Copyright

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2014

Copyright © Robin Hobb 2014

Map and illustration copyright © Nicolette Caven 2014

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

Cover illustration © Jackie Morris; lettering by Stephen Raw.

Robin Hobb asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007444175

Ebook Edition © August 2014 ISBN: 9780007444182

Version: 2018-09-21

Praise for Robin Hobb

‘Hobb is one of the great modern fantasy writers’

The Times

‘Hobb is always readable. But the elegant translucence of her prose is deceptive … That is the ambition of high art. The novelists in any genre are rare who achieve it with Hobb’s combination of accessibility and moral authority’

Sunday Telegraph

‘A little slice of heaven’

Guardian

‘Hobb is superb, spinning wonderful characters and plots from pure imagination’

Conn Iggulden

‘In today’s crowded fantasy market Robin Hobb’s books are like diamonds in a sea of zircons’

George R.R. Martin

‘Robin Hobb is without question among the finest writers of fantasy working today’

SFX

‘A master of “epic” fantasy’

Shortlist

Dedication

For Soren and Felix. This one’s for the guys

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Robin Hobb

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One: Withywoods

Chapter Two: Spilled Blood

Chapter Three: The Felling of Fallstar

Chapter Four: Preservation

Chapter Five: Arrival

Chapter Six: The Secret Child

Chapter Seven: The Presentation

Chapter Eight: The Spider’s Lair

Chapter Nine: A Childhood

Chapter Ten: My Own Voice

Chapter Eleven: The Last Chance

Chapter Twelve: Explorations

Chapter Thirteen: Chade

Chapter Fourteen: Dreams

Chapter Fifteen: A Full House

Chapter Sixteen: Honoured Guests

Chapter Seventeen: Assassins

Chapter Eighteen: Invisibility

Chapter Nineteen: The Beaten Man

Chapter Twenty: The Morning After

Chapter Twenty-One: Search for the Son

Chapter Twenty-Two: Perseverance

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Tutor

Chapter Twenty-Four: Settling In

Chapter Twenty-Five: Things to Keep

Chapter Twenty-Six: Lessons

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Time and Again

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Things Bought

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Mist and Light

Chapter Thirty: Collision

Chapter Thirty-One: A Time of Healing

Chapter Thirty-Two: The Raid

Epilogue

Read on for an excerpt from Fool’s Quest

About the Author

Also by Robin Hobb

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

My dear Lady Fennis,

We have been friends far too long for me to be circumspect. As you so delicately hinted, yes, there has been shattering news delivered to me. My stepson, Prince Chivalry, has exposed himself as the crude fellow I have always known him to be. His bastard child, fathered on a Mountain whore, has been revealed.

As shameful as that is, it could have been handled far more discreetly if his clever-as-a-stone brother Prince Verity had taken swift and decisive action to eliminate the disgrace. Instead, he has announced him in an indiscreet message to my husband.

And so, in the face of this base behaviour, what does my lord do? Why, not only does he insist the bastard must be brought to Buckkeep Castle, he then bestows on Chivalry the title to Withywoods, and sends him out to pasture there with his awkward barren wife. Withywoods! A fine estate that any number of my friends would be pleased to occupy, and he rewards it to his son for fathering a bastard with a foreign commoner! Nor does King Shrewd find it distasteful that said bastard has been brought back here to Buckkeep Castle where any member of my court may see the little Mountain savage.

And the final insult to me and my son? He has decreed that Prince Verity will now take up the title of King-in-Waiting, and be the next presumed heir to the throne. When Chivalry had the decency to secede his claim in the face of this disgrace, I secretly rejoiced, believing that Regal would immediately be recognized as the next king. While he may be younger than both his half-brothers, no one can dispute that his bloodlines are more noble, and his bearing as lordly as his name.

Truly, I am wasted here. As wasted as my son Regal. When I gave up my own reign and titles to be Shrewd’s queen, it was in the belief that any child I bore him would be seen as possessing far better lineage than the two reckless boys his former queen gave him, and would reign after Shrewd. But does he now look at Chivalry and admit his mistake in naming him heir? No. Instead he sets him aside only to install his doltish younger brother as King in Waiting. Verity. Hulking, square-faced Verity, with all the grace of an ox.

It is too much, my dear. Too much for me to bear. I would leave court, save that Regal would then be without a defender here.

A missive from Queen Desire to Lady Fennis of Tilth

I hated her when I was a boy. I recall the first time I found that missive, unfinished and never sent. I read it, confirming for myself that the queen I had never formally met had, indeed, hated me from the moment she knew of me. I made it mutual. I never asked Chade how he came by that letter. A bastard himself and half-brother to King Shrewd, Chade had never hesitated in pursuing the best interests of the Farseer throne. He had purloined it from Queen Desire’s desk, perhaps. Perhaps it had been his ploy to make it appear the queen snubbed Lady Fennis by not responding to her letter. Does it matter now? I do not know, for I do not know what effect my old mentor gained with his theft.

Yet I do wonder, sometimes, if it was an accident that I found and read Queen Desire’s letter to Lady Fennis, or if it was a deliberate revelation on Chade’s part. He was my mentor in those days, teaching me the assassin’s arts. Chade served his king ruthlessly, as assassin, spy and manipulator of the court at Buckkeep Castle, and taught me to do the same. A royal bastard, he told me, is only safe in a court so long as he is useful. Ostensibly, I was a lowly bastard, ignored or reviled as I navigated the dangerous currents of politics in the castle. But both King Shrewd and I knew that I was protected by the king’s hand and his assassin. Yet it was not only poisons and knife-work and subterfuge that he taught me, but what one must do to survive as a bastard of royal lineage. Did he seek to give me warning, or teach me to hate that I might be more firmly his? Even those questions come to me too late.

Over the years, I have seen Queen Desire in so many guises. First, she was the horrid woman who hated my father and hated me even more, the woman with the power to snatch the crown from my father’s head and condemn me to a life where even my name was the mark of my bastardy. I recall a time in my life when I feared even to let her see me.

Years after I arrived at Buckkeep, when my father was murdered at Withywoods, hers was the hand most likely behind it. And yet there was nothing I or Chade could do about it, no justice we could demand. I remember wondering if King Shrewd did not know or if he did not care. I remember knowing with absolute certainty that if Queen Desire wished my death, she could ask for it. I even wondered then if Chade would protect me or if he would bow to his duty and allow it to happen. Such things for a child to wonder.

Withywoods was an idea to me, a harsh place of banishment and humiliation. When I was a boy and I lived in Buckkeep, I was told that was where my father had gone, to hide from the shame that was me. He had abdicated his throne and crown, bowed his head to the hurt and anger of his lawful wife Patience, apologized to king and court for his failure of virtue and judgment, and fled from the bastard he had sired.

And so I imagined that place based on the only places I had ever lived, as a fortified castle on a hill. I had thought of it as a place like the stockade fortress at Moonseye in the Mountain Kingdom, or the steep walls of Buckkeep Castle perched on top of sheer and forbidding black cliffs overlooking the sea. I had imagined my father, brooding alone in a chill stone hall hung with battle pennants and ancient arms. I imagined stony fields that gave onto grey-fogged marshes.

Later I would discover that Withywoods was a grand manor, a large and comfortable home built in a wide and generous valley. Its walls were not of stone, but of golden oak and rich maple, and though the floors of the halls were flagged with flat river stone, the walls were panelled in warm wood. The gentle sunlight of the farming valley fell in broad stripes into the rooms through the tall, narrow windows. The carriageway to the front door was wide, and graceful white birches lined it. In autumn, they shed a carpet of gold on the road, and in winter, burdened with snow, they arched over it, a frosted white tunnel paned with glimpses of blue sky.

Withywoods was not a fortress banishment, not an exile, but a tolerant pasturing-out for my father and his barren wife. I think my grandfather had loved my father as much as his stepmother hated him. King Shrewd sent him to that distant estate to be safe.

And when my time came to go there, with the woman I loved and her lively boys and the woman who had always wanted to be my mother, it became for a time a haven of rest and peace for us.

Time is an unkind teacher, delivering lessons that we learn far too late for them to be useful. Years after I could have benefited from them, the insights come to me. Now, I look back on ‘old’ King Shrewd and see him as a man beset by a long wasting illness that stole from him the comfort of his own body and the sharpness of his mind. But worse, I see Queen Desire for what she was: not an evil woman intent on making my little life miserable, but as a mother full of ruthless love for her only son, intent that he should never be slighted in any way. She would stop at nothing to put him on a throne.

What would I not have done to protect my little daughter? What action would have been too extreme? If I say, ‘I would have killed them all, with no regrets,’ does that make me a monster?

Or just a father?

But it is all hindsight. All these lessons, learned too late. When I was still a young man, I felt in my flesh like a bent old gaffer, full of pains and sighs. Oh, how I pitied myself, and justified every wild decision I had ever made! And then, when it came time for me to be the wise elder of my household, I was trapped in the body of a man of middle years, still subject to those passions and impulses, still relying on the strength of my right arm when I would have been wiser to stop and employ my powers of reason.

Lessons learned too late. Insights discovered decades later.

And so much lost as a result.

ONE
Withywoods

Burrich, old friend,

Well, we are settled here, I suppose. It has not been a pleasant time for me, or for you if your somewhat terse message conceals as much as I suspect it does. The house is immense, far too large for the two of us. It is so like you to ask after our mounts before inquiring after my own health. I will answer that query first. I’m pleased to tell you that Silk has taken the change in stable quite calmly, as the well-mannered palfrey she has always been. Tallfellow, in contrast, has made a new hobby out of bullying the resident stallion, but we have taken steps to be sure their stalls and paddocks are well separated now. I’ve reduced his grain and there is a young stableman here named, oddly enough, Tallman, who was absolutely ecstatic to receive my request that he take the horse out and run him hard at least once a day. With such a regimen, I am sure he will soon settle.

