.’ ‘My prince,’ I said, and had the good sense to keep quiet. ‘Well. If she must ride, at least she is guarded now. Though I would greatly prefer she had no more encounters with Forged ones. Would I could think of something to busy her,’ he added wearily. ‘The Queen’s Garden,’ I suggested, recalling Patience’s account of them. Verity cocked his eye at me. ‘The old ones, on top of the tower,’ I explained. ‘They have been unused for years. I saw what was left of them, before Galen ordered us to dismantle them to clear space for our Skill lessons. It must have been a charming place at one time. Tubs of earth and greenery, statuary, climbing vines.’ Verity smiled to himself. ‘And basins of water, too, with pond lilies in them, and fish, and even tiny frogs. The birds came there often in summer, to drink and to splash. Chivalry and I used to play up there. She had little charms hung on strings, made of glass and bright metal. And when the wind stirred them, they would chime together, or flash like jewels in the sun.’ I could feel myself warming with his memory of that place and time. ‘My mother kept a little hunting cat, and it would lounge on the warm stone when the sun struck it. Hisspit; that was her name. Spotted coat and tufted ears. And we would tease her with string and tufts of feathers, and she would stalk us among the pots of flowers. While we were supposed to be studying tablets on herbs. I never properly learned them. There was too much else to do there. Except for thyme. I knew every kind of thyme she had. My mother grew a lot of thyme. And catmint.’ He was smiling. ‘Kettricken would love such a place,’ I told him. ‘She gardened much in the mountains.’ ‘Did she?’ He looked surprised. ‘I would have thought her occupied with more … physical pastimes.’ I felt an instant of annoyance with him. No, of something more than annoyance. How could it be that I knew more of his wife than he did? ‘She kept gardens,’ I said quietly. ‘Of many herbs, and knew all the uses of those that grew therein. I have told you of them myself.’ ‘Yes, I suppose you have.’ He sighed. ‘You are right, Fitz. Visit her for me, and tell her of the Queen’s Garden. It is winter now, and there is probably little she can do with it. But come spring, it would be a wondrous thing to see it restored …’ ‘Perhaps, you yourself, my prince,’ I ventured, but he shook his head. ‘I haven’t the time. But I trust it to you. And now, downstairs. To the maps. I have things I wish to discuss with you.’ I turned immediately toward the door. Verity followed more slowly. I held the door for him and on the threshold he paused and looked back over his shoulder at the open window. ‘It calls me,’ he admitted to me, calmly, simply, as if observing that he enjoyed plums. ‘It calls to me, at any moment when I am not busied. And so I must be busy, Fitz. And too busy.’ ‘I see,’ I said slowly, not at all sure that I did. ‘No. You don’t.’ Verity spoke with great certainty. ‘It is like a great loneliness, boy. I can reach out and touch others. Some, quite easily. But no one ever reaches back. When Chivalry was alive … I still miss him, boy. Sometimes I am so lonely for him; it is like being the only one of something in the world. Like the very last wolf, hunting alone.’ A shiver went down my spine. ‘What of King Shrewd?’ I ventured to ask. He shook his head. ‘He Skills seldom now. His strength for it has dwindled, and it taxes his body as well as his mind.’ We went down a few more steps. ‘You and I are the only ones now to know that,’ he added softly. I nodded. We went down the stairs slowly. ‘Has the healer looked at your arm?’ he queried. I shook my head. ‘Nor Burrich.’ He was stating this as fact, already knowing it was true. I shook my head again. The marks of Nighteyes’ teeth were too plain upon my skin, although he had given those bites in play. I could not show Burrich the marks of the Forged Ones without betraying my wolf to him. Verity sighed. ‘Well. Keep it clean. I suppose you know as well as any how to keep an injury clean. Next time you go out, remember this, and go prepared. Always. There may not always be one to step in and aid you.’ I came to a slow stop on the stairs. Verity continued down. I took a deep breath. ‘Verity,’ I asked quietly. ‘How much do you know? About … this.’ ‘Less than you do,’ he said jovially. ‘But more than you think I do.’ ‘You sound like the Fool,’ I said bitterly. ‘Yes. Sometimes. He is another one who has a great understanding of aloneness, and what it can drive a man to do.’ He took a breath, and almost I thought he might say that he knew what I was, and did not condemn me for it. Instead, he continued, ‘I believe the Fool had words with you, a few days ago.’ I followed him silently now, wondering how he knew so much about so many things. The Skilling, of course. We came to his study and I followed him in. Charim, as ever, was already waiting for us. Food was set out, and mulled wine. Verity set to upon it with a great appetite. I sat across from him, mostly watching him eat. I was not very hungry, but it built my appetite to watch how much he enjoyed this simple, robust meal. In this he was still a soldier, I thought. He would take this small pleasure, this good, well-served food when he was hungry, and relish it while he could. It gave me much satisfaction to see him with this much life and appetite to him. I wondered how he would be next summer, when he would have to Skill for hours every day, keeping watch for Raiders off our coast, and using the tricks of his mind to set them astray while giving our own folk early warning. I thought of Verity as he had been last summer by harvest time; worn to thinness, face lined, without the energy to eat save that he drank the stimulants that Chade put in his tea. His life had become the hours he spent Skilling. Come summer, his hunger for the Skilling would replace every other hunger in his life. How would Kettricken react to that, I wondered? After we had eaten, Verity went over his maps with me. There was no longer any mistaking the pattern that emerged. Regardless of what obstacles, forest or river or frozen plains, the Forged ones were moving towards Buckkeep. It made no sense to me. The ones I had encountered seemed all but bereft of their senses. I found it difficult to believe that any one of them would conceive of travelling overland, despite hardships, simply to come to Buckkeep. ‘And these records you’ve kept indicate that all of them have. All of the Forged ones that you’ve identified seem to be moving towards Buckkeep.’ ‘Yet you have difficulty seeing it as a coordinated plan? Verity asked quietly. ‘I fail to see how they could have any plan at all. How have they contacted each other? And it doesn’t seem a concerted effort. They aren’t meeting up and travelling here in bands. It simply seems that each and every one sets out this way, and some of them fall in together.’ ‘Like moths drawn to a candle flame,’ Verity observed. ‘Or flies to carrion,’ I added sourly. ‘The ones to fascination, the others to feed,’ Verity mused. ‘I wish I knew which it is that draws the Forged ones to me. Perhaps another thing entirely.’ ‘Why do you think you must know why they come? Do you think you are their target?’ ‘I do not know. But if I find out, I may understand my enemy. I do not think it chance that all the Forged ones make their way to Buckkeep. I think they move against me, Fitz. Perhaps not of their own will, but it is still a move against me. I need to understand why.’ ‘To understand them, you must become them.’ ‘Oh.’ He looked less than amused. ‘Now who sounds like the Fool?’ The question made me uneasy and I let it slip by me. ‘My prince, when the Fool mocked me the other day …’ I hesitated, still stung by the memory. I had always believed the Fool to be my friend. I tried to push the emotion aside. ‘He put ideas in my mind. In his teasing way. He said, if I understand his riddles aright, that I should be seeking for others who are Skilled. Men and women from your father’s generation, trained by Solicity before Galen became Skillmaster. And he seemed also to say that I should be finding out more about the Elderlings. How are they summoned, what can they do? What are they?’ Verity leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers over his chest. ‘Either of those quests might be enough for a dozen men. And yet, neither is even sufficient for one, for the answers to either question are so scarce. To the first, yes, there should yet be Skilled ones amongst us, folk older than my father even, trained for the old wars against the Outislanders. It would not have been common folk knowledge as to who was trained. Training was done privately, and even those in a coterie might know of few outside their own circle. Still, there should have been records. I am sure there were, at one time. But what has become of them, no one can say. I imagine that they were passed from Solicity down to Galen. But they were not found in his room or among his things after he … died.’ It was Verity’s turn to pause. We both knew how Galen had died, in a sense had both been there, though we had never spoken much of it. Galen had died a traitor, in the act of trying to Skill-tap Verity’s strength and drain it off and kill him. Instead, Verity had borrowed my strength to aid him in draining Galen. It was not a thing either of us enjoyed recalling. But I spoke boldly, trying to keep all emotion from my voice. ‘Do you think Regal would know where such records are?’ ‘If he does, he has said nothing of it.’ Verity’s voice was as flat as my own, putting an end to that topic. ‘But I have had some small success in uncovering a few Skilled ones. The names, at least. In every case, those I have managed to discover have either already died or cannot be located now.’ ‘Um.’ I recalled hearing something of this from Chade some time ago. ‘How did you discover their names?’ ‘Some my father could recall. The members of the last coterie, who served King Bounty. Others I knew vaguely, when I was very small. A few I discovered by talking to some of the very old folk in the keep, asking them to recall what rumours they could of who might have been trained in the Skill. Though of course I did not ask in so many words. I did not, and still do not, wish my quest to be known.’ ‘May I ask why? He frowned and nodded toward his maps. ‘I am not as brilliant as your father was, my boy. Chivalry could make leaps of intuition that seemed nothing short of magical. What I discover are patterns. Does it seem likely to you that every Skilled one I can discover should be either dead, or unfindable? It seems to me that if I find one, and his name is known as a Skilled one, it might not be healthy for him.’ For a time we sat in silence. He was letting me come to my own conclusions. I was wise enough not to voice them aloud. ‘And Elderlings?’ I asked at last. ‘A different sort of riddle. At the time they were written about, all knew what they were. So I surmise. It would be the same if you went to find a scroll that explained exactly what a horse was. You would find many passing mentions of them, and a few that related directly to shoeing one, or to one stallion’s blood-line. But who amongst us would see the need to devote the labour and time to writing out exactly what a horse is?’ ‘I see.’ ‘So, again, it is a sifting out of detail. I have not had the time required to devote myself to such a task.’ For a moment he sat looking at me. Then he opened a little stone box on his desk and took out a key. ‘There is a cabinet in my bedchamber,’ he said slowly. ‘I have gathered there what scrolls I could find that made even a passing mention of the Elderlings. There are also some related to the Skill. I give you leave to pore through them. Ask Fedwren for good paper, and keep notes of what you discover. Look for patterns among those notes. And bring them to me, every month or so.’ I took the little brass key in my hand. It weighed strangely heavy, as if attached to the task the Fool had suggested and Verity had confirmed. Look for patterns, Verity had suggested. I suddenly saw one, a web woven from me to the Fool to Verity and back again. Like Verity’s other patterns, it did not seem to be an accident. I wondered who had originated the pattern. I glanced at Verity, but his thoughts had gone afar. I rose quietly to go. As I touched the door, he spoke to me. ‘Come to me. Very early tomorrow morning. To my tower.’ ‘Sir?’ ‘Perhaps we may yet discover another Skilled one, unsuspected in our midst.’ TWELVE (#ulink_22f39c13-a393-5abd-ab5d-e048111189af) Tasks (#ulink_22f39c13-a393-5abd-ab5d-e048111189af) Perhaps the most devastating part of our war with the Red Ships was the sense of helplessness that overpowered us. It was as if a terrible paralysis lay over the land and its rulers. The tactics of the Raiders were so incomprehensible that for the first year we stood still as if dazed. The second year of raiding, we tried to defend ourselves. But our skills were rusty; for too long they had been employed only against the chance Raiders, the opportunistic or the desperate. Against organized pirates who had studied our sea-coasts, our watchtower positions, our tides and currents, we were like children. Only Prince Verity’s Skilling provided any protection for us. How many ships he turned aside, how many navigators he muddled or pilots he confused, we will never know. Because his people could not grasp what he did for them, it was as if the Farseers did nothing. Folk saw only the raids that were successful, never the ships that went onto the rocks or sailed too far south during a storm. The people lost heart. The Inland duchies bridled at taxes to protect a coastline they didn’t share; the Coastal duchies were laboured under taxes that seemed to make no difference. So if the enthusiasm for Verity’s warships was a fickle thing, rising and falling with the folk’s current assessment of him, we cannot really blame the people. It seemed the longest winter of my life. I went from Verity’s study to Queen Kettricken’s apartments. I knocked and was admitted by the same little page girl as previously. With her merry little face and dark curly hair, Rosemary reminded me of some pool sprite. Within, the atmosphere of the room seemed subdued. Several of Kettricken’s women were there, and they all sat on stools around a frame holding a white linen cloth. They were doing edge-work on it, flowers and greenery done in bright threads. I had witnessed similar projects in Mistress Hasty’s apartments. Usually these activities seemed merry, with tongues wagging and friendly banter, needles flashing as they dragged their tails of bright thread through the heavy cloth. But here, it was near silent. The women worked with their heads bent, diligently, skilfully, but without gay talk. Scented candles, pink and green, burned in each corner of the room. Their subtle fragrances mingled scents over the frame. Kettricken presided over the work, her own hands as busy as any. She seemed the source of the stillness. Her face was composed, even peaceful. Her self-containment was so evident I could almost see the walls around her. Her look was pleasant, her eyes kind, but I did not sense she was really there at all. She was like a container of cool, still water. She was dressed in a long simple robe of green, more of the Mountain style than of Buckkeep. She had set her jewellery aside. She looked up at me and smiled questioningly. I felt like an intruder, an interruption to a group of studying pupils and their master. So instead of simply greeting her, I tried to justify my presence. I spoke formally, mindful of all the watching women. ‘Queen Kettricken. King-in-Waiting Verity has asked me to bring a message to you.’ Something seemed to flicker behind her eyes, and then was still again. ‘Yes,’ she said neutrally. None of the needles paused in their jumping dance, but I was sure that every ear waited for whatever tidings I might be bringing. ‘Upon a tower there was once a garden, called the Queen’s Garden. Once, King Verity said, it had pots of greenery, and ponds of water. It was a place of flowering plants, and fish, and wind chimes. It was his mother’s. My queen, he wishes you to have it.’ The stillness at the table grew profound. Kettricken’s eyes grew very wide. Carefully, she asked, ‘Are you certain of this message?’ ‘Of course, my lady.’ I was puzzled by her reaction. ‘He said it would give him a great deal of pleasure to see it restored. He spoke of it with great fondness, especially recalling the beds of flowering thyme.’ The joy in Kettricken’s face unfurled like the petals of a flower. She lifted a hand to her mouth, took a shivering breath through her fingers. Blood flushed through her pale face, rosing her cheeks. Her eyes shone. ‘I must see it,’ she exclaimed. ‘I must see it now!’ She stood abruptly. ‘Rosemary? My cloak and gloves, please.’ She beamed about at her ladies. ‘Will not you fetch your cloaks and gloves also, and accompany me?’ ‘My queen, the storm is most fierce today …’ one began hesitantly. But another, an older woman with a motherly cast to her features, Lady Modesty, stood slowly. ‘I shall join you on the tower top. Pluck!’ A small boy who had been drowsing in the corner leaped to his feet. ‘Dash off and fetch my cloak and gloves. And my hood.’ She turned back to Kettricken. ‘I recall that garden well, from Queen Constance’s days. Many a pleasant hour I spent there in her company. I will take joy in its restoration.’ There was a heartbeat’s pause, and then the other ladies were taking similar action. By the time I had returned with my own cloak, they were all ready to go. I felt distinctly peculiar as I led this procession of ladies through the keep, and then up the long climb to the Queen’s Garden. By then, counting the pages and the curious, there were nearly a score of people following Kettricken and me. As I led the way up the steep stone steps, Kettricken was right on my heels. The others trailed out in a long tail behind us. As I pushed on the heavy door, forcing it open against the layer of snow outside, Kettricken asked softly, ‘He’s forgiven me, hasn’t he?’ I paused to catch my breath. Shouldering the door open was doing the injury on my neck no good at all. My forearm throbbed dully. ‘My queen?’ I asked in reply. ‘My lord Verity has forgiven me. And this is his way of showing it. Oh, I shall make a garden for us to share. I shall never shame him again.’ As I stared at her rapt smile, she casually put her own shoulder to the door and shoved it open. While I stood blinking in the chill and the light of the winter day, she walked out onto the tower top. She waded through crusted snow calf-high, and paid it no mind at all. I looked around the barren tower top and wondered if I had lost my mind. There was nothing here, only the blown and frozen snow under the leaden sky. It had drifted up over the discarded statuary and pots along one wall. I braced myself for Kettricken’s disappointment. Instead, in the centre of the tower top, as the wind swirled the falling flakes around her, she stretched out her arms and spun in a circle, laughing like a child. ‘It’s so beautiful!’ she exclaimed. I ventured out after her. Others came behind me. In a moment Kettricken was by the tumbled piles of statuary and vases and basins that were heaped along one wall. She brushed snow from a cherub’s cheek as tenderly as if she were its mother. She swept a load of snow from a stone bench, and then picked up the cherub and set it upon it. It was not a small statue, but Kettricken used her size and strength energetically as she extricated several other pieces from the drifted snow. She exclaimed over them, insisting that her women come and admire them. I stood a little apart from them. The cold wind blew past me, awakening the pain in my injuries and bringing me hard memories. Here I had stood once, near naked to the cold, while Galen had tried to hammer the Skill ability into me. Here I had stood, in this very spot, while he beat me as if I were a dog. And here I had struggled with him and, in the struggle, burned and scarred over whatever Skill I had once had. This was a bitter place to me still. I wondered if any garden, no matter how green and peaceful, could charm me if it stood upon this stone. One low wall beckoned me. Had I gone to it and looked over the edge, I knew I would look down on rocky cliffs below. I did not. The quick end that fall had once offered me would never tempt me again. I pushed Galen’s old Skill-suggestion aside. I turned back to watch the Queen. Against the white backdrop of snow and stone, her colours came alive. There is a flower called a snowdrop, that sometimes blooms even as the banked snows of winter are retreating. She reminded me of one. Her pale hair was suddenly gold against the green cloak she wore, her lips red, her cheeks pink as the roses that would bloom here again. Her eyes were darting blue jewels as she excavated and exclaimed over each treasure. In contrast, her dark-tressed ladies with eyes of black or brown were cloaked and hooded against the winter chill. They stood quietly, agreeing with their queen and enjoying her enjoyment, but also rubbing chilled fingers together, or holding cloaks tightly closed against the wind. This, I thought, this is how Verity should see her, glowing with enthusiasm and life. Then he could not help but love her. Her vitality burned, even as his did when he hunted or rode. Or had once. ‘It is, of course, quite lovely,’ one Lady Hope ventured to say. ‘But very cold. And there is little that can be done here until the snow melts and the wind grows kinder.’ ‘Oh, but you are wrong!’ Queen Kettricken exclaimed. She laughed aloud as she straightened up from her treasures, walked again to the centre of the tower top. ‘A garden begins in the heart. I must sweep the snow and ice from the tower top tomorrow. And then, all these benches and statues and pots must be set out. But how? Like the spokes of a wheel? As a charming maze? Formally, by variation of height and theme? There are a thousand ways they could be arranged, and I must experiment. Unless, perhaps, my lord will remember it for me just as it once was. Then I shall restore it to him, the garden of his childhood!’ ‘Tomorrow, Queen Kettricken. For the skies grow dark, and colder,’ advised Lady Modesty. I could see what the climb followed by standing in the cold had cost the older woman. But she smiled kindly as she spoke. ‘I could, perhaps, tell you tonight what I remember of this garden.’ ‘Would you?’ Kettricken exclaimed, and clasped both of her hands in her own. The smile she shed on Lady Modesty was like a blessing. ‘I should be glad to.’ And on those words we slowly began to file from the rooftop. I was the last to go. I pulled the door closed behind me and stood for a moment letting my eyes adjust to the darkness in the tower. Below me, candles bobbed as the others descended. I blessed whatever page had thought to run and fetch them. I followed more slowly, my whole arm, from bite to sword cut, throbbing nastily. I thought of Kettricken’s joy, and was glad of it, even as I guiltily reflected that it was built on a false foundation. Verity had been relieved at my suggestion to turn the garden over to Kettricken, but the act had not the significance to him that it did to Kettricken. She would attack this project as if she were building a shrine to their love. I doubted that by the morrow Verity would even recall he had gifted her with it. I felt both traitorous and foolish as I descended the steps. I went to the evening meal thinking I wished to be alone, so I avoided the hall, and took myself instead to the guardroom off the kitchen. There I encountered both Burrich and Hands at their meal. When they invited me to join them, I could not refuse. But once I was seated, it was as if I were not there. They did not exclude me from their conversation but they spoke of a life I no longer shared. The immensely rich detail of all that went on in the stables and mews eluded me now. They discussed problems with the confident briskness of men who shared an intimate background knowledge. More and more, I found myself nodding at their words, but contributing nothing. They got along well. Burrich did not speak down to Hands. But Hands did not conceal his respect for a man he clearly regarded as his superior. Hands had learned much from Burrich in a short time. He had left Buckkeep as a lowly stable-boy last autumn. He now spoke competently of the hawks and dogs and asked solid questions concerning Burrich’s breeding choices for the horses. I was still eating when they got up to leave. Hands was concerned about a dog that had been kicked by a horse earlier in the day. They wished me good evening, and continued to talk together as they went out the door. I sat quietly. There were others about me, guards and soldiers, eating and drinking and talking. The pleasant sounds of talk, of spoon against the pot’s side, the thud as someone cut a wedge of cheese from a wheel was like a music. The room smelled of food and folk, of the wood fire and spilled ale and the rich stew bubbling. I should have felt content, not restless. Nor melancholy. Not alone. Brother? Coming. Meet me at the old pig shed. Nighteyes had been hunting afar. I was there first, and I stood in the darkness and waited for him. There was a pot of unguent in my pouch, and I bore a sack of bones as well. The snow whirled around me, an endless dance of winter sparks. My eyes probed the darkness. I sensed him, felt him near, but he still managed to spring out and startle me. He was merciful, giving me no more than a nip and a shake on my uninjured wrist. We went inside the hut. I kindled the stump of a candle and looked at his shoulder. I had been weary last night, and in pain, so I was pleased to see I had done a good job. I had sheared the dense hair and undercoat close to his hide around the cut and wiped the injury with clean snow. The scab on it was thick and dark. I could tell it had bled a bit more today. But not much. I smeared my unguent over it in a thick greasy layer. Nighteyes winced slightly, but suffered my ministrations. Afterward, he turned his head and gave a questioning sniff to the spot. Goosegrease, he observed, and began to lick at it. I let him. Nothing in the medicine would harm him, and his tongue would push it into the wound better than my fingers could. Hungry? I asked. Not really. There are mice in plenty along the old wall, then as he got a whiff of the bag I’d brought, but a bit of beef or venison would be just as welcome. I tumbled the bones out in a heap for him and he flung himself down beside them to possess them. He snuffed them over, then picked out a meaty knuckle to work on. We hunt soon? He imaged Forged ones for me. In a day or so. I want to be able to wield a sword the next time. I don’t blame you. Cow’s teeth are not much of a weapon. But don’t wait too long. Why is that? Because I saw some today. Senseless ones. They had found a winter-killed buck on a stream bank and were eating it. Fouled, stinking meat, and they were eating it. But it won’t hold them for long. Tomorrow, they’ll be coming closer. Then we hunt tomorrow. Show me where you saw them. I closed my eyes, and recognized the bit of creek bank that he recalled for me. I did not know you ranged that far! Did you go all that way today, with an injured shoulder? It was not far. I sensed a bit of bravado in that answer. And I knew we would be seeking them. I can travel much faster alone. Easier for me to find them out alone, and then take you to them for the hunting. It is scarcely hunting, Nighteyes. No. But it is a thing we do for our pack. I sat with him for a while in companionable silence, watching him gnaw on the bones I had brought him. He had grown well this winter. Given a good diet and freed from the confines of a cage, he had put on weight and muscle. Snow might fall on his coat, but the thicker black guard-hairs interspersed throughout his grey coat shed the snowflakes and kept any moisture from reaching his skin. He smelled healthy, too, not the rank dogginess of an overfed canine kept inside and unexercised, but a wild, clean scent. You saved my life, yesterday. You saved me from a death in a cage. I think that I had been alone so long, I had forgotten what it meant to have a friend. He stopped chewing his bone and looked up at me in mild amusement. A friend? Too small a word for it, brother. And in the wrong direction. So do not look at me like that. I will be to you what you are to me. Bond brother, and pack. But I am not all you will ever need. He went back to chewing his bone, and I sat chewing over what he had just advised. Sleep well, brother, I told him as I left. He snorted. Sleep? Hardly. The moon may yet break through this overcast and give me some hunting light. But if not, I may sleep. I nodded and left him to his bones. As I walked back to the castle I felt less dismal and alone than I had before. But I also had a twinge of guilt that Nighteyes would so adapt his life and will to mine. It did not seem a clean thing for him to do, this snuffing out of Forged ones. For the pack. This is for the good of the pack. The senseless ones are trying to come into our territory. We cannot allow it. He sounded comfortable with it, and surprised that it should bother me. I nodded to ourselves in the dark and pushed my way through the kitchen door, back into yellow light and warmth. I climbed the stairs to my room, thinking of what I had wrought over the past few days. I had resolved to set the cub free. Instead, we had become brothers. I was not sorry. I had gone to warn Verity of new Forged ones near Buckkeep. Instead, I had found he already knew about them, and had gained for myself the task of studying the Elderlings and trying to discover other Skilled ones. I had asked him to give the garden to Kettricken, to busy her mind away from her hurts. Instead, I had deceived her, and bound her more to her love for Verity. I paused to catch my breath on a landing. Perhaps, I reflected, we all danced to the Fool’s tune. Had not he suggested some of these very things to me? I felt again the brass key in my pocket. Now was as good a time as any. Verity was not in his bedchamber, but Charim was. He had no qualms about allowing me to come in and use the key. I took an armload of the scrolls I found there; there were more than I had expected. I bore them back to my room and set them down on my dressing chest. I built up the fire in the fireplace. I peeked at the dressing on the bite on my neck. It was an ugly wad of cloth, saturated with blood. I knew I should change it. I dreaded pulling it loose. In a while. I put more wood on my fire. I sorted through the scrolls. Spidery little writing, faded illustrations. Then I lifted my eyes and looked around my room. A bed. A chest. A small stand by the bed. An ewer and bowl for wash water. A truly ugly tapestry of King Wisdom conferring with a yellowish Elderling. A branch of candles on the mantel. It had scarcely changed in the years I had lived here from the first night I had moved into it. It was a bare and dreary room, devoid of imagination. Suddenly I was a bare and dreary person, devoid of imagination. I fetched and I hunted and I killed. I obeyed. More hound than man. And not even a favoured hound, to be petted and praised. One of the working pack. When was the last time I had heard from Shrewd? Or Chade? Even the Fool mocked me. What was I, any more, to anyone, except a tool? Was there anyone left who cared for me, myself? Suddenly I could no longer abide my own company. I set down the scroll I had picked up and left my room. When I knocked at the door of Patience’s room, there was a pause. ‘Who is it?’ came Lacey’s voice. ‘Only FitzChivalry.’ ‘FitzChivalry!’ A bit of surprise in the tone. It was late for a visit from me. Usually I came during the day. Then I was comforted to hear the sound of a bar being removed, and a latch worked. She had paid attention to what I had told her, I thought. The door opened slowly and Lacey stepped back to admit me, smiling dubiously. I stepped in, greeting Lacey warmly, and then glanced about for Patience. She was in the other chamber, I surmised. But in a corner, eyes lowered over needlework, sat Molly. She did not look up at me or acknowledge my presence at all. Her hair was tidied back in a bun under a lacy little cap. On another woman, her blue dress might have been simple and modest. On Molly it was drab. Her eyes stayed down on her work. I glanced at Lacey to find her regarding me levelly. I looked at Molly again and something inside me gave way. It took me four steps to cross the room to her. I knelt beside her chair and as she drew back from me, I seized her hand and carried it to my lips. ‘FitzChivalry!’ Patience’s voice behind me was outraged. I glanced at her framed in the doorway. Her lips were set flat in anger. I turned away from her. Molly had turned her face aside from me. I held her hand and spoke quietly. ‘I cannot go on like this any more. No matter how foolish, no matter how dangerous, no matter what any other may think. I cannot be always apart from you.’ She pulled her hand away from me, and I let it go not to hurt her fingers. But I grasped at her skirt and clutched a fold of it like a stubborn child. ‘At least speak to me,’ I begged her, but it was Patience who spoke. ‘FitzChivalry, this is not seemly. Stop it at once.’ ‘It was not seemly, nor wise, nor appropriate for my father to court you as he did, either. But he did not hesitate. I suspect he felt much as I do right now.’ I did not look away from Molly. That won me a moment of startled silence from Patience. But it was Molly who set aside her needlework and rose. She stepped away and when it became clear that I must let go or tear the fabric of her skirt, I released it. She stepped clear of me. ‘If my Lady Patience will excuse me for the evening?’ ‘Certainly,’ Patience replied, but her voice was not at all certain. ‘If you go away, there is nothing for me.’ I knew I sounded too dramatic. I was still on my knees by her chair. ‘If I stay, there is still nothing for you.’ Molly spoke levelly as she took off her apron and hung it on a hook. ‘I am a serving-girl. You are a young noble, of the royal family. There can never be anything between us. I’ve come to see that, over the last few weeks.’ ‘No.’ I rose and stepped towards her, but forbore to touch her. ‘You are Molly and I am Newboy.’ ‘Maybe. Once.’ Molly conceded. Then she sighed. ‘But not now. Do not make this harder for me than it is, sir. You must leave me in peace. I have no where else to go; I must stay here and work, at least until I earn enough …’ She shook her head suddenly. ‘Good evening, my lady. Lacey. Sir.’ She turned aside from me. Lacey stood silently. I noticed she did not open the door for Molly, but Molly did not pause there. The door shut very firmly behind her. A terrible silence welled up in the room. ‘Well,’ Patience breathed at last. ‘I am glad to see that at least one of you has some sense. What on earth were you thinking, FitzChivalry, to barge in here and all but attack my maid?’ ‘I was thinking that I loved her,’ I said bluntly. I dropped into a chair and put my head into my hands. ‘I was thinking that I am very weary of being so alone.’ ‘That is why you came here?’ Patience sounded almost offended. ‘No. I came here to see you. I did not know she would be here. But when I saw her, it just came over me. It’s true, Patience. I cannot go on like this.’ ‘Well, you’d better, because you’re going to have to.’ The words were hard, but she sighed as she said them. ‘Does Molly speak of it … of me? To you. I must know. Please.’ I battered at their silence and exchanged looks. ‘Does she truly wish me to leave her alone? Have I become so despised of her? Have I not done all you demanded of me? I have waited, Patience. I have avoided her, I have taken care not to cause talk. But when is an end to it? Or is this your plan? To keep us apart until we forget each other? It cannot work. I am not a babe, and this is not some bauble you hide from me, to distract me with other toys. This is Molly. And she is my heart and I will not let her go.’ ‘I am afraid you must.’ Patience said the words heavily. ‘Why? Has she chosen another?’ Patience batted my words away as if they were flies. ‘No. She is not fickle, not that one. She is smart and diligent and full of wit and spirit. I can see how you lost your heart to her. But she also has pride. She has come to see what you refuse. That you come, each of you, from places so far apart that there can be no meeting in the middle. Even were Shrewd to consent to a marriage, which I very much doubt, how would you live? You cannot leave the keep, to go down to Buckkeep Town and work in a candle shop. You know you cannot. And what status would she enjoy if you kept her here? Despite her goodness, people who did not know her well would see only the differences in your rank. She would be seen as a low appetite you had indulged. “Oh, the Bastard, he had an eye for his step-mother’s maid. I fancy he caught her around the corner one time too many, and now he has to pay the piper.” You know the kind of talk I mean.’ I did. ‘I don’t care what folk would say.’ ‘Perhaps you could endure it. But what of Molly? What of your children?’ I was silent. Patience looked down at her hands idle in her lap. ‘You are young, FitzChivalry.’ She spoke very quietly, very soothingly. ‘I know you do not believe it now. But, you may meet another. One closer to your station. And she may also. Maybe she deserves that chance of happiness. Perhaps you should draw back. Give yourself a year or so. And if your heart has not changed by then, well …’ ‘My heart will not change.’ ‘Nor will hers, I fear.’ Patience spoke bluntly. ‘She cared for you, Fitz. Not knowing who you really were, she gave her heart to you. She has said as much. I do not wish to betray her confidences to me, but if you do as she asks and leave her alone, she can never tell you herself. So I will speak, and hope you hold me harmless for the pain I must give you. She knows this can never be. She does not want to be a servant marrying a noble. She does not want her children to be the daughters and sons of a keep servant. So she saves the little I am able to pay her. She buys, her wax and her scents, and works still at her trade, as best as she is able. She means to save enough, somehow, to begin again, with her own chandlery. It will not be soon. But that is her goal.’ Patience paused. ‘She sees no place in that life for you.’ I sat a long time, thinking. Neither Lacey nor Patience spoke. Lacey moved slowly through our stillness, brewing tea. She pushed a cup of it into my hand. I lifted my eyes and tried to smile at her. I set the tea carefully aside. ‘Did you know, from the beginning, that it would come to this’ I asked. ‘I feared it,’ Patience said simply. ‘But I also knew there was nothing I could do about it. Nor can you.’ I sat still, not even thinking. Under the old hut, in a scratched out hollow, Nighteyes was dozing with his nose over a bone. I touched him softly, not even waking him. His calm breathing was an anchor. I steadied myself against him. ‘Fitz? What will you do? Tears stung my eyes. I blinked, and it passed. ‘What I am told,’ I said heavily. ‘When have I ever done otherwise?’ Patience was silent as I got slowly to my feet. The wound on my neck was throbbing. I suddenly wanted only to sleep. She nodded to me as I excused myself. At the door I paused. ‘Why I came this evening. Besides to see you. Queen Kettricken will be restoring the Queen’s Garden. The one on top of the tower. She mentioned she would like to know how the garden was originally arranged. In Queen Constance’s time. I thought perhaps you could recall it for her.’ Patience hesitated. ‘I do recall it. Very well.’ She was quiet for a moment, then brightened. ‘I will draw it out for you, and explain it. Then you could go to the Queen.’ I met her eyes. ‘I think you should go to her. I think it would please her very much.’ ‘Fitz, I have never been good with people.’ Her voice faltered. ‘I am sure she would find me odd. Boring. I could not –’ Her voice stuttered to a halt. ‘Queen Kettricken is very alone,’ I said quietly. ‘There are ladies around her, but I do not think she has real friends. Once, you were Queen-in-Waiting. Cannot you recall what it was like?’ ‘Very different for her than it was for me, I should think.’ ‘Probably,’ I agreed. I turned to go. ‘For one thing, you had an attentive and loving husband.’ Behind me Patience made a small shocked sound. ‘And I do not think Prince Regal was as … clever then as he is now. And you had Lacey to support you. Yes, Lady Patience. I am sure it is very different for her. Much harder.’ ‘FitzChivalry!’ ‘I paused at the door. ‘Yes, my lady?’ ‘Turn about when I speak to you!’ I turned slowly and she actually stamped the floor at me. ‘This ill becomes you. You seek to shame me! Think you that I do not do my duty? That I do not know my duty? ‘My lady?’ ‘I shall go to her, tomorrow. And she will think me odd and awkward and flighty. She will be bored with me and wish I had never come. And then you shall apologize to me for making me do it.’ ‘I am sure you know best, my lady.’ ‘Take your courtier’s manners and go. Insufferable boy.’ She stamped her foot again, then whirled and fled back into her bedchamber. Lacey held the door for me as I left. Her lips were folded in a flat line, her demeanour subdued. ‘Well?’ I asked her as I left, knowing she had words left to say to me. ‘I was thinking that you are very like your father,’ Lacey observed tartly. ‘Except not quite as stubborn. He did not give up as easily as you have.’ She shut the door firmly behind me. I looked at the closed door for a while, then headed back to my room. I knew I had to change the dressing on my neck wound. I climbed the flight of stairs, my arm throbbing at every step. I halted on the landing. For a time I watched the candles burning in their holders. I climbed the next flight of stairs. I knocked steadily for several minutes. A yellow candle light had been coming out the crack under her door, but as I knocked, it suddenly winked out. I took out my knife and experimented, loudly, with the latch on her door. She’d changed it. There seemed to be a bar as well, a heavier one than the tip of my blade would lift. I gave it up and left. Down is always easier than up. In fact, it can be too much easier, when one arm is already injured. I looked down at the waves breaking like white lace on the rocks far away. Nighteyes had been right. The moon had managed to come out for a bit. The rope slipped a bit through my gloved hand and I grunted as my injured arm had to take my weight. Only a little more, I promised myself. I let myself down another two steps. The ledge of Molly’s window was narrower than I had hoped it would be. I kept the rope in a wrap around my arm as I perched there. My knife blade slipped easily into the crack between the shutters; they were very poorly fitted. The upper catch had yielded and I was working on the lower one when I heard her voice from inside. ‘If you come in, I shall scream. The guards will come.’ ‘Then you’d best put on tea for them,’ I replied grimly and went back to wriggling at the lower catch. In a moment, Molly snatched the shutters open. She stood framed in the window, the dancing light of the fire on the hearth illuminating her from behind. She was in her nightdress, but she hadn’t braided her hair back yet. It was loose and gleaming from brushing. She had thrown a shawl over her shoulders. ‘Go away,’ she told me fiercely. ‘Get out of here.’ ‘I can’t,’ I panted. ‘I haven’t strength to climb back up, and the rope isn’t long enough to reach to the base of the wall.’ ‘You can’t come in,’ she repeated stubbornly. ‘Very well.’ I seated myself on the windowsill, one leg inside the room, the other dangling out of the window. Wind gusted past me, stirring her night robe and fanning the flames of the fire. I said nothing. After a moment, she began to shiver. ‘What do you want?’ she demanded angrily. ‘You. I wanted to tell you that tomorrow I am going to the King to ask permission to marry you.’ The words came out of my mouth with no planning. I was suddenly giddily aware that I could say and do anything. Anything at all. Molly stared a moment. Her voice was low as she said, ‘I do not wish to marry you.’ ‘I wasn’t going to tell him that part.’ I found myself grinning at her. ‘You are intolerable!’ ‘Yes. And very cold. Please, at least let me come in out of the cold.’ She did not give me permission. But she did stand back from the window. I jumped lightly in, ignoring the jolt to my arm. I closed and fastened the shutters. I walked across the room. I knelt by her hearth and built up the fire well with logs to chase the chill from the room. Then I stood, thawing my hands at it. Molly said not a word. She stood sword straight, her arms crossed on her chest. I glanced over at her and smiled. She didn’t smile. ‘You should go.’ I felt my own smile fade. ‘Molly, please, just talk to me. I thought, the last time we spoke, that we understood each other. Now you don’t speak to me, you turn away … I don’t know what changed, I don’t understand what is happening between us.’ ‘Nothing.’ She suddenly looked very fragile. ‘Nothing is happening between us. Nothing can happen between us. FitzChivalry’ (and that name sounded so strange on her lips), ‘I’ve had time to think. If you had come to me, like this, a week ago, or a month ago, impetuous and smiling, I know I would have been won over.’ She permitted herself the ghost of a sad smile, as if she were remembering the way a dead child had skipped on some long ago summer day. ‘But you didn’t. You were correct and practical, and did all the right things, and, foolish as it may sound, that hurt me. I told myself that if you loved me as deeply as you had declared you did, nothing, not walls, not manners or reputation or protocol, would get in the way of your seeing me. That night, when you came, when we … but it changed nothing. You did not come back.’ ‘But it was for your sake, for your reputation …’ I began desperately. ‘Hush. I told you it was foolish. But feelings do not have to be wise. Feelings just are. Your loving me was not wise. Nor my caring for you. I’ve come to see that. And I’ve come to see that wisdom must overrule feelings.’ She sighed. ‘I was so angry when your uncle first spoke to me. So outraged. He made me defiant, he gave me a steel resolve to stay in spite of everything that stood between us. But I am not a stone. Even if I were, even a stone can be worn away by the constant cold drip of common sense.’ ‘My uncle? The prince?’ I was incredulous at the betrayal. She nodded slowly. ‘He wished me to keep his visit to myself. Nothing, he said, could be gained by your knowing of it. He needed to act in his family’s best interests. He said I should understand that. I did, but it made me angry. It was only over time that he made me see that it was in my own best interests as well.’ She paused and brushed a hand over her cheek. She was crying. Silently, just the tears running as she spoke. I walked across the room to her. Tentatively, I took her into my arms. She didn’t resist me, and that surprised me. I held her carefully, as if she were a butterfly that might be crushed too easily. She leaned her head forward, so that her forehead barely rested on my shoulder, and spoke into my chest. ‘In a few more months, I will have saved enough that I can start out on my own again. Not open a business, but rent a room somewhere, and find work to sustain me. And begin to start saving for a shop. That’s what I intend to do. Lady Patience is kind, and Lacey has become a real friend to me. But I do not like being a servant. And I will do it no longer than I have to.’ She stopped speaking and stood still in my arms. She was trembling lightly, as if from exhaustion. She seemed to have run out of words. ‘What did my uncle say to you?’ I asked carefully. ‘Oh.’ She swallowed, and moved her face lightly against me. I think she wiped tears on my shirt. ‘Only what I should have expected him to say. When first he came to me, he was cold and aloof. He thought me a … street whore, I suppose. He warned me sternly that the King would tolerate no more scandals. He demanded to know if I was with child. Of course, I was angry. I told him it was impossible that I should be. That we had never …’ Molly paused and I could feel how shamed she had been that anyone could even ask such a question. ‘So then he told me that if that was so, it was good. He asked what I thought I deserved, as reparation for your deceptions.’ The word was like a little knife twisted in my guts. The fury I felt was building, but I forced myself to keep silent that she might speak it all out. ‘I told him I expected nothing. That I had deceived myself as much as you had deceived me. So then, he offered me money. To go away. And never speak of you. Or what had happened between us.’ She was having trouble speaking. Her voice kept getting higher and tighter on each phrase. She fought for a semblance of calm I knew she didn’t feel. ‘He offered me enough to open a chandlery. I was angry. I told him I could not be paid to stop loving someone. That if the offer of money could make me love, or not love, then I was truly a whore. He grew very angry, but he left.’ She gave a sudden shuddering sob, then held herself still. I moved my hands lightly over her shoulders, feeling the tension there. I stroked her hair, softer than any horse’s mane, and sleeker. She had fallen silent. ‘Regal makes mischief,’ I heard myself say. ‘He seeks to injure me by driving you away. To shame me by hurting you.’ I shook my head to myself, wondering at my stupidity. ‘I should have foreseen this. All I thought was that he might whisper against you, or arrange for physical harm to befall you. But Burrich is right. The man has no morals, is bound by no rules.’ ‘He was cold, at first. But never coarsely rude. He came only as the King’s messenger, he said, and came himself to save scandal, that no more should know of it than needed to. He sought to avoid talk, not make it. Later, after we had talked a few times, he said he regretted to see me cornered so, and that he would tell the King it was not of my devising. He even bought candles of me, and arranged for others to know what I had to sell. I believe he is trying to help, FitzChivalry. Or so he sees it.’ To hear her defend Regal cut me deeper than any insult or rebuke she could level at me. My fingers tangled in her soft hair and I unwound them carefully. Regal. All the weeks I had gone alone, avoiding her, not speaking to her lest it cause scandal. Leaving her alone, so that Regal could come in my stead. Not courting her, no, but winning her with his practised charm and studied words. Chopping away at her image of me while I was not there to contradict anything he said. Making himself out to be her ally, while I was left voiceless to become the unthinking callow youth, the thoughtless villain. I bit my tongue before I spoke any more ill of him to her. It would only sound like a shallow angry boy striking back at one who sought to deny his will. ‘Have you ever spoken of Regal’s visits to Patience or Lacey? What did they say of him?’ She shook her head, and the movement loosed the fragrance of her hair. ‘He cautioned me not to speak of it. “Women talk” he said, and I know that is true. I should not even have spoken of it to you. He said that Patience and Lacey would respect me more if it seemed I had reached this decision on my own. He said, also … that you would not let me go … if you thought the decision came from him. That you must believe that I turned away from you on my own.’ ‘He knows me that well,’ I conceded to her. ‘I should not have told you,’ she murmured. She pushed a little away from me, to look up into my eyes. ‘I don’t know why I did.’ Her eyes and her hair were the colours of a forest. ‘Perhaps you did not want me to let you go?’ I ventured. ‘You must,’ she said. ‘We both know there is no future for us.’ For an instant, all was stillness. The fire crackled softly to itself. Neither of us moved. But somehow, I stepped to another place, where I was achingly aware of every scent and touch of her. Her eyes and the herb scents of her skin and hair were one with the warmth and suppleness of her body under the soft woollen night robe. I experienced her as if she were a new hue suddenly revealed to my eyes. All concerns, even all thoughts, were suspended in that sudden awareness. I know I trembled, for she put her hands on my shoulders and clasped them, to steady me. Warmth flowed through me from her hands. I looked down into her eyes and wondered at what I saw there. She kissed me. That simple act, of offering up her mouth to mine, was like the opening of a floodgate. What followed was a seamless continuation of her kiss. We did not pause to consider wisdom or morality, we did not hesitate at all. The permission we gave each other was absolute. We ventured together into that newness, and I cannot imagine a deeper joining than our shared amazement brought us. We both came whole to that night, unfettered by expectations or memories of others. I had no more right to her than she had to me. But I gave and I took and I swear I shall never regret it. The memory of that night’s sweet awkwardness is the truest possession of my soul. My trembling fingers jumbled the ribbon at the neck closure of her nightgown into a hopeless knot. Molly seemed wise and sure as she touched me, only to betray her surprise with her sharply in-drawn breath when I responded. It did not matter. Our ignorance yielded to a knowing older than both of us. I strove to be both gentle and strong, but found myself amazed at her strength and gentleness. I have heard it called a dance, I have heard it called a battle. Some men speak of it with a knowing laugh, some with a sneer. I have heard the sturdy market women chuckling over it like hens clucking over bread crumbs; I have been approached by bawds who spoke their wares as boldly as peddlers hawking fresh fish. For myself, I think some things are beyond words. The colour blue can only be experienced, as can the scent of jasmine or the sound of a flute. The curve of a warm, bared shoulder, the uniquely feminine softness of a breast, the startled sound one makes when all barriers suddenly yield, the perfume of her throat, the taste of her skin are all but parts, and sweet as they may be, they do not embody the whole. A thousand such details still would not illustrate it. The fireplace logs burned down to dark red embers. The candles had long since guttered out. It seemed we were in a place we had entered as strangers, and discovered to be home. I think I would have given away all the rest of the world, just to remain in the drowsy nest of tousled blankets and feather quilts, breathing her warm stillness. Brother, this is good. I leaped like a hooked fish, jolting Molly out of her drowsing reverie. ‘What is it?’ ‘A cramp in my calf,’ I lied, and she laughed, believing me. So simple a fib, but I was suddenly shamed by the lie, by all the lies I had ever spoken and all the truths I had made into lies by leaving them unspoken. I opened my lips to tell her all. That I was the royal assassin, the King’s killing tool. That the knowledge of her that she had given me that night had been shared by my brother the wolf. That she had given herself so freely to a man who killed other men and shared his life with an animal. It was unthinkable. To tell her those things would hurt and shame her. She would have felt permanently dirtied by the touch we had shared. I told myself that I could stand to have her despise me, but I could not stand to have her despise herself. I told myself that I clenched my lips shut because it was the nobler thing to do, to keep these secrets to myself was better than to let the truth destroy her. Did I lie to myself, then? Don’t we all? I lay there, with her arms twined warm around me, with the length of her body warming my side, and promised myself that I would change. I would stop being all those things, and then I would never need tell her. Tomorrow, I promised myself, I would tell Chade and Shrewd that I would no longer kill for them. Tomorrow, I would make Nighteyes understand why I must sever my bond with him. Tomorrow. But today, in this day that was already beginning to dawn, I had to go forth with the wolf at my side, to hunt the Forged ones and slay them. Because I wanted to go to Shrewd with a fresh triumph, to put him in the mood to grant the boon I would ask. This very evening, when my killing was done, I would ask him to allow Molly and me to marry. I promised myself that his permission would mark the beginning of my new life as a man who would no longer have to keep secrets from the woman he loved. I kissed her forehead, then set her arms softly aside from me. ‘I have to leave you,’ I whispered as she stirred. ‘But I pray it will not be for long. Today I go to Shrewd, to ask permission to marry you.’ She stirred and opened her eyes. She watched in a sort of wonder as I went naked from her bed. I put more wood on the fire, then avoided her gaze as I gathered my scattered clothes and put them on. She was not so shy, for as I looked up from fastening my belt, I found her eyes upon me, smiling. I blushed. ‘I feel we are wed already,’ she whispered. ‘I cannot imagine how the speaking of any vows could make us more truly joined.’ ‘Nor I.’ I came to sit on the edge of her bed, to take her hands in mine once again. ‘But there will be great satisfaction to me in letting all know of it. And that, my lady, requires a wedding. And a public speaking of all my heart has already vowed to you. But for now, I must go.’ ‘Not yet. Stay a while yet. I am sure we have some small time left before anyone else begins to stir.’ I leaned over her to kiss her. ‘I have to go now, to retrieve a certain rope that is hanging from the battlements to my lady’s window. Otherwise, it might excite comment.’ ‘At least stay long enough for me to help me change the dressings on your arm and neck. However did you hurt yourself so? I meant to ask you last night, but …’ I smiled down at her. ‘I know. There were more interesting things to pursue. No, my dear. But I promise you I shall take care of it this morning, in my room.’ To call her ‘my dear’ made me feel a man as no words ever had before. I kissed her, promising myself that I would go immediately afterwards, but found myself lingering to her touch on my neck. I sighed. ‘I do have to go.’ ‘I know. But you have not told me how you injured yourself.’ I could hear in her voice that she did not think my hurts were serious, but only tried to use the subject to detain me at her side. But still it shamed me, and I tried to make the lie as harmless as possible. ‘Dog bites. A bitch in the stable with pups. I guess I did not know her as well as I had thought. I bent to pick up one of her pups, and she went for me.’ ‘Poor boy. Well. Are you sure you cleaned it well? Animal bites infect very easily.’ ‘I’ll clean it again when I dress it. Now. I must go.’ I covered her over with the feather quilt, but not without a twinge of regret at leaving that warmth. ‘Get what little sleep is left for you before day breaks.’ ‘FitzChivalry!’ I paused at the door, turned back. ‘Yes?’ ‘Come to me tonight. Regardless of what the King may say.’ I opened my mouth to protest. ‘Promise me! Otherwise, I shall not survive this day. Promise me you will return to me. For no matter what the King may say, know this. I am your wife now. And always will be. Always.’ My heart stood still in me at that gift, and I could do no more than dumbly nod. My look must have been enough, for the smile she bestowed on me was bright and golden as midsummer sunshine. I lifted the bar and unhooked the latch of the door. Easing it open, I peered out into the darkened hallway. ‘Be sure you lock up after me,’ I whispered, and then I slipped away from her into the little that was left of the night. THIRTEEN (#ulink_de43dab0-5f1f-5ac2-afe6-7f029f6429cf) Hunting (#ulink_de43dab0-5f1f-5ac2-afe6-7f029f6429cf) The Skill, like any other discipline, can be taught in a number of ways. Galen, Skillmaster under King Shrewd, used techniques of deprivation and enforced hardship to break down a student’s inner walls. Once reduced to a level of cowering survival, the student was susceptible to Galen’s invasion of his mind and his enforced acceptance of Galen’s Skilling techniques. While the students who survived his training and went on to become his coterie could all Skill reliably, none were especially strong of talent. Galen reportedly congratulated himself at taking students of little talent, and teaching them to Skill reliably. This may be the case. Or perhaps he took students with great potential, and ground them down to adequate tools. One may contrast Galen’s techniques with that of Solicity, Skill mistress before him. She supplied the initial instruction to the then young princes Verity and Chivalry. Verity’s account of his instruction indicates much was accomplished by gentleness and lulling her students into lowering their barriers. Both Verity and Chivalry emerged from her training as adept and strong Skill users. Her death unfortunately occurred before their full adult instruction was complete, and before Galen had advanced to a journey status as a Skill instructor. One can only wonder how much knowledge of the Skill went to her grave with her, and what potentials of this royal magic may never be rediscovered. I spent little time in my room that morning. The fire had gone out, but the chill I felt there was more than that of an unwarmed room. This room was an empty shell of a life soon to be left behind. It seemed more barren than ever. I stood, bared to the waist, and shivered as I washed myself with unwarmed water, and belatedly changed the bandaging on my arm and neck. I did not deserve for those wounds to look as clean as they did. Nonetheless, they were healing well. I dressed warmly, a padded mountain shirt going on under a heavy leather jerkin. I pulled on heavy leather over-trousers, and laced them close to my legs with strips of leather. I took down my work blade, and armed myself with a short dagger as well. From my working kit, I took a small pot of powdered death’s cap. Despite all this, I felt unprotected, and equally foolish as I left my room. I went straight to Verity’s tower. I knew he would be awaiting me, expecting to work with me on Skilling. Somehow, I would have to convince him that I needed to hunt Forged ones today. I climbed the stairs swiftly, wishing this day were over. All of my life was presently focused on the moment when I could knock on King Shrewd’s door and ask his permission to marry Molly. The mere thought of her flooded me with such a strange combination of unfamiliar feelings that my strides on the stairs slowed as I tried to consider them all. Then I gave it over as useless. ‘Molly,’ I said aloud, but softly, to myself. Like a magic word, it strengthened my resolve and spurred me on. I stopped outside the door and rapped loudly. I felt rather than heard Verity’s permission to enter. I pushed open the door and went inside. I shut the door behind me. Physically, the room was still. A cool breeze sprang in from the open window and Verity sat enthroned before it on his old chair. His hands rested idly on the windowsill and his eyes were fixed on the distant horizon. His cheeks were pink, his dark hair ruffled by the wind’s fingers. Save for the soft current from the window, the room was still and silent. Yet I felt as if I had stepped into a whirlwind. Verity’s consciousness washed against me and I was drawn into his mind, swept along with his thoughts and his Skilling far out to sea. He carried me with him on a dizzying tour of every ship within the range of his mind. Here we brushed the thoughts of a merchant captain, ‘… if the price is good enough, load up with oil for the return trip …’ and then skipped from him to a net mender patching hastily, her fid flying, grumbling to herself as the captain railed at her to be faster about her task. We found a pilot worrying about his pregnant wife at home, and three families out digging clams in the dim morning light before the tide came in to cover the beds again. These, and a dozen others we visited before Verity suddenly recalled us to our own bodies and place. I felt as giddy as a small boy who has been boosted aloft by his father to perceive the whole chaos of the fair before being returned to his own feet and his child’s view of knees and legs. I approached the window to stand beside Verity. He still stared out over the water to the horizons. But I suddenly understood his maps and why he created them. The network of lives he had touched so briefly for me were as if he had opened his palm to reveal he cupped a handful of priceless gems. People. His people. It was not some rocky coast or rich pastureland that he stood watch over. It was these folk, these bright glimpses of other lives unlived by him, but cherished all the same. This was Verity’s kingdom. Geographical boundaries marked on parchment enclosed them for him. For a moment I shared his bafflement that anyone could wish harm on these people, and shared, too, his fierce determination that not one more life should be lost to the Red Ships. The world steadied around me, as vertigo passing, and all was still in the tower top. Verity did not look at me as he spoke. ‘So. Hunting today.’ I nodded, not caring that he did not see the gesture. It didn’t matter. ‘Yes. The Forged ones are closer than we suspected.’ ‘Do you expect to fight them?’ ‘You told me to go prepared. I will try the poison first. But they may not be as eager to gobble it down. Or they may still try to attack me. So I’m taking my blade, in case.’ ‘So I surmised. But take this one instead.’ He lifted a sheathed sword from beside his chair and gave it into my hands. For a moment I could only look at it. The leather was fancifully tooled, the hilt had that beautiful simplicity possessed by weapons and tools made by a master. At Verity’s nod, I drew the blade in his presence. The metal gleamed and shimmered, the hammering and folding that had given it strength recalled as a watery rippling of light down its length. I held it out and felt it perch in my hand, weightless and waiting. It was a much finer sword than my skill deserved. ‘I should present it to you with pomp and ceremony, of course. But I give it to you now, lest for the lack of it you can’t return later. During Winterfest, I might ask it back of you, so that I may present it to you properly.’ I slipped it back into its sheath, then drew it out, swift as an in-drawn breath. I had never possessed anything so finely made. ‘I feel as if I should swear it to you or something,’ I said awkwardly. Verity permitted himself a smile. ‘No doubt Regal would require some such oath. As for me, I don’t think a man need swear his sword to me when he has already sworn me his life.’ Guilt assaulted me. I took my courage in both hands. ‘Verity, my prince. I go forth today to serve you as an assassin.’ Even Verity was taken aback. ‘Direct words,’ he mused guardedly. ‘It is time for direct words, I think. That is how I serve you today. But my heart has grown weary of it. I have sworn my life to you, as you say, and if you command it, so must I continue. But I ask that you find for me another way to serve you.’ Verity was silent for what seemed a long time. He rested his chin on his fist, and sighed. ‘Were it only I you were sworn to, perhaps I could answer swiftly and simply. But I am only King-in-Waiting. This request must be made of your king. As must your request to wed.’ The silence in the room now grew very wide and deep, making a distance between us. I could not break it. Verity spoke at last. ‘I showed you how to ward your dreams, FitzChivalry. If you neglect to enclose your mind, you cannot blame others for what you divulge.’ I pushed down my anger and swallowed it. ‘How much?’ I asked coldly. ‘As little as possible, I assure you. I am well used to guarding my own thoughts, less so to blocking out those of others. Especially the thoughts of one as strongly, if erratically Skilled as yourself. I did not seek to be privy to your … assignation.’ He was silent. I did not trust myself to speak. It was not just that my own privacy had been so badly betrayed. But Molly! How I was ever to explain this to Molly, I could not imagine. Nor could I tolerate the idea of yet another silence masking an unspoken lie between us. As always, Verity was as true as his name. The carelessness had been mine. Verity was speaking, very quietly. ‘Truth to tell, I envy you, boy. Were it my choice, you should be wed today. If Shrewd denies you permission today, hold this in your heart, and impart it to Lady Red Skirts: when I am king, you will be free to marry when and where you choose. I will not do to you what was done to me.’ I think then that I grasped all that had been taken from Verity. It is one thing to sympathize with a man whose wife was chosen for him. It is another to come from the bed of one’s beloved, and suddenly realize that a man you care for will never know the fullness of what I had experienced with Molly. How bitter must it have been to glimpse what Molly and I shared, and what he must be forever denied? ‘Verity. Thank you,’ I told him. He met my eyes briefly and gave me a wan smile. ‘Well. I suppose.’ He hesitated. ‘This is not a promise, so do not take it as such. There may be something I can do about the other as well. You might not have time to function as a … diplomat, if you were given other duties. Duties more valuable to us.’ ‘Such as?’ I asked cautiously. ‘My ships grow, day by day, taking shape under their masters’ hands. And again, I am denied what I most desire. I will not be allowed to sail on them. There is much common sense to that. Here, I am able to look out over all and direct all. Here, my life is not risked to the violence of the Red Ship pirates. Here, I can coordinate the attacks of several vessels at once, and dispatch aid where it is most needed.’ He cleared his throat. ‘On the other hand, I will not feel the wind or hear it snapping in the sail, and I will never be allowed to fight the Raiders as I long to, with a blade in my hand, killing swiftly and cleanly, taking blood for the blood they have taken.’ Cold fury rode his features as he spoke. After a moment’s pause, he went on more calmly. ‘So. For those ships to function best, there must be someone aboard each one who can at least receive my information. Ideally, that one would also be able to relay to me detailed information as to what is going on aboard the ship. You have seen, this day, how I am limited. I can tell the thoughts of certain folk, yes, but I cannot direct them as to what they think about. Sometimes, I am able to find one more susceptible to my Skill, and influence his thoughts. But this is not the same thing as having a quick response to a direct question. ‘Have you ever considered sailing, FitzChivalry?’ To say I was taken aback would be an understatement. ‘I … you have just reminded me that my ability with the Skill is erratic, sir. And reminded me, yesterday, that in a fight, I am more a brawler than a swordsman, despite Hod’s training …’ ‘And I now remind you that it is mid-winter. There are not many months until spring. I have told you it is a possibility, no more than that. I will be able to give you only the barest help with what you need to master by then. I am afraid it is entirely up to you, FitzChivalry. Can you, by spring, learn to control both your Skill and your blade?’ ‘As you said to me, my prince, I cannot promise, but it will be my intention.’ ‘Fine.’ Verity looked at me steadily for a long moment. ‘Will you begin today?’ ‘Today? Today I have to hunt. I dare not neglect that duty, even for this.’ ‘They need not exclude each other. Take me with you, today.’ I stared at him blankly for a moment, then nodded assent. I had thought he would arise, to go and put on winter clothes and fetch a sword. Instead, he reached out toward me and took hold of my forearm. As his presence flowed into me, it was instinct to struggle against him. This was not like other times when he had shuffled through my thoughts as a man sorts scattered papers on a desk. This was a true occupation of my mind. I had not been so invaded since Galen had brutalized me. I tried to jerk free of his grip, but it was like iron on my wrist. Everything paused. You have to trust me. Do you? I stood sweating and shuddering like a horse with a snake in its stall. I don’t know. Think about it, he bade me. He withdrew a trifle. I could still sense him, waiting, but knew he was holding himself apart from my thoughts. My mind raced frantically. There were too many things to juggle. This was a thing I must do if I wished to win myself free from a life as an assassin. It was a chance to make all the secrets old secrets rather than an ongoing exclusion of Molly and her trust. I had to take it. But how could I do this, and keep secret from him Nighteyes and all that we shared. I quested toward Nighteyes. Our bond is a secret. I must keep it so. Today, men, I must hunt alone. Do you understand? No. It is stupid and dangerous. I shall be there, but you may trust me to be unseen and unknowable. ‘What did you do, just then?’ It was Verity, speaking aloud. His hand was on my wrist. I looked down into his eyes. There was no harshness to his question. He asked it as I might ask it of a small child found carving on the woodwork. I stood frozen inside myself. I longed to unburden myself, to have one person in the world who knew all about me, everything that I was. You already do, Nighteyes objected. It was true. And I could not endanger him. ‘You must trust me, also,’ I found myself saying to my King-in-Waiting. And when he remained looking up at me consideringly, I asked, ‘My prince. Do you?’ ‘Yes.’ With one word, he gave me his trust, and with it his confidence that whatever I had been doing would not bring him harm. It sounds a simple thing, but for a King-in-Waiting to permit his own assassin to keep secrets from him was a staggering act. Years ago, his father had bought my loyalty, with a promise of food and shelter and education and a silver pin thrust into my shirtfront. Verity’s simple act of trust was suddenly more to me than any of these things. The love I had always felt for him suddenly knew no bounds. How could I not trust him? He smiled sheepishly. ‘You can Skill, when you’ve heart to.’ With no more than that, he entered my mind again. As long as his hand was on my wrist, the joining of thoughts was effortless. I felt his curiosity and tinge of woe at looking down at his own face through my eyes. A looking glass is kinder. I have aged. With him ensconced in my mind, it would have been useless to deny the truth of what he said. So, It was a necessary sacrifice, I agreed. He lifted his hand from my wrist. For a moment I had dizzying double vision, looking at myself, looking at him, and then it settled. He turned carefully to set his own eyes once more on the horizon, and then sealed that vision from me. Without his touch, this clasping of minds was a different thing. I left the room slowly, and went down the stairs as if I were balancing a wine glass full to the brim. Exactly. And in both cases, it is easier to do if you do not look at it and think about it so heavily. Just carry. I went down to the kitchens, where I ate a solid breakfast and tried to behave normally. Verity was right. It was easier to maintain our contact if I didn’t focus on it. While everyone there was busied at other tasks, I managed to slip a plateful of biscuits into my carry sack. ‘Going hunting?’ Cook asked me as she turned about. I nodded. ‘Well, be careful. What are you going after?’ ‘Wild boar,’ I improvised. ‘Just to locate one, not to attempt a kill today. I thought it might be a fine amusement during Winterfest.’ ‘For who? Prince Verity? You won’t budge him out of the keep, pet. Stays too much in his rooms these days, he does, and poor old King Shrewd hasn’t taken a real meal with us in weeks. I don’t know why I keep cooking his favourites, when the tray comes back as full as I sent it. Now Prince Regal, he might go, long as it didn’t spoil his curls.’ There was a general clucking of laughter among the kitchen maids at that. My cheeks burned at Cook’s boldness. Steady. They don’t know I’m here, boy. And naught of what is said to you shall be held against them by me. Don’t betray us now. I sensed Verity’s amusement, and also his concern. So I permitted myself a grin, thanked Cook for the pasty she insisted I take, and left the keep kitchen. Sooty was restive in her stall, more than eager for an outing. Burrich passed by as I was saddling her. His dark eyes took in my leathers and the tooled sheath and fine hilt of the sword. He cleared his throat, but then stood silent. I had never been able to decide exactly how much Burrich knew of my work. At one time, in the mountains, I had divulged my assassin’s training to him. But that had been before he took a blow on the head attempting to protect me. When he recovered from it, he professed to have lost the memories of the day that preceded it. But sometimes I wondered. Perhaps it was his sage way of keeping a secret a secret; that it could not be discussed even by those who shared it. ‘Be careful,’ he said at last, gruffly. ‘Don’t you let that mare come to harm.’ ‘We’ll be careful,’ I promised him, and then led Sooty out past him. Despite my errands, it was still early morning, with just enough winter light to make it safe to canter. I let Sooty out, allowing her to choose her pace and express her spirits, and letting her warm herself without allowing her to break a sweat. There was broken cloud cover, and the sun was slipping through it to touch the trees and banked snow with glistening fingers. I pulled Sooty in, pacing her. We would be taking a roundabout way to get to the creek bed; I did not want to leave the trodden paths until we must. Verity was with me every second. It was not that we conversed, but he was privy to my internal dialogue. He enjoyed the fresh morning air, Sooty’s responsiveness, and the youth of my own body. But the farther I went from the keep, the more aware I became of holding onto Verity. From a touch he had initially imposed on me, the sharing had changed to a mutual effort more like clasping hands. I wondered if I would be able to maintain it. Don’t think about it. Just do it. Even breathing becomes a task if you pay attention to every breath. I blinked my eyes, suddenly aware that he was now in his study, carrying on his normal morning tasks. Like the humming of far-away bees, I was aware of Charim consulting with him about something. I could detect no sign of Nighteyes. I was trying not to think about him, nor look for him, a strenuous mental denial that was fully as demanding as keeping Verity’s consciousness with me. So quickly had I become accustomed to reaching out for my wolf and finding him awaiting my touch that I felt isolated, and as unbalanced as if my favourite knife were missing from my belt. The only image that could completely displace him from my mind was Molly’s, and that too was one I did not wish to dwell on. Verity had not rebuked me for my actions of the night before, but I knew he regarded them as less than honourable. I had an uneasy feeling that if I allowed myself time to truly consider all that had happened, I would agree with him. Cowardly, I kept my mind reined away from that, too. I realized I was putting most of my mental effort into not thinking. I gave my head a shake and opened myself up to the day. The road I was following was not well travelled. It wound through the rolling hills behind Buckkeep, and far more sheep and goats trod it than men. Several decades ago, a lightning fire had cleared it of trees. The first growth of trees on it was mostly birch and cottonwood, now standing bare but for snow-burden. This hilly country was ill-suited to farming, and served mostly as summer pasturage for grazing animals, but from time to time I would catch a whiff of wood smoke and see a trodden path leading from the road to a woodcutter’s cottage, or a trapper’s hut. It was an area of small, isolated homesteads occupied by folk of humbler persuasions. The road became narrower, and the trees changed as I entered an older part of the forest. Here the dark evergreens still stood thick and crowded close to the road’s edge. Their trunks were immense, and beneath their spreading branches snow lay in uneven hummocks on the forest floor. There was little underbrush. Most of the year’s snowfall was still up above resting on those thickly-needled limbs. It was easy to turn Sooty aside from the trail here. We travelled under the snow-laden canopy through a greyish daylight. The day seemed hushed in the dimness of the great trees. You are seeking a specific place. You have definite information as to where the Forged ones are? They were seen on a certain creek bank, eating from a winter-killed deer. Just yesterday. I thought we could trail them from there. Who saw them? I hesitated. A friend of mine. He is shy of most folk. But I have gained his confidence, and sometimes, when he sees odd things, he comes to me and tells me. Um. I could sense Verity’s reservations as he considered my reticence. Well, I shall ask no more. Some secrets are necessary, I suppose. I remember a little half-wit girl who used to come and sit at my mother’s feet. My mother kept her clothed and fed and gave her trinkets and sweets. No one ever paid much attention to her. But once I came upon them unawares, and heard her telling my mother about a man in a tavern who had been selling pretty necklaces and armbands. Later that week, the King’s guard arrested Rife the Highwayman in the very same tavern. Quiet folk often know much. Indeed. We rode on in a companionable silence. Occasionally I had to remind myself that Verity was not here in the flesh. But I begin to wish I were. It has been too long, boy, since I rode through these hills simply for the sake of riding. My life has become too heavy with purpose. I cannot remember the last time I did something simply because I wanted to do it. I was nodding to his thought when the scream shattered the forest quiet. It was the wordless cry of a young creature, cut off in mid shriek, and before I could control myself, I quested toward it. My Wit found wordless panic, death fear, and sudden horror from Nighteyes. I sealed off my mind to it, but turned Sooty’s head that way and urged her toward it. Clinging low to her neck, I nudged her along through the maze of banked snow and fallen limbs and clear ground that was the forest floor. I worked my way up a hill, never getting up to the speed I suddenly so desperately wanted. I crested the hill, and looked down on a scene I shall never be able to forget. There were three of them, raggedy and bearded and smelly. They snarled and muttered at each other as they fought. They gave off no life sense to my Wit, but I recognized them as the Forged ones that Nighteyes had shown me the night before. She was small, three perhaps, and the woolly tunic she wore was bright yellow, the loving work of some mother’s hands. They fought over her as if she were a snared rabbit, dragging on the limbs of her little body in an angry tug of war with no heed to the small life that still resided in her. I roared my fury at the sight and drew my sword just as a Forged one’s determined jerk on her neck snapped her free of her body. At my cry, one of the men lifted his head and turned to me, his beard bright with blood. He had not waited for her death to begin feeding. I kicked Sooty and rode down on them like vengeance on horseback. From the woods to my left, Nighteyes burst onto the scene. He was upon them before I was, leaping to the shoulders of one and opening his jaws wide to set his teeth into the back of the man’s neck. One turned to me as I came down, and threw up a useless hand to shield himself from my sword. My blow was such that my fine new blade half severed his neck from his body before wedging in his spine. I pulled my belt knife and launched myself from Sooty’s back to grapple with the man who was trying to plunge his knife into Nighteyes. The third Forged one snatched up the girl’s body and raced off into the woods with it. The man fought like a maddened bear, snapping and stabbing at us even after I had opened up his belly. His entrails hung over his belt and still he came stumbling after us. I could not even take time for the horror I felt. Knowing he would die, I left him and we plunged off after the one who had fled. Nighteyes was a befurred grey streak that undulated up the hillside and I cursed my slow two legs as I sped after him. The trail was plain, trampled snow and blood and the foul stench of the creature. My mind was not working well. I swear that as I raced up that hillside, I somehow thought I could be in time to undo her death and bring her back. To make it have never happened. It was an illogical drive that sped me on. He had doubled back. From behind a great stump he leapt at us, flinging the girl’s body at Nighteyes and then leaping bodily onto me. He was big and muscled like a smith. Unlike other Forged ones I had encountered, this one’s size and strength had kept him fed and well-clothed. The boundless anger of a hunted animal was his. He seized me, lifting me clear of my feet, and then fell upon me with one knotty forearm crushing my throat. He landed upon me, barrel chest on my back, pinning my chest and one arm to the earth below him. I reached back, to sink my knife twice into a meaty thigh. He roared with anger and increased the pressure. He pressed my face into the frozen earth. Black dots spotted my vision, and Nighteyes was a sudden addition to the weight on my back. I thought my spine would snap. Nighteyes slashed at the man’s back with his fangs, but the Forged one only drew his chin into his chest and hunched his shoulders against the attack. He knew he was killing me with his strangle. Time enough to deal with the wolf when I was dead. The struggle opened up the wound on my neck and warm blood spilled out. The added pain was a tiny spur to my struggle. I shook my head wildly in his grip, and the slipperiness of my own blood was enough to let me turn my throat a tiny bit. I got in one desperate wheeze of air before the giant shifted his grip on me. He began to bend my head back. If he could not throttle me, he would simply break my neck. He had the muscle for it. Nighteyes changed tactics. He could not open his jaws wide enough to get the man’s head into them, but his scraping teeth found enough purchase to tear part of the man’s scalp from his skull. He set his teeth in the flap of flesh and pulled. Blood rained down on me as the Forged one roared wordlessly and kneed me in the small of the back. He let go with one arm to flail at Nighteyes. I eeled around in his arms, to bring one knee up into his groin, and then to get a good knife thrust into his side. The pain must have been incredible, but he did not release me. Instead he cracked his head against mine in a flash of blackness, and then wrapped his huge arms around me, pinning me to him as he began to crush my chest. That is as much of the struggle as I can remember coherently. I don’t know what came over me next; perhaps it was the death fury some legends speak of. Teeth, nails and knife I fought him, taking flesh from his body wherever I could reach it. Still, I know it would not have been enough had not Nighteyes also been attacking with the same boundless frenzy. Some time later, I crawled from under the man’s body. There was a foul coppery taste in my mouth and I spat out dirty hair and blood. I wiped my hands down my pants and then rubbed them in clean snow, but nothing could ever cleanse them. Are you all right? Nighteyes lay panting in the snow a yard or two away. His jaws were likewise bloodied. As I watched, he snapped up a great mouthful of snow, then resumed his panting. I rose and stumbled a step or two toward him. Then I saw the girl’s body and sank down beside it in the snow. I think that was when I realized I was too late, and had been too late from the instant I had spotted them. She was tiny. Sleek black hair and dark eyes. Horribly her little body was still warm and lax. I lifted her to my lap and smoothed the hair back from her face. A small face, even baby teeth. Round cheeks. Death had not yet clouded her gaze; the eyes that stared up into mine seemed fixed on a puzzle beyond understanding. Her little hands were fat and soft and streaked with the blood that had run down from the bites on her arms. I sat in the snow with the dead child on my lap. So this was how a child felt in one’s arms. So small, and once so warm. So still. I bowed my head over her smooth hair and wept. Sudden shudders ran over me, uncontrollably. Nighteyes snuffed at my cheek and whined. He pawed roughly at my shoulder and I suddenly realized I had shut him out. I touched him with a quieting hand, but could not open my mind to him or anything else. He whined again, and I finally heard the hoof beats. He gave my cheek an apologetic lick, and then vanished into the woods. I staggered to my feet, still holding the child. The riders crested the hill above me. Verity in the lead, on his black, with Burrich behind him, and Blade, and half a dozen others. Horribly, there was a woman, roughly dressed, riding behind Blade on his horse. She cried out aloud at the sight of me, and slid quickly from the horse’s back, running toward me with hands reaching for the child. I could not bear the terrible light of hope and joy in her face. Her eyes seized on mine for an instant and I saw everything die in her face. She clawed her little girl from my arms, snatched at the cooling face on the lolling neck, and then began to scream. The desolation of her grief broke over me like a wave, sweeping my walls away and carrying me under with her. The screaming never stopped. Hours later, sitting in Verity’s study, I could still hear it. I vibrated to the sound, long shudders that ran over me uncontrollably. I was stripped to the waist, sitting on a stool before the fireplace. The healer was building the fire up, while behind me a stonily silent Burrich was swabbing pine needles and dirt out of the gouge on my neck. ‘This, and this aren’t fresh wounds,’ he observed at one point, pointing down to the other injury on my arm. I said nothing. All words had deserted me. In a basin of hot water beside him, dried iris flowers were uncurling with bits of bog myrtle floating beside them. He moistened a cloth in the water and sponged at the bruises on my throat. ‘The smith had big hands,’ he observed aloud. ‘You knew him?’ the healer asked as he turned to look at Burrich. ‘Not to talk to. I’d seen him, a time or two, at Springfest when some of the outlying trade folk come to town with their goods. He used to bring fancy silverwork for harness.’ They fell silent again. Burrich went back to work. The blood tingeing the warm water wasn’t mine, for the most part. Other than a lot of bruises and sore muscles, I’d escaped with mostly scratches and scrapes and one huge lump on my forehead. I was somehow ashamed that I hadn’t been hurt. The little girl had died; I should have at least been injured. I don’t know why that thought made sense to me. I watched Burrich make a neat white bandage snug on my forearm. The healer brought me a mug of tea. Burrich took it from him, sniffed it thoughtfully, then gave it over to me. ‘I would have used less valerian,’ was all he said to the man. The healer stepped back and went to sit by the hearth. Charim came in with a tray of food. He cleared a small table and began to set it out on it. A moment later Verity strode into the room. He took his cloak off and flung it over a chair back. ‘I found her husband in the market,’ he said. ‘He’s with her now. She had left the child playing on the doorstep while she went to the stream for water. When she got back, the child was gone.’ He glanced toward me but I couldn’t meet his eyes. ‘We found her calling her little girl in the woods. I knew …’ He glanced abruptly at the healer. ‘Thank you, Dem. If you’ve finished with FitzChivalry, you may go.’ ‘I haven’t even looked at …’ ‘He’s fine.’ Burrich had run a length of bandaging across my chest and under my opposite arm and up again in an effort to keep a dressing in place on my neck. It was useless. The bite was right on the muscle between the tip of my shoulder and my neck. I tried to find something amusing in the irritated look the healer gave Burrich before he left. Burrich didn’t even notice it. Verity dragged up a chair to face me. I began to lift the mug to my lips, but Burrich casually reached over and took it from my hand. ‘After you’ve talked. There’s enough valerian in here to drop you in your tracks.’ He took it and himself out of the way. Over by the hearth, I watched him dump out half of the tea and dilute what was left with more hot water. That done, he crossed his arms on his chest and leaned against the mantelpiece, watching us. I shifted my gaze to Verity’s eyes, and waited for him to speak. He sighed. ‘I saw the child with you. Saw them fighting over her. Then you were suddenly gone. We lost our joining, and I couldn’t find you again, not even with all my strength. I knew you were in trouble and set out to reach you as soon as I could. I’m sorry I wasn’t faster.’ I longed to open myself up and tell Verity everything. But it might be too revealing. To possess a prince’s secrets does not give one the right to divulge them. I glanced at Burrich. He was studying the wall. I spoke formally. ‘Thank you, my prince. You could not have come faster. And even if you had, it would have been too late. She died at almost the same instant I saw her.’ Verity looked down at his hands. ‘I knew that. Knew it better than you did. My concern was for you.’ He looked up at me and tried for a smile. ‘The most distinctive part of your fighting style is the incredible way you have of surviving it.’ From the corner of my eye, I saw Burrich shift, open his mouth to speak, then close it again. Cold dread uncoiled me. He had seen the bodies of the Forged ones, seen the tracks. He knew I hadn’t fought alone against them. It was the only thing that could have made the day worse. I felt as if my heart were suddenly caught in a cold stillness. That Burrich had not spoken of it yet, that he was reserving his accusations for a private time only made it worse. ‘FitzChivalry?’ Verity called my attention back to him. I started. ‘I beg your pardon, my prince.’ He laughed, almost, a brief snort. ‘Enough of “my prince”. Rest assured that I do not expect it of you just now, and neither does Burrich. He and I know each other well enough; he did not “my prince” my brother at moments like this. Recall that he was King’s Man to my brother. Chivalry drew on his strength, and oftentimes not gently. I am sure Burrich knows that I have used you likewise. And knows also that I rode with your eyes today, at least as far as the top of that ridge.’ I looked to Burrich, who nodded slowly. Neither of us were certain why he was being included here. ‘I lost touch with you when you went into a battle frenzy. If I am to use you as I wish, that cannot happen.’ Verity drummed his fingers lightly on his thighs for a moment, in thought. ‘The only way I can see for you to learn this thing is to practise it. Burrich. Chivalry once told me that in a tight spot, you were better with an axe than a sword.’ Burrich looked startled. Plainly he had not expected Verity to know this about him. He nodded again, slowly. ‘He used to mock me about it. Said it was a brawler’s tool, not a gentleman’s weapon.’ Verity permitted himself a tight smile. ‘Appropriate for Fitz’s style, then. You will teach him to use one. I don’t believe it’s something Hod teaches as a general rule. Though no doubt she could if I asked her. But I’d rather it was you. Because I want Fitz to practise keeping me with him while he learns it. If we can tie the two lessons together, perhaps he can master them both at once. And if you are teaching him, then he’ll not be too distracted about keeping my presence a secret. Can you do it?’ Burrich could not completely disguise the dismay that crept over him. ‘I can, my prince.’ ‘Then do so, please. Beginning tomorrow. Earlier is better for me. I know you have other duties as well, and few enough hours to yourself. Don’t hesitate to pass some of your duties on to Hands while you are busy with this. He seems a very capable man.’ ‘He is,’ Burrich agreed. Guardedly. Another titbit of information that Verity had at his fingertips. ‘Fine, then.’ Verity leaned back in his chair. He surveyed us both as if he were briefing a whole roomful of men. ‘Does anyone have any difficulties with any of this?’ I saw the question as a polite closing. ‘Sir?’ Burrich asked. His deep voice had gone very soft and uncertain. ‘If I may … I have … I do not intend to question my prince’s judgment, but …’ I held my breath. Here it came. The Wit. ‘Speak it out, Burrich. I thought I had made it clear that the “my princing” was to be suspended here. What worries you?’ Burrich stood up straight, and met the King-in-Waiting’s eyes. ‘Is this … fitting? Bastard or no, he is Chivalry’s son. What I saw up there, today …’ Once started, the words spilled out of Burrich. He was fighting to keep anger from his voice. ‘You sent him … He went into a slaughterhouse situation, alone. Most any other boy of his age would be dead now. I … try not to pry into what is not my area. I know there are many ways to serve my king, and that some are not as pretty as others. But up in the mountains … and then what I saw today. Could not you find someone besides your brother’s child for this?’ I glanced back to Verity. For the first time in my life, I saw full anger on his face. Not expressed in a sneer or a frown, but simply as two hot sparks deep in his dark eyes. The line of his lips was flat. But he spoke evenly. ‘Look again, Burrich. That’s no child sitting there. And think again. I did not send him alone. I went with him, into a situation that we expected to be a stalk and a hunt, not a direct confrontation. It didn’t turn out that way. But he survived it. As he has survived similar things before. And likely will again.’ Verity stood suddenly. The whole air of the room was abruptly charged to my senses, boiling with emotion. Even Burrich seemed to feel it, for he gave me a glance, then forced himself to stand still, like a soldier at attention while Verity stalked about the room. ‘No. This isn’t what I would choose for him. This isn’t what I would choose for myself. Would that he had been born in better times! Would that he had been born in a marriage bed, and my brother still upon the throne! But I was not given that situation, nor was he. Nor you! And so he serves, as I do. Damn me, but Kettricken has had it right all along. The King is the sacrifice of the people. And so is his nephew. That was carnage up there today. I know of what you speak: I saw Blade go aside to puke after he saw that body, I saw him walk well clear of Fitz. I know not how the boy … this man survived it. By doing whatever he had to, I suppose. So what can I do, man? What can I do? I need him. I need him for this ugly, secret battling, for he is the only one equipped and trained to do it. Just as my father sets me in that tower, and bids me burn my mind out with sneaking, filthy killing. Whatever Fitz must do, whatever skills he must call upon –’ (My heart stood still, my breath was ice in my lungs.) ‘– them let him use. Because that is what we are about now. Survival. Because …’ ‘They are my people.’ I did not realize I had spoken until they both swung to stare at me. Sudden silence in the room. I took a breath. ‘A long time ago, an old man told me that I would some day understand something. He said that the Six Duchies people were my people, that it was in my blood to care about them, to feel their hurts as my own.’ I blinked my eyes, to clear Chade and that day at Forge from my vision. ‘He was right,’ I managed to say after a moment. ‘They killed my child today, Burrich. And my smith, and two other men. Not the Forged ones. The Red Ship Raiders. And I must have their blood in return, I must drive them from my coast. It is as simple now as eating or breathing. It is a thing I must do.’ Their eyes met over my head. ‘Blood will tell,’ Verity observed quietly. But there was a fierceness in his voice, and a pride that stilled the day-long trembling of my body. A deep calm rose in me. I had done the right thing today. I suddenly knew it as a physical fact. Ugly, demeaning work, but it was mine, and I had done it well. For my people. I turned to Burrich, and he was looking at me with that considering gaze usually reserved for when the runt of a litter showed unusual promise. ‘I’ll teach him,’ he promised Verity. ‘What few tricks I know with an axe. And a few other things. Shall we begin tomorrow, before first light?’ ‘Fine,’ Verity agreed before I could object. ‘Now let us eat.’ I was suddenly famished. I rose to go to the table, but Burrich was suddenly beside me. ‘Wash your face and hands, Fitz,’ he reminded me gently. The scented water in Verity’s basin was dark with the smith’s blood when I was through. FOURTEEN (#ulink_b4c435fe-3be5-5122-9d89-3e035b4dc0f9) Winterfest (#ulink_b4c435fe-3be5-5122-9d89-3e035b4dc0f9) Winterfest is as much a celebration of the darkest part of the year as a festival of the returning light. For the first three days of Winterfest, we pay homage to the darkness. The tales told and puppet shows presented are those that tell of resting times and happy endings. The foods are salt fish and smoked flesh, harvested roots and fruit from last summer. Then, on the mid-day of the festival, there is a hunt. New blood is shed to celebrate the breaking point of the year, and new meat is brought fresh to the table, to be eaten with grain harvested from the year before. The next three days are days that look toward the coming summer. The looms are threaded with gayer thread, and the weavers take over an end of the Great Hall to vie amongst themselves for the brightest patterns and lightest weave. The tales told are ones that tell of beginnings of things, and of how things came to be. I tried to see the King that afternoon. Despite all that had transpired, I had not forgotten my promise to myself. Wallace turned me away, saying that King Shrewd felt poorly and was seeing no one. I longed to hammer on the door and shout for the Fool to make Wallace admit me. But I did not. I was not so sure of the Fool’s friendship as I had once been. We’d had no contact since that last mocking song of his. Thinking of him put me in mind of his words, and when I went back to my room, I once more rooted through Verity’s manuscripts. Reading made me sleepy. Even the diluted valerian had been a strong dose. Lethargy took over my limbs. I pushed the scrolls aside, no wiser than when I had begun. I pondered other avenues. Perhaps a public trumpeting at Winterfest that those trained in the Skill, no matter how old or how weak, were being sought? Would that make targets of any who responded? I thought again of the obvious candidates. Those who had trained alongside me. None of them had any fondness for me, but that did not mean they were not still faithful to Verity. Tainted perhaps by Galen’s attitudes, but could not that be cured? I ruled August out immediately. His final experience of the Skill at Jhaampe had burned his abilities out of him. He had retired quietly to some town on the Vin River, old before his time it was said. But there had been others. Eight of us had survived the training. Seven of us had come back from the testing. I had failed it, August had been burned clean of it. That left five. Not much of a coterie. I wondered if they all hated me as much as Serene did. She blamed me for Galen’s death and made no secret of it to me. Were the others as knowledgeable as to what had happened? I tried to recall them all. Justin. Very taken with himself and too proud of his Skilling. Carrod. He had once been a sleepy, likable boy. The few times I had seen him since he had become a coterie member, his eyes had seemed almost empty, as if nothing was left of who he had been. Burl had let his physical strength run to fat once he could Skill instead of carpenter for a living. Will had always been unremarkable. Skilling had not improved him. Still, they were all proven to have Skill ability. Could not Verity retrain them? Perhaps. But when? When did he have time for such an undertaking? Someone comes. I came awake. I was sprawled face-down on my bed, scrolls tumbled around me. I hadn’t meant to sleep, and seldom slept so deeply. Had Nighteyes not been using my own senses to watch over me, I would have been taken completely unaware. I watched the door of my room ease open. The fire had burned low and there was little other light in the room. I had not latched the door; I had not expected to sleep. I lay very quiet, wondering who came so softly, hoping to take me unawares. Or was it someone hoping to find my room empty, someone after the scrolls perhaps? I eased my hand to my belt knife, gathered my muscles for a spring. A figure came slipping around the door, pushed it quietly shut. I eased the knife out of its sheath. It’s your female. Somewhere, Nighteyes yawned and stretched. His tail gave a lazy wag. I found myself taking a deep breath through my nose. Molly, I confirmed to myself with satisfaction as I took in her sweet scent, and then felt an amazing physical quickening. I lay still, eyes closed, and let her come to the bed. I heard her softly chiding exclamation, and then the rustling as she gathered up the scattered scrolls and set them safely upon the table. Hesitantly, she touched my cheek. ‘Newboy?’ I could not resist the temptation to feign sleep. She sat beside me and the bed gave sweetly with her warm weight. She leaned over me and as I lay perfectly motionless she set her soft mouth upon mine. I reached out and drew her to me, marvelling. Yesterday, I had been a man seldom touched: the clap of a friend on my shoulder, or the casual jostling of a crowd, or, too often lately, hands seeking to throttle me. That had been the extent of my personal contact. Then, last night, and now this. She finished the kiss and then lay beside me, gently arranging herself against me. I took a deep breath of her scent and kept still, savouring the places where her body touched mine and made warmth. The sensation was like a soap bubble floating on the wind; I feared even to breathe lest it vanish. Nice, agreed Nighteyes. Not so much aloneness here. More like pack. I stiffened and pulled slightly away from Molly. ‘Newboy? What’s wrong?’ Mine. This is mine, and not a thing to share with you. Do you understand? Selfish. This is not a thing like meat, made more or less by sharing. ‘Just a moment, Molly. I’ve cramped a muscle.’ Which one? Smirking. No, it is not like meat. Meat I would always share with you, and shelter, and always I will come to fight beside you if you need me. Always I will let you join me in the hunt, and always I will help you hunt. But this, with my … female. This I must have to myself. Alone. Nighteyes snorted, scratched at a flea. You are always marking off lines that do not exist. The meat, the hunt, the defending of territory and females … these are all pack. When she bears cubs, shall I not hunt to feed them? Shall I not defend them? Nighteyes … I cannot explain this to you just now. I should have spoken with you earlier. For now, will you withdraw? I promise we shall discuss it. Later. I waited. Nothing. No sense of him at all. One down, one to go. ‘Newboy? Are you all right?’ ‘I’m fine. I just … need a moment.’ I think it was the hardest thing I have ever done. Molly was beside me, suddenly hesitant, on the point of pulling away from me. I had to concentrate on finding my boundaries, on placing my mind in the middle of myself and setting limits to my thoughts. I took the breaths and let them out evenly. Adjusting harness. That was what it always reminded me of, and the image I always used. Not loose enough to slip, not tight enough to bind. Confining myself to my own body, lest I startle Verity awake. ‘I heard the rumours,’ Molly began, then stopped. ‘I’m sorry. I should not have come. I thought perhaps you might need … but maybe what you need is to be alone.’ ‘No, Molly, please, Molly, come back, come back,’ and I flung myself across the bed after her and managed to catch the hem of her skirt as she stood. She turned back to me, still full of uncertainty. ‘You are always exactly what I need. Always.’ A smile ghosted across her lips and she sat on the edge of the bed. ‘You seemed so distant.’ ‘I was. Sometimes I just need to clear my mind.’ I stopped, uncertain of what else I could say without lying to her. I was determined to do that no longer. I reached and took her hand into mine. ‘Oh,’ she said after a moment. There was an awkward little pause as I offered no further explanation. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked carefully after a few more moments had slipped by. ‘I’m fine. I didn’t get in to see the King today. I tried, but he wasn’t feeling well, and …’ ‘Your face is bruised. And scratched. There were rumours …’ I took a silent breath. ‘Rumours?’ Verity had enjoined the men to silence. Burrich wouldn’t have spoken, nor Blade. Perhaps none of them had spoken to anyone who hadn’t been there. But men will always discuss what they have witnessed together, and it wouldn’t take much for anyone to overhear them. ‘Don’t play cat and mouse with me. If you don’t want to tell me, then say so.’ ‘The King-in-Waiting asked us not to speak of it. That isn’t the same as not wanting to tell you about it.’ Molly considered a moment. ‘I suppose not. And I shouldn’t listen to gossip, I know. But the rumours were so strange … and they brought bodies back to the keep, for burning. And there was a strange woman, weeping and weeping in the kitchen today. She said that Forged ones had stolen and killed her child. And someone said you had fought them to try and get the baby back, and another said, no, that you’d come upon them just as a bear attacked them. Or something. Someone said you had killed them all, and then someone who had helped burn the bodies said that at least two of them had been mauled by an animal of some kind.’ She fell silent and looked at me. She rested on her side, bare inches away from me, her eyes looking directly into mine. I didn’t want to think about any of it. I didn’t want to lie to her, nor even to tell her the truth. I couldn’t tell anyone the complete truth. So I just looked into her eyes and wished that things were simpler for us. ‘FitzChivalry?’ I would never get used to hearing that name from her. I sighed. ‘The King asked us not to speak of it. But … yes, a child was killed by Forged ones. And I was there, too late. It was the ugliest, saddest thing I have ever witnessed.’ ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. It’s just so hard, not knowing.’ ‘I know.’ I reached out to touch her hair. She leaned her head against my hand. ‘I told you once that I had dreamed of you, at Siltbay. I journeyed from the Mountain Kingdom, all the way back to Buckkeep, not knowing if you had survived. Sometimes I thought the burning house had fallen on the cellar; at other times, I thought the woman with the sword had finished you …’ Molly looked at me levelly. ‘When the house fell, a great wind of sparks and smoke whooshed towards us. It blinded her, but my back was to it. I … I killed her with the axe.’ She suddenly started to tremble. ‘I told no one of it. No one. How did you know?’ ‘I dreamed it.’ I pulled gently at her hand and she came down on the bed beside me. I put my arms around her, and felt her trembling still. ‘I have true dreams, sometimes. Not often,’ I told her quietly. She drew back a little from me. Her eyes searched my face. ‘You would not lie to me about this, Newboy?’ The question hurt, but I deserved it. ‘No. This is not a lie. I promise you that. And I promise that I shall never lie …’ Her fingers stopped my lips. ‘I hope to spend the rest of my life with you. Make me no promises that you cannot keep for the rest of your days.’ Her other hand went to the lacing of my shirt. It was my turn to tremble. I kissed her fingers. And then her mouth. At some time, Molly got up and latched and barred my door. I remember sending up a fervent prayer that this would not be the night that Chade finally returned from his journeying. It was not. Instead I journeyed afar that night, into a place that was becoming ever more familiar, but none the less wondrous to me. She left me in the deep of the night, shaking me awake to insist that I latch and bar the door after her. I wanted to dress and walk her back to her room, but she refused me indignantly, saying she was perfectly capable of going up some stairs, and that the less we were seen together, the better. Reluctantly I conceded her logic. The sleep I fell into then was deeper than any the valerian had induced. I awoke to thunder and shouting. I found myself on my feet, dazed and confused. After a moment, the thunder turned to pounding on my door, and the shouting was Burrich’s repetition of my name. ‘A moment!’ I managed to call back. I ached everywhere. I dragged on some clothes and staggered to the door. It took a long time for my fingers to manage the catch. ‘What’s wrong?’ I demanded. Burrich just stared at me. He was washed and dressed, hair and beard combed, and carrying two axes. ‘Oh.’ ‘Verity’s tower room. Hurry up, we’re already late. But wash first. What is that scent?’ ‘Perfumed candles,’ I extemporized. ‘They’re supposed to bring restful dreams.’ Burrich snorted. ‘That’s not the kind of dreams that scent would bring me. It’s full of musk, boy. Your whole room reeks of it. Meet me up in the tower.’ And he was gone, striding purposefully down the hall. I went back into my room, groggily realizing that this was his idea of early morning. I washed myself thoroughly with cold water, not enjoying it, but lacking the time to warm any. I dug about for fresh clothes and was dragging them on when the pounding at my door began again. ‘I’m nearly there,’ I called out. The pounding went on. That meant Burrich was angry. Well, so was I. Surely he could understand how badly I ached this morning. I jerked the door open to confront him and the Fool slipped in as smoothly as a waft of smoke. He wore a new motley of black and white. The sleeves of his shirt were all embroidered with black vines crawling up his arms like ivy. Above the black collar, his face was as pale as a winter moon. Winterfest, I thought dully. Tonight was the first night of Winterfest. The winter had already been as long as any five others I had known. But tonight we would begin to mark the mid-point of it. ‘What do you want?’ I demanded, in no mood for his silliness. He took a deep appreciative sniff. ‘Some of what you had would be lovely,’ he suggested, and then danced back gracefully at the look on my face. I was instantly angry. He leaped lightly to the centre of my tousled bed, then to the other side, putting it between us. I lunged across it after him. ‘But not from you,’ he exclaimed coquettishly and fluttered his hands at me in girlish rebuke before retreating again. ‘I’ve no time for you,’ I told him disgustedly. ‘Verity’s expecting me and I cannot keep him waiting.’ I rolled off the bed and stood to adjust my clothing. ‘Out of my room.’ ‘Ah, such a tone. Time was when the Fitz could handle a jest better than this.’ He pirouetted in the middle of my room, then stopped abruptly. ‘Are you truly angry with me?’ he demanded straightforwardly. I gaped to hear him speak so bluntly. I considered the question. ‘I was,’ I said guardedly, wondering if he were deliberately drawing me out. ‘You made a fool of me that day, with that song, before all those people.’ He shook his head. ‘Don’t take titles to yourself. Only I am the Fool. And the Fool is always only what I am. Especially that day, with that song, before all those people.’ ‘You made me doubt our friendship,’ I said bluntly. ‘Ah, good. For doubt not that others must always doubt our friendship if we are to remain doughty friends.’ ‘I see. Then it was your end to sow rumours of strife between us. I understand, then. But I still must go.’ ‘Farewell, then. Have fun playing at axes with Burrich. Try not to be dumb-struck with all he teaches you today.’ He put two logs onto my failing fire, and made a great show of settling himself before it. ‘Fool,’ I began uncomfortably. ‘You are my friend, I know. But I like not to leave you here, in my room, while I am gone.’ ‘I like it not when others enter my room when I am not there,’ he pointed out archly. I flushed miserably. ‘That was long ago. And I apologized for my curiosity. I assure you, I have never done it again.’ ‘Nor shall I, after this. And when you come back, I shall apologize to you. Shall that do?’ I was going to be late. Burrich was not going to be amused. No help for it. I sat down on the edge of the rumpled bed. Molly and I had lain here. Suddenly, it was a personal area. I tried to be casual as I tugged the quilts up over the featherbeds. ‘Why do you want to stay in my room? Are you in danger?’ ‘I live in danger, Fitzy-fitz. As do you. We are all in danger. I should like to stay here for part of the day, and try to find a way out of that danger. Or at least a way to lessen it.’ He shrugged significantly toward the scatter of scrolls. ‘Verity entrusted those to me,’ I said uneasily. ‘Obviously because he feels you are a man whose judgement he trusts. So, perhaps you shall judge it safe to entrust them to me?’ It is one thing to trust a friend with one’s own possessions. It is another to allow him those another has put in your safekeeping. I found I had no doubt of my own trust of the Fool. But. ‘Perhaps it would be wiser to ask Verity first,’ I offered. ‘The less connection between Verity and me, the better it is for both of us.’ The Fool spoke flatly. ‘You do not care for Verity?’ I was startled. ‘I am the King’s Fool. He is the King-in-Waiting. Let him wait. When he is king, I shall be his. If he does not get us all killed before then.’ ‘I will hear nothing spoken against Prince Verity,’ I told him softly. ‘No? Then you must walk about with your ears closely stoppered these days.’ I walked to the door, set my hand to the latch. ‘We must leave now, Fool. I am already late.’ I kept my voice steady. His sneer at Verity had cut me as deeply as if aimed at me. ‘Do not be the Fool, Fitz. That is my role. Think. A man can serve only one master. No matter what your lips may say, Verity is your king. I fault you not for that. Do you fault me that Shrewd is mine?’ ‘I do not fault you. Nor do I make mock of him before you.’ ‘Nor do you come to visit him, no matter how many times I have urged it.’ ‘I was at his door just yesterday. I was turned away. They said he was not well.’ ‘And if that were to happen at Verity’s door, would you take it so meekly?’ That made me stop and think. ‘No. I don’t suppose I would.’ ‘Why do you give him up so easily?’ The Fool spoke softly, like a man grieved. ‘Why does not Verity bestir himself for his father, instead of luring away Shrewd’s men to his side?’ ‘I have not been lured away. Rather Shrewd has not seen fit to see me. As for Verity, well, I cannot speak for him. But all know it is Regal that Shrewd favours of his sons.’ ‘Do all know that? Then do all know as well where Regal’s heart is truly set?’ ‘Some do,’ I said briefly. This was dangerous talk. ‘Reflect on this. Both of us serve the king we love best. Yet there is another that we love least. I do not think we have a conflict of loyalty, Fitz, while we are united in who we love least. Come. Confess to me that you have scarce had time to set your eyes upon the scrolls, and I shall remind you that the time you have not had has fled us all too swiftly. This is not a task that can wait upon your convenience.’ I teetered on the decision. The Fool came suddenly closer. His eyes were always hard to meet and harder to read. But the set of his mouth showed me his desperation. ‘I will trade with you. I offer you a bargain you will find nowhere else. A secret I hold, promised to you, after you have let me search the scrolls for a secret which may not even be there.’ ‘What secret?’ I asked reluctantly. ‘My secret.’ He turned aside from me and stared at the wall. ‘The mystery of the Fool. Whence comes he and why?’ He cast me a sidelong glance and said no more. The curiosity of a dozen years leaped in me. ‘Freely given?’ I asked. ‘No. Offered as a bargain, as I said.’ I considered. Then, ‘I’ll see you later. Latch the door when you leave.’ And I slipped out. There were serving-folk moving about in the corridors. I was grievously late. I forced myself into a creaking trot, and then to a run. I did not slow for the stairs to Verity’s tower, but rushed up their full length, knocked once and then entered. Burrich turned to me, greeting me with a frown. The spartan furnishings of the room had already been pushed to one wall, save for Verity’s window chair. Verity was already ensconced in it. He turned his head to me more slowly, with eyes still full of distance. There was a drugged look to his eyes and mouth, a laxness painful to see when one knew what it meant. The Skill hunger gnawed at him. I feared that what he wished to teach me would only feed it and increase it. Yet how could either of us say no? I had learned something yesterday. It had not been a pleasant lesson, but once learned it could not be undone. I knew now that I would do whatever I must to drive the Red Ships from my shore. I was not the king, I would never be the king. But the folk of the Six Duchies were mine, just as they were Chade’s. I understood now why Verity spent himself so recklessly. ‘I beg pardon that I am late. I was detained. But I am ready to begin now.’ ‘How do you feel?’ The question came from Burrich, asked with genuine curiosity. I turned to find him regarding me as sternly as before, but also with some puzzlement. ‘Stiff, sir. A bit. The run up the stairs warmed me up some. Sore, from yesterday. But otherwise I am all right.’ A bit of amusement quirked at his face. ‘No tremors, FitzChivalry? No darkening at the edge of your vision, no dizzy spells?’ I paused to think for a moment. ‘No.’ ‘Be damned.’ Burrich gave a snort of amusement. ‘Evidently the cure has been to beat it out of you. I’ll remember that the next time you need a healer.’ Over the next hour, he seemed intent on applying his new theory of healing. The heads of the axes were blunt ones, and he had bundled them both in rags for this first lesson, but that did not prevent bruises. To be honest, most of them I earned with my own clumsiness. Burrich was not trying to land any blows that day, but only to teach me to use the whole weapon, not just the head of it. To keep Verity with me was effortless, for he remained in the same room with us. He was silent within me that day, offering no counsels or observations or warnings, but merely riding with my eyes. Burrich told me that the axe was not a sophisticated weapon, but was a very satisfactory one if used correctly. At the end of the session, he pointed out to me that he had been gentle with me, in consideration of the wounds I already bore. Verity dismissed us, and we both went down the stairs rather more slowly than I had come up. ‘Be on time tomorrow,’ Burrich charged me as we parted at the kitchen door, he going back to his stables, and I to find breakfast. I ate as I had not in days, with a wolf’s appetite, and wondered at the source of my own sudden vitality. Unlike Burrich, I did not put it down to any beating I had received. Molly, I thought, had healed with a touch what all the herbs and rest in a year could never have put to rights. The day suddenly stretched long in front of me, full of unbearable minutes of unendurable hours before nightfall and the kindly dark allowed us to be together again. I set her resolutely from my mind and resolved to fill the day with tasks. A dozen immediately leapt to mind. I had been neglecting Patience. I had promised my aid with Kettricken’s garden. An explanation was owed to Brother Nighteyes. A visit was owed King Shrewd. I tried to order them in importance. Molly kept moving to the top of the list. I resolutely set her to last. King Shrewd, I decided. I gathered my crockery from the table and took it back to the kitchen. The bustle was deafening. It puzzled me for a moment, until I recalled that tonight was the first night of Winterfest. Old Cook Sara looked up from the bread she was kneading and motioned me over. I went and stood beside her as I often had as a child, admiring the deft way her fingers shaped handfuls of dough into rolls and set them to rise. She was flour to her dimpled elbows, and flour smudged one cheek as well. The racket and rush of the kitchen created a strange sort of privacy. She spoke quietly through the clatter and chatter, and I had to strain to hear her. ‘I just wanted you to know,’ she grunted as she folded and pushed a new batch of dough, ‘that I know when a rumour is nonsense. And I speak it so when anyone tries to tell it here in my kitchen. They can gossip all they like in the laundry court, and tattle tales as much as they wish while they spin, but I’ll not have ill said of you here in my kitchen.’ She glanced up at me with snapping black eyes. My heart stood still with dread. Rumours? Of Molly and me? ‘You’ve et at my tables, and often enough, stood aside me and stirred a pot while we chatted when you were small. I think that maybe I know you better than most. And them what says you fight like a beast because you’re more than a half beast are talking evil nonsense. Them bodies was tore up bad, but I’ve seen worse done by men in a rage. When Sal Flatfish’s daughter was raped, she cut up that beast with her fish-knife, chop, chop, chop, right there in the market, just like she was cutting bait to set her lines. What you done was no worse than that.’ I knew an instant of dizzying terror. More than half beast … It wasn’t so long ago or far away that folk with the Wit were burned alive. ‘Thank you,’ I said, fighting for a calm voice. I added a modicum of truth when I said, ‘Not all of that was my doing. They were fighting over … their prey when I came on them.’ ‘Ginna’s daughter. You need not hide words from me, Fitz. I’ve children of my own, growed now, but if any was to attack them, why, I’d pray there’d be one like to you to defend them, no matter how. Or avenge them, if that’s all you could do.’ ‘I’m afraid it was, Cook.’ The shudder that ran over me was not feigned. I saw again the lines of blood trickled over a fat little fist. I blinked, but the image stayed. ‘I’ve got to hurry off now. I’m to wait on King Shrewd this day.’ ‘Are ye? Well, there’s a spot of good news, then. You just run these up with you, then.’ She trundled over to a cupboard, to take out a covered tray of small pastries baked rich with soft cheese and currants. She set a pot of hot tea beside them, and a clean cup. She arranged the pastries lovingly. ‘And you see he eats them, Fitz. His favourites, they are, and if he tastes one, I know he’ll eat them all. And do him good, too.’ Mine, too. I jumped as if poked with a pin. I tried to cover it with a cough, as if I had suddenly choked, but Cook still looked at me oddly. I coughed again, and nodded at her. ‘I’m sure he’ll love them,’ I said in a choked voice, and bore the tray out of the kitchen. Several sets of eyes followed me. I smiled pleasantly and tried to pretend I didn’t know why. I didn’t realize you were still with me, I told Verity. A tiny part of me was reviewing every thought I’d had since I left his tower, and was thanking Eda that I had not decided to seek out Nighteyes first, even as I pushed such thoughts aside, unsure how private they were. I know. I didn’t intend to be spying on you. Only to show you that when you do not focus so tightly on this, you are able to do it. I groped after his Skilling. More your effort than mine, I pointed out as I climbed the stairs. You’re annoyed with me. Beg pardon. From now on, I shall be sure you are aware of me whenever I am with you. Shall I leave you to your day? My own surliness had left me feeling embarrassed. No. Not yet. Ride with me a bit more while I visit King Shrewd. Let’s see how far we can carry this. I sensed his assent. I paused before Shrewd’s door, and balanced the tray with one hand as I hastily smoothed my hair back and tugged my jerkin straight. My hair had begun to be a problem lately. Jonqui had cut it short during one of my fevers in the mountains. Now that it was growing out, I didn’t know whether to tie it back in a tail as Burrich and the guardsmen did, or keep it at my shoulders as if I were a page still. I was much too old to wear it in the half-braid of a child. Tie it back, boy. I’d say you’d earned the right to wear it as a warrior, as much as any guardsman. Just don’t start fussing about it and twining it into oiled curls as Regal does. I fought the smirk off my face and knocked at the door. I waited a bit, then knocked again, more loudly. Announce yourself and open it, Verity suggested. ‘It’s FitzChivalry, sire. I’ve brought you something from Cook.’ I set my hand to the door. It was latched from within. That’s peculiar. It has never been my father’s way to latch a door. Put a man on it, yes, but not latch it and ignore someone knocking. Can you slip it? Probably. But let me try knocking again first. I all but pounded on the door. ‘A moment! A moment!’ someone hissed from inside. But it was considerably more than that before several latches were undone and the door opened a hand’s width. Wallace peered out at me like a rat from under a cracked wall. ‘What do you want?’ he demanded accusingly. ‘Audience with the King.’ ‘He’s asleep. Or was before you came pounding and shouting. Be off with you.’ ‘A moment.’ I shoved my booted foot into the closing door. With one free hand, I turned up the collar of my jerkin, to expose the red-stoned pin I was seldom without. The door was closed firmly on my foot. I put a shoulder against it, leaned as much as I could without dropping the tray I still carried. ‘This was given to me by King Shrewd a number of years ago. With it he gave the promise that whenever I showed it, I would be admitted to see him.’ ‘Even if he’s asleep?’ Wallace asked snidely. ‘He placed no limitations on it. Do you?’ I glared at him through the cracked door. He considered a moment, then stepped back from it. ‘By all means, then, do come in. Come and see your king asleep, trying to get the rest he so badly needs in his condition. But do you disturb it, and I as his healer shall tell him to take away that pretty pin and see that you do not bother him again.’ ‘You may recommend that as you wish. And if my king desires it, I shall not dispute it.’ He stood aside from me with an elaborate bow. I desperately wanted to knock that knowing sneer from his face, but I ignored it. ‘Wonderful,’ he elaborated as I passed him. ‘Sweet pastries to upset his digestion and tax him all the more. Thoughtful lad, aren’t you?’ I kept my temper. Shrewd was not in his sitting room. The bedchamber? ‘Will you truly bother him there? Well, why not? You’ve shown no other manners, why should I expect consideration now?’ Wallace’s voice was full of snide condescension. I gripped my temper. Don’t just accept that from him. Turn and face him down now. This was not advice from Verity, but a command. I set the tray down carefully upon a small table. I took a breath and turned to face Wallace. ‘Have you a dislike of me?’ I asked directly. He took a step back but tried to keep his sneer in place. ‘A dislike? Why should I, a healer, mind if someone comes to disturb an ill man when he is finally resting?’ ‘This room reeks of Smoke. Why?’ Smoke? A herb they use in the mountains. Seldom for medicine, save pains nothing else will halt. But more often the burning fumes are breathed for pleasure. Much as we use carris seed at Springfest. Your brother has a liking for it. As did his mother. If it is the same herb. She called it mirthleaf. Almost the same leaf, but the mountain plant grows taller with fleshier leaves. And thicker smoke. My exchange with Verity had taken less than a blink of an eye. One can Skill information as fast as one can think it. Wallace was still pursing his lips over my question. ‘Are you claiming to be a healer?’ he demanded. ‘No. But I’ve a working knowledge of herbs, one that suggests Smoke is not appropriate to a sick man’s chambers.’ Wallace was still a moment as he formulated an answer. ‘Well. A king’s pleasures are not his healer’s area of concern.’ ‘Perhaps they are mine, then,’ I offered, and turned away from him. I picked up the tray and pushed open the door to the King’s dimly-lit bedchamber. The reek of Smoke was heavier here, the air thick and cloying with it. Too hot a fire was burning, making the room close and stuffy. The air was still and stale as if no fresh wind had blown through the room for weeks. My own breath seemed heavy in my lungs. The King lay still, breathing stertorously beneath a mound of feather quilts. I looked about for a place to set down the tray of pastries. The small table close to his bed was littered. There was a censer for Smoke; the drifting ash thick on its top, but the burner was out and cold. Beside it was a goblet of lukewarm red wine, and a bowl with some nasty grey gruel in it. I set the vessel on the floor, and brushed the table clean with my shirt sleeve before setting the tray down. As I approached the King’s bed, there was a fusty, foetid smell that became even stronger as I leaned over the King. This is not like Shrewd at all. Verity shared my dismay. He has not summoned me much of late. And I have been too busy to call upon him unless he bids me to. The last time I saw him was in his sitting room, in an evening. He complained of headaches, but this… The thought trailed away between us. I glanced up from the King to find Wallace peering in round the door at us. There was something in his face; I know not whether to call it satisfaction or confidence, but it roused me to fury. In two steps I had reached the door. I slammed it, and had the satisfaction of hearing him yelp as he jerked his pinched fingers out. I dropped into place an ancient bar that had probably never been used in my lifetime. I moved to the tall windows, jerked aside the tapestries that covered them, and flung wide the wooden shutters. Clear sunlight and fresh cold air spilled into the room. Fitz, this is rash. I made no reply. Instead, I moved about the room, dumping censer after censer of ash and herb out of the open window. I brushed the clinging ash out with my hand to free the room from its reek. From about the room I gathered a half a dozen sticky goblets of stale wine, and a tray full of bowls and plates of untouched or half-eaten food. I stacked them by the door. Wallace was pounding on it and howling with fury. I leaned against it and spoke through the crack. ‘Hush!’ I told him sweetly. ‘You’ll waken the King.’ Have a boy sent with ewers of warm water. And tell Mistress Hasty that the King’s bed requires clean linens, I requested of Verity. Such orders cannot come from me. A pause. Don’t waste time in anger. Think, and you’ll see why it must be so. I understood, but knew also that I would not leave Shrewd in this dingy, smelly room any more than I would abandon him to a dungeon. There was half an ewer of water, stale, but mostly clean. I set it to warm by the hearth. I wiped his bed table clean of ash, and set out the tea and pastry tray upon it. Rummaging boldly through the King’s chest, I found a clean nightshirt, and then washing herbs. Leftover, no doubt, from Cheffer’s time. I had never thought I would so miss a valet. Wallace’s pounding ceased. I did not miss it. I took the warmed water scented with the herbs and a washing cloth and set it by the King’s bedside. ‘King Shrewd,’ I said gently. He stirred slightly. The rims of his eyes were red, the lashes gummed together. When he opened his eyes, he blinked red-veined eyes at the light. ‘Boy?’ He squinted about the room. ‘Where is Wallace?’ ‘Away for the moment. I’ve brought you warm wash water, and fresh pastries from the kitchen. And hot tea.’ ‘I … I don’t know. The window’s open. Why is the window open? Wallace has warned me about taking a chill.’ ‘I opened it to clear the air in the room. But I’ll close it if you like.’ ‘I smell the sea. It’s a clear day, isn’t it? Listen to those gulls cry a storm coming … No. No, close the window, boy. I dare not take a chill, not as ill as I am already.’ I moved slowly to close the wooden shutters. ‘Has your majesty been ill long? Not much has been said of it about the palace.’ ‘Long enough. Oh, forever it seems. It is not so much that I am ill as that I am never well. I am sick, and then I get a bit better, but as soon as I try to do anything, I am sick again, and worse than ever. I am so weary of being sick, boy. So tired of always feeling tired.’ ‘Come, sir. This will make you feel better.’ I damped the cloth and wiped his face gently. He recovered himself enough to motion me aside as he washed his own hands, and then wiped his face again more firmly. I was appalled at how the wash water had yellowed as it cleansed him. ‘I’ve found a clean nightshirt for you. Shall I help you into it? Or would you rather that I sent for a boy to bring a tub and warm water? I would bring clean linens for the bed while you bathed.’ ‘I, oh, I haven’t the energy, boy. Where is that Wallace? He knows I cannot manage alone. What possessed him to leave me?’ ‘A warm bath might help you to rest,’ I tried persuasively. Up close, the old man smelled. Shrewd had always been a cleanly man; I think that his grubbiness distressed me more than anything else. ‘But bathing can lead to chills. So Wallace says. A damp skin, a cool wind, and whisk, I’m gone. Or so he says.’ Had Shrewd really become this fretful old man? I could scarcely believe what I was hearing from him. ‘Well, perhaps just a hot cup of tea then. And a pastry. Cook Sara said these were your favourites.’ I poured the steaming tea into the cup and saw his nose twitch appreciatively. He had a sip or two, and then sat up to look at the carefully arranged pastries. He bade me join him, and I ate a pastry with him, licking the rich filling from my fingers. I understood why they were his favourites. He was well into a second when there were three solid thuds against the door. ‘Unbar it, Bastard. Or the men with me will take it down. And if any harm has come to my father, you shall die where you stand.’ Regal did not sound at all pleased with me. ‘What’s this, boy? The door barred? What goes on here? Regal, what goes on here?’ It pained me to hear the King’s voice crack querulously. I crossed the room, I unbarred the door. It was flung open before I could touch it, and two of Regal’s more muscular guards seized me. They wore his satin colours like bulldogs with ribbons about their necks. I offered no resistance, so they had no real excuse to throw me up against the wall, but they did. It awoke every pain I still bore from yesterday. They held me there while Wallace rushed in, tut-tutting about how cold the room was, and what was this, eating this, why, it was no less than poison to a man in King Shrewd’s condition. Regal stood, hands on hips, very much the man in charge, and stared at me through narrowed eyes. Rash, my boy. I very much fear that we have overplayed our hand. ‘Well, Bastard? What have you to say for yourself? Exactly what were your intentions?’ Regal demanded when Wallace’s litany ran down. He actually added another log to the fire in the already stifling room, and took the half-eaten pastry from the King’s hand. ‘I came to report. And finding the King ill cared for, sought to remedy that situation first.’ I was sweating, more from pain than nervousness. I hated to see Regal smile at it. ‘Ill cared for? What exactly are you saying?’ he accused me. I took a breath for courage. Truth. ‘I found his chamber untidy and musty. Dirty plates left about. The linens of his bed unchanged …’ ‘Dare you say such things?’ Regal hissed. ‘I do. I speak the truth to my king, as I ever have. Let him look about with his own eyes and see if it is not so.’ Something in the confrontation had stirred Shrewd to a shadow of his old self. He pushed himself up in bed and looked about himself. ‘The Fool has likewise made these complaints, in his own acid way …’ he began. Wallace dared to interrupt him. ‘My lord, the state of your health has been tender. Sometimes uninterrupted rest is more important than rolling you out of your bed to fuss with a change of blankets or linen. And a dish or two stacked about is less annoyance than the rattle and prattle of a page come in to tidy.’ King Shrewd looked suddenly uncertain. My heart smote me. This was what the Fool had wished me to see, why he had so often urged me to visit the King. Why had not he spoken more plainly? But then, when did the Fool ever speak plainly? Shame rose in me. This was my king, the king I had sworn to. I loved Verity, and my loyalty to him was unquestioning. But I had abandoned my king at the very moment when he needed me most. Chade was gone, for how long I did not know. I had left King Shrewd with no more than the Fool to protect him. And yet when had King Shrewd ever needed anyone to shelter him before? Always that old man had been more than capable of guarding himself. I chided myself that I should have been more emphatic with Chade about the changes I noted when I first returned home. I should have been more watchful of my sovereign. ‘How did he get in here?’ Regal suddenly demanded with a savage glare at me. ‘My prince, he had a token from the King himself, he claimed. He said the King had promised always to see him if he but showed that pin …’ ‘What rot! You believed such nonsense …’ ‘Prince Regal, you know it is true. You were witness when King Shrewd first gave it to me.’ I spoke quietly but clearly. Within me, Verity was silent, waiting and watching, and learning much. At my expense, I thought bitterly, and then strove to call back the thought. Moving calmly and unthreateningly, I pulled one wrist free of a bulldog’s grip. I turned back the collar of my jerkin and drew the pin out. I held it up for all to see. ‘I recall no such thing,’ Regal snapped, but Shrewd sat up. ‘Come closer, boy,’ he instructed me. Now I shrugged clear of my guards and tugged my clothing straight. Then I bore the pin up to the King’s bedside. Deliberately, King Shrewd reached out. He took the pin away from me. My heart sank inside me. ‘Father, this is …’ Regal began annoyedly, but Shrewd interrupted him. ‘Regal. You were there. You do recall it, or you should.’ The King’s dark eyes were as bright and alert as I remembered them, but also plain were the lines of pain about those eyes and the corner of his mouth. King Shrewd fought for this lucidity. He held the pin up and looked at Regal with a shadow of his old calculating glance. ‘I gave the boy this pin. And my word, in exchange for his.’ ‘Then I suggest you take them both back again, pin and word. You will never get well with this type of disruption going on in your rooms.’ Again, that edge of command in Regal’s voice. I waited, silent. The King lifted a shaky hand to rub his face and eyes, ‘I gave those things,’ he said, and the words were firm, but the strength was fading from his voice. ‘Once given, a man’s word is no longer his to call back. Am I right about this, FitzChivalry? Do you agree that once a man has given his word, he may not take it back?’ The old test was in that question. ‘As ever I have, my king, I agree with you. Once a man has given his word, he may not call it back. He must abide by what he has promised.’ ‘Good, then. That’s settled. It’s all settled.’ He proffered the pin to me. I took it from him, relief so immense it was like vertigo. He leaned back into his pillows. I had another dizzying moment. I knew those pillows, this bed. I had lain there, and looked with the Fool down on the sack of Siltbay. I had burned my fingers in that fireplace … The King heaved a heavy sigh. There was exhaustion in it. In another moment, he would be asleep. ‘Forbid him to come and disturb you again, unless you summon him,’ Regal commanded. King Shrewd pried his eyes open one more time. ‘Fitz. Come here, boy.’ Like a dog, I came closer to him. I knelt by his bed. He lifted a thinned hand, patted me awkwardly. ‘You and I, boy. We have an understanding, don’t we?’ A genuine question. I nodded. ‘Good lad. Good. I’ve kept my word. You see that you keep yours, now. But,’ he glanced at Regal, and that pained me, ‘it were better if you came to see me in the afternoons. I am stronger in the afternoons.’ He was slipping away again. ‘Shall I come back this afternoon, sire?’ I asked quickly. He lifted a hand and waved it in a vaguely denying gesture. ‘Tomorrow. Or the next day.’ His eyes closed and he sighed out as heavily as if he would never breathe in again. ‘As you wish, my lord,’ I concurred. I bowed deeply, formally. As I straightened, I carefully returned the pin to my jerkin lapel. I let them all spend a moment or two watching me do that. Then, ‘If you will excuse me, my prince?’ I requested formally. ‘Get out of here,’ Regal growled. I bowed less formally to him, turned carefully and left. His guards’ eyes watched me go. I was outside the room before I recalled that I had never brought up the subject of me marrying Molly. Now it seemed unlikely I would have an opportunity to for some time. I knew that afternoons would now find Regal or Wallace or some spy of theirs always at King Shrewd’s side. I had no wish to broach that topic before anyone save my king. Fitz? I’d like to be alone for a while just now, my prince. If you do not mind? He vanished from my mind like a bursting soap bubble. Slowly I made my way down the stairs. FIFTEEN (#ulink_bdbdd51c-22e2-5f0d-b7cc-c74288167cb5) Secrets (#ulink_bdbdd51c-22e2-5f0d-b7cc-c74288167cb5) Prince Verity chose to unveil his fleet of warships on the mid-day of Winterfest that decisive year. Tradition would have had him wait until the coming of better weather, to launch them on the first day of Springfest. That is considered a more auspicious time to launch a new ship. But Verity had pushed his shipwrights and their crews hard to have all four vessels ready for a mid-winter launch. By choosing the mid-day of Winterfest, he ensured himself a large audience, both for the launch and for his words. Traditionally, a hunt is held that day, with the meat brought in seen as a harbinger of days to come. When he had the ships pushed out of the sheds on their rollers, he announced to the gathered folk that these were his hunters, and that the only prey that would slake them would be Red Ships. The reaction to his announcement was muted, and clearly not what he had hoped for. It is my belief that the people wanted to put all thoughts of the Red Ships from their minds, to hide themselves in winter and pretend that the spring would never come. But Verity refused to let them. The ships were launched that day, and the training of the crews begun. Nighteyes and I spent the early afternoon hunting. He grumbled about it, saying it was a ridiculous time of day to hunt, and why had I wasted the early dawn hours tussling with my littermate? I told him that that was simply a thing that had to be, and would continue to be for several days, and possibly longer. He was not pleased. But neither was I. It rattled me not a little that he could be so clearly aware of how I spent my hours even if I had no conscious sense of being in touch with him. Had Verity been able to sense him? He laughed at me. Hard enough to make you hear me sometimes. Should I batter through to you and then shout for him as well? Our hunting success was small. Two rabbits, neither with much fat. I promised to bring him kitchen scraps on the morrow. I had even less success at conveying to him my demand for privacy at certain times. He could not grasp why I set mating apart from other pack activities such as hunting or howling. Mating suggested offspring in the near future, and offspring were the care of the pack. Words cannot convey the difficulties of that discussion. We conversed in images, in shared thoughts, and such do not allow for much discretion. His candour horrified me. He assured me he shared my delight in my mate and my mating. I begged him not to. Confusion. I finally left him eating his rabbits. He seemed piqued that I would not accept a share of the meat. The best I had been able to get from him was his understanding that I did not want to be aware of him sharing my awareness of Molly. That was scarcely what I wanted but it was the best way I could convey it to him. The idea that at times I would want to sever my bond to him completely was not a thought he could comprehend. It made no sense, he argued. It was not pack. I left him wondering if I would ever again really and truly have a moment to myself. I returned to the keep and sought the solitude of my own room. If only for a moment, I had to be where I could close the door behind me and be alone. Physically, anyway. As if to fuel my quest for quiet, the halls and stairways were full of hurrying folk. Servants were cleaning away old rushes and spreading new ones, fresh candles were being placed in holders, and boughs of evergreen were hung in festoons and swags everywhere. Winterfest. I didn’t much feel like it. I finally reached my own door and slipped inside. I shut it firmly behind me. ‘Back so soon?’ The Fool looked up from the hearth where he crouched in a semi-circle of scrolls. He seemed to be sorting them into groups. I stared at him with unconcealed dismay. In an instant, it flashed into anger. ‘Why didn’t you tell me of the King’s condition?’ He considered another scroll and, after a moment, set it in the pile to his right. ‘But I did. A question in exchange for yours: Why didn’t you already know of it?’ That set me back. ‘I admit I’ve been lax in calling upon him. But …’ ‘None of my words could have had the impact of seeing for yourself. Nor do you pause to think what it would have been like, had I not been there every single day, emptying chamberpots, sweeping, dusting, carrying out dishes, combing his hair and his beard …’ Again he had shocked me into silence. I crossed the room, sat down heavily upon my clothing chest. ‘He’s not the king I remember,’ I said bluntly. ‘It frightens me that he could sink so far, so fast.’ ‘Frightens you? Appals me. At least you’ve another king when this one’s been played.’ The Fool flipped another scroll onto the pile. ‘We all do,’ I pointed out carefully. ‘Some more than others,’ the Fool said shortly. Without thinking, my hand rose to tuck the pin tighter in my jerkin. I’d almost lost it today. It had made me think of all it had symbolized all these years. The King’s protection, for a bastard grandson that a more ruthless man would have done away with quietly. And now that he needed protection? What did it symbolize to me now? ‘So. What do we do?’ ‘You and I? Precious little. I’m but a Fool, and you are a Bastard.’ I nodded grudgingly. ‘I wish Chade were here. I wish I knew when he was coming back.’ I looked to the Fool, wondering how much he knew. ‘Shade? Shade returns when the sun does, I’ve heard.’ Evasive as always. ‘Too late for the King, I imagine,’ he added more quietly. ‘So we are powerless?’ ‘You and I? Never. We’ve too much power to act here; that is all. In this area, the powerless ones are always the most powerful. Perhaps you are right; they are who we should consult in this. And now,’ here he rose and made a show of shaking all his joints loose as if he were a marionette with tangled strings. He set every bell he had to jingling. I could not help but smile. ‘My king will be coming into his best time of day. And I will be there, to do what little I can for him.’ He stepped carefully out of his ring of sorted scrolls and tablets. He yawned. ‘Farewell, Fitz.’ ‘Farewell.’ He halted, puzzled, by the door. ‘You have no objections to my going?’ ‘I believe I objected first to your staying.’ ‘Never bandy words with a Fool. But do you forget? I offered you a bargain. A secret for a secret.’ I had not forgotten. But I was not sure, suddenly, that I wanted to know. ‘Whence comes the Fool, and why?’ I asked softly. ‘Ah.’ He stood a moment, then asked gravely, ‘You are certain you wish the answers to these questions?’ ‘Whence comes the Fool, and why?’ I repeated slowly. For an instant he was dumb. I saw him then. Saw him as I had not in years, not as the Fool, glib-tongued and wits as cutting as any barnacle, but as a small and slender person, all so fragile, pale flesh, bird-boned, even his hair seemed less substantial than that of other mortals. His motley of black and white trimmed with silver bells, his ridiculous rat sceptre were all the armour and sword he had in this court of intrigues and treachery. And his mystery. The invisible cloak of his mystery. I wished for an instant he had not offered the bargain, and that my curiosity had been less consuming. He sighed. He glanced about my room, then walked over to stand before the tapestry of King Wisdom greeting the Elderling. He glanced up at it, then smiled sourly, finding some humour there I had never seen. He assumed the stance of a poet about to recite. Then he halted, looked at me squarely once more. ‘You are certain you wish to know, Fitzy-Fitz?’ Like a liturgy, I repeated the question. ‘Whence comes the Fool and why?’ ‘Whence? Ah, whence?’ He went nose to nose with Ratsy for a moment, formulating a reply to his own question. Then he met my eyes. ‘Go south, Fitz. To lands past the edges of every map that Verity has ever seen. And past the edges of the maps made in those countries as well. Go south, and then east across a sea you have no name for. Eventually, you would come to a long peninsula, and on its snaking tip you would find the village where a Fool was born. You might even find, still, a mother who recalled her wormy-white babe, and how she cradled me against her warm breast and sang.’ He glanced up at my incredulous, enraptured face and gave a short laugh. ‘You cannot even picture it, can you? Let me make it harder for you. Her hair was long and dark and curling, and her eyes were green. Fancy that! Of such rich colours was this transparency made. And the fathers of the colourless child? Two cousins, for that was the custom of that land. One broad and swarthy and full of laughter, ruddy-lipped and brown-eyed, a farmer smelling of rich earth and open air. The other as narrow as the one was wide, and gold to his bronze, a poet and songster, blue-eyed. And, oh, how they loved me and rejoiced in me! All the three of them, and the village as well. I was so loved.’ His voice grew soft, and for a moment he fell silent. I knew with great certainty that I was hearing what no other had ever heard from him. I remembered the time I had ventured into his room, and the exquisite little doll in its cradle that I had found there. Cherished as the Fool had once been cherished. I waited. ‘When I was … old enough, I bade them all farewell. I set off to find my place in history, and choose where I would thwart it. This was the place I selected; the time had been destined by the hour of my birth. I came here, and became Shrewd’s. I gathered up whatever threads the fates put into my hands, and I began to twist them and colour them as I could, in the hopes of affecting what was woven after me.’ I shook my head. ‘I don’t understand a thing you just said.’ ‘Ah.’ He shook his head, setting his bells to jingling. ‘I offered to tell you my secret. I didn’t promise to make you understand it.’ ‘A message is not delivered until it is understood,’ I countered. This was a direct quote from Chade. The Fool teetered on accepting it. ‘You do understand what I said,’ he compromised. ‘You simply do not accept it. Never before have I spoken so plainly to you. Perhaps that is what confuses you.’ He was serious. I shook my head again. ‘You make no sense! You went somewhere to discover your place in history? How can that be? History is what is done and behind us.’ He shook his head, slowly this time. ‘History is what we do in our lives. We create it as we go along.’ He smiled enigmatically. ‘The future is another kind of history.’ ‘No man can know the future,’ I agreed. His smile widened. ‘Cannot they?’ he asked in a whisper. ‘Perhaps, Fitz, somewhere, there is written down all that is the future. Not written down by one person, know, but if the hints and visions and premonitions and foreseeings of an entire race were written down, and cross-referenced and related to one another, might not such a people create a loom to hold the weaving of the future?’ ‘Preposterous,’ I objected. ‘How would anyone know if any of it were true?’ ‘If such a loom were made, and such a tapestry of predictions woven, not for a few years, but for tens of hundreds of years, after a time, it could be shown that it presented a surprisingly accurate foretelling. Bear in mind that those who keep these records are another race, an exceedingly long-lived one. A pale, lovely race, that occasionally mingled its blood-lines with that of men. And then!’ He spun in a circle, suddenly fey, pleased insufferably with himself, ‘And then, when certain ones were born, ones marked so clearly that history must recall them, they are called to step forward, to find their places in that future history. And they might further be exhorted to examine that place, that juncture of a hundred threads, and say, these threads, here, these are the ones I shall tweak, and in the tweaking, I shall change the tapestry, I shall warp the weft, alter the colour of what is to come. I shall change the destiny of the world.’ He was mocking me. I was certain of it now. ‘Once, in perhaps a thousand years, there may come a man capable of making such a great change in the world. A powerful king, perhaps, or a philosopher, shaping the thoughts of thousands. But you and I, Fool? We are pawns. Ciphers.’ He shook his head pityingly. ‘This, more than anything else, is what I have never understood about your people. You can roll dice, and understand that the whole game may hinge on one turn of a die. You deal out cards, and say that all a man’s fortune for the night may turn upon one hand. But a man’s whole life, you sniff at, and say, what, this nought of a human, this fisherman, this carpenter, this thief, this cook, why, what can they do in the great wide world? And so you putter and sputter your lives away, like candles burning in a draught.’ ‘Not all men are destined for greatness,’ I reminded him. ‘Are you sure, Fitz? Are you sure? What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? A sadder thing I cannot imagine. Why should not a mother say to herself, if I raise this child aright, if I love and care for her, she shall live a life that brings joy to those about her, and thus I have changed the world? Why should not the farmer that plants a seed say to his neighbour, this seed I plant today will feed someone, and that is how I change the world today?’ ‘This is philosophy, Fool. I have never had time to study such things.’ ‘No, Fitz, this is life. And no one has time not to think of such things. Each creature in the world should consider this thing, every moment of the heart’s beating. Otherwise, what is the point of arising each day?’ ‘Fool, this is beyond me,’ I declared uneasily. I had never seen him so impassioned, never heard him speak so plainly. It was as if I had stirred grey-coated embers and suddenly found the cherry-red coal that glowed in their depths. He burned too brightly. ‘No, Fitz. I have come to believe it is through you.’ He reached out and tapped me lightly with Ratsy. ‘Keystone. Gate. Crossroads. Catalyst. All these you have been, and continue to be. Whenever I come to a crossroads, whenever the scent is uncertain, when I put my nose to the ground, and cast about and bay and snuffle, I find one scent. Yours. You create possibilities. While you exist, the future can be steered. I came here for you, Fitz. You are the thread I tweak. One of them, anyway.’ I felt a sudden chill of foreboding. Whatever more he had to say, I did not wish to hear it. Somewhere, far away, a thin howl arose. A wolf baying at mid-day. A shiver ran up me, setting up every hair on my body. ‘You’ve had your joke,’ I said, laughing nervously. ‘I should have known better than to expect a real secret from you.’ ‘You. Or not you. Linchpin, anchor, knot in the line. I have seen the end of the world, Fitz. Seen it woven as plainly as I’ve seen my birth. Oh, not in your lifetime, nor even mine. But shall we be happy, to say that we live in the dusk rather than in the full night? Shall we rejoice that we shall only suffer, while your offspring will be the ones to know the torments of the damned? Shall this be why we do not act?’ ‘Fool. I wish not to hear this.’ ‘You had a chance to deny me. But thrice you demanded it, and hear it you shall.’ He lifted his staff as if leading a charge, and spoke as if he addressed the full Council of the Six Duchies. ‘The fall of the Kingdom of the Six Duchies was the pebble that started the landslide. The soulless ones moved on from there, spreading like a bloodstain down the world’s best shirt. Darkness devours, and is never satiated until it feeds upon itself. And all because the line of House Farseer failed. That is the future as it is woven. But wait! Farseer!’ He cocked his head and peered at me, considering as a gore-crow. ‘Why do they call you that, Fitz? What have your ancestors ever foreseen afar to gain such a name? Shall I tell you how it comes about? The very name of your house is the future reaching back in time to you, and naming you by the name that someday your house will deserve. The Farseers. That was the clue I took to my heart. That the future reached back to you, to your house, to where your blood-lines intersected with my lifetime, and named you so. I came here, and what did I discover? One Farseer, with no name at all. Unnamed in any history, past or future. But I have seen you take a name, FitzChivalry Farseer. And I shall see that you deserve it.’ He advanced on me, seized me by the shoulders. ‘We are here, Fitz, you and I, to change the future of the world. To reach out and hold in place the tiny pebble that could trigger the boulder’s tumbling.’ ‘No.’ A terrible cold was welling up inside me. I shook with it. My teeth began to chatter, and the bright motes of light to sparkle at the edges of my vision. A fit. I was going to have another fit. Right here, in front of the Fool. ‘Leave!’ I cried out, unable to abide the thought. ‘Go away. Now! Quickly. Quickly!’ I had never seen the Fool astonished before. His jaw actually dropped open, revealing his tiny white teeth and pale tongue. A moment longer he gripped me, and then he let go. I did not stop to think of what he might feel at my abrupt dismissal. I snatched the door open and pointed out of it, and he was gone. I shut it behind him, latched it, and then staggered to my bed as wave after wave of darkness surged through me. I fell face-down on the coverlets. ‘Molly!’ I cried out, ‘Molly, save me!’ But I knew she could not hear me, and I sank alone into my blackness. The brightness of a hundred candles, festoons of evergreen and swags of holly and bare, black winter branches hung with sparkling sugar candies to delight the eye and tongue. The clacking of the puppets’ wooden swords and the delighted exclamations of the children when the Piebald Prince’s head actually came flying off and arced out over the crowd. Mellow’s mouth wide in a bawdy song as his unattended fingers danced independently over his harp strings. A blast of cold as the great doors of the hall were thrown open and yet another group of merrymakers came into the Great Hall to join us. The slow knowledge stole over me that this was no longer a dream, this was Winterfest, and I was wandering benignly through the celebration, smiling blandly at everyone and seeing no one. I blinked my eyes slowly. I could do nothing quickly. I was wrapped in soft wool, I was drifting like an unmanned sailboat on a still day. A wonderful sleepiness filled me. Someone touched my arm. I turned. Burrich frowning and asking me something. His voice, always so deep, almost a colour washing against me when he spoke. ‘It’s all good,’ I told him calmly. ‘Don’t worry, it’s all good.’ I floated away from him, wafting through the room with the milling of the crowd. King Shrewd sat on his throne, but I knew now that he was made of paper. The Fool sat on the step by his feet and clutched his rat sceptre like an infant clutches a rattle. His tongue was a sword, and as the King’s enemies drew closer to the throne, the Fool slew them, slashed them to bits and turned them back from the paper man on the throne. And here were Verity and Kettricken on another dais, pretty as the Fool’s doll, each of them. I looked and saw they were both made of hungers, like containers made of emptiness. I felt so sad, I’d never be able to fill either of them, for they were both so terribly empty. Regal came to speak to them, and he was a big black bird, not a crow, no, not so merry as a crow, and not a raven, he hadn’t the cheery cleverness of a raven, no, a miserable eye-pecker of a bird, circling, circling, dreaming of them as carrion for himself to feast on. He smelled the carrion, and I covered my mouth and nose with a hand and walked away from them. I sat down on a hearth, next to a giggling girl, happy in her blue skirts. She chattered like a squirrel and I smiled at her, and soon she leaned against me and began to sing a funny little song about three milkmaids. There were others sitting and standing about the hearth, and they joined in the song. We all laughed at the end, but I wasn’t sure why. And her hand was warm, resting so casually on my thigh. Brother, are you mad? Have you eaten fishbones, are you burned by fever? ‘Huh?’ Your mind is clouded. Your thoughts are bloodless and sickly. You move like prey. ‘I feel fine.’ ‘Do you, sir? Then I do, too.’ She smiled up at me. Chubby little face, dark eyes, curly hair peeking out from under her cap. Verity would like this one. She patted my leg companionably. A bit higher than she had touched me before. ‘FitzChivalry!’ I looked up slowly. Patience was standing over me, with Lacey at her elbow. I smiled to see her there. She so seldom came out of her rooms to socialize. Especially in winter. Winter was a hard time for her. ‘I shall be so glad when summer returns, and we can walk in the gardens together,’ I told her. She looked at me silently for a moment. ‘I have something heavy I wish carried up to my rooms. Will you bring it for me?’ ‘Certainly.’ I stood carefully. ‘I have to go,’ I told the little servant girl. ‘My mother needs me. I liked your song.’ ‘Goodbye sir!’ she chirped at me, and Lacey glared at her. Patience’s cheeks were very rosy. I followed her through the ebb and press of folk. We came to the foot of the stairs. ‘I forget how to do these,’ I told her. ‘And where is the heavy thing you wish carried?’ ‘That was an excuse to get you away from there before you completely disgraced yourself!’ she hissed at me. ‘What is the matter with you? How could you behave so badly? Are you drunk?’ I thought about it. ‘Nighteyes said I was poisoned by fishbones. But I feel fine.’ Lacey and Patience looked at me very carefully. Then they each took an arm, and guided me upstairs. Patience made tea. I talked to Lacey. I told her how much I loved Molly and that I was going to marry her as soon as the King said I could. She patted my hand and felt my forehead and asked what I’d eaten today and where. I couldn’t remember. Patience gave me tea. Very soon I puked. Lacey gave me cold water. Patience gave me more tea. I puked again. I said I didn’t want any more tea. Patience and Lacey argued. Lacey said she thought I’d be all right after I slept. She took me back to my room. I woke up with no clear idea of what had been dream and what had been real, if anything. My entire recall of the evening’s events had the same distance as events that had happened years ago. This was compounded by the open staircase with its beckoning yellow light and the draught from it chilling my room. I scrabbled out of bed, swayed for a moment as a wave of dizziness overtook me and then slowly mounted the stairs, one hand always touching the cold stone wall to reassure myself that it was real. About midway up the steps, Chade came down to meet me. ‘Here, take my arm,’ he commanded, and I did. He put his free arm around me and we went up the stairs together. ‘I’ve missed you,’ I told him. With my next breath, I told him, ‘King Shrewd is in danger.’ ‘I know. King Shrewd is always in danger.’ We gained the top of the stairwell. There was a fire in his hearth, and a meal set out next to it on a tray. He guided me toward both. ‘I think I might have been poisoned today.’ A sudden shivering ran up me and I shuddered all over. When it passed, I felt more alert. ‘I seem to be waking up in stages. I keep thinking I’m awake, and then suddenly everything is clearer.’ Chade nodded gravely. ‘I suspect it was the ash residue. You weren’t thinking when you tidied King Shrewd’s room for him. Many times the burned residue of a herb concentrates the potency of the herb. You got it all over your hands and then sat there eating pastries. There was little I could do. I thought you would sleep it off. What possessed you to go downstairs?’ ‘I don’t know.’ Then, ‘How do you always know so much?’ I asked peevishly as he pushed me down into his old chair. He took my usual perch on the hearthstones. Even in my fuddled state, I noticed how fluidly he moved, as if he had somewhere abandoned the cramps and aches of an old man’s body. There was wind-burnt colour to his face and arms as well, the tan fading the pocks’ stigma. I had once noticed his resemblance to Shrewd. Now I saw Verity in his face as well. ‘I have my little ways of finding things out.’ He grinned at me wolfishly. ‘How much do you remember of Winterfest tonight?’ I winced as I considered it. ‘Enough to know that tomorrow is going to be a difficult day.’ The little servant girl suddenly popped up in my memory. Leaning on my shoulder, her hand on my thigh. Molly. I had to get to Molly tonight and somehow explain things to her. If she came to my room tonight, and I wasn’t there to answer her knock … I started up in my chair, but then another shiver ran up over me. It felt almost like a skin being peeled off me. ‘Here. Eat something. Puking your guts out wasn’t the best thing for you, but I’m sure Patience meant well. And under other circumstances, it could have been a life-saver. No, you idiot, wash your hands first. Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?’ I noticed then the vinegar-water set out beside the food. I washed my hands carefully to remove every trace of whatever had clung to them, and then my face, amazed as how much more alert I suddenly felt. ‘It’s been like an extended dream, all day … is this what Shrewd has been feeling?’ ‘I’ve no idea. Perhaps not all those burning herbs down there are what I think they are. It was one of the things I wanted to discuss with you tonight. How has Shrewd been? Has this come on him suddenly? How long has Wallace been calling himself a healer?’ ‘I don’t know.’ I hung my head in shame. I forced myself to report to Chade just how lax I had been in his absence. And how stupid. When I was finished, he did not disagree with me. ‘Well,’ he said heavily. ‘We can’t undo, we can only salvage. Too much is happening here to sort at one sitting.’ He looked at me consideringly. ‘Much of what you tell me does not surprise me. Forged ones converging still on Buckkeep, the King’s illness lingering. But King Shrewd’s health has declined much more swiftly than I can account for, and the squalor in his rooms makes no sense to me. Unless …’ He did not finish the thought. ‘Perhaps they believe that Lady Thyme was his only defender. Perhaps they think we no longer care; perhaps they believe him an isolated old man, an obstacle to be removed. Your carelessness has drawn them out, at least. And having drawn them out, perhaps we can cut them off.’ He sighed. ‘I thought I could use Wallace as a tool, lead him subtly through the advice of others. He has little knowledge of herbs of his own; the man is a dabbler. But the tool I left carelessly lying about, perhaps another employs now. We shall have to see. Still. There are ways to stop this.’ I bit my tongue before I could utter Regal’s name. ‘How?’ I asked instead. Chade smiled. ‘How were you rendered ineffective as an assassin in the Mountain Kingdom?’ I winced at the memory. ‘Regal revealed my purpose to Kettricken.’ ‘Exactly. We shall shine a bit of daylight on what goes on in the King’s chambers. Eat while I talk.’ And so I did, listening to him as he outlined my assignments for the next day, but also noting what he chose to feed me. The flavour of garlic predominated, and I knew his confidence in its purifying abilities. I wondered just what I had ingested, and also how much it coloured my recollection of my conversation with the Fool. I flinched as I recalled my brusque dismissal of him. He would be another I would have to seek out tomorrow. Chade noticed my preoccupation. ‘Sometimes,’ he observed obliquely, ‘you have to trust people to understand you are not perfect.’ I nodded, then suddenly yawned immensely. ‘Beg pardon,’ I muttered. My eyelids were suddenly so heavy I could barely keep my head up. ‘You were saying?’ ‘No, no. Go to bed. Rest. It’s the real healer.’ ‘But I haven’t even asked you where you’ve been. Or what you’ve been doing. You move and act as if you’d lost ten years of age.’ Chade puckered his mouth. ‘Is that a compliment? Never mind. Such questions would be useless anyway, so you may save them for another time, and be frustrated then when I refuse to answer them. As to my condition … well, the more one forces one’s body to do, the more it can do. It was not an easy journey. Yet I believe it was worth the hardship.’ He held up a halting hand as I opened my mouth. ‘And that is all I am going to say. To bed, now, Fitz. To bed.’ I yawned again as I rose, and stretched until my joints popped. ‘You’ve grown again,’ Chade complained admiringly. ‘At this rate, you’ll even top your father’s height.’ ‘I’ve missed you,’ I mumbled as I headed toward the stair. ‘And I you. But we shall have tomorrow night for catching up. For now, bed for you.’ I went down his stairs with the sincere intention of following his suggestion. As it always did, the staircase sealed itself moments after I exited it, by a mechanism I had never been able to discover. I threw three more logs on my dying fire and then crossed to my bed. I sat down on it to pull my shirt off. I was exhausted. But not so tired that I could not catch a faint trace of Molly’s scent on my own skin as I pulled my shirt off. I sat a moment longer, holding my shirt in my hands. Then I put it back on and rose. I went to my door and slipped out into the hallway. It was late, by any other night’s standard. Yet this was the first night of Winterfest. There were many below who would not think of their beds until dawn was on the horizon. Others who would not find their own beds at all this night. I smiled suddenly, as I realized I intended to be part of the latter group. There were others in the halls that night and on the staircases. Most were too inebriated, or too engrossed in themselves to notice me. As for the others, I resolved to let Winterfest be my excuse for any questions asked of me the next day. Still, I was discreet enough to be sure the corridor was clear before I tapped on her door. I heard no reply. But as I lifted my hand to tap again, the door swung silently open into darkness. It terrified me. In an instant I was sure harm had come to her, that someone had been here and hurt her and left her there in the darkness. I sprang into the room, crying out her name. The door swung shut behind me and ‘Hush!’ she commanded. I turned to find her, but it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. The light from the hearth fire was the only illumination in the room, and it was to my back. When my eyes did penetrate the darkness, I felt as if I could not breathe. ‘Were you expecting me?’ I asked at last. In a little cat voice, she replied, ‘Only for hours.’ ‘I thought you would be at the merrymaking in the Great Hall.’ Slowly it dawned on me that I had not seen her there. ‘I knew I would not be missed there. Except by one. And I thought perhaps that one might come seeking me here.’ I stood motionless and looked at her. She wore a wreath of holly upon the tumble of her hair. That was all. And she stood against the door, wanting me to look at her. How can I explain the line that had been crossed? Before, we had ventured into this together, exploring and inquisitive. But this was different. This was a woman’s frank invitation. Can there be anything so compelling as the knowledge that a woman desires you? It overwhelmed me and blessed me and somehow redeemed me from every stupid thing I had ever done. Winterfest. The heart of night’s secret. Yes. She shook me awake before dawn, and put me out of her rooms. The farewell kiss that she gave me before shooing me out the door was such that I stood in the hall trying to persuade myself that dawn was not all that close. After a few moments, I recalled that discretion was called for, and wiped the foolish smile off my face. I straightened my rumpled shirt and headed for the stairs. Once inside my room, an almost dizzying weariness overtook me. How long had it been since I had had a full night’s sleep? I sat down on my bed and dragged my shirt off. I dropped it to the floor. I fell back onto the bed and closed my eyes. A soft tap at my door jerked me upright. I crossed the room swiftly, smiling to myself. I was still smiling as I swung the door wide. ‘Good, you’re up! And almost dressed. I was afraid from the way you looked last night that I’d be dragging you out of your bed by the scruff of your neck.’ It was Burrich, freshly washed and brushed. The lines across his forehead were the only visible signs of the last night’s revelry. From my years of sharing quarters with him, I knew that no matter how fierce a hangover he might have, he would still rise to face his duties. I sighed. No good asking quarter, for none would be given. Instead I went to my clothes chest and found a clean shirt. I put it on as I followed him to Verity’s tower. There is an odd threshold, physical as well as mental. There have been but a few times in my life that I have been pushed over it, but each time, an extraordinary thing happened. That morning was one of those times. After an hour or so had passed, I stood in Verity’s tower room, shirtless and sweating. The tower windows were open to the winter wind, but I felt no chill. The padded axe Burrich had given me was but a little lighter than the world itself, and the weight of Verity’s presence in my mind felt as if it were forcing my brain out my eyes. I could no longer keep my axe up to guard myself. Burrich came at me again, and I made no more than a token defence. He batted it aside with ease, then came in swiftly, one, two blows, not hard, but not softly either. ‘And you’re dead,’ he told me, and stood back. He let the head of his axe sag to the floor and stood leaning on it and breathing. I let my own axe thud head first to the floor. Useless. Within my mind, Verity was very still. I glanced over to where he sat staring out the window across the sea to the horizon. The morning light was harsh on the lines in his face and the grey in his hair. His shoulders were slumped forward. His posture mirrored what I felt. I closed my eyes a moment, too weary to do anything anymore. And suddenly we meshed. I saw to the horizons of our future. We were a country besieged by a ravenous enemy who came to us only to kill and maim. That was their sole goal. They had no fields to plant, no children to defend, no stock to tend to distract them from their Raiding. But we strove to live our day to day lives at the same time we tried to protect ourselves from their destruction. For the Red Ship Raiders, their ravages were their day to day lives. That singleness of purpose was all they needed to destroy us. We were not warriors, had not been warriors for generations. We did not think like warriors. Even those of us who were soldiers were soldiers who had trained to fight against a rational enemy. How could we stand against an onslaught of madmen? What weapons did we have? I looked around. Me. Myself as Verity. One man. One man, making himself old as he strove to walk the line between defending his people and being swept away in the addictive ecstasy of the Skill. One man, trying to rouse us, trying to ignite us to defend ourselves. One man, with his eyes afar, as we squabbled and plotted and bickered in the rooms below him. It was useless. We were doomed to fail. The tide of despair swept over me and threatened to pull me down. It swirled around me, but suddenly, in the middle of it, I found a place to stand. A place where the very uselessness of it was funny. Horribly funny. Four little warships, not quite finished, with untrained crews. Watchtowers and fire signals to call the inept defenders forth to the slaughter. Burrich with his axe, and me standing in the cold. Verity staring out the window, while below Regal fed his own father drugs. In the hopes of stealing his mind, and inheriting the whole mess, I didn’t doubt. It was all so totally useless. And so unthinkable to give it up. A laugh welled up from inside me, and I could not contain it. I stood leaning on my axe, and laughed as if the world were the funniest thing I’d ever seen, while Burrich and Verity both stared at me. A very faint answering smile crooked the corners of Verity’s mouth; a light in his eyes shared my madness. ‘Boy? Are you all right?’ Burrich asked me. ‘I’m fine. I’m absolutely fine,’ I told them both when my waves of laughter had subsided. I pulled myself up to stand straight. I shook my head, and I swear I almost felt my brain settle. ‘Verity,’ I said, and embraced his consciousness to mine. It was easy; it had always been easy, but before I had believed there was something to lose by doing it. We did not meld into one person, but instead fit together like bowls stacked in a cupboard. He rode me comfortably, like a well-loaded pack. I took a breath and lifted my axe. ‘Again,’ I said to Burrich. As he came at me, I no longer allowed him to be Burrich. He was a man with an axe, come to kill Verity, and before I could stop my momentum, I had laid him out on the floor. He rose, shaking his head, and I saw a touch of anger in his face. Again we came together, and again I made a telling touch. ‘Third time,’ he told me, and his battle-smile lit up his weathered face. We came together again with a jolt in the joy of struggle, and I overmatched him cleanly. Twice more we clashed before Burrich suddenly stepped back from one of my blows. He lowered his axe to the floor and stood, hunkered slightly forward until his breath came easy again. Then he straightened and looked at Verity. ‘He’s got it,’ he said huskily. ‘He’s caught the knack of it now. Not that he’s fully honed yet. Drill will make him sharper, but you’ve made a wise choice for him. The axe is his weapon.’ Verity nodded slowly. ‘And he is mine.’ SIXTEEN (#ulink_71e66785-0591-526a-9424-d926ea98ad33) Verity’s Ships (#ulink_71e66785-0591-526a-9424-d926ea98ad33) In the third summer of the Red Ship War, the Six Duchies’ warships were blooded. Although they numbered only four, they represented an important change in tactics to defending our realm. Our encounters that spring with the Red Ships swiftly taught us that we had forgotten much of being warriors. The Raiders were right; we had become a race of farmers. But we were farmers who had determined to take a stand and fight. We quickly found the Raiders to be resourceful and savage fighters. This was true to the extent that none of them ever surrendered or were taken alive. That, perhaps, should have been our first clue as to the nature of Forging and what we actually battled, but at the time it was too subtle a hint, and we were too busy surviving to wonder at it. The rest of that winter passed as swiftly as the first half had dragged. The separate parts of my lives became like beads and I the string that ran through them all. I believe if I had ever paused to consider the intricacy of all I did to keep those parts separate, I would have found it impossible. But I was young then, much younger than I suspected, and somehow I found the energy and time to do and be it all. My day began before dawn, with a session with Verity. At least twice a week, Burrich and his axes were included. But most often it was Verity and I alone. He worked on my Skill sense, but not as Galen had. He had specific tasks in mind for me, and these were what he trained me in. I learned to see through his eyes, and to give him the use of mine. I practised being aware of the subtle way he would steer my attention, and in keeping up a constant mental commentary that kept him informed of all that was going on around us. This involved me leaving the tower, and carrying his presence about with me like a hawk on my wrist as I went about my other daily tasks. At first a few hours were as long as I could sustain the Skill bond, but as time went on I managed to share my mind with him for days at a time. The bond did weaken with the passing of time, however. It was not a true Skilling from me to Verity, but a touch-imposed bond that had to be renewed. It still gave me a sense of accomplishment to be able to do at least this much. I put in a fair share of time in the Queen’s Garden, moving and then shifting again benches and statuary and pots, until Kettricken was finally satisfied with the arrangements there. For those hours, I always made sure Verity was with me. I hoped it would do him good to see his Queen as others saw her, especially when she was caught up in the enthusiasm of her snowy garden spot. Glowing pink-cheeked and gold-haired, wind-kissed and lively: this was how I showed her to him. He heard her speak freely of the pleasure she hoped this garden would bring him. Was this a betrayal of Kettricken’s confidences to me? I pushed such uneasiness firmly away. I took him with me when I paid my duties to Patience and Lacey. I also tried to carry Verity out and among the folk more. Since he had begun his heavy Skill duties, he was seldom among the common folk he had once so enjoyed. I took him to the kitchen, and the watch-room, to the stables, and down to the taverns in Buckkeep Town. For his part, he steered me to the boat-sheds, where I watched the final work being done on his ships. Later, I frequently visited the dock where the ships were tied, to talk to the crews as they got to know their vessels. I made him aware of the grumbling of the men who thought it treasonous that some Outislander refugees had been allowed to become crew-members of our defence vessels. It was plain to any eye that these men were experienced in the handling of sleek raiding vessels, and were making our ships more effective with their expertise. Plain, too, that many of the Six Duchies men resented and distrusted the handful of immigrants among them. I was not sure if Verity’s decision to use them had been wise. I said nothing of my own doubts, but only showed him the mutterings of other men. He was with me, too, the times when I called upon Shrewd. I learned to make my visits in late morning or early afternoon. Wallace seldom admitted me easily, and it always seemed there were others in the room, serving-maids I did not know, a workman ostensibly repairing a door, when I went to visit. I hoped impatiently for a chance to talk with him privately about my marriage ambitions. The Fool was there always, and kept his word not to show friendship to me before other eyes. His mockery was sharp and stinging, and even though I knew its purpose, he still could manage to fluster or irritate me. The only satisfaction I could take was in the changes I saw in the room. Someone had tattled to Mistress Hasty about the state of the King’s chamber. In the midst of the Winterfest activities, such a troop of housemaids and serving-boys flocked to the room that it brought the festivities to the King. Mistress Hasty, fists on hips, stood at the centre of the room and oversaw it all, all the while berating Wallace for ever letting things reach such a state. Evidently he had been assuring her that he had been personally seeing to the tidying and laundering in an effort to keep the King from being disturbed. I spent one very merry afternoon there, for the activity awoke Shrewd, and soon he seemed almost his old self. He hushed Mistress Hasty when she berated her own folk for laxness, and instead exchanged banter with them as floors were scrubbed, fresh reeds strewn, and the furniture rubbed well with fragrant cleansing oil. Mistress Hasty bundled a veritable mountain of quilts upon the King while she ordered the windows opened and the room aired. She, too, sniffed at all the ashes and burn pots. I quietly suggested that Wallace might best see to their cleansing, as he was most familiar with the qualities of the herbs that had burned there. He was a much more docile and tractable man when he returned with the pots. I wondered if he himself knew just what effect his smokes had upon Shrewd. But if these smokes were not his doing, then whose? The Fool and I exchanged more than one secret significant glance. Not only was the chamber scrubbed out, but made bright as well, with festive candles and wreaths, evergreens and bare branches of trees gilded and hung with painted nuts. It brought the colour back into the King’s cheeks. I sensed Verity’s quiet approval. When that night the King descended from his chambers to join us in the Great Hall, and actually called out for his favourite musicians and songs, I took it as a personal victory. Some moments were solely mine, of course, and not just my nights with Molly. As often as I could manage, I would creep off from the keep, to run and hunt with my wolf. Bonded as our minds were, I was never completely isolated from him, but a simple mind link did not have the deep satisfaction of sharing a hunt. It is hard to express the completeness of two beings moving as one, for a single purpose. Those times were really the fulfilling of our bond. But even when I went days without physically seeing him, he was with me. His presence was like a perfume, which one is aware of greatly when one first encounters it, but then becomes simply a part of the air one breathes. I knew he was there in small ways. My sense of smell seemed more acute, and I attributed this to his expertise in reading what the air brought me. I became more aware of others around me, as if his consciousness were guarding my back, and alerting me to small sensory clues I might otherwise have ignored. Food was more savoury, perfumes more tangible. I tried not to extend this logic to my appetite for Molly’s company. I knew he was there, but as he had promised, he did nothing overt to make me aware of him at such times. A month after Winterfest, I found myself thrown into a new labour. Verity had told me he wished me aboard a ship. I found myself summoned one day to the deck of the Rurisk, and assigned a spot at an oar. The master of the vessel openly wondered why he had been sent a twig when he asked for a log. I could not dispute the question. Most of the men around me were brawny fellows and seasoned ship-hands. My only possible chance to prove myself was to throw myself into my tasks with every bit of energy I could muster. At least I had the satisfaction of knowing I was not alone in my inexperience. While the other men aboard had all served in some fashion on other vessels, all save the Outislanders among the crew were new to this style of ship. Verity had had to seek out our oldest shipwrights to come up with men who knew how to build a fighting ship. The Rurisk was the largest of the four vessels launched at Winterfest. The lines of the boat were sleek and sinuous, and her shallow draught meant that she could skim across a calm sea like an insect on a pond, or ride out rough swell as handily as any gull. In two of the other boats, the planking was pegged edge to edge into the ribs, but the Rurisk and her smaller sister ship Constance were clinker-built, with the planking overlapped. The Rurisk had been built by Mastfish, and the planking was well fitted, but still had the give to withstand any battering the seas might offer. Only a minimum of caulking with tarred rope had been needed, so lovingly had this ship been crafted. Her mast of pine supported a sail of spun flax reinforced with rope. Verity’s buck graced the sail of the Rurisk. The new ship still smelled of wood shavings and tarred rope. Her decks were scarcely scarred, and the oars were clean their entire length. Soon the Rurisk would take on a character of its own; a bit of marlinspike work to make it easier to grip an oar, a splice in a line, all the nicks and dings of a well-used ship. But for now, the Rurisk was as green as we were. When we took the ship out, it reminded me of an inexperienced rider on a green-broke horse. She sidled about, shied and curtsied amongst the waves, and then, as we all found a rhythm, stepped out and cut through the water like a greased knife. It was Verity’s will that I immerse myself in these new skills. I was given a bunk in the warehouse with the rest of my shipmates. I learned to be unobtrusive, but energetic in jumping to any order. The master was Six Duchies through and through, but the mate was an Outislander, and he it was who really taught us to handle the Rurisk and just what the ship could do. There were two other Outislander immigrants aboard, and when we weren’t cleaning the ship or doing maintenance and sleeping, they congregated and spoke quietly amongst themselves. I wondered that they didn’t see how this set the Six Duchies folk to muttering. My bunk was near to theirs, and oftentimes as I lay trying to fall asleep, I was aware of Verity urging me to pay attention to soft words spoken in a language I didn’t understand. So I did, knowing that he made more sense of the sounds than I did. After a time I came to realize that it was not so very different from the Duchies’ tongue, and that I could understand some of what was said for myself. I found no talk of betrayal or mutiny amongst them. Only soft, sad words of kin Forged away from them by their own countrymen, and harsh bitter vows of vengeance to be carried out against their own kind. They were not so different from the Six Duchies men and women of the crew. Almost everyone on board had lost someone to Forging. Guiltily, I wondered how many of those lost souls I had sent into the oblivion of death. It made a small barrier between me and the other crew members. Despite the fury of the winter storms, we took the ships out nearly every day. We fought mock battles against each other, practising techniques for grappling or ramming another ship, and also gauging a leap so that one boarded the other vessel rather than ending up in the waters between them. Our master was at pains to explain all our advantages to us. The enemy we would encounter would be far from home, and already worn from weeks at sea. They would have been living aboard their vessels, cramped and punished by the weather, while we would be fresh each day and well fed. The rigours of their journey would demand that every oarsman must also be a Raider, while we could carry additional fighters who could use their bows or board another vessel while keeping our oars fully manned. Often I saw the mate shaking his head over these words. Privately, he confided to his fellows that the rigours of a raiding journey were what made a crew hard and fierce. How could soft, well-fed farmers hope to prevail against sea-honed Red Ship Raiders? One day out of ten I was allowed a day to myself, and those days I spent at the keep. They were scarcely restful. I reported to King Shrewd, detailing to him my experiences aboard the Rurisk, and taking pleasure in the interest that awoke in his eyes at such times. He seemed better, but was still not the robust king I remembered from my youth. Patience and Lacey likewise demanded a visit, and I made a dutiful call on Kettricken as well. An hour or two for Nighteyes, a clandestine visit to Molly’s chambers, and then the excuses to hurry back to my own chamber for the rest of the night, so that I might be there when Chade would summon me for his quizzings. The following dawn, a brief report to Verity, where with a touch he renewed our Skill bond. Often it was a relief to return to the crew’s quarters to get a solid night of sleep. Finally, as winter drew to a close, chance afforded me an opportunity to speak privately with Shrewd. I had gone to his chambers on one of my days away from the boat, to report to him on our training progress. Shrewd was in better health than usual, and was sitting up in his chair by the fire. Wallace was not about that day. Instead, there was a young woman, ostensibly tidying the chamber, but almost certainly spying for Regal. The Fool, too, was underfoot as always, and taking a keen pleasure in making her uncomfortable. I had grown up with the Fool, and had always accepted his white skin and colourless eyes as simply the way he was. The woman obviously felt differently. She began it, it must be admitted, peering at the Fool whenever she thought he might not be paying attention. But as soon as he noted it, he began to peek back at her, and each time affected a more lascivious glance than the last. She became more and more nervous, and when finally, she must pass by us with her bucket, and the Fool sent Ratsy on his sceptre to peek up under her skirts, she leaped back with a shriek, dousing herself and the floor she had just scrubbed with dirty water. Shrewd rebuked the Fool, who grovelled extravagantly and remorselessly, and then dismissed the woman to get dry clothes on. I sprang to my opportunity. She was scarcely clear of the room before I spoke. ‘My liege, there is something I have been wishing to petition you about, for some time.’ Some note in my voice must have alerted both Fool and King, for I instantly had their undivided attention. I glared at the Fool, and he knew plainly I wished him to withdraw, but instead he leaned closer, actually resting his head against Shrewd’s knee as he simpered at me infuriatingly. I refused to let it rattle me. I looked at the King beseechingly. ‘You may speak, FitzChivalry,’ he said formally. I drew a breath. ‘My liege, I would ask your permission to marry.’ The Fool’s eyes grew round with surprise. But my king smiled as indulgently as if I were a child begging a sweetmeat. ‘So. Finally, it has come. But surely you mean to court her first?’ My heart was thundering in my chest. My king looked entirely too knowing. But pleased, very pleased. I dared to hope. ‘May it please my king, I fear I have already begun to court her. Yet know I did not intend to do so presumptuously. It just … came about.’ He laughed good-naturedly. ‘Yes. Some things do. Though when you did not speak out sooner, I wondered what your intentions were, and if the lady had deceived herself.’ My mouth went dry. I could not breathe. How much did he know? He smiled at my terror. ‘I have no objections. In fact, I am well pleased with your choice …’ The smile that broke out on my face was amazingly echoed by one on the Fool’s countenance. I drew a trembling breath, until Shrewd continued, ‘But her father has reservations. He has told me that he would like to delay this, at least until her older sisters are pledged.’ ‘What?’ I could barely utter the word. Confusion whirled in me. Shrewd smiled benignly. ‘Your lady, it seems, is as good as her name. Celerity asked her father for permission to court you the very day you left for Buckkeep. I think you won her heart when you spoke so plainly to Virago. But Brawndy denied her, for the reason I have told you. I understand the lady raised quite a storm with her father, but Brawndy is a fine man. He did, however, send word to us, lest we take offence. He wishes us to know he has no opposition to the match itself, only to her preceding her sisters in marriage. I acceded in this. She is, I believe, but fourteen?’ I could not speak. ‘Do not look so distressed, boy. You are both young and there is plenty of time. While he does not choose to allow a formal courting to begin as yet, I am sure he does not intend that you shall not see each other.’ King Shrewd looked on me so tolerantly, with so much kindliness in his eyes. The Fool’s eyes flickered back and forth between us. I could not read his face. I was trembling, as I had not in months. I would not allow this to continue, to become any worse than it was already. I found my tongue, formed words in my dry throat. ‘My king, that is not the lady I was considering.’ Silence descended. I met my king’s eyes, and saw his look change. Had I not been so desperate, I know I would have looked aside from that displeasure. Instead I looked at him beseechingly, praying he might understand. When he did not speak further, I attempted to. ‘My king, the woman I speak of is presently a lady’s maid, but in her own right she is not a servant. She is …’ ‘Be silent.’ It could not have been sharper if he had struck me. I was still. Shrewd looked me up and down carefully. When he spoke, it was with the force of all his majesty. I thought I felt even the pressure of the Skill in his voice. ‘Be entirely certain of what I say to you, FitzChivalry. Brawndy is my friend, as well as my Duke. Neither he, nor his daughter, shall be offended or slighted by you. At this time, you shall court no one. No one. I suggest you consider well all you are offered when Brawndy considers you favourably as a match for Celerity. He makes no matter of your birth. Few others would do so. Celerity will have land and a title of her own. As will you, from me, if you have the wisdom to bide your time and do well by the lady. You will come to find that it is the wise choice. I will tell you when you may begin courting her.’ I summoned the last of my courage. ‘My king, please, I …’ ‘Enough, Chivalry! You have heard my word on this subject. There is no more to say!’ A short time later, he dismissed me, and I went shaking from his rooms. I do not know if fury or heartbreak were the force behind my trembling. I thought again of how he had called me by my father’s name. Perhaps, I told myself spitefully, it was because in his heart he knew I would do as my father had done. I would wed for love. Even, I thought savagely, if I had to wait until King Shrewd was in his grave, for Verity to keep his word to me. I went back to my rooms. To have wept would have been a relief. I could not even find tears. Instead I lay on my bed and stared at the hangings. I could not imagine telling Molly what had just transpired between my king and me. Telling myself that not to speak was also a deception, I resolved to find a way to tell her. But not right away. A time would come, I promised myself, a time when I could explain and she would understand. I would wait for it. Until then, I would not think about it. Nor, I resolved coldly, would I go to my king unless I were summoned. As spring drew closer, Verity arranged his ships and men as carefully as tokens on a gameboard. The watchtowers on the coast were always manned, and their signal fires kept ever ready for a torch. Such signal fires were for the purpose of alerting local citzenry that Red Ships had been sighted. He took the remaining members of the Skill coterie Galen had fashioned, and distributed them in the towers and on the ships. Serene, my nemesis and heart of Galen’s coterie, remained at Buckkeep. Privately I wondered why Verity used her there, as a centre for the coterie, rather than having each member Skill individually to him. With Galen’s death, and August’s forced retirement from the coterie, Serene had taken on Galen’s post, and seemed to consider herself the Skillmaster. In some ways, she almost became him. It was not just that she stalked Buckkeep in austere silence and wore always a disapproving frown. She seemed to have acquired his testiness and foul humour as well. The serving-folk now spoke of her with the same dread and distaste they had once reserved for Galen. I understood she had taken over Galen’s personal quarters as well. I avoided her assiduously on the days I was at home. I would have been more relieved if Verity had placed her elsewhere. But it was not up to me to question my King-in-Waiting’s decisions. Justin, a tall, gangly young man with two years on me, was assigned as coterie member to the Rurisk. He had despised me since we had studied the Skill together, and I had failed so spectacularly at it. He snubbed me at every opportunity. I bit my tongue and did my best not to encounter him. The close quarters of the ship made that difficult. It was not a comfortable situation. After great debate, with himself and me, Verity placed Carrod aboard the Constance, Burl at the Neatbay tower, and sent Will far north, to the Red Tower up in Bearns that commanded such a wide view of the sea as well as the surrounding countryside. Once he had arranged their tokens on his maps, it made a reality of the pathetic thinness of our defences. ‘It reminds me of the old folk tale, of the beggar who had but a hat to cover his nakedness,’ I told Verity. He smiled without humour. ‘Would that I could move my ships as swiftly as he did his hat,’ he wished grimly. Two of the ships Verity set to duty as roving patrol vessels. Two he kept in reserve, one docked at Buckkeep, and that was the Rurisk, while the Stag anchored in South Cove. It was a pitifully small fleet to protect the Six Duchies’ straggling coastline. A second set of ships was being constructed, but it was not expected they would be finished soon. The best of the seasoned wood had been used in the first four vessels, and his shipwrights cautioned him he would be wiser to wait than to attempt to use green wood. It chafed him, but he listened to them. Early spring saw us practising drills. The coterie members, Verity privately told me, functioned almost as well as carrier pigeons at relaying simple messages. His situation with me was a more frustrating one. For his own reasons, he had chosen not to disclose to anyone his training of me in the Skill. I believe he was enjoying the advantages of being able to go with me and observe and listen undetected to the everyday life of Buckkeep Town. I understood that the Rurisk’s master had been given word that I was to be heeded if I requested a sudden change in course or announced that we were required at a certain location immediately. I fear he saw this mostly as Verity’s indulgence of his bastard nephew, but in this he followed his orders. Then, one early spring morning, we reported to our ship for yet another practice. We functioned well as a crew now in manoeuvring our ship. This exercise was to have us rendezvous with the Constance at an undisclosed location. It was a Skill exercise that so far we had not succeeded at. We were resigned to a frustrating day, save for Justin, who was stonily intent on succeeding. Arms crossed on his chest, dressed all in dark blue (I believe he thought the blue robe made him appear more Skilled) he stood on the dock and stared out into the thick fog that blanketed the ocean. I was forced to pass him as I put a keg of water aboard. ‘To you, Bastard, it’s an opaque blanket. But to me, all is as clear as a mirror.’ ‘How unfortunate for you,’ I said kindly, ignoring his use of the word bastard. I had all but forgotten how much sting could be put into a word. ‘I’d rather see the fog than your face of a morning.’ Petty, but satisfying. I had the additional satisfaction of watching his robe bind about his legs as he boarded. I was sensibly dressed, in snug leggings, an undershirt of soft cotton, and a leather jerkin over that. I had considered some sort of mail, but Burrich had shook his head over it. ‘Better to die cleanly from a weapon’s wound than to fall overboard and drown,’ he’d advised me. Verity had quirked a smile at that. ‘Let’s not burden him with too much overconfidence,’ he suggested wryly, and even Burrich had smiled. After a moment. So I had abandoned any thought of mail or armour. At any rate, today would be a rowing day, and what I wore was comfortable for that. No shoulder seams to strain against, no sleeves to catch on my forearms. I was inordinately proud of the chest and shoulders I was developing. Even Molly had expressed an astonished approval. I settled into my seat, and rolled my shoulders, smiling as I thought of her. I’d had far too little time with her lately. Well, only time would cure that. Summer brought the Raiders. As the long fair days came on, I’d have even less time with her. Autumn could not come too soon for me. We settled in, a full complement of rowers and warriors. At some moment, as ropes were cast off and the steersman took his post and the oars began their steady beat, we became one animal. It was a phenomenon I had noted before. Perhaps I was more sensitized to it, nerves abraded clean by my Skill-sharing with Verity. Perhaps it was that all the men and women on board shared a single purpose, and that for most of them it was vengeance. Whatever it was, it lent a unity to us that I had never sensed before in a group of folk. Perhaps, I thought, this was a shadow of what it was to belong to a coterie. I felt a pang of regret, of opportunities lost. You are my coterie. Verity, like a whisper behind me. And somewhere, from the distant hills, something less than a sigh. Are we not pack? I do have you, I thought back to them. Then I settled in and paid attention to what I was doing. Oars and backs dipped and rose in unison and the Rurisk went nosing boldly out into the fog. Our sail hung limp. In a moment, we were a world unto ourselves. Sounds of water, of the rhythmic unity of our breathing as we rowed. A few of the fighters spoke softly amongst themselves, their words and thoughts muffled by the mist. Up in the bow, Justin stood beside the master, staring out into the fog. His brow was lined, his eyes distant, and I knew he reached for Carrod aboard the Constance. Almost idly, I reached out too, to see if I could sense what he Skilled. Stop that! warned Verity, and I drew back feeling as if he slapped my hand. I’m not ready for anyone to have suspicions about you yet. There was a lot behind that warning, more than I could devote myself to just now. As if what I had begun to do were actually a very dangerous action. I wondered what he feared, but I concentrated on the steady rhythm of my rowing, and let my eyes stare into the infinite grey. Most of that morning passed in a mist. Several times Justin asked the master to have the steersman change his course. It made little difference that I could see, save in the texture of the rowing. All of the inside of a fog bank looks much the same. The steady physical effort, the lack of anything to focus on put me into a waking dream about nothing. The cries of the young watchman broke my trance. ‘’Ware treachery!’ he cried out, his shrill voice deepening as blood engulfed it. ‘We are attacked!’ I leaped up from my rowing bench, staring wildly all about. Fog. Only my oar dangling and skipping on the surface of the water, while my fellow oarsmen glared at me for breaking the rhythm. ‘You, Fitz! What ails you?’ the master demanded. Justin stood at his side, clear-browed and self-righteous. ‘I … my back cramped. Sorry.’ I stooped to my oar again. ‘Kelpy, relieve him. Stretch and move about a bit, boy then take your oar back,’ the mate directed in his thick accent. ‘Aye, sir,’ I acknowledged his order, and stood to let Kelpy have my bench and oar. It did feel good to pause. My shoulders cracked when I rolled them. But I was ashamed, too, to take a rest when the others did not. I rubbed my eyes and gave my head a rattle, wondering what nightmare had seized me so firmly. What watchman? Where? Antler Island. They came in under the fog’s cover. No town there, but the signal tower. I think they intend to slaughter the watchers, and then do their best to destroy the towers. A brilliant strategy. Antler Island is one of our first lines of defence. The outer tower watches the sea, the inner tower passes on the signals to both Buckkeep and Neatbay. Verity’s thoughts, almost calm with the same steadiness that seizes one as a weapon is brought to the ready. Then, after a moment, The single-minded slug is so intent on reaching Carrod, he won’t let me through. Fitz. Go to the master. Tell him Antler Island. If you get into the channel, the current will practically fly you to the cove where the tower is. The Raiders are there already, but they’ll have to beat against the current to get out again. Go now, and you may catch them on the beach. NOW! Easier to give orders than to obey them, I thought, and then hurried forward. ‘Sir?’ I requested, and then stood an eternity waiting for the master to turn and speak to me, while the mate glared at me for going straight to the master rather than through him. ‘Oarsman?’ the master said at last. ‘Antler Island. If we make for it now, and catch the current in the channel, we’ll practically fly to the cove where the tower is.’ ‘That’s true. Do you read currents then, boy? It’s a useful skill. I thought I was the only man on board with an idea of where we actually are.’ ‘No, sir.’ I took a deep breath. Verity had ordered this. ‘We should go there, sir. Now.’ The ‘now’ drew his brows together in a frown. ‘What is this nonsense!’ Justin demanded angrily. ‘Are you trying to make me look a fool? You’d sensed that we were getting close to each other, didn’t you? Why do you want me to fail? So you won’t feel so alone?’ I wanted to kill him. Instead I drew myself straight and told the truth. ‘A secret order from the King-in-Waiting, sir. One I was to pass on to you at this time.’ I addressed only the master. He dismissed me with a nod and I returned to my bench and took my oar back from Kelpy. The master stared dispassionately into the mist. ‘Jharck. Have the steersman swing her about and catch the current. Take her a bit deeper into the channel.’ The mate nodded stiffly, and in an instant we had changed course. Our sail bellied slightly, and it was as Verity had said it would be. The current combined with our rowing sent us skating down the channel. Time passes oddly in a fog. All senses are distorted in it. I don’t know how long I rowed, but soon Nighteyes whispered that there was a tinge of smoke in the air, and almost immediately we became aware of the cries of men in battle, carrying clear but ghostly through the fog. I saw Jharck, the mate, exchange glances with the master. ‘Put your backs into it!’ he snarled suddenly. ‘We’ve got a Red Ship attacking our tower.’ Another moment and the stink of the smoke was distinguishable in the fog, as were the battle cries and screams of men. Sudden strength leaped in me and about me I saw the same, the clenched jaws, the muscles that knotted and sprang as we rowed, even a different tang to the sweat of those who laboured around me. If we had been one creature before, we were now part of the same enraged beast. I felt the leap of the heating anger igniting and spreading. It was a Wit thing, a surging of hearts on the animal level that flooded us with hate. We drove the Rurisk forward, sending her skimming up finally into the shallows of the cove and then we leaped out and ran her up the beach just as we had practised. The fog was a treacherous ally, concealing us from the attackers that we would in turn attack, but concealing from us also the lie of the land and a view of exactly what was happening. Weapons were seized and we rushed toward the sounds of the fighting. Justin stayed with the Rurisk, standing and staring into the fog toward Buckkeep earnestly, as if that would help him Skill the news to Serene. The Red Ship was drawn up on the sand, just as the Rurisk was. Not far from her were the two small boats that served as ferries to the mainland. Both had been stove in. There had been Six Duchies men down here on the beach when the Red Ships arrived. Some of them were still there. Carnage. We ran past crumpled bodies leaking blood into the sand. All of them seemed to be our own folk. Suddenly the Antler Island inner tower loomed grey above us. On top of it her signal fire burned a ghostly yellow in the fog. The tower was besieged. The Raiders were dark, muscular men, wiry rather than massive. Most were heavily bearded and their hair hung black and wild to their shoulders. They wore body armour of plaited leather and carried heavy blades and axes. Some wore helms of metal. Their bared arms were marked with coils of scarlet, but whether this was tattoo or paint I could not tell. They were confident, swaggering, laughing and talking like workmen completing a task. The guardians of the tower were cornered; the structure had been built as a basis for a signal light, not as a defensible rampart. It was a matter of time before all the cornered men were dead. The Outislanders did not look back toward us as we came pouring up the rocky incline. They believed they had nothing to fear from behind them. One tower gate hung on its hinges, a huddle of men inside barricaded behind a wall of bodies. As we advanced, they sent a thin hail of arrows out toward the encircled Raiders. None of them hit. I gave a cry between a whoop and a howl, terrible fear and vengeful joy merged into one sound. The emotions of those who ran beside me found vent in me, and spurred me on. The attackers turned to see us as we closed with them. We caught the Raiders between us. Our ship’s crew outnumbered them, and at sight of us, the beleaguered defenders of the tower took heart and poured forth themselves. Scattered bodies about the tower gate attested to several efforts before this one. The young watchman still lay where I had seen him fall in my dream. Blood had spilled from his mouth and soaked into his embroidered shirt. A dagger thrown from behind had taken him. An odd detail to note as we rushed forward to join in the m?l?e. There was no strategy, no formation, no plan of battle. Simply a group of men and women suddenly offered the opportunity for vengeance. It was more than enough. If I thought I had been one with the crew before, I was now engulfed in them. Emotions battered and thrust me forward. I will never know how much or which feelings were my own. They overwhelmed me, and FitzChivalry was lost in them. I became the emotions of the crew. Axe raised, roaring, I led the way. I had no desire for the position I had seized. Instead I was thrust forward by the crew’s extreme desire for someone to follow. I suddenly wanted to kill as many Raiders as I could, as fast as I could. I wanted my muscles to crack with each swing, I wanted to fling myself forward through a tide of dispossessed souls, to tread on the bodies of fallen Raiders. And I did. I had heard legends of berserks. I had thought them animalistic brutes, powered by bloodlust, insensitive to the damage they wrought. Perhaps, instead, they were oversensitized, unable to defend their own minds from the emotions that rushed in to drive them, unable to heed the pain signals of their own bodies. I do not know. I have heard tales of myself on that day. Even a song. I do not recall that I frothed and roared as I fought. But neither do I recall that I did not. Somewhere, within me, were both Verity and Nighteyes, but they too were drowned in the passions of those around me. I know I killed the first Raider that went down before our mad rush. I also know that I finished the last standing man, in a battle we fought axe to axe. The song says it was the master of the Red Ship vessel. I suppose it could have been. His leather surcoat was well made, and spattered with the blood of other men. I don’t recall another thing about him except how my axe crushed his helm deep into his skull, and how the blood gouted from beneath the metal as he sank to his knees. So the battle ended, and defenders rushed forth to embrace our crew, to shout the victory and pound one another’s backs. The change was too much for me. I stood, leaning on my axe, and wondered where my strength had fled. The anger had abandoned me as suddenly as carris seed leaves an addict. I felt drained and disoriented, as if I had wakened from one dream into another. I could have dropped and slept amongst the bodies, so totally exhausted was I. It was Nonge, one of the Outislanders in the crew, who brought me water, and then walked me clear of the bodies so I could sit down to drink it. Then he waded back in among the carnage, to join in the looting. When he came back to me a while later, he held out to me a bloodied medallion. It was hammered gold, on a silver chain. A crescent moon. When I did not reach to take it from him, he looped it over the gory head of my axe. ‘It was Harek’s,’ he said, finding the Six Duchies words slowly. ‘You fought him well. He died well. He’d want you to have it. He was a good man, before the Korriks took his heart.’ I did not even ask him which one had been Harek. I did not want any of them to have names. After a time, I began to feel alive again. I helped to clear the bodies from the door of the tower, and then from the battlefield. The Raiders we burned, the Six Duchies men we laid out and covered, for kin to claim. I remember odd things about that long afternoon. How a dead man’s heels leave a snaking trail in the sand when you drag him. How the young watchman with the dagger in him wasn’t quite dead when we went to gather him up. Not that he lasted long afterwards. He soon was just one more body to add to a row that was too long already. We left our warriors with what was left of the tower guard, to help fill up the watches until more men could be sent out. We admired the vessel we’d captured. Verity would be pleased, I thought to myself. Another ship. A very well-made one. I knew all these things, but felt nothing about any of them. We returned to the Rurisk, where a pale Justin awaited us. In a numbed silence, we launched the Rurisk and took our places at the oars and headed back to Buckkeep. We encountered other boats before we were halfway there. A hastily-organized flotilla of fishing vessels laden with soldiers hailed us. The King-in-Waiting had sent them, at Justin’s urgently Skilled behest. They seemed almost disappointed to find that the fighting was over, but our master assured them they would be welcomed at the tower. That, I think, was when I realized I could no longer sense Verity. And hadn’t for some time. I groped after Nighteyes immediately, as another man might grope after his purse. He was there. But distant. Exhausted, and awed. Never have I smelt so much blood, he told me. I agreed. I still stank of it. Verity had been busy. We were scarcely off the Rurisk before there was another crew aboard to take her back to Antler Island tower. Watch soldiers and another crew of rowers set her heavy in the water. Verity’s prize would be tied up at his home dock by this night. Another open boat followed them, to bring our slain home. The master, the mate and Justin departed on provided horses to report directly to Verity. I felt only relief that I hadn’t been summoned also. Instead, I went with my crewmates. Faster than I would have thought possible, word of the battle and our prize spread through Buckkeep Town. There was not a tavern that was not anxious to pour us full of ale and hear our exploits. It was almost like a second battle frenzy, for wherever we went, folk ignited around us with savage satisfaction in what we had done. I felt drunk on the surging emotions of those around me long before the ale overwhelmed me. Not that I held back from that. I told few tales of what we had done, but my drinking more than made up for it. I threw up twice, once in an alley, and later in the street. I drank more to kill the taste of the vomit. Somewhere in the back of my mind, Nighteyes was frantic. Poison. That water is poisoned. I couldn’t frame a thought to reassure him. Some time before morning, Burrich hauled me out of a tavern. He was stonily sober, and his eyes were anxious. In the street outside the tavern, he stopped by a dying torch in a street sconce. ‘There’s still blood on your face,’ he told me, and stood me up straight. He took out his handkerchief, dipped it in a rain barrel, and wiped my face as he had not since I was a child. I swayed under his touch. I looked into his eyes, and forced my gaze to focus. ‘I’ve killed before,’ I said helplessly. ‘Why is this so different? Why does it sicken me like this, afterward?’ ‘Because it does,’ he said softly. He put an arm around my shoulders, and I was surprised we were of a height. The walk back to Buckkeep was steep. Very long. Very quiet. He sent me to the baths, and told me to go to bed afterwards. I should have stayed in my own bed, but I had not the sense. Luckily the castle was abuzz, and one more drunk clambering up a staircase was not remarkable. Stupidly, I went to Molly’s room. She let me in. But when I tried to touch her, she pulled away from me. ‘You’re drunk,’ she told me, almost crying. ‘I told you, I promised myself to never kiss a drunk. Or be kissed by one.’ ‘But I’m not drunk that way,’ I insisted. ‘There’s only one way to be drunk,’ she told me. And turned me out of her rooms, untouched. By noon the next day, I knew how much I had hurt her by not coming straight to her to find comfort. I could understand what she felt. But I also knew that what I had carried that night was nothing to take home to someone you loved. I wanted to explain that to her. But a boy came running up to me, to tell me I was needed on the Rurisk, and right now. I gave him a penny for his troubles and watched him dash off with it. Once, I had been the boy earning the penny. I thought of Kerry. I tried to remember him as the boy with the penny in his hand, running at my side, but forever now he was the Forged one dead on a table. No one, I told myself, had been taken for Forging yesterday. Then I headed down to the docks. On the way I stopped at the stable. I gave the crescent moon over into Burrich’s hands. ‘Keep this safe for me,’ I asked him. ‘And there will be a bit more, my crewshare from the raid. I want to have you hold it for me … what I make at doing this. It’s for Molly. So if ever I don’t come back, you be certain she gets it. She doesn’t like being a servant.’ I hadn’t spoken so plainly of her to Burrich in a long time. A line creased his brow, but he took the bloodied moon. ‘What would your father say to me?’ he wondered aloud as I turned wearily away from him. ‘I don’t know,’ I told him bluntly. ‘I never knew him. Only you.’ ‘FitzChivalry.’ I turned back to him. Burrich met my eyes as he spoke. ‘I don’t know what he’d say to me. But I know I can say this for him, to you. I’m proud of you. It’s not the kind of work a man does that says he can be proud or not. It’s how he does it. Be proud of yourself.’ ‘I will try,’ I told him quietly. I went back to my ship. Our next encounter with a Red Ship was a less decisive victory. We met them on the sea, and they were not surprised for they had seen us coming. Our master stood the course, and I think they were surprised when we began the engagement by ramming them. We sheared off a number of their oars, but missed the steering oar we had targeted. There was little damage to the ship itself; the Red Ships were as flexible as fish. Our grapples flew. We outnumbered them, and the master intended to use that advantage. Our warriors boarded them, and half our oarsmen lost their heads and jumped in too. It became a chaos that spread briefly to our own decks. It took every bit of will I could muster to withstand the vortex of emotions that engulfed us, but I stayed with my oar as I had been ordered. Nonge, at his oar, watched me strangely. I gripped my oar and ground my teeth until I could find myself. I muttered a curse when I discovered that I’d lost Verity again. I think our warriors let up a bit when they knew we had reduced their crew to where they could no longer manage their vessel. It was a mistake. One of the Raiders set fire to their own sail while a second one attempted to chop through their own planking. I guess they hoped the fire would spread and they could take us down with them. Certainly at the end they fought with no care for the damage they took to their ship or their own bodies. Our fighters finally finished them, and we got the fire put out, but the prize we towed back to Buckkeep was smoking and damaged, and man for man, we had lost more lives than they had. Still, it was a victory, we told ourselves. This time, when the others went out drinking, I had the sense to seek out Molly. And early the next morning, I found an hour or two for Nighteyes. We went hunting together, good clean hunting, and he tried to persuade me to run away with him. I made the mistake of telling him that he could leave if he wished, meaning only the best for him, and hurt his feelings. It took me another hour to convey to him what I had meant. I went back to my ship wondering if my ties were worth the effort it took to keep them intact. Nighteyes assured me they were. That was the last clear victory for the Rurisk. It was far from the last battle of the summer. No, the clear, pleasant weather stretched impossibly long before us, and every fine day was a day when I might kill someone. I tried not to count them as days on which I might be killed. We had many skirmishes, and gave pursuit many times, and it did seem there were fewer raids attempted in the area we regularly patrolled. Somehow that only made it all the more frustrating. And there were successful raids for the Red Ships, times when we put into a town but an hour or so after they had left, and could do no more than help stack bodies or put out fires. Then Verity would roar and curse in my mind that he could not get messages more swiftly, that there were not enough ships and watches to be everywhere. I would rather have faced the fury of a battle than Verity’s savage frustration racking through my brain. There was never any end in sight, save the respite that bad weather might bring us. We could not even put an accurate number to the Red Ships that plagued us, for they were painted identically, and as like as peas in a pod. Or drops of blood on the sand. While I was an oarsman on the Rurisk that summer, we had one other encounter with a Red Ship that is worth telling for the strangeness of it. On a clear summer night, we had been tumbled from our beds in the crew-shed and sent racing toward our ship. Verity had sensed a Red Ship lurking off Buck Point. He wanted us to overtake it in the dark. Justin stood in our prow, Skill linked to Serene in Verity’s tower. Verity was a wordless mumble in my mind as he felt our way through the dark toward the ship he sensed. And something else? I could feel him groping out, beyond the Red Ship, like a man feeling forward in the darkness. I sensed his uneasiness. We were allowed no talk, and our oars were muffled as we came closer. Nighteyes whispered to me that he had scent of them, and then we spotted them. Long and low and dark, the Red Ship was cutting through the water ahead of us. A sudden cry went up from their deck; they had seen us. Our master shouted to us to lay into our oars, but as we did, a sick wave of fear engulfed me. My heart began to hammer, my hands to tremble. The terror that swept through me was a child’s nameless fear of things lurking in the dark, a helpless fear. I gripped my oar but could find no strength to ply it. ‘Korrikska,’ I heard a man groan in a thick Outislander accent. I think it was Nonge. I became aware I was not the only one unmanned. There was no steady beat to our oars. Some sat on their sea-chests, head bowed over their oars, while others rowed frantically, but out of rhythm, the blades of the oars skipping and slapping against the water. We skittered on the surface like a crippled pond-skater while the Red Ship forged purposefully toward us. I lifted up my eyes and watched my death coming for me. The blood hammered so in my ears that I could not hear the cries of the panic-stricken men and women about me. I could not even take a breath. I lifted up my eyes to the heavens. Beyond the Red Ship, almost glowing on the black water, was a white ship. This was no raiding vessel; this was a ship, easily three times the size of the Red Ship, her two sails reefed, riding at anchor on the quiet water. Ghosts strode her deck, or Forged ones. I felt no hint of life from them, and yet they moved purposefully, readying a small boat to be lowered over the side. A man stood on the afterdeck. The moment I saw him, I could not look away. He was cloaked in grey, yet I saw him limned against the dark sky as clearly as if a lantern illuminated him. I swear I could see his eyes, the jut of his nose, the dark curly beard that framed his mouth. He laughed at me. ‘Here’s one come to us!’ he called out to someone, and lifted a hand. He pointed it at me, and laughed aloud again, and I felt my heart squeeze in my chest. He looked at me with a terrible singleness, as if I alone of our crew were his prey. I looked back at him, and I saw him, but I could not sense him. There! There! I shrieked the word aloud, or perhaps the Skill I could never control sent it bounding off the insides of my skull. There was no response. No Verity, no Nighteyes, no one, nothing. I was alone. All the world had gone silent and still. Around me my crew fellows rattled with terror and cried out aloud, but I felt nothing. They were no longer there. No one was there. No gull, no fish in the sea, no life anywhere as far as any of my inner senses would reach. The cloaked figure on the ship leaned far out on the rail, the accusing finger pointing at me. He was laughing. I was alone. It was a loneliness too great to be endured. It wrapped me, coiled about me, blanketed me and began to smother me. I repelled at it. In a reflex I did not know I had, I used the Wit to push away from it as hard as I could. Physically, I was the one that flew backwards, landing in the bilge upon the thwarts, tangled in the feet of the other oarsmen. I saw the figure on the ship stumble, sag and then fall over the side. The splash was not large, but there was only one. If he rose to the surface at all, I did not see it. Nor was there time to look for him. The Red Ship hit us amidships, shattering oars and sending oarsmen flying. The Outislanders were shouting with their confidence, mocking us with their laughter as they leaped from their ship to ours. I scrabbled to my feet and lunged to my bench, reaching for my axe. Around me, the others were making the same sort of recovery. We were not battle-ready, but neither were we paralysed by fear any more. Steel met our boarders and battle was joined. There is no place so dark as the open water at night. Fellow and foe were indistinguishable in the dark. A man leaped onto me, I caught at the leather of his foreign harness, bore him down and strangled him. After the numbness that had briefly clenched me, there was a savage relief in his terror beating against me. I think it happened quickly. When I straightened up, the other boat was pulling away from us. She had only about half her oarsmen, and there was still fighting on our decks, but she was leaving her men. Our master was shouting at us to finish them and be after the Red Ship. It was a useless command. By the time we had killed them and thrown them off our decks, the other ship was lost in the darkness. Justin was down, throttled and battered, alive, but incapable of Skilling to Verity just then. In any case, one bank of our oars was a splintered mess. Our master cursed us all soundly as the oars were redistributed and shipped, but it was too late. He shouted us down to stillness, but we could hear nothing, and see nothing. I stood on my sea-chest and turned slowly in a complete circle. Empty black water. Of the oared vessel, no sign. But even more strange to me was what I spoke aloud, ‘The white ship was at anchor. But she’s gone, too!’ Around me, heads turned to stare at me. ‘White ship?’ ‘Are you all right, Fitz?’ ‘A Red Ship, boy, it was a Red Ship we fought.’ ‘Speak not of a white ship. To see a white ship is to see your own death. Bad luck.’ This last was hissed to me by Nonge. I opened my mouth to object that I had seen an actual ship, not some vision of disaster. He shook his head at me, and then turned away to stare out over the empty water. I closed my mouth and sat down slowly. No one else had seen it. Nor did any of the others speak of the terrible fear that had gripped us and changed our battle plans to panic. When we got back to town that night, the way it was told in the taverns was that we had come upon the ship, engaged battle, only to have the Red Ship flee us. No evidence remained of that encounter but some shattered oars, some injuries, and some Outislander blood on our decks. When I privately conferred with both Verity and Nighteyes, neither had seen anything. Verity told me that I had excluded him as soon as we sighted the other vessel. Nighteyes was miffed to admit that I had completely closed myself to him as well. Nonge would say nothing to me of white ships; he was not much for conversation on any topic. Later, I found mention of the white ship in a scroll of old legends. There it was an accursed ship, where the souls of drowned sailors unworthy of the sea would work forever for a merciless master. I was forced to set aside all mention of it or be thought mad. The rest of the summer, the Red Ships evaded the Rurisk. We would catch sight of them, and give chase, but never managed to run one down. Once it was our good fortune to chase one that had just raided. She threw her captives overboard to lighten herself and fled us. Of twelve folk they threw in, we rescued nine, and returned them unForged to their village. The three who drowned before we reached them were mourned, but all agreed it was a better fate than Forging. The other ships had much the same luck. The Constance came upon Raiders in the midst of attacking a village. They didn’t manage a quick victory, but had the foresight to damage the beached Red Ship so that the Raiders could not make a clean escape. It took days to hunt them all down, for they scattered into the woodlands when they saw what had been done to their ship. The other vessels had similar experiences: we gave chase, we drove off Raiders, the other ships even had some few successes at sinking raiding vessels, but we captured no more intact ships that summer. So, the Forgings were reduced, and each time we sent a ship down, we told ourselves it was one less. But it never seemed to make a difference in how many remained. In one sense, we brought hope to the folk of Six Duchies. In another way, we gave them despair, for despite all we did, we could not drive the threat of Raiders from our shore. For me, that long summer was a time of terrible isolation and incredible closeness. Verity was often with me, yet I found I could never seem to sustain the contact once any sort of fighting had begun. Verity himself was aware of the maelstrom of emotions that threatened to overwhelm me each time our crew engaged. He ventured the theory that in attempting to defend against the thoughts and feelings of others, I set up my boundaries so firmly that not even he could breach them. He also suggested that this might mean I was strong in the Skill, stronger than he was even, but so sensitized that to let down my barriers during a battle drowned me in the consciousness of everyone around me. It was an interesting theory, but one that offered no practical solutions to the problem. Still, in the days when I carried Verity about, I developed a feel for him that I had for no other man, save perhaps Burrich. With chilling familiarity, I knew how the Skill hunger gnawed at him. When I was a boy, Kerry and I had one day climbed a tall cliff over the ocean. When we reached the top and looked out over it, he confessed to me an almost overwhelming impulse to fling himself off. I think this was akin to what Verity felt. The pleasure of the Skill enticed him, and he longed to fling all of himself, every ounce of his being, out into its web. His close contact with me only fed it. And yet we did too much good for the Six Duchies for him to give it up, even though the Skill was eating him hollow. Perforce I shared with him many of his hours at his lonely tower window, the hard chair where he sat, the weariness that destroyed his appetite for food, even the deep bone-aches of inactivity. I witnessed how he wasted away. I do not know that it is good to know someone so well. Nighteyes was jealous, and said so plainly. At least with him it was an open anger about being slighted, as he saw it. It was a more difficult thing with Molly. She could see no real reason why I had to be away so much. Why did I, of all people, have to crew on one of the warships? The reason I was able to give her, that Verity wished me to, satisfied her not at all. Our brief times together began to have a predictable pattern. We would come together in a storm of passion, find peace in each other briefly, and then begin to wrangle about things. She was lonely, she hated being a servant, the little bit of money she could set aside for herself grew terribly slowly, she missed me, why did I have to be gone so much when I was the only thing that made her life bearable? I approached her once with the offer of what money I had earned aboard the ship, but she stiffened as if I had called her a whore. She would take nothing of mine until we were joined in marriage before all. And I could offer her no real hope as to when that might happen. I still had never found the moment in which to reveal Shrewd’s plans for Celerity and me. We were apart so much, we lost the threads of one another’s day-to-day lives, and when we did come together, we always rechewed the bitter rinds of the same arguments. One night, when I came to her, I found her with her hair bound back all in red ribbons, and graceful silver earrings shaped like willow leaves dangling against her bare neck. Clad in her simple white nightgown, the sight of her took my breath away. Later, during a quieter moment when we had breath for speaking, I complimented her on the earrings. Artlessly, she told me that when Prince Regal had last come to buy candles of her, he had gifted her with them, for he said he was so pleased with what she created that he scarcely felt he paid her what such finely-scented candles were worth. She smiled proudly as she told me this, her fingers toying with my warrior’s queue while her own hair and ribbons tangled wildly upon the pillows. I do not know what she saw in my face, but it widened her eyes and she drew back from me. ‘You will take gifts from Regal?’ I asked her coldly. ‘You will not accept from me coin that I had honestly earned, but you take jewellery from that …’ I teetered on the edge of treason, but could find no word to express what I thought of him. Molly’s eyes narrowed, and it was my turn to draw back. ‘What should I have said to him? “No, sir, I cannot accept your largesse, until you marry me?” There is not between Regal and me what there is between us. This was a perquisite from a customer, such as is often given to a skilled craftsman. Why did you think he gave them to me? In exchange for my favours?’ We stared at one another, and after a time I managed to speak what she was almost willing to accept as an apology. But then I made the mistake of suggesting that perhaps he had given them to her solely because he knew it would vex me. And then she wanted to know how Regal might know what was between us, and did I think her work so poor that largesse such as the earrings was not due her? Suffice to say that we mended our quarrels as well as we could in the short time we had left together. But a mended pot is never as sound as a whole one, and I returned to the ship as lonely as if I had had no time at all with her. In the times when I leaned on my oar and kept perfect rhythm and tried to think of nothing at all, I often found myself missing Patience and Lacey, Chade, Kettricken, or even Burrich. The few times I was able to call on our Queen-in-Waiting that summer, I always found her on her tower-top garden. It was a beautiful place, but despite her efforts, it was nothing like the other Buckkeep gardens had ever been. There was too much of the mountains in her for her to ever convert entirely to our ways. There was a honed simplicity to how she arranged and trained the plants. Simple stones had been added, and bare driftwood branches, twisted and smoothed by the sea, rested against them in stark beauty. I could have meditated calmly there, but it was not a place to loll in the warm wind of summer, and I suspected that was how Verity had recalled it. She kept herself busy there, and enjoyed it, but it did not bond her to Verity as she had once believed it would. She was as beautiful as ever, but always her blue eyes were clouded grey with preoccupation and worry. Her brow was furrowed so often that when she did relax her face, one saw the pale lines of the skin the sun had never reached. In the times I spent with her there, she often dismissed most of her ladies, and then quizzed me about the Rurisk’s activities as thoroughly as if she were Verity himself. When I had finished reporting to her, often she folded her lips into a firm line and went to stare out over the top of the tower wall and beyond to the sea touching the edge of the sky. Towards the end of summer, as she was staring so one afternoon, I ventured close to her to ask to be excused from her presence to return to my ship. She scarcely seemed to hear what I had asked. Instead, she said softly, ‘There has to be a final solution. Nothing, no one can go on like this. There must be a way to make an end of this.’ ‘Autumn storms come soon, my lady queen. Already, frost has touched some of your vines. Storms are never far behind the first chilling, and with them comes peace for us.’ ‘Peace? Ha.’ She snorted in disbelief. ‘Is it peace to lie awake and wonder who will die next, where will they attack next year? That is not peace. That is a torture. There must be a way to put an end to the Red Ships. And I intend to find it.’ Her words sounded almost like a threat. SEVENTEEN (#ulink_ca19dbbc-9487-592c-b5eb-93a12578e4d4) Interludes (#ulink_ca19dbbc-9487-592c-b5eb-93a12578e4d4) ‘Of stone were their bones made, of the sparkling veined stone of the mountains. Their flesh was made of the shining salts of the earth. But their hearts were made of the hearts of wise men. ‘They came from afar, those men, a long and trying way. They did not hesitate to lay down the lives that had become a weariness to them. They ended their days and began eternities, they put aside flesh and donned stone, they let fall their weapons and rose on new wings. Elderlings.’ When the King finally summoned me, I went to him. True to my promise to myself, I had not voluntarily gone to his chambers since that afternoon. Bitterness still ate at me over his arrangements with Duke Brawndy concerning Celerity and me. But a summons from one’s king was not a thing to be ignored, regardless of what anger churned inside me still. King Shrewd sent for me on an autumn morning. It had been at least two months since I had last stood before him. I had ignored the wounded looks the Fool flung at me when I encountered him, and turned aside Verity’s occasional query as to why I had not sought out Shrewd’s chamber. It was easy enough. Wallace still guarded his door like a serpent on the hearth, and the King’s poor health was no secret from anyone. No one was admitted to his rooms before noon any more. So I told myself this morning summons betokened something important. I had thought the morning would belong to me. An unseasonably early and vicious autumn storm had pounded us for two days. The driving wind was merciless, while drenching rain promised that anyone in an open boat would be fully occupied with bailing. I had spent the evening before in the tavern with the rest of the Rurisk’s crew, toasting the storm and wishing the Red Ships the full kiss of it. I had come back to the keep to tumble suddenly into my bed, certain that I could sleep as long as I wished the next morning. But a determined page had battered my door until sleep forsook me, and then delivered to me the King’s formal summons. I washed, shaved, smoothed my hair back into a tail and donned clean clothes. I steeled myself to betray nothing of my smouldering resentment. When I was confident I was master of myself, I left my chamber. I presented myself at the King’s door. I fully expected Wallace to sneer and turn me aside. But this morning he opened the door promptly to my knock. His glance was still disapproving, but he immediately ushered me into the King’s presence. Shrewd sat before his hearth in a cushioned chair. Despite myself, my heart sank at how wasted he had become. His skin was papery and translucent as parchment, his fingers gone to bone. His face sagged, skin drooping where flesh had once held it firm. His dark eyes were sunken into his face. He clasped his hands in his lap in a gesture I knew well. Thus did I hold my hands to conceal the trembling that occasionally overtook me still. A small table at his elbow supported a censer, and Smoke rose from it. The fumes already made a bluish haze about the rafters. The Fool sprawled disconsolately at his feet. ‘FitzChivalry is here, your majesty,’ Wallace announced me. The King started as if poked, then shifted his gaze to me. I moved to stand before him. ‘FitzChivalry,’ the King acknowledged me. There was no force behind the words, no presence at all. My bitterness was still strong in me, but it could not drown the pain I felt to see him so. He was still my king. ‘My king, I have come as you ordered,’ I said formally. I tried to cling to my coldness. He looked at me wearily. He turned his head aside, coughed once into his shoulder. ‘So I see. Good.’ He stared at me for a moment. He took a deep breath that whispered into his lungs. ‘A messenger arrived from Duke Brawndy of Bearns last night. He brought the harvest reports and such, mostly news for Regal. But Brawndy’s daughter Celerity also sent this scroll. For you.’ He held it out to me. A small scroll, bound with a yellow ribbon and sealed with a blob of green wax. Reluctantly I stepped forward to take it. ‘Brawndy’s messenger will be returning to Bearns this afternoon. I am sure that by that time you will have created an appropriate reply.’ His tone did not make this a request. He coughed again. The roil of conflicting emotions I felt for him soured in my stomach. ‘If I may,’ I requested, and when the King did not object, I broke the seal on the scroll and untied the ribbon. I unwound it to discover a second scroll coiled inside it. I glanced over the first one. Celerity wrote with a clear, firm hand. I unrolled the second one and considered it briefly. I looked up to find Shrewd’s eyes on me. I met them without emotion. ‘She writes to wish me well, and to send me a copy of a scroll she found in the Ripplekeep libraries. Or, properly, a copy of what was still legible. From the wrapping, she believed it pertained to Elderlings. She had noted my interest in them during my visit to Ripplekeep. It looks to me as if the writing was actually philosophy, or perhaps poetry.’ I offered the scrolls back to Shrewd. After a moment, he took them. He unfurled the first one and held it out at arm’s length. He furrowed his brow, glared at it briefly, then set it down in his lap. ‘My eyes are befogged, sometimes, of a morning,’ he said. He rerolled the two scrolls together, carefully, as if it were a difficult task. ‘You will write her a proper note of thanks.’ ‘Yes, my king.’ My voice was carefully formal. I received once more the scrolls he proffered me. When I had stood before him for some moments longer while he stared through me, I ventured, ‘Am I dismissed, my king?’ ‘No.’ He coughed again, more heavily. He took another long sighing breath. ‘You are not dismissed. Had I dismissed you, it would have been years ago. I would have let you grow up in some backwater village. Or seen that you did not grow up at all. No, FitzChivalry, I have not dismissed you.’ Something of his old presence came back into his voice. ‘Some years ago, I struck a bargain with you. You have kept your end of it. And kept it well. I know how I am served by you, even when you do not see fit to report to me personally. I know how you serve me, even when you are brimming with anger at me. I could ask little more than what you have given me.’ He coughed again, suddenly, a dry wracking cough. When he could speak, it was not to me. ‘Fool, a goblet of the warmed wine, please. And ask Wallace for the … spicing herbs to season it.’ The Fool rose immediately, but I saw no willingness on his face. Instead, as he passed behind the King’s chair, he gave me a look that should have drawn blood. King Shrewd made a small gesture at me to wait. He rubbed his eyes, and then stilled his hands once more in his lap. ‘I but seek to keep my end of the bargain,’ he resumed. ‘I promised to see to your needs. I would do more than that. I would see you wed to a lady of quality. I would see you … ah. Thank you.’ The Fool was back with the wine. I marked how he filled the goblet but halfway, and how the King picked it up with both hands. I caught a waft of unfamiliar herbs mingled with the rising scent of the wine. The rim of the goblet chattered twice against Shrewd’s teeth before he stilled it with his mouth. He took a long deep draught of it. He swallowed, then sat still a moment longer, eyes closed as if listening. When he opened his eyes to look up at me once more, he seemed briefly puzzled. After a moment, he recollected himself. ‘I would see you with a title, and land to steward.’ He lifted the goblet and drank again. He sat holding it, warming his thin hands around it while he considered me. ‘I should like to remind you it is no small thing that Brawndy deems you a fit match for his daughter. He does not hesitate over your birth. Celerity will come to you with a title and estates of her own. Your match gives me the opportunity to see that you have the same. I wish only the best for you. Is this so hard to understand?’ The question left me free to speak. I took a breath and tried to reach him. ‘My king, I know you wish me well. I am well aware of the honour that Duke Brawndy does me. The Lady Celerity is as fair a woman as any man could wish. But the lady is not of my choosing.’ His look darkened. ‘Now there you sound like Verity,’ he said crossly. ‘Or your father. I think they suckled stubbornness from their mother’s breasts.’ He lifted the goblet and drained it off. He leaned back in his chair and shook his head. ‘Fool. More wine, please.’ ‘I have heard the rumours,’ he resumed heavily after the Fool had taken his cup. ‘Regal brings them to me and whispers them like a kitchen maid. As if they were important. Chickens clucking. Dogs barking. Just as important.’ I watched the Fool obediently refill the goblet, his reluctance plain in every muscle of his slender body. Wallace appeared as if summoned by magic. He heaped more Smoke onto the censer, blew on a tiny coal with carefully pursed lips until the heap smouldered and then drifted away. Shrewd leaned carefully so that the fumes curled past his face. He breathed in, gave a tiny cough, then drew in more of the Smoke. He leaned back in his chair. A silent Fool stood holding his wine. ‘Regal claims you are enamoured of a chambermaid. That you pursue her relentlessly. Well, all men are young once. As are all maids.’ He accepted his goblet and drank again. I stood before him, biting the inside of my cheek, willing my eyes to stoniness. My traitorous hands began the shaking that physical exertion no longer wrung from them. I longed to cross my arms on my chest to still them, but I kept my hands at my side. I concentrated on not crushing the small scroll I gripped. King Shrewd lowered the goblet. He set it on the table at his elbow and sighed heavily. He let his lax hands uncurl quietly in his lap as he leaned his head back against the cushions of his chair. ‘FitzChivalry,’ he said. I stood numbly before him and waited. I watched as his eyelids drooped, then closed. Then opened again a crack. His head wavered slightly as he spoke. ‘You have Constance’s angry mouth,’ he said. His eyes drooped again. ‘I would like to do well by you,’ he muttered. After a moment, a snore buzzed from his slack mouth. And still I stood before him and gazed at him. My king. When finally I dropped my eyes from him, I saw the only thing that could have wrenched me into greater turmoil. The Fool huddled disconsolately at Shrewd’s feet, his knees drawn up to his chest. He stared at me furiously, his mouth a flat line. Clear tears brimmed in his colourless eyes. I fled. Within my chamber, I paced a bit before my hearth. The feelings inside me seared me. I forced myself to calmness, sat down and took out pen and paper. I penned a brief, correct note of thanks to Duke Brawndy’s daughter, carefully rolled it up, and sealed it with wax. I stood up, tugged my shirt straight, smoothed my hair back, and then threw the scroll onto my hearth fire. Then I sat down again with my writing tools. I wrote a letter to Celerity, the shy girl who had flirted with me at table, and stood with me on the cliffs in the wind and waited for a challenge that never came. I thanked her for the scroll. And then I wrote to her of my summer. Of pulling an oar on the Rurisk, day after day. Of my clumsiness with a sword that made the axe my weapon. I wrote of our first battle, in ruthless detail, and of how sickened I had been afterwards. I told her of sitting frozen with terror at my oar while a Red Ship attacked us. I neglected to mention the white ship I had seen. I finished by confiding that I was still troubled by tremors occasionally as the aftermath of my long illness in the mountains. I read it over carefully. Satisfied that I had presented myself as a common oarsman, an oaf, a coward and an invalid, I rolled the letter into a scroll and tied it with the same yellow ribbon she had used. I did not seal it. I did not care who read it. Secretly, I hoped that Duke Brawndy might peruse this letter to his daughter, and then forbid her to ever mention my name again. When I knocked again at King Shrewd’s door, Wallace answered it with his usual grim displeasure. He took the scroll from me as if it were dirtied with something, and shut the door firmly in my face. As I went back up to my room, I thought of what three poisons I would use on him, were I given the opportunity. It was less complicated than thinking of my king. Back in my room, I flung myself down on my bed. I wished it were night and safe to go to Molly. Then I thought of my secrets, and even that pleasant anticipation vanished. I bounced up from my bed, to fling open the window shutters wide to the storm. But even the weather cheated me. Blue had cracked the overcast wide, to admit a watery sunlight. A bank of black clouds boiling and mountaining over the sea promised that this respite would not last long. But for now the wind and the rain had ceased. There was even a hint of warmth in the air. Nighteyes came to my mind immediately. It’s too wet to hunt. Water clings to every blade of grass. Besides, it’s full daylight. Only men are stupid enough to hunt in full daylight. Lazy hound, I rebuked him. I knew he was curled, nose to tail, in his den. I sensed the warm satiation of his full belly. Perhaps tonight, he suggested, and drifted back to sleep. I pulled back from him, then snatched up my cloak. My feelings were not conducive to a day within walls. I left the keep and headed down toward Buckkeep Town. Anger at Shrewd’s decision for me warred with dismay at how he had weakened. I walked briskly, trying to escape the King’s trembling hands, his drugged sleep. Damn Wallace! He had stolen my king from me. My king had stolen my life from me. I refused to think any more. Dripping water and yellow-edged leaves fell from the trees as I passed. Birds sang clearly and joyously at the unexpected respite from the downpour. The sun grew stronger, making everything sparkle with the wet, and steaming rich scents up from the earth. Despite my turmoil, the beauty of the day touched me. The recent downpours had washed Buckkeep Town clean. I found myself in the market, in the midst of an eager crowd. Everywhere folk hurried to make purchases and rush them home before the storm could drench us again. The amiable busyness and friendly clatter was at odds with my sour mood, and I glared about the market until a bright scarlet cloak and hood caught my eye. My heart turned over inside me. Molly might wear servant-blue about the keep, but when she came to market, she still wore her old cloak of red. No doubt Patience had sent her out on errands during this respite from the rain. I watched her, unnoticed, as she haggled stubbornly over packets of spiced tea from Chalced. I loved the jut of her chin as she shook her head at the merchant. A sudden inspiration lifted my heart. I had coin in my pockets, my oarsman’s pay. With it I bought four sweet apples, two current buns, a bottle of wine and some pepper-meat. I bought too, a string bag to carry it in, and a thick wool blanket. Red. It took every bit of every skill Chade had ever taught me to make my purchases and still keep sight of Molly without being seen. Even more taxing was to follow her unobtrusively as she went to the milliners to buy silk ribbon, and then to trail behind her as she started up toward Buckkeep. At a certain bend in the path, overshadowed by trees, I caught up to her. She gasped as I light-footed up behind her, to lift and swing her suddenly in my arms. I landed her on her feet and kissed her soundly. Why it felt so different to kiss her out of doors and under the bright sun, I cannot say. I only know all my troubles suddenly fell from me. I made a sweeping bow to her. ‘Will my lady join me for a brief repast?’ ‘Oh, we cannot,’ she replied, but her eyes sparkled. ‘We’ll be seen.’ I made a great show of glancing about us, then seized her arm and pulled her from the road. Beneath the trees there was not much underbrush. I hurried her through the dripping trees, over a fallen log and past a patch of buckbrush that clutched wetly at our legs. When we came to the cliff’s edge above the boom and susurrus of the ocean, we scrambled like children down the rock chimneys to get to a small sandy beach. Driftwood was piled haphazardly in this nook in the bay. An overhang of the cliffs had kept a small patch of sand and shale almost dry, but did not block the reaching sunbeams. The sun shone now with surprising warmth. Molly took the food and blanket from me, and commanded that I assemble firewood. She was the one who finally got the damp wood to burn, however. The salt made it burn with greens and blues, and it gave enough heat that we both set aside our cloaks and hoods. It was so good to sit with her and look at her out under the open sky, with the bright sun bringing out glints in her hair and the wind rosying her cheeks. It was so good to laugh aloud, to mingle our voices with the cries of the gulls without fear of awakening anyone. We drank the wine from the bottle, and ate with our fingers, and then walked down to the waves’ edge to wash the stickiness from our hands. For a brief time we scrambled about on the rocks and driftwood, looking for treasures tossed up by the storm. I felt more like myself than I had since I had returned from the mountains, and Molly looked very much the wild hoyden of my childhood. Her hair came unbraided and blew about her face. She slipped when I chased her, and stumbled into a tide pool. We went back to the blanket, where she took off her shoes and hose to let them dry by the fire. She leaned back on the blanket and stretched. Taking things off suddenly seemed a very good idea. Molly was not as sure of that as I. ‘There’s fully as much stone as sand under this blanket. I’ve no wish to go back with bruises up my back!’ I leaned over her to kiss her. ‘Am not I worth it?’ I asked persuasively. ‘You? Of course not!’ She gave me a sudden push that sent me sprawling on my back. Then she flung herself boldly upon me. ‘But I am.’ The wild sparkle in her eyes as she looked down on me took my breath away. After she had claimed me ruthlessly, I discovered she had been right, both about the rocks, and her being well worth the bruises. I had never seen anything so spectacular as the blue sky glimpsed through the cascade of her hair over my face. Afterward she lay more than half on top of me and we dozed in the chill sweet air. Eventually she sat up, shivering, to pull her clothing back around herself. Reluctantly I watched her lace up her blouse again. Darkness and candle-light had always hidden too much from me. She looked down at my bemused look, stuck her tongue out at me, then paused. My hair had come loose from its tail. She pulled it forward to frame my face, then set a fold of her red cloak across my forehead. She shook her head. ‘You would have been a singularly homely girl.’ I snorted. ‘I am not so much better as a man, either.’ She looked offended. ‘You are not ill-favoured.’ She traced a finger down the musculature of my chest speculatively. ‘The other day, in the washer-courts, some were saying you were the best thing to come out of the stables since Burrich. I think it is your hair. It is not near as coarse as most Buck men.’ She twined strands of it through her fingers. ‘Burrich!’ I said with a snort. ‘You cannot tell me he is favoured among the women!’ She quirked a brow at me. ‘And why not? He is a very well-made man, and clean and mannered besides. He has good teeth, and such eyes! His dark humours are daunting, but not a few would like to try their hands at lightening those. The washing maids agreed that day that, were he to turn up in their sheets, they would not hurry to shake him out.’ ‘But that is not likely to happen,’ I pointed out. ‘No,’ she agreed pensively. ‘That was another thing they agreed on. Only one claimed to have ever had him, and she admitted he was very drunk at the time. At a Springfest, I believe she said.’ Molly glanced at me, then laughed aloud at the incredulous look on my face. ‘She said,’ Molly went on teasingly, ‘“he has used his time well amongst the stallions to learn their ways. I carried the mark of his teeth on my shoulders for a week.”’ ‘That cannot be,’ I declared. My ears burned for Burrich’s sake. ‘He would not mistreat a woman, no matter how drunk he was.’ ‘Silly boy!’ Molly shook her head over me as her nimble fingers set to braiding her hair up again. ‘No one said she was mistreated.’ She glanced at me coyly, ‘Or displeased.’ ‘I still do not believe it,’ I declared. Burrich? And the woman had liked it? ‘Has he really a small scar, here, shaped like a crescent moon?’ She put her hand high on my hip and looked at me from under her lashes. I opened my mouth, shut it again. ‘I cannot believe that women chatter of such things,’ I said at last. ‘In the washer-courts, they talk of little else,’ Molly divulged calmly. I bit my tongue until curiosity overwhelmed me. ‘What do they say of Hands?’ When we had worked in the stables together, his tales of women had always astonished me. ‘That he has pretty eyes and lashes, but that all the rest of him needs to be washed. Several times.’ I laughed joyously, and saved the words for when next he bragged to me. ‘And Regal?’ I encouraged her. ‘Regal. Uummm.’ She smiled dreamily at me, then laughed at the scowl on my face. ‘We do not speak of the princes, my dear. Some propriety is kept.’ I pulled her back down beside me and kissed her. She fit her body to mine and we lay still under the arching blue sky. Peace that had eluded me for so long now filled me. I knew that nothing could ever part us, not the plans of kings nor the vagaries of fate. It seemed, finally, to be the right time to tell her of my problems with Shrewd and Celerity. She rested warm against me and listened silently as I spilled out to her the foolishness of the King’s plan and my bitterness at the awkward position it brought me. It did not occur to me that I was an idiot until I felt a warm tear spill and then slide down the side of my neck. ‘Molly?’ I asked in surprise as I sat up to look at her. ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘What’s wrong?’ her voice went high on the words. She took a shuddering breath. ‘You lie beside me and tell me you are promised to another. And then you ask me what’s wrong?’ ‘The only one I am promised to is you,’ I said firmly. ‘It’s not that simple, FitzChivalry.’ Her eyes were very wide and serious. ‘What will you do when the King tells you that you must court her?’ ‘Stop bathing?’ I asked. I had hoped she would laugh. Instead she pulled away from me. She looked at me with a world of sorrow in her eyes. ‘We haven’t got a chance. Not a hope.’ As if to prove her words, the sky darkened suddenly above us and the squall winds rose. Molly leaped to her feet, snatching up her cloak and shaking sand from it. ‘I’m going to get soaked. I should have been back to Buckkeep hours ago.’ She spoke flatly, as if those two things were the only concerns that she had. ‘Molly, they would have to kill me to keep me from you,’ I said angrily. She gathered up her market purchases. ‘Fitz, you sound like a child,’ she said quietly. ‘A foolish, stubborn child.’ With a pattering like flung pebbles, the first rain drops began to hit. They made dimples in the sand and swept across the sea in sheets. Her words had left me speechless. I could not think of a worse thing for her to have said to me. I gathered up the red blanket, shook sand from it. She pulled her cloak tight against the wind that whipped at it. ‘Best we don’t go back together,’ she observed. She came close to me, stood on tiptoe to kiss the angle of my jaw. I could not decide who I was angriest at: King Shrewd for creating this mess, or Molly for believing in it. I did not turn to her kiss. She said nothing of that, but only hurried away, to scrabble lightly up the rock chimney and vanish from sight. All joy had gone out of my afternoon. What had been as perfect as a gleaming seashell was now crushed bits under my feet. I walked disconsolately home through gusting winds and pelting rain. I had not rebound my hair and it whipped in lank strands across my face. The wet blanket stank as only wool can and bled red dye onto my hands. I went up to my room and dried off, then amused myself by carefully preparing the perfect poison for Wallace. One that would rack his bowels before he died. When the powder was mixed fine and put in a twist of paper, I set it down and looked at it. For a while I considered taking it myself. Instead, I took up needle and thread, to devise a pocket inside my cuff where I could carry it. I wondered if I would ever use it. The wondering made me feel more a coward than ever. I did not go down to dinner. I did not go up to Molly. I opened my shutters and let the storm spill rain across my floor. I let the hearth fire go out and refused to light any candles. It seemed a time for gestures like those. When Chade opened his passage to me, I ignored it. I sat on the foot of my bed, staring out into the rain. After a time I heard hesitant footsteps come down the stairs. Chade appeared in my darkened room like a wraith. He glared at me, then crossed to the shutters and slammed them shut. As he hooked them, he asked me angrily, ‘Have you any idea of the kind of draught that creates in my rooms?’ When I didn’t reply, he lifted his head and snuffed, for all the world like a wolf. ‘Have you been working with baneleaf in here?’ he asked suddenly. He came to stand before me. ‘Fitz, you’ve not done anything stupid, have you?’ ‘Stupid? Me?’ I choked on a laugh. Chade stooped to peer into my face. ‘Come up to my chamber,’ he said, in an almost kindly voice. He took my arm and I went with him. The cheery room, the crackling fire, the autumn fruit ripe in a bowl; all of it clashed so badly with what I felt that I wanted to smash things. Instead I asked Chade, ‘Does anything feel worse than being angry with people you love?’ After a bit he spoke. ‘Watching someone you love die. And being angry, but not knowing where to direct it. I think that’s worse.’ I flung myself onto a side chair, kicked my feet out in front of me. ‘Shrewd has taken up Regal’s habits. Smoke. Mirthweed. El only knows what else in his wine. This morning, without his drugs, he began to shake, and then he drank them mixed with his wine, took a chestful of Smoke and went to sleep in my face. After telling me, again, that I must court and marry Celerity, for my own good.’ The words spilled from me. I had no doubt that Chade already knew of everything I told him. I pinned Chade with my eyes. ‘I love Molly,’ I told him bluntly. ‘I have told Shrewd that I love another. Yet he insists that I will be paired with Celerity. He asks how I cannot understand he means the best for me. How can he not understand that I wish to wed whom I love?’ Chade looked considering. ‘Have you discussed this with Verity?’ ‘What good would that do? He could not even save himself from being wed off to a woman he did not desire.’ I felt disloyal to Kettricken as I said this. But I knew it was true. ‘Would you care for wine?’ Chade asked me mildly. ‘It might calm you.’ ‘No.’ He raised his eyebrows at me. ‘No. Thank you. After watching Shrewd “calm” himself with wine this morning …’ I let my complaint trail away. ‘Was that man never young?’ ‘Once he was very young.’ Chade permitted himself a small smile. ‘Perhaps he remembers that Constance was a woman chosen for him by his parents. He did not court her willingly, nor wed her gladly. It took her death to make him know how deeply he had come to love her. Desire, on the other hand, he chose for himself, in a passion that fevered him.’ He paused. ‘I will not speak ill of the dead.’ ‘This is different,’ I said. ‘How?’ ‘I am not to be king. Whom I wed affects no one but me.’ ‘Would it were that simple,’ Chade said softly. ‘Can you believe you can refuse Celerity’s courtship without offending Brawndy? At a time when the Six Duchies needs every bond of unity?’ ‘I am convinced I can make her decide she does not want me.’ ‘How? By being an oaf? And shaming Shrewd?’ I felt caged. I tried to think of solutions, but found only one answer in me. ‘I will marry no one except Molly.’ I felt better simply by saying it aloud. I met Chade’s eyes. He shook his head. ‘Then you will marry no one,’ he pointed out. ‘Perhaps not,’ I acceded. ‘Perhaps we shall never be married in name. But we shall have a life together …’ ‘And little bastards of your own.’ I stood convulsively, my fists knotting of their own accord. ‘Don’t say that,’ I warned Chade. I turned away from him to glare into his fire. ‘I wouldn’t. But everyone else will.’ He sighed. ‘Fitz, Fitz, Fitz.’ He came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. Very, very gently, he said, ‘It might be best to let her go.’ The touch and the gentleness had disarmed me of my anger. I lifted my hands to cover my face. ‘I cannot,’ I said through my fingers. ‘I need her.’ ‘What does Molly need?’ A little chandlery with bee hives in the back yard. Children. A legitimate husband. ‘You are doing this for Shrewd. To make me do as he wishes,’ I accused Chade. He lifted his hands from my shoulders. I listened to him walk away, to wine being poured into a single cup. He brought his wine with him to his chair and sat down before his fire. ‘I’m sorry.’ He looked at me. ‘Someday, FitzChivalry,’ he warned me, ‘those words will not be enough. Sometimes it is easier to pull a knife out of a man than to ask him to forget words you have uttered. Even words uttered in anger.’ ‘I am sorry,’ I repeated. ‘So am I,’ he said shortly. After a time, I asked humbly, ‘Why did you wish to see me tonight?’ He sighed. ‘Forged ones. Southwest of Buckkeep.’ I felt ill. ‘I had thought I would not have to do that any more,’ I said quietly. ‘When Verity put me on a ship to Skill for him, he said that perhaps …’ ‘This does not come from Verity. It was reported to Shrewd, and he wishes it taken care of. Verity is already … overtaxed. We do not wish to trouble him with anything else just now.’ I put my head back into my hands. ‘Is there no one else who can do this?’ I begged him. ‘Only you and I are trained for this.’ ‘I did not mean you,’ I said wearily. ‘I do not expect you to do that sort of work any more.’ ‘Don’t you?’ I looked up to find the anger back in his eyes. ‘You arrogant pup! Who do you think kept them from Buckkeep all summer, Fitz, while you were out on the Rurisk? Did you think that because you wished to avoid a task, the need for such work ceased?’ I was as shamed then as I have ever been. I looked aside from his anger. ‘Oh, Chade. I am sorry.’ ‘Sorry that you avoided it? Or sorry that you thought me incapable of doing it any more?’ ‘Both. Everything,’ I conceded it all suddenly. ‘Please, Chade, if one more person I care about becomes angry with me, I don’t think I shall be able to bear it.’ I lifted my head and looked at him steadily until he was forced to meet my eyes. He lifted a hand to scratch at his beard. ‘It has been a long summer for both of us. Pray El for storms to drive the Red Ships away forever.’ We sat a time in silence. ‘Sometimes,’ Chade observed, ‘it would be much easier to die for one’s king than to give one’s life for him.’ I bowed my head in assent. The rest of the night we spent preparing the poisons I would need in order to begin killing for my king again. EIGHTEEN (#ulink_9e46d9c3-4ca2-5ec4-997c-7410c2d2dd26) Elderlings (#ulink_9e46d9c3-4ca2-5ec4-997c-7410c2d2dd26) The autumn of the third year of the Red Ship War was a bitter one for King-in-Waiting Verity. His warships had been his dream. He had founded all his hopes on them. He had believed he could rid his own coast of Raiders, and be so successful at it that he could send forth raiders against the hostile Outisland coasts even during the worst of the winter storms. Despite early victories, the ships never achieved the command of the coast that he had hoped they would. Early winter found him with a fleet of five ships, two of which had recently sustained severe damage. One intact was the captured Red Ship vessel, which had been refitted and sent out with a crew to assist in patrols and escorting of merchant vessels. When the winds of autumn finally arrived, only one of his shipmasters expressed enough confidence in his crew’s skills and his vessel to be willing to undertake a raid against the Outislander coasts. The other masters argued for at least one winter of practising seamanship along our own rough coast, and another summer of practising tactics before undertaking such an ambitious goal. Verity would not send unwilling men, but neither did he hide his disappointment. He expressed it well when he outfitted the one willing ship, for the Revenge, as the vessel had been renamed, was provisioned handsomely. The master’s hand-picked crew were outfitted as well, in whatever armour they chose for themselves, and were given new weapons of the best craftsmanship available. There was quite a ceremony at her send-off, with even King Shrewd in attendance despite his failing health. The Queen herself hung the gull’s feathers from the ship’s mast that are said to bring a vessel swiftly and safely back to her home port. A great cheer arose as the Revenge set out, and the health of the captain and crew were drunk many times over that evening. A month later, to Verity’s chagrin, we would receive word that a vessel matching that description was pirating in the calmer waters to the south of the Six Duchies, and bringing much misery to the merchants of Bingtown and the Chalced States. That was as much news of the captain and crew and ship as ever came back to Buckkeep. Some blamed it on the Outislanders among the crew, but there were as many good Six Duchies hands aboard as Outislanders, and the captain had been raised right in Buckkeep Town. This was a crushing blow to Verity’s pride and to his leadership of his people. Some believe it was then that he decided to sacrifice himself in the hopes of finding a final solution. I think the Fool put her up to it. Certainly he had spent a great many hours in the tower-top garden with Kettricken, and his admiration for what she had accomplished there was unfeigned. Much goodwill can be won with a sincere compliment. By the end of the summer, not only was she laughing at his jests when he came up to entertain her and her ladies, but he had persuaded her to be a frequent caller in the King’s chambers. As Queen-in-Waiting, she was immune to Wallace’s humours. Kettricken herself undertook to mix King Shrewd strengthening tonics, and for a time the King did seem to rally under her care and attention. I think the Fool decided that he would accomplish through her what he had been unable to nag Verity and me into doing. It was a wintry autumn evening when she first broached the subject to me. I was up on the tower top with her, helping her to tie bundles of straw about the more tender of the plants there, that they might withstand the winter snows better. This was something Patience had decreed must be done, and she and Lacey were performing the same task on a bed of windbower plants behind me. She had become a frequent advisor to Queen Kettricken in matters of growing things, albeit a very timid one. Little Rosemary was at my elbow, handing me twine as we needed it. One or two of Kettricken’s other ladies, well-bundled, had stayed, but they were at the other end of the garden, talking quietly together. The others she had dismissed back to their hearths when she had noted them shivering and blowing on their fingers. My bare hands were near numb, as were my ears, but Kettricken seemed perfectly comfortable. As was Verity, tucked away somewhere inside my skull. He had insisted that I start carrying him again after he had discovered that once more I was going out after Forged ones alone. I scarcely noticed his presence in the back of my mind any more. Yet I believe that I felt him startle when Kettricken asked me, as she knotted a string about a bundled plant I was supporting, what I knew of the Elderlings. ‘Little enough, my lady queen,’ I replied honestly, and once more made a promise to myself to go through the long neglected manuscripts and scrolls. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». 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