My lady wife. You did not ask after her, but I know you well, my friend. So I will tell you that Patience has been furious, wounded, melancholy, hysterical and altogether of a hundred different minds about the situation. She berates me that I was unfaithful to her before we met, and in the next instant forgives me and blames herself that she has not furnished me an heir, given that ‘it is evident that the problem is entirely with me’. Somehow, we two will weather this.

I appreciate that you have taken command of my other responsibilities there. My brother has told me enough of your charge’s temperament that I send my sympathy to both of you and my deepest thanks. On whom else could I rely at a time such as this, for a favour so extreme?

I trust you to understand why I remain circumspect in this regard. Give Vixen a pat, a hug, and a large bone from me. I am confident that I owe as much to her vigilance as to yours. My wife is calling for me down the halls. I must end this and send it on its way. My brother may have words for you from me when next your paths cross.

Unsigned letter to Stablemaster Burrich, from Chivalry

Fresh snowfall perched in white ramparts on the bare black birch limbs that lined the drive. White gleamed against black, like a fool’s winter motley. The snow came down in loose clumps of flakes, adding a fresh layer of glistening white to the banked snow in the courtyard. It was softening the hard ridges of fresh wheel tracks in the carriageway, erasing the boys’ footprints in the snow and smoothing the rutted pathways to mere suggestions of themselves. As I watched, another carriage arrived, drawn by a dapple-grey team. The driver’s red-cloaked shoulders were dusted with snow. A page in green and yellow darted from the steps of Withywoods to open the carriage door and gesture a welcome to our guests. From my vantage, I could not tell who they were, save that their garb bespoke Withy merchants rather than gentry from one of the neighbouring estates. As they passed out of my view and their driver moved the carriage off to our stables, I looked up at the afternoon sky. Definitely more to come. I suspected it would snow all night. Well, that was fitting. I let the curtain fall and turned as Molly entered our bedchamber.

‘Fitz! You aren’t ready yet?’

I glanced down at myself. ‘I thought I was …’

My wife clicked her tongue at me. ‘Oh, Fitz. It’s Winterfest. The halls are festooned with greenery, Patience had Cook create a feast that will probably sustain the whole household for three days, all three sets of minstrels that she invited are tuning up, and half our guests have already arrived. You should be down there, greeting them as they enter. And you’re not even dressed yet.’

I thought of asking her what was wrong with what I was wearing, but she was already digging through my clothing chest, lifting garments, considering them and discarding them. I waited. ‘This,’ she said, pulling out a white linen shirt with ridges of lace down the sleeves. ‘And this jerkin over it. Everyone knows that wearing green at Winterfest is good luck. With your silver chain to match the buttons. These leggings. They’re old fashioned enough to make you look like an old man, but at least they’re not as saggy as those you have on. I know better than to ask you to wear your new trousers.’

‘I AM an old man. At forty-seven, surely I’m allowed to dress as I please.’

She lowered her brows and gave me a mock glare. She set her hands to her hips. ‘Are you calling me an old woman, sirrah? For I seem to recall I have three years on you.’

‘Of course not!’ I hastily amended my words. But I could not resist grumbling, ‘But I have no idea why everyone wishes to dress as if they are Jamaillian nobility. The fabric on those trousers is so thin, the slightest bramble would tear them and …’

She looked up at me with an exasperated sigh. ‘Yes. I’ve heard it from you a hundred times. Let’s ignore that there are few brambles inside Withywoods, shall we? So. Take these clean leggings. The ones you have on are a disgrace; didn’t you wear them yesterday when you were helping with that horse that had a cracked hoof? And put on your house shoes, not those worn boots. You’ll be expected to dance, you know.’

She straightened from her excavation of my clothing chest. Conceding to the inevitable, I’d already begun shedding garments. As I thrust my head out of the shirt, my gaze met hers. She was smiling in a familiar way, and as I considered her holly crown, the cascading lace on her blouse and gaily embroidered kirtle, I found a smile to answer hers. Her smile broadened even as she took a step back from me. ‘Now, Fitz. We’ve guests below, waiting for us.’

‘They’ve waited this long, they can wait a bit longer. Our daughter can mind them.’

I advanced a step. She retreated to the door and set her hand to the knob, all the while shaking her head so that her black ringlets danced on her brow and shoulders. She lowered her head and looked up at me through her lashes, and suddenly she seemed just a girl to me again. A wild Buckkeep Town girl, to be pursued down a sandy beach. Did she remember? Perhaps, for she caught her lower lip between her teeth and I saw her resolve almost weaken. Then, ‘No. Our guests can’t wait, and while Nettle can welcome them, a greeting from the daughter of the house is not the same as an acknowledgement from you and me. Riddle may stand at her shoulder as our steward and help her, but until the king gives his permission for them to wed, we should not present them as a couple. So it is you and I who must wait. Because I’m not going to be content with “a bit” of your time tonight. I expect better effort than that from you.’

‘Really?’ I challenged her. I took two swift steps toward her, but with a girlish shriek she was out of the door. As she pulled it almost shut, she added through the crack, ‘Hurry up! You know how quickly Patience’s parties can get out of hand. I’ve left Nettle in charge of things, but you know, Riddle is very nearly as bad as Patience.’ A pause. ‘And do not dare to be late and leave me with no dancing partner!’

She shut the door just as I reached it. I halted and then, with a small sigh, went back for my clean leggings and soft shoes. She would expect me to dance, and I would do my best. I did know that Riddle was apt to enjoy himself at any sort of festivity at Withywoods with an abandon that was very unlike the reserved fellow he showed himself at Buckkeep, and perhaps not precisely correct for a man who was ostensibly just our former household steward. I found myself smiling. Where he led, sometimes Nettle followed, showing a merry side of herself that she, too, seldom revealed at the king’s court. Hearth and Just, the two of Molly’s six grown sons who were still at home, would need very little encouragement to join in. As Patience had invited half of Withy and far more musicians than could perform in one evening, I fully expected that our Winterfest revelry would last at least three days.

With some reluctance, I removed my leggings and pulled on the trousers. They were a dark green that was nearly black, thin linen and nearly as voluminous as a skirt. They tied at my waist with ribbons. A broad silk sash completed the ridiculous garment. I told myself that my wearing them would please Molly. I suspected that Riddle would have been bothered into donning similar garb. I sighed again, wondering why we must all emulate Jamaillian fashions, and then resigned myself to it. I finished dressing, badgered my hair into a warrior tail, and left our bedchamber. I paused at the top of the grand oak staircase; the sounds of merriment drifted up to me. I took a breath as if I were about to dive into deep water. I had nothing to fear, no reason to hesitate, and yet the ingrained habits of my distant boyhood still clutched at me. I had every right to descend this stair, to walk among the glad company below as master of the house and husband to the lady who owned it. Now I was known as Holder Tom Badgerlock, common-born perhaps but elevated alongside Lady Molly to gentry status. The bastard FitzChivalry Farseer – grandson and nephew and cousin to kings – had been laid to rest two score years ago. To the folk below, I was Holder Tom and the founder of the feast they would enjoy.

Even if I was wearing silly Jamaillian trousers.

I paused a moment longer, listening. I could hear two distinct groups of minstrels vying to tune their instruments. Riddle’s laugh rang suddenly clear and loud, making me smile. The hum of voices from the grand room lifted in volume and then fell again. One set of minstrels gained ascendancy, for a lively drumbeat suddenly broke through the voices to dominate all. The dancing would soon begin. Truly, I was late, and had best descend. Yet there was sweetness to standing here, above it all, imagining Nettle’s flashing feet and sparkling eyes as Riddle led her through the dance steps. Oh, and Molly! She would be waiting for me! I had become a passable dancer over the years, for her sake, as she loved it so. She would not easily forgive me if I left her standing.

I hurried down the polished oak steps two at a time, reached the hall foyer and was there suddenly ambushed by Revel. Our new young steward was looking very fine indeed in a white shirt, black jacket and black trousers in the Jamaillian fashion. His green house shoes were startling, as was the yellow scarf at his throat. Green and yellow were the Withywoods colours, and I suspected these accoutrements were Patience’s idea. I did not let the smile curve my mouth but I think he read it in my eyes. He stood even taller and looked down at me as he soberly informed me, ‘Sir, there are minstrels at the door.’

I gave him a puzzled glance. ‘Well, let them in, man. It’s Winterfest.’

He stood still, his lips folded in disapproval. ‘Sir, I do not think they were invited.’

‘It’s Winterfest,’ I repeated, beginning to be annoyed. Molly would not be pleased at being kept waiting. ‘Patience invites every minstrel, puppeteer, tumbler, tinker or blacksmith she meets to come and sojourn with us for a time. She probably invited them months ago and forgot all about it.’

I did not think his back could get stiffer but it did. ‘Sir, they were outside the stable, trying to peer in through a crack in the planking. Tallman heard the dogs barking and went to see what it was about and found them. That is when they said they were minstrels, invited for Winterfest.’

‘And?’

He took a short breath. ‘Sir, I do not think they are minstrels. They have no instruments. And while one said they were minstrels, another said, no, they were tumblers. But when Tallman said he would walk them up to the front door, they said that he needn’t, they only wished to beg shelter for the night, and the stable would be fine.’ He shook his head. ‘Tallman spoke to me privately when he brought them up. He thinks they’re none of what they claim to be. And so do I.’

I gave him a look. Revel folded his arms. He did not meet my glance but his mouth was stubborn. I found a bit of patience for him. He was young and fairly new to the household. Cravit Softhands, our ancient steward, had died last year. Riddle had stepped up to shoulder many of the old man’s duties, but insisted that Withywoods needed a new steward trained. I’d casually replied that I did not have time to find one, and within three days Riddle had brought Revel to us. After two months, Revel was still learning his place, I told myself, and considered that perhaps Riddle had infused him with a bit too much caution. Riddle was, after all, Chade’s man, insinuated into our household to watch my back and probably spy on me. Despite his current merriness and devotion to my daughter, he was a man steeped in carefulness. Given his way, we’d have had a guard contingent at Withywoods to rival the Queen’s Own. I reined my mind back to the question at hand.

‘Revel, I appreciate your care. But it’s Winterfest. And be they minstrels or wandering beggars, no man should be turned from our door on such a holiday, or on such a snowy evening. While there’s room in the house, they need not sleep in the stable. Bring them in. I’m sure all will be well.’

‘Sir.’ He was not agreeing, but he was obeying. I suppressed a sigh. That would do for now. I turned to join the throng in the Great Hall.

‘Sir?’

I turned back. My voice was stern as I asked him, ‘Is there something else, Revel? Something pressing?’ I could hear the tentative notes of musicians bringing their instruments into harmony and then the music suddenly opened into blossom. I’d missed the start of the first dance. I gritted my teeth as I thought of Molly standing alone, watching the dancers whirl.

I saw his teeth catch for an instant on his lower lip. He decided to press on. ‘Sir, the messenger still waits for you in your study.’

‘Messenger?’

Revel gave a martyred sigh. ‘Hours ago, I sent one of our temporary pages looking for you with a message. He said he shouted it at you through the door of the steams. I have to inform you, sir, this is what comes of us using untrained boys and girls as pages. We should have a few here permanently, if only to train them for future need.’

At my wearied look, Revel cleared his throat and changed tactics. ‘My apologies, sir. I should have sent him back to confirm you’d heard him.’

‘I didn’t. Revel, would you mind dealing with it for me?’ I took a hesitant step toward the hall. The music was rising.

Revel gave a minute shake of his head. ‘I am very sorry, sir. But the messenger insists the message is specifically for you. I have asked twice if I could be of any help, and offered to write the message for you to receive.’ He shook his head. ‘The messenger insists that only you can receive the words.’

I guessed the message, then. Holder Barit had been trying to wrangle me into agreeing that he could pasture some of his flock with our sheep. Our shepherd had adamantly insisted that would be too many beasts on our winter pasturage. I intended to listen to Shepherd Lin, even if Barit was now willing to offer a decent amount of money. Winterfest eve was no time to be doing business. It would keep. ‘It’s fine, Revel. And don’t be too stern with our pages. You are right. We should have one or two on staff. But most of them will grow up to work in the orchards or follow their mothers’ trades. It’s rare that we need them here at Withy.’ I didn’t want to be thinking about this right now. Molly was waiting! I took a breath and made my decision. ‘Thoughtless as it is for me to have left a messenger waiting so long, it would be ruder by far if I leave my lady unpartnered for the second dance as well as the first. Please extend my apology to the messenger for my unfortunate delay and see that he is made comfortable with food and drink. Tell him that I’ll come to the study directly after the second dance.’ I had no wish to do so. The festivities beckoned tonight. A better idea came to me. ‘No! Invite him to join the festivities. Tell him to enjoy himself, and that we will sit down together before noon tomorrow.’ I could think of nothing in my life that could possibly be so pressing as to demand my attention tonight.

‘Her, sir.’

‘Revel?’

‘Her. The messenger is a girl, sir. Scarcely a woman, by the look of her. Of course, I have already offered her food and drink. I would not so neglect anyone who came to your door. Let alone one who seems to have come a long and weary way.’

Music was playing and Molly was waiting. Better the messenger wait than Molly. ‘Then offer her a room, and ask if she would like a hot bath drawn or a quiet meal alone before we meet tomorrow. Do your best to see she is comfortable, Revel, and I will give her as much of my time as she wishes tomorrow.’

‘I shall, sir.’

He turned to go back to the entrance hall and I hastened to the Great Hall of Withywoods. The two tall doors stood open, the golden oak planks gleaming in firelight and candlelight. Music and the tap and slap of dancing feet spilled from into the panelled corridor, but just as I drew near the musicians played the last refrain and with a shout the first dance was over. I rolled my eyes at my ill luck.

But as I stepped into the hall, breasting the wave of applause for the minstrels, I saw that Molly’s dance partner was bowing gravely to her. My stepson had rescued his mother and taken her to the floor. Young Hearth had been growing like a weed for the past year. He was as darkly handsome as his father Burrich had been, but his brow and smiling mouth were Molly’s. At seventeen, he could look down at the top of his mother’s head. His cheeks were flushed with the lively dance and Molly did not look as if she had missed me even a tiny bit. As she looked up and her eyes met mine across the hall, she smiled. I blessed Hearth and resolved that I would find a substantial way to convey my thanks to him. Across the room, his older brother, Just, lounged against the hearth. Nettle and Riddle stood nearby; Nettle’s cheeks were pink and I knew he was teasing his older sister, and Riddle was in on it.

I made my way across the room to Molly, pausing often to bow and return greetings to our many guests who hailed me. Every rank and walk of life was reflected there. The gentry and minor nobility of our area, finely dressed in lace and linen trousers; Tinker John and the village seamstress and a local cheese-maker were there as well. Their festive garments might be a bit more dated and some were well-worn, but they had been freshly brushed for the occasion and the shining holly crowns and sprigs that many wore were newly harvested. Molly had put out her best scented candles, so the fragrances of lavender and honeysuckle filled the air even as the dancing flames painted the walls with gold and honey. Grand fires blazed in all three hearths, with spitted meats tended by red-faced village lads employed for the occasion. Several maids were busy at the ale keg in the corner, topping mugs on the trays they would offer to the breathless dancers when the music paused.

At one end of the room, tables were laden with breads, apples and dishes of raisins and nuts, pastries and creams, platters of smoked meats and fish, and many another dish I didn’t recognize. Dripping slices of fresh-cut meat from the roasts on the spits supplied all that any man could ask for, and added their rich fragrance to the festive air. Benches were filled with guests already enjoying food and drink, for there was also beer and wine in plenty.

At the other end of the room, the first set of minstrels were yielding the stage to the second. The floor had been strewn with sand for the dancers. Undoubtedly it had been swept into elegant patterns when the guests first arrived, but it now showed the busy tread of the merrymakers. I reached Molly’s side just as the musicians swept into their opening notes. This tune was as pensive as the first had been jolly, so as Molly seized my hand and led me to the dance floor, I was able to keep possession of both her hands and hear her voice through the melody. ‘You look very fine tonight, Holder Badgerlock.’ She drew me into line with the other men.

I bowed gravely over our joined hands. ‘If you are pleased, then I am content,’ I replied. I ignored the flapping of fabric against my calves as we turned, parted briefly and then clasped hands again. I caught a glimpse of Riddle and Nettle. Yes, Riddle wore the same sort of flapping trousers, in blue, and he held my daughter not by her fingertips but by her hands. Nettle was smiling. When I glanced back at Molly, she was smiling, too. She had noted the direction of my glance.

‘Were we ever that young?’ she asked me.

I shook my head. ‘I think not,’ I said. ‘Life was harsher for us when we were that age.’ I saw her cast her thoughts back through the years.

‘When I was Nettle’s age, I was already the mother of three children and carrying a fourth. And you were …’ She let the thought trail away and I did not speak. I had been living in a little cabin near Forge with my wolf. Was that the year I had taken in Hap? The orphan had been glad of a home, and Nighteyes had been glad of livelier company. I had thought myself resigned, then, to losing her to Burrich. Nineteen long years ago. I pushed the long shadow of those days aside. I stepped closer, put my hands to her waist, and lifted her as we turned. She set her hands to my shoulders, her mouth opening in surprise and delight. Around us, the other dancers gawked briefly. As I put her back on her feet, I observed, ‘And that is why we should be young now.’

‘You, perhaps.’ Her cheeks were pink and she seemed a bit breathless as we made another promenade and then turned, parted and then rejoined. Or almost rejoined. No, I should have turned again and then … I’d hopelessly muddled it, just as I’d been taking great pride that I recalled every step from the last time we had danced this. The other dancers avoided me, parting to flow past me as if I were a stubborn rock in a creek. I spun in a circle, looking for Molly, and found her standing behind me, her hands lifted in a useless attempt to contain her laughter. I reached for her, intending to insert us back into the dance, but she seized both my hands and pulled me from the floor, laughing breathlessly. I rolled my eyes and tried to apologize but, ‘It’s all right, dear. A bit of rest and something to drink would be welcome. Hearth wore me out earlier with his prancing. I need a brief rest.’ She caught her breath suddenly and swayed against me. Her brow glistened with perspiration. She set her hand to the back of her neck and rubbed it as if to relieve a cramp.

‘And I the same,’ I lied to her. Her face was flushed and she smiled faintly at me as she pressed her hand to her breast as if to calm her fluttering heart. I smiled back at her and took her to her chair by the hearth. I had scarcely seated her before a page was at my elbow, offering to bring her wine. She nodded and sent him scampering.

‘What was that, stitched all round his cap?’ I asked distractedly.

‘Feathers. And locks of hair from horse tails.’ She was still breathless.

I looked askance at her.

‘It was Patience’s fancy this year. All the boys she hired from Withy to act as pages for the holiday are dressed so. Feathers to bid all our troubles take flight, and horse tail hairs, which is what we will show to our problems as we flee them.’

‘I … see.’ My second lie of the evening.

‘Well, it’s good that you do, as I certainly don’t. But every Winterfest, it’s something, isn’t it? Do you remember the year that Patience handed out greenwood staffs to every unmarried man who came to the festival? With the length based on her assessment of his masculinity?’

I bit down on the laugh that threatened to escape. ‘I do. Apparently she thought the young ladies needed a clear indication of which men would make the best mates.’

Molly lifted her brows. ‘Perhaps they did. There were six weddings at Springfest that year.’

My wife looked across the room. Patience, my stepmother, was dressed in a grand old gown of pale blue velvet trimmed with black lace at the cuffs and throat. Her long grey hair had been braided and pinned to her head in a coronet. She had a single sprig of holly in it, and several dozen bright blue feathers stuck in at all angles. A fan dangled from a bracelet at her wrist; it was blue to match her gown and feathers and also edged with stiffened black lace. She looked both lovely and eccentric to me, as she always had. She was wagging a finger at Molly’s youngest, warning him about something. Hearth stood straight, looking solemnly down at her, but his clasped fingers fidgeted behind his back. His brother Just stood at a distance, concealing his grin and waiting for him to be released. I took pity on them both. Patience seemed to think they were still ten and twelve, despite how they towered over her. Just was barely short of his twentieth birthday, and Hearth was Molly’s youngest at seventeen. Yet he stood like a scolded boy and tolerantly accepted Patience’s rebuke.

‘I want to let Lady Patience know that more of her minstrels have arrived. I hope this is the last batch of them. Any more and I suspect they’ll be coming to blows over who gets to perform and for how long.’ Any minstrels invited to perform at Withywoods were assured of meals and a warm place to sleep, and a small purse for their efforts. The rest of their rewards were won from the guests, and often the musicians who performed the most reaped the greatest gain. Three sets of musicians were more than ample for a Winterfest at our holding. Four would be a challenge.

Molly nodded. She lifted her hands to her rosy cheeks. ‘I think I’ll just sit here a bit longer. Oh, here’s the lad with my wine!’

There was a lull in the music and I took the opportunity to cross the dance floor quickly. Patience saw me coming and first smiled and then scowled at me. By the time I reached her side, she had completely forgotten Hearth and he had escaped with his brother. She snapped her fan shut, pointed it at me and asked me accusingly, ‘What has become of your leggings? Those skirts are flapping about your legs like a ship with storm-torn canvas!’

I looked down at them, and up at her. ‘The new style from Jamaillia.’ As her disapproval deepened, I added, ‘Molly chose them.’

Lady Patience stared down at them as if perhaps I had a litter of kittens concealed in them. Then she lifted her eyes to mine, smiled and said, ‘A lovely colour. And I am sure she is pleased that you wore them.’

‘She is.’

Patience lifted her hand, I extended my arm, she placed her hand on my forearm and we began a slow perambulation of the Great Hall. Folk parted for her, bowing and curtseying. Lady Patience, for so she was this evening, gravely inclined her head or warmly greeted or embraced as each person merited. I was content simply to be her escort, to see her enjoying herself, and to endeavour to keep a straight face through her whispered asides about Lord Durden’s breath or her pity for how quickly Tinker Dan was losing his hair. Some of the older guests remembered when she was not only the Lady of Withywoods but wife to Prince Chivalry. In many ways, she still reigned here, for Nettle spent a good portion of her time at Buckkeep Castle as Skillmistress to King Dutiful, and Molly was content to let Patience have her way in most things.

‘There are times in a woman’s life when only the company of other women can suffice.’ Patience had explained to me when she had summarily moved in with us at Withywoods five years previously. ‘Girls need an older woman in the house as they become women, to explain those changes to them. And when that other change comes early to women, especially women who hoped to bear more children, it is good to have the guidance of a woman who has also known that disappointment. Men are simply not helpful at this time.’ And while I had known trepidation about the arrangement when Patience first arrived with her baggage-train of animals, seeds and plants, she had proven the wisdom of her words. I knew it was rare for two women to exist so contentedly under one roof and blessed my good fortune.

When we reached her favourite chair by the hearth, I deposited her there, fetched her a cup of mulled cider, and then confided to her, ‘The last of your musicians arrived just as I came down the stairs. I haven’t seen them come in yet, but I thought you’d want to know that they had arrived.’

She raised her brows at me and then turned to peer the length of the room. The third set of musicians were moving to take over the dais there. She looked back at me, ‘No, they’re all there. I was most careful in my selection this year. For Winterfest, I thought to myself, we must have some warm-tempered folk to keep the chill away. And so, if you look, there is a redhead in every group that I’ve invited. There, see the woman warming her voice? Look at that cascade of auburn hair. Don’t tell me that she won’t warm this fest with her spirit alone.’ She did indeed appear to be a very warm-natured woman. She let the dancers rest by launching into a long story song, more fit for listening than dancing, sung in a rich and throaty voice. Her audience, old and young, drew closer as she sang the old tale of the maiden seduced by the Old Man of winter and carried off to his distant ice fortress in the far south.

All were rapt by the tale, and so it was that my eye caught the motion as two men and a woman entered the hall. They looked around as if dazzled, and perhaps they were after their long hike through an evening of falling snow. It was obvious they had come on foot, for their rough leather trousers were soaked to the knee. Their garb was odd, as minstrels were wont to wear, but unlike any that I had ever seen. Their knee-boots were yellow mottled brown from the wet, their leather trousers short, barely hanging past the tops of their boots. Their jackets were of the same leather, tanned to the same pale brown, with shirts of heavy-knit wool beneath them. They looked uncomfortable, as if the wool were too snug a fit under the leathers. ‘There they are now,’ I told her.

Patience stared at them from across the room. ‘I did not hire them,’ she declared with an offended sniff. ‘Look at that woman, pale as a ghost. There’s no heat to her at all. And the men are just as wintry, with hair the colour of an ice-bear’s hide. Brr. They chill me just looking at them.’ Then the lines smoothed from her brow. ‘So. I shall not allow them to sing tonight. But let’s invite them back for high summer, when a chilly tale or a cool wind would be welcome on a muggy evening.’

But before I could move to her bidding, I heard a roar of ‘Tom! There you are! So good to see you, old friend!’

I turned with that mixture of elation and dismay that surprise visits from unconventional and loving friends stir in one. Web was crossing the room in long strides, with Swift but a step or two behind. I lifted my arms wide and went to greet them. The burly Witmaster had grown in girth these last few years. As always, his cheeks were as red as if he had just stepped in from the wind. Molly’s son Swift was a couple of steps behind him, but as I watched, Nettle emerged from the crowd of guests and ambushed her brother in a hug. He stopped to lift her and whirl her in a joyous circle. Then Web engulfed me in a spine-cracking hug, followed by several solid thumps to my back. ‘You’re looking well!’ he told me as I tried to catch my breath. ‘Almost whole again, aren’t you? Ah, and my Lady Patience!’ Having released me from his exuberant greeting, he bowed gracefully over the hand that Patience extended to him. ‘Such a rich blue gown! You put me in mind of a jay’s bright feathers! But please tell me the feathers in your hair did not come from a live bird!’

‘Of course not!’ Patience looked properly horrified at the thought. ‘I found him dead on the garden path last summer. And I thought, now here is a time for me to see just what is beneath those lovely blue feathers. But I saved his feathers, of course, plucking them carefully before I boiled him down to bones. And then, of course, once I had discarded the jay broth, my task was before me: to assemble his little bones into a skeleton. Did you know that a bird’s wing is as close to a man’s hand as is a frog’s flipper? All those tiny bones! Well, doubtless you know the task is somewhere on my workbench, half-done as are so many of my projects. But yesterday, when I was thinking of feathers to take flight from our troubles, I remembered that I had a whole box full! And luckily for me, the beetles had not found and eaten them down to the quill, as they did when I tried to save the gull feathers. Oh! Gull! Have I been thoughtless? I beg pardon!’

She had obviously suddenly recalled that he was bonded with a gull. But Web smiled at her kindly and said, ‘We of the Wit know that when life is done, what remains is empty. None, I think, know better than we do. We sense the presence of all life, of course, with some burning brighter than others. A plant is not as vital in our senses as is a tree. And of course a deer outshines both, and a bird most of all.’

I opened my mouth to object to that. With my Wit I could sense birds, but had never found them particularly brimming with life. I recalled something that Burrich – the man who had all but raised me – had said to me, many years ago, when he had declared that I would not work with the hawks at Buckkeep Castle. ‘They don’t like you: you are too warm.’ And I had thought he meant my flesh, but now I wondered if he had sensed something about my Wit that he could not, then, have explained to me. For the Wit had then been a despised magic, and if either of us had admitted to possessing it we would have been hanged, quartered and burned over water.

‘Why do you sigh?’ Patience abruptly demanded of me.

‘Your pardon. I was not aware I had done so.’

‘Well, you did! Witmaster Web was just telling me the most fascinating things about a bat’s wing and suddenly you sigh as if you find us the most boring old things in the world!’ She punctuated her words with a tap of her fan on my shoulder.

Web laughed. ‘Lady Patience, doubtless his thoughts were elsewhere. I know Tom of old, and recall his melancholy streak well! Ah, but I have been keeping you to myself, and here are others of your guests, come to claim you!’

Was Patience deceived? I think not, but it pleased her to allow herself to be drawn away from us by the charming young man that doubtless Nettle had dispatched to allow Web to speak to me privately. Almost, I wished she had not done so; Web had sent me several letters and I was sure I knew the current of the conversation he wished to draw me into. It had been long since I had been bonded with an animal through my Wit. But what Web seemed to equate with a sulking child I felt was more like the solitude of a long-married man who is suddenly widowed. No one could replace Nighteyes in my heart, nor could I imagine such a connection with any other creature. Gone was gone, as he had just said. The echoes of my wolf within me were enough to sustain me now. Those vivid memories, so strong that sometimes I felt I still heard his thoughts in my mind, would always be preferable to any other joining.

So now, as he ventured past banalities about how I had been, and if Molly had been keeping well, and had the harvest been good this year, I deliberately diverted a conversation that would lead us, inevitably, to his perceived importance of my learning more of the Wit and discussing my solitary status. My considered opinion was that as I was unpartnered and intended to remain so for the rest of my life, I needed no more knowledge of the Wit-magic than what I had now.

So I tipped my head toward the ‘musicians’ still standing by the door and told him, ‘I fear they’ve come a long way for nothing. Patience has told me that red-headed singers are for Winterfest, and she will save the blondes for summer.’ I expected Web to share my amusement at Lady Patience’s eccentricities. The strangers had not ventured into the hall to join the merriment, but remained by the door, speaking only to one another. They stood as long-time companions do, closer together than one stands near an acquaintance. The tallest man had a weathered, craggy face. The woman at his side, with her face tilted toward him, had broad cheekbones and a high, lined forehead. ‘Blondes?’ Web asked me, staring round.

I smiled. ‘The strangely-dressed trio by the door. See them? In yellow boots and coats?’

He swept his eyes past them twice and then, with a start, stared at them. His eyes grew wider.

‘Do you know them?’ I asked at his look of dread.

‘Are they Forged?’ he asked in a hoarse whisper.

‘Forged? How could they be?’ I stared at them, wondering what had alarmed Web. Forging stripped a man’s humanity from him, tore him from the network of life and empathy that enabled all of us to care and be cared about. Forged ones loved only themselves. Once, there had been many of them in the Six Duchies, preying on their families and neighbours, tearing the kingdom apart from within as the Red-Ship Raiders released our own people as a foe among us. Forging had been the dark magic of the Pale Woman and her captain Kebal Rawbread. But we had prevailed and driven the raiders from our shores. Years after the Red-Ship Wars had ended, we had taken ship to her last stronghold on Aslevjal Island where we made an end of them forever. The Forged ones they had created were long gone to their graves. No one had practised that evil magic for years.

‘They feel Forged to me. My Wit cannot find them. I can barely sense them except with my eyes. Where did they come from?’

As a Witmaster, Web relied on that beast-magic far more keenly than I did. Perhaps it had become his dominant sense, for the Wit gives one a tingle of awareness for any living creature. Now, alerted by Web, I deliberately extended my own Wit toward the newcomers. I did not have his level of awareness and the crowded room muddled my senses even more. I could feel almost nothing from them. I dismissed that with a shrug.

‘Not Forged,’ I decided. ‘They huddle together too companionably. If they were Forged, each would be immediately seeking what they most needed, food, drink or warmth. They hesitate, not wishing to be seen as intruders here, but uncomfortable not knowing our ways. So not Forged. Forged ones never care for such niceties.’

I suddenly realized I sounded far too much like Chade’s apprentice assassin in how I analysed them. They were guests, not targets. I cleared my throat. ‘I do not know where they came from. Revel told me they came to the door as musicians for the feast. Or perhaps tumblers.’

Web was still staring at them. ‘They are neither,’ he said decisively. Curiosity blossomed in his voice as he announced, ‘So. Let us speak to them and find out who and what they are.’

I watched as the three conferred with one another. The woman and the younger man nodded abruptly at what the taller man was saying. Then, as if they were herd-dogs set to bringing in sheep, they abruptly left his side and began to move purposefully through the crowd. The woman kept her hand at her hip, as if her fingers sought a sword that was not there. Their heads turned and their eyes roved as they went. Seeking something? No. Someone. The woman stood on tiptoe, trying to peer over the heads of the gathered folk who were watching the change of the musicians. Their leader faded back toward the door. Did he guard it lest their prey escape? Or was I imagining things? ‘Who do they hunt?’ I heard myself ask softly.

Web didn’t respond. He’d already started moving toward where they had been. But as he turned from me, a lively drumbeat was suddenly joined by uplifted voices and a trilling pipe, and dancers surged back onto the floor. Couples spun and hopped like spinning tops to the lively tune, and blocked our path and my view. I put my hand on Web’s broad shoulder and tugged him back from the hazards of the dance floor. ‘We’ll go around,’ I told him, and led the way. But even that path was fraught with delays, for there were guests to greet, and one could not hurry through those conversations without seeming rude. Web, ever engaging and garrulous, seemed to lose his interest in the odd strangers. He focused his attention strongly on each person he was introduced to, and convinced them of his charm simply by his intense interest in who they were and what they did for a living and if they were having an enjoyable time tonight. I watched the room but could no longer locate the strangers.

They were not warming themselves at the big hearth as we passed it. Nor did I see them enjoying food or drink, or dancing, or watching the fest from the benches. When the music ended and the tide of dancers retreated, I firmly excused myself from Web’s and Lady Essence’s conversation and strode across the room to where I had last seen them. I was convinced now that they were not musicians and this was not a random stopping place for them. I tried not to let my suspicions escalate: my early training did not always serve me well in social situations.

I didn’t find any of them. I slipped out of the Great Hall into the relative quiet of the corridor outside it and looked in vain for them. Gone. I took a breath and resolutely let my curiosity go. Doubtless they were somewhere in Withywoods, changing into dry clothing or having a glass of wine or perhaps lost in the crowd of dancers. I would see them again. For now, I was the host of the gathering, and my Molly had been left alone too long. I had guests to attend to and a pretty wife to dance with and a lovely feast. If they were musicians or tumblers, they would soon make themselves known, for doubtless they would hope to win the favour and the largesse of the gathered guests. It was even possible that I was the person they were looking for, as I controlled the purse that paid the entertainers. If I waited long enough, they would approach me. And if they were beggars or travellers, then still they were welcome here. Why must I always imagine danger to my loved ones?

I plunged myself back into the maelstrom of merriment, danced again with Molly, invited Nettle to join me in a jig but lost her to Riddle, interrupted Hearth seeing how many honey-cakes he could stack into a tower on a single plate for the amusement of a pretty Withy maiden, over-indulged myself in ginger cookies and was ultimately trapped by Web near the ale keg. He filled his mug after me, and then nudged us toward a bench not far from the hearth. I looked for Molly, but she and Nettle had their heads together, and as I watched they moved as one to stir Patience from where she was dozing in a chair. She was protesting feebly as they gathered her up to take her to her chambers.

Web spoke without beating about the bush. ‘It’s not natural, Tom,’ he chided me, heedless of who might overhear us. ‘You are so alone, you echo to my Wit. You should open yourself to the possibility of bonding again. For one of Old Blood to go so long un-partnered is not healthy.’

‘I don’t feel the need,’ I told him honestly. ‘I’ve a good life here, with Molly and Patience and the boys. There’s honest work to keep me busy, and my idle time is enjoyed with those I love. Web, I don’t doubt your wisdom and experience, but I also don’t doubt my own heart. I don’t need anything more than what I have right now.’

He looked into my eyes and I met his gaze. My last utterance was almost true. If I could have had my wolf back again, then, yes, life would have been much sweeter. If I could have opened my door, and found the Fool grinning on my doorstep, then my life would have been full indeed. But there was no point in sighing after what I could not have. It only distracted me from what I did have, and that was more than I’d ever had in my life. A home, my lady, youngsters growing to manhood under my roof, and the comforts of my own bed at night. Just enough consultations from Buckkeep Castle that I could feel I was still needed in the greater world, and few enough that I knew, truly, they could get by without me and let me have a measure of peace. I had anniversaries I could be proud of. It was nearly eight years that Molly had been my wife. It was almost ten years since I’d killed anyone.

Almost ten years since I’d last seen the Fool.

And there it was, that stone-dropping-into-a-well plunge of my heart. I kept it from showing on my face or in my eyes. That gulf, after all, had nothing to do with how long I’d gone with no animal companion. That was a different sort of loneliness entirely. Wasn’t it?

Perhaps not. The loneliness that can never be filled by anyone except the one whose loss created the absence; well, then, perhaps it was the same.

Web was still watching me. I realized that I’d been staring past his shoulder at the dancers, but now the floor was empty. I shifted my gaze back to meet his. ‘I’m fine as I am, old friend. Content. Why should I tamper with that? Would you prefer I long for more when I have so much already?’

It was the perfect question to stop Web’s well-meaning pestering. I saw him think over my words, and then a deep smile rose onto his face, one that came from his heart. ‘No, Tom, I wouldn’t wish that on you, truly. I’m a man who can admit when he’s wrong, and perhaps I’ve been measuring your wheat with my bushel.’

The discussion suddenly tipped upside-down for me. The words burst from me. ‘Your gull, Risk, she is well, still?’

He smiled crookedly. ‘As well as might be expected. She’s old, Fitz. Twenty-three years with me, and she was probably two or three when we met.’

I was silent; I’d never stopped to wonder how long a gull might live, and I didn’t ask him now. All the questions that were too cruel to ask left me silent. He shook his head and looked away from me. ‘Eventually, I’ll lose her, unless accident or disease takes me first. And I’ll mourn her. Or she will mourn me. But I also know that if I am left alone, eventually, I’ll look about for another partner. Not because Risk and I do not have something wonderful together, but because I am Old Blood. And we are not meant to be solitary souls.’

‘I’ll think well on what you have said to me,’ I promised. Web deserved that courtesy from me. Time to leave this topic. ‘Did you ever manage to have words with our odd guests?’

He nodded slowly. ‘I did. But not many, and with the woman only. Tom, she made me uneasy. She rang oddly against my senses, as muted as muffled bells. She claimed that they were travelling jugglers and hoped to entertain us later. She was stingy in speaking of herself, but full of questions for me. She was looking for a friend of hers, who might also have come this way recently. Had I heard of any other travellers or visitors to the area? And when I told them that while I was a friend of the household, I had but arrived this night as well, then she asked me if I had met any other strangers on the road.’

‘I wonder if a member of their party became separated from them.’

Web shook his head. ‘I think not.’ He frowned slightly. ‘It was passing strange, Tom. When I asked who …’

And then Just touched my elbow. ‘Mother would like your help,’ he said quietly. A simple request yet something in the way he said it alarmed me.

‘Where is she?’

‘She and Nettle are in Lady Patience’s chambers.’

‘At once,’ I said, and Web nodded as I set off.

TWO
Spilled Blood

Of all the magics known to be possessed by men, the highest and noblest is that collection of talents known as the Skill. Surely it is no coincidence that through generations of Farseer rule, it often manifests in those destined to become our kings and queens. Strength of character and generosity of spirit, the blessings of both El and Eda, often accompany this hereditary magic of the Farseer line. It conveys to the user the ability to send his thoughts afar, to influence gently the thinking of his dukes and duchesses or to strike fear in the heart of his enemies. Tradition tells us that many a Farseer ruler, his strength supplemented by the courage and talent of his Skill-coterie, could work wondrous cures on both body and mind as well as command his ships at sea and our defenders upon the land. Queen Efficacious established six coteries for herself, placing one Skill-talented group in each duchy, and thus making the magic of the Skill available to each of her trusted dukes and duchesses during her enlightened reign, to the great benefit of all her people.

At the other end of the magical spectrum is the Wit, a base and corrupting magic that most often afflicts the lowborn who live and breed alongside the animals they cherish. This magic, once thought to be useful to goose-girls and shepherds and stable-boys, is now known to be dangerous not only to those who succumb to its influence but to all those around them. The mind-to-mind contamination of communicating with beasts leads to animalistic behaviours and appetites. While this writer laments that even nobly born youth have been known to fall prey to the attractions of beast-magic, I cannot sympathize beyond wishing that they be quickly discovered and eliminated before they can infect the innocent with their loathsome appetites.

On the Natural Magics of the Six Duchies, a treatise by Scribe Sweet-tongue

I all but forgot our strange visitors as I hurried through the halls of Withywoods. My immediate fear was for Patience. She had fallen twice in the last month, but blamed it on the room ‘suddenly whirling all about me’. I did not run but my stride was as long as I could make it and I did not knock when I reached her chambers but darted straight in.

Molly was sitting on the floor. Nettle knelt beside her and Patience stood, flapping a cloth at her. There was a pungent smell of sharp herbs in the room, and a little glass vial rolled on its side on the floor. Two serving-women stood in a corner, obviously bullied away from her by Patience’s sharp tongue.

‘What happened?’ I demanded.

‘I fainted.’ Molly sounded both annoyed and ashamed. ‘So silly of me. Help me up, Tom.’

‘Of course,’ I said, trying to hide my dismay. I reached down for her, and she leaned on me heavily as I drew her to her feet. She swayed slightly, but hid it by clutching my arm.

‘I’m fine now. A bit too much whirling about on the dance floor, and perhaps too many glasses.’

Patience and Nettle exchanged glances, undeceived.

‘Perhaps you and I should let our evening end. Nettle and the lads can perform the duties of the house.’

‘Nonsense!’ Molly exclaimed. Then she looked up at me, her eyes still a bit unfocused and added, ‘Unless you are weary?’

‘I am,’ I lied expertly, concealing my rising alarm. ‘So many folk all in one place! And we have three more days of this, at least. There will be plenty of time for conversation and food and music.’

‘Well. If you are tired, then, my love, I shall give way to you.’

Patience gave me the tiniest nod and added, ‘I’m going to do the same, my dears. Bed for these old bones, but tomorrow, I shall wear my dancing slippers!’

‘I am warned, then!’ I agreed, and submitted to a slap from her fan. As I turned her mother toward the door, Nettle shot me a grateful look. I knew she would draw me aside for a quiet talk the next day, and knew also that I had no answers for her, other than that her mother and I were both getting older.

Molly leaned on my arm as we walked sedately through the halls. Our path led us past the merrymaking, where guests delayed us with brief bits of conversation, compliments on the food and music and wishes for a good night. I could feel Molly’s exhaustion in her dragging steps and slow replies, but as ever she was Lady Molly to our guests. Finally I managed to pull her free of them. We limped slowly up the stairs with Molly leaning on me and when we reached the door of our bedchamber, Molly breathed an audible sigh of relief. ‘I don’t know why I’m so tired,’ she complained. ‘I didn’t have that much to drink. And now I’ve spoiled everything.’

‘You’ve spoiled nothing,’ I protested, and opened the door to find our bedroom had been transformed. Draperies of ivy confined our bed, and evergreen boughs graced the mantel and perfumed the air. The fat yellow candles that burned about the room gave off scents of wintergreen and bayberry. There was a new coverlet on the bed and matching hangings, all done in the green and golden-yellow of Withywoods, with twining willow leaves as a motif. I was astonished. ‘When did you find time to arrange all this?’

‘Our new house steward is a man of many talents,’ she replied, smiling, but then she sighed and said, ‘I thought we would be coming here after midnight, drunk with dance and music and wine. I planned on seducing you.’

Before I could respond, she added, ‘I know that of late, I have not been as ardent as once I was. Sometimes I feel I am the dried husk of a woman now that there is no chance of ever giving you another child. I thought tonight we might regain, for a time … But now I feel light-headed, and not in a pleasant way. Fitz, I think I will do no more in that bed than sleep beside you tonight.’ She let go of me and tottered a few steps to sink down on the edge of the bed. Her fingers fumbled at the laces of her kirtle.

‘Let me do that for you,’ I offered. She raised an eyebrow at me. ‘With no thought of more than that!’ I assured her. ‘Molly, just to have you sleep beside me every night is the fulfilment of my dream of years. Time enough for more when you are not exhausted.’ I loosened the confining laces and she sighed as I eased her out of the garment. The buttons on her blouse were tiny things made from mother of pearl. She brushed my clumsy fingers aside to undo them, then stood. She was very unlike her tidy self as she let her skirts fall on top of the discarded clothing. I’d found and brought to her a soft nightgown. She pulled it on over her head, and it tangled on the holly crown that was in her hair. I lifted it gently free and smiled as I beheld the woman my lovely Molly Redskirts had become. A long ago Winterfest came to my mind, as I’m sure it did to her. But as she sank down to sit on the edge of the bed again, I saw the furrows in her brow. She lifted a hand to rub her forehead. ‘Fitz, I’m so sorry. I’ve ruined all I planned.’

‘Nonsense. Here. Let me tuck you in.’

She gripped my shoulder to stand and swayed as I opened the bed to the linens for her. ‘In you go,’ I told her, and she made no saucy reply, but only sighed heavily as she sat, then eased over onto the bed and lifted her feet after her. She closed her eyes. ‘The room is spinning. And it’s not wine.’

I sat down on the edge of the bed and took her hand. She frowned. ‘Be still. Any movement makes the room spin faster.’

‘It will pass,’ I told her, hoping it would, and sat very still. I watched her. The candles burned steadily, releasing the fragrances she had imbued in them over the summer past. The fire on the hearth crackled, flames consuming the carefully-stacked logs. Slowly the lines of discomfort in her face eased. Her breathing steadied. The stealth and patience of my youthful training sustained me. I gradually eased my weight and when I finally stood beside the bed, I doubted that she had felt any motion at all for she slept on.

I ghosted about the room, extinguishing all but two of her candles. I poked at the fire, added another log, and set the fire screen before it. I was not sleepy, nor even weary. I had no desire to return to the festivities and explain why I was there while Molly was not. For a time longer I stood, the fire warming my back. Molly was a shape behind the mostly-drawn bed-curtains. The flames crackled and my ears could almost sort the kiss of the driven snow against the windows from the sounds of the merrymaking down below. Slowly, I took off my festive garments and resumed the comforts of my familiar leggings and tunic. Then silently I left the room, drawing the door slowly closed behind me.

I did not descend by the main stairs. Instead, I took a roundabout path, down a servants’ back staircase and through a deserted corridor until finally I reached my private den. I unlocked the tall doors and slipped inside. The remains of the hearth-fire were a few winking coals. I woke them with a few twists of paper from my desk, burning the useless musings of that morning and then adding more fuel. I went to my desk, sat, and drew a blank sheet of paper toward me. I stared at it and wondered, why not just burn it now? Why write on it, stare at the words, and then burn it? Was there really anything left in me that I could only trust to paper? I had the life I had dreamed of: the home, the loving wife, the children grown. Buckkeep Castle respected me. This was the quiet backwater I’d always dreamed of. It was over a decade since I’d even thought of killing anyone. I set down the quill and leaned back in my chair.

A tap at the door startled me. I sat up straight and instinctively looked about the room, wondering if there was anything I should hastily conceal. Silly. ‘Who is it?’ Who but Molly, Nettle or Riddle would know I was here? And none of them would have tapped first.

‘It’s Revel, sir!’ His voice sounded shaky.

I stood. ‘Come in! What is it?’

He was out of breath and pale as he pushed open the door and stood framed in it. ‘I don’t know. Riddle sent me running. He says, “Come, come right now, to your estate study”. Where I left the messenger. Oh, sir. There’s blood on the floor there, and no sign of her.’ He gasped in a shuddering breath. ‘Oh, sir, I’m so sorry. I offered a room, but she said no and—’

‘With me, Revel,’ I said, as if he were a guardsman and mine to command. He went paler at my snapped command but then stood a bit straighter, glad to cede all decisions to me. My hands moved instinctively, confirming a few small concealed weapons that never left my person. Then we were off at a run through the corridors of Withywoods. Blood spilled in my home. Blood spilled by someone besides me, and not Riddle, or he would have quietly cleaned it away, not summoned me. Violence in my home, against a guest. I fought the blind fury that rose in me, quenched it with icy anger. They would die. Whoever had done this would die.

I led him by a roundabout path that avoided passages where we might encounter guests and reached the estate study after interrupting only one indiscreet young couple and scaring one drunken youngster looking for a place to doze. I berated myself for how many people I had let into my home, how many I knew only by face or name.

And Molly was sleeping alone and unguarded.

I skidded to a halt by the study door. My voice was hoarse with anger as I took a nasty knife that had been strapped to my forearm and shoved it at Revel. He staggered back a step in fear. ‘Take it,’ I barked at him. ‘Go to my bedchamber. Look in on my lady, be sure she sleeps undisturbed. Then stand outside the door and kill anyone who seeks to come in. Do you understand me?’

‘Sir.’ He coughed and then gulped, ‘I have a knife already, sir. Riddle made me take it.’ Awkwardly he drew it from inside his immaculate jacket. It was twice the length of the one I’d offered, an honourable weapon rather than an assassin’s little friend.

‘Go, then,’ I told him, and he did.

I drummed on the door with my fingertips, knowing Riddle would recognise me by that, and then slipped in. Riddle straightened slowly from where he had crouched. ‘Nettle sent me to find a bottle of the good brandy she said you had here. She wanted to offer some to Lord Canterby. When I saw the papers on the floor, and then the blood, I sent Revel for you. Look here.’

Revel had brought the messenger food and wine and served it at my desk. Why had she declined to go to a guest room or join us in the great hall? Had she known she was in danger? She’d eaten at least some of the food, I judged, before the tray had been dashed to the floor along with a few papers from my desk. The falling wine glass had not shattered but had left a half-moon of spilled wine on the polished dark stone of the floor. And around that moon was a constellation of blood stars. A swung blade had flung those scattered red drops.

I stood up and swept my gaze across the study. And that was all. No rifled drawers, nothing moved or taken. Not a thing out of place at all. Not enough blood for her to have died here, but there was no sign of any further struggle. We exchanged a silent look and, as one, moved to the heavily-curtained doors. In summers I sometimes opened them wide to look out onto a garden of heathers for Molly’s bees. Riddle started to sweep the curtain to one side, but it caught. ‘A fold of it is shut in the door. They went this way.’

Knives drawn, we opened the doors and peered out into the snow and darkness. Half of one footprint remained where the eaves had partially sheltered it. The other tracks were barely dimples in the windblown snow. As we stood there, another gust swept past us, as if the wind itself sought to help them escape us. Riddle and I stared into the storm. ‘Two or more,’ he said, surveying what remained of the trail.

‘Let’s go before it’s gone completely,’ I suggested.

He looked down woefully at his thin, flapping skirt-trousers. ‘Very well.’

‘No. Wait. Do a wander through the festivities. See what you see, and bid Nettle and the boys be wary.’ I paused. ‘Some odd folk came to the door tonight, professing to be minstrels. But Patience said she had not hired them. Web spoke briefly with one of the strangers. He started to tell me what she said, but I was called away. They were looking for someone. That much was obvious.’

His face grew darker. He turned to go and then turned back. ‘Molly?’

‘I put Revel on her door.’

He made a face. ‘I’ll check them first. Revel has potential, but for now, it’s only potential.’ He stepped toward the door.

‘Riddle.’ My voice stopped him. I took the bottle of brandy from the shelf and handed it to him. ‘Let no one think anything is amiss. Tell Nettle if you think it wise.’

He nodded. I nodded back and as he left, I took down a sword that had hung on the mantel. Decoration now but it had once been a weapon and would be again. It had a nice heft. No time for a cloak, or boots. No time to go for a lantern or torch. I waded out into the snow, sword in hand, the light from the opened doors behind me. In twenty paces I knew all I needed to know. The wind had erased their tracks completely. I stood, staring off into the darkness, flinging myself wide-Witted into the night. No humans. Two small creatures, rabbits probably, had hunkered down in the shelter of some snow-draped bushes. But that was all. No tracks and whoever had done this was already both out of my eyesight and beyond the range of my Wit. And if they were the strangers, my Wit could not have found them even if they were close.

I went back into the den, shaking the snow from my wet shoes before I entered. I shut the door behind me and let the curtain fall. My messenger and her message were gone. Dead? Or fled? Had someone gone out of the door, or had she let someone in? Was it her blood on the floor, or someone else’s? The fury I had felt earlier at the idea that someone might do violence to a guest in my home flared in me again. I suppressed it. Later, I might indulge it. When I had a target.

Find the target.

I left the study, closing the door behind me. I moved swiftly and silently, years and dignity and present social standing swept aside and erased. I made no sound and carried no light with me. I kept the sword at my side. First, to my own bedchamber. I built castles of thoughts as I ran. The messenger had sought me. Regardless of whether she was attacker or attacked, it might indicate that I was the intended target for the violence. I flowed up the stair like a hunting cat, every sense burning and raw. I was aware of Revel keeping his vigil by the door long before he knew I was coming. I lifted a finger to my lips as I drew near. He startled when he saw me, but kept silent. I drew close to him. ‘All is well here?’ I breathed the question.

He nodded and as softly replied, ‘Riddle was here not that long ago, sir, and insisted I admit him to be sure that all was well with the lady.’ He stared at the sword.

‘And it was?’

His gaze snapped back to me. ‘Of course, sir! Would I stand here so calmly were it not so?’

‘Of course not. Forgive my asking. Revel, please remain here until I come back to relieve you, or I send Riddle or one of Molly’s sons.’ I offered him the sword. He took it, holding it like a poker. He looked from it to me.

‘But our guests …’ he began feebly.

‘Are never as important as our lady. Guard this door, Revel.’

‘I will, sir.’

I reflected that he deserved more than an order. ‘We still do not know whose blood was shed. Someone used the doors in the study that go out to the garden. To enter or to leave, I do not know. Tell me a bit more of the messenger’s appearance.’

He bit his upper lip, worrying the information from his memory. ‘She was a girl, sir. That is, more girl than woman. Slight and slender. Her hair was blonde and she wore it loose. Her clothing looked as if it had been of a good quality but had seen hard use. It was a foreign style, the cape tapered in at the waist and then belling out, with sleeves belled as well. It was green and looked heavy but did not appear to be wool. There was fur on the edging of the hood, of a kind I do not know. I offered to take her cloak and hood but she did not wish to give them up to me. She wore loose trousers, perhaps of the same fabric, but black with white flowers figured on them. Her boots did not reach her knee and seemed thin and were laced tight to her calf.’

So much detail about her garments! ‘But what did she herself look like?’

‘She was young. She looked white with cold and seemed grateful when I built up the fire for her and offered her hot tea. Her fingers were pale as ice against the mug when she took it from me …’ His voice trailed away. He looked up at me suddenly. ‘She didn’t want to leave the study, sir. Or to give up her cloak. Should I have known she was frightened?’

Had Riddle truly thought he could make more of this man than a house steward? Tears stood in his brown eyes. ‘Revel, you did all that you should have done. If anyone is at fault, it is I. I should have gone to the study as soon as I heard there was a messenger. Please. Just keep watch here for a short time longer until I send someone to relieve you. Then, you should go back to what you do best. Tend to our guests. Let no one suspect that anything is amiss.’

‘I can do that, sir.’ He spoke softly. Was the reproach in his dog’s eyes for me or himself? No time to wonder.

‘Thank you, Revel,’ I told him and left him with a clap on his shoulder. I moved swiftly down the corridor, already reaching for Nettle with my Skill-magic. The moment our thoughts touched, my daughter’s outrage blasted into my mind. Riddle told me. How dare anyone do this in our home! Is Mother safe?

She is. I’m on my way down. Revel is on watch on her door, but I’d like you or one of the boys to take his place.

Me. I’ll make my excuses and be right up. A heartbeat’s pause, then, fiercely, Find who did this!

I intend to.

I think she took satisfaction in my cold assurance.

I moved swiftly through the corridors of Withywoods, every sense alert. I was not surprised when I rounded a corner and found Riddle waiting for me. ‘Anything?’ I asked him.

‘Nettle’s gone up to her mother’s room.’ He glanced past me. ‘You know that you were probably the target in some way.’

‘Perhaps. Or the messenger herself, or the message she bore, or someone seeking to do injury to whoever sent the message by delaying or destroying it.’

We were moving swiftly together, trotting side by side like wolves on a trail.

I loved this.

The thought ambushed me and I almost stumbled. I loved this? Hunting someone who had attacked someone else in the sanctity of my own home? Why would I love that?

We always loved the hunt. An ancient echo of the wolf I had been and the wolf who was still with me. The hunt for meat is best, but any hunt is always the hunt, and one is never more alive than during the hunt.

‘And I am alive.’

Riddle shot me a questioning glance but instead of asking a question, he gave me information. ‘Revel himself took the food and tea to the messenger. The two pages who were on the front door recall admitting her. She came on foot, and one says that she seemed to come from behind the stable rather than up the carriageway. No one else saw her, though of course the kitchen staff recall making up a tray for her. I haven’t had a chance to go out to the stables and see what they know there.’

I glanced down at myself. I was scarcely dressed to appear before our guests. ‘I’ll do that now,’ I said. ‘Alert the boys.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘It’s their home, Riddle. And they are not really boys any more. They’ve been talking of leaving for the last three months. In spring, I think they’ll fly.’

‘And you have no one else to trust. Tom. When this is over, we are going to talk again. You need a few house soldiers, a few men who can be brutes when the situation calls for it, but can open a door and serve wine to a guest as well.’

‘We’ll talk later,’ I agreed, but grudgingly. It wasn’t the first time he had pointed out to me that I should have some sort of house guard for Withywoods. I resisted the idea. I was no longer an assassin, living to guard my king and carry out his quiet work. I was a respectable land-holder, a man of grapes and sheep now, a man of ploughs and shears, not knives and swords. And there was, I had to admit, my conceit that I could always protect my own household against whatever limited threats might find their way to my door.

But I hadn’t tonight.

I left Riddle and trotted through the halls on my way to the stables. There was, I told myself, truly no indication that whatever bloodshed there had been was deadly. Nor did it have to be related to me or to my own. Perhaps the messenger had enemies of her own who had followed her. I reached a servants’ entrance, pushed open the heavy door and dashed across the snowy courtyard to the stable door. Even in that brief run, I had snow down the back of my neck and in my mouth. I slid back the bar on the stable doors and pushed one open just enough to slip in.

Inside was the warmth of stabled animals, the pleasant smell of horses and soft light from a shielded lantern on a hook. In response to my entrance, Tallman was already hobbling toward me. His son, Tallerman, supervised most of the work of the stables now, but Tallman still considered himself in charge. On days when there was a great deal of coming and going, as there was tonight, he rigorously controlled which animals were stabled where. He had strong feelings about teams left standing all evening in harness. He peered at me through the gloom of the stable and then gave a start as he recognized me. ‘Holder Tom!’ he cried in his cracking voice. ‘Shouldn’t you be dancing with the fine folk in the great hall?’

Like many another oldster, his years had diminished his regard for the differences in our status. Or perhaps it was that he’d seen that I could shovel out a stall with the best of men, and he therefore respected me as an equal. ‘Soon enough,’ I replied. ‘The dancing will go on to dawn, you know. But I thought I would wander out here and be sure all is well in the stable in such a storm.’

‘All’s well here. This barn was built sturdy two decades ago, and it’ll stand for a dozen more, I reckon.’

I nodded. ‘Steward Revel tells me that you had visitors here tonight, ones that made you uneasy.’

His querying look changed to a scowl. ‘Yes. If you act like a horse thief, I’ll speak to you like you’re a horse thief. Don’t come prying and peeking around my stables and then tell me you’re a minstrel. They were no more minstrels than Copper there is a pony. They didn’t smell right to me, and I took them right up to the door.’ He peered at me. ‘That Revel fellow was supposed to warn you. You didn’t let them in, did you?’

Hard to admit it. I nodded once. ‘It’s Winterfest. I let everyone in.’ I cleared my throat at his lowering stare. ‘Before that. Did you notice anyone else here at the stables, anyone odd?’

‘You mean that foreign girl?’

I nodded.

‘Only her. She came in here like she thought it was the house. “I need to speak to the master,” she told one of the hands, so he brought her to me, thinking she wanted me. But she looked at me and said, “No, the master with the crooked nose and the badger’s hair.” So, begging your pardon, we knew she meant you and sent her up to the house.’

I dropped my hand from where I’d touched the bridge of my nose and the old break there. This was just getting odder and odder. A vanished messenger who had come seeking me with only a description rather than my name. ‘That’s all?’ I asked.

He frowned thoughtfully. ‘Yes. Unless you want to hear about Merchant Cottleby trying to get me to stable his horses here when both have signs of mange. Poor creatures. I put them under shelter in the woodshed, but they’re not getting anywhere near our stock. And if his driver wants to complain, I’ll tell him what I think of his horsemanship.’ He looked at me fiercely as if I might challenge his wisdom.

I smiled at him. ‘A small kindness, Tallman, for the horses’ sake. Pack them up some of the liniment you make.’

He stared at me a moment, then gave a short nod. ‘Could do that. Not the beasts’ fault they’re ill cared for.’

I started to leave, then turned back. ‘Tallman. How long between the time the girl arrived and the three you took for horse thieves?’

He lifted his gaunt shoulders and then let them fall. ‘She came before Caul Toely arrived. Then came that tailor fellow, and the Willow sisters on those matched ponies of theirs. Those ladies never ride in a carriage, do they? Then the Cooper boys and their mother, and …’

I dared to interrupt him. ‘Tallman. Do you think they were following her?’

He stopped. I waited impatiently as he weighed what he knew. Then he nodded, his mouth tight. ‘I should have puzzled that out for myself. Same sort of boots, and they came right to the barn and were trying to peek in. Not looking for horses to steal, but following that girl.’ His eyes met mine angrily. ‘They hurt her?’

‘I don’t know, Tallman. She’s gone. I’m going to go see if those three are still here.’

‘You do that. If they aren’t there, they can’t be far, in this weather. You want I should send a lad to Stocker’s Holding, ask to borrow their tracking dogs?’ He shook his head and added sourly, ‘I’ve said many a time, it wouldn’t hurt us to have our own hunting pack.’

‘Thank you, Tallman, but no dogs. The way the snow is coming down, I doubt there’s any trail to follow.’

‘You change your mind, Tom, you let me know. I can have my son go fetch those hounds in a heartbeat. And—’And now he was calling after me as I beat a retreat. ‘If you come to your senses about keeping our own dogs, you let me know! I know a great bitch, will have her pups by spring! You just let me know!’

‘Later, Tallman!’ I shouted the words back to him, and got a mouthful of snow for my trouble. The snow was still coming down and the wind was rising. I suddenly felt certain that those I sought were still within Withywoods. No one would be desperate enough to try to flee during this storm. I reached for Nettle. Is all still well with your mother?

I left her sleeping, with Hearth sitting in a chair by her fire. I told him to latch the door behind me, and I heard him do it. I’m with Riddle and Just, and our guests. We have discovered nothing out of the ordinary. There is no sign of the messenger.

Dead? Fled? Hiding within Withywoods? It had to be one of the three. There were three minstrels who came late. Two men and a woman. Web seemed unsettled by them. Are they still among our guests? I pictured them for her in my mind.

I saw them earlier. But they did not look like musicians to me, nor behave like them. They gave no indication of wanting a turn on the dais.

Send Just to me, please. We’re going to do a quick search of the unoccupied wings. And let me know if you and Riddle find the three strangers.

Just and I divided Withywoods and went room to room, looking for any sign of intrusion in the unoccupied areas of the manor. It was not an easy task in the rambling old manor, and I relied on my Wit as much as my eyes to tell me if a room was truly empty. Nettle and Riddle found no sign of the three strangers, and when she asked our other guests if they had seen them, the responses were so conflicting as to be useless. Even our servants, who sometimes irritated me with the close attention they paid to family doings, had nothing to report. The three and the messenger were as gone as if they had never visited us at all.

Toward the small hours of the morning, when our guests were sated with food and music and were departing for their homes or seeking the chambers we had offered them, I called off the search. Riddle and the lads joined Revel in seeing that all the outside doors were secured for the night, and then made a quiet patrol of that part of the manor where we had housed our guests. While they were doing that, I resolved to slip off to my private den in the West Wing. From there I could access a spy-network that only Patience, Molly and I knew existed. It was my low intention that I would wander it tonight and peer in on our sleeping guests to see if anyone had offered the strangers shelter in their rooms.

Such was my intent. But when I reached the doors of my study, the hackles on my neck rose. Even before I touched the door handle, I knew it was not quite latched. And yet I recalled clearly that I had shut the door behind me before I had followed Revel to join Riddle. Someone had been here since I last left it.

I drew my knife before I eased the door open. The interior of the room was dim, the candles guttering out and the fire subsiding. I stood for a time, exploring the room with my senses. There was no one inside the room, my Wit said, but I recalled that earlier the strangers had been almost transparent to Web, a man with a much more finely tuned magic than I possessed. And so I stood, ears pricked and waited. But it was what I smelled made me angry. Blood. In my den.

My knife led the way as I advanced. With my free hand I kindled a fresh candle and then poked up the fire. Then I stood still, looking around my room. They had been here. They had come here, to my den, someone’s blood still wet on them.

If Chade had not trained me through a thousand exercises to recall a room exactly as I had left it, their passage might have been unnoticeable. I smelled a brush of blood on the corner of my desk, and there was a small smear of browning red where my papers had been shifted. But even without the scent of blood and the tiny traces of it, they had been here, touching my papers, moving the scroll I’d been translating. They’d tried to open the drawer of my desk, but had not found the hidden catch. Someone had picked up the memory stone carving the Fool had made for me decades before and put it back on the mantel with the facet that showed my face looking out into the room. When I picked it up to correct it, my lip lifted in a snarl. On the Fool’s image, a clumsy thumb had left blood smeared down his cheek. The surge of fury I felt was not rational.

When I lifted it, I felt the tide of the memories stored in it. The Fool’s last words to me, stored in the stone, tugged at my memory. ‘I have never been wise,’ he had said. A reminder of the recklessness of our youths, or a promise that some day he would ignore caution and return? I closed my mind against that message. Not now.

And foolishly, I tried to swipe the blood from his face with my thumb.

Memory stone is peculiar stuff. Of old, Skill-coteries had travelled to a distant quarry in the Mountain Kingdom where they carved dragons from it, imbuing the stone with their memories before being absorbed into their creations to give them a semblance of life. I’d seen it happen, once. Verity, my king, had given himself to a stone dragon, and then risen in that guise to bring terror and war to the enemies of the Six Duchies. On Aslevjal Island I’d discovered small cubes of the gleaming black stuff had been used by the Elderlings to store songs and poetry.

I myself had wakened the slumbering dragons of previous generations with an offering of blood and a call to arms that was both Wit and Skill-wrapped into one magic.

Blood on memory stone, and my touch. The Skill and the Wit both boiling inside me. The smear of blood sank into the stone.

The Fool opened wide his mouth and screamed. I saw his lips stretch, his bared teeth and stiffened tongue. It was a screech of unremitting agony.

No sound reached my ears. It was more intimate than that. Sourceless and enduring, the endless, hopeless, merciless agony of systematic torture engulfed me. It filled my entire body and burned my skin as if I were a glass brimming with black despair. It was too familiar, for it was not the keen pain of any one physical torment but the overwhelming drowning of the mind and soul in the knowledge that nothing could prevent this torment. My own memories rose up in a shrieking chorus. Once more I sprawled on the cold stone floor of Prince Regal’s dungeons, my battered body suffocating my tormented mind. I tore my awareness free of that memory, denying that bond. His carved eyes stared at me blindly. For a moment, our gazes met and then all went dark and my eyes burned. My enervated hands fumbled the carving, nearly dropping it, but instead hugged it to me as I collapsed to my knees. I held it to my chest, feeling a far distant wolf lift his muzzle and snarl in fury. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ I babbled blindly, as if it were the Fool himself I had injured. Sweat burst from every pore on my body, drenching me. Still clutching the carving to me, I sank onto my side. Slowly my vision came back. I stared into the dying fire, haunted by images of dull red instruments soaking in the flames, smelling blood both old and new mixed with the acrid stench of terror. I remembered how to close my eyes. I felt the wolf come to stand over me, threatening to rend any who came near. Slowly, the echoes of the pain passed. I drew breath.

Blood had the power to waken memory stone, whether it was an Elderling carved dragon or the bust the Fool had shaped. And in that brief linking, I knew that the girl was dead. I’d felt her terror at being hunted and cornered, her memory of past torments and the agony of her death. By that, I knew her for Revel’s girlish messenger rather than the soldier-schooled woman I’d seen with the two men. They’d followed her, hunted her through my home, and killed her. I did not know why, or what message they had foiled, but I would find them and I would find out.

I rolled to my belly, holding the carving still to my chest. My head swam. I got my knees under me, knelt and managed to stand by holding onto the desk top. Staggering to my chair, I sat down. I set the carving on the desk before me and looked at it. It had not changed. Had I imagined that movement, the Fool’s soundless scream and staring eyes? Had I shared some distant experience of the Fool’s, or had the carving expressed the terror and pain the messenger had felt at her death?

I started to lift the carving, to set it to my brow to view again the simple memories he had stored in it for me. But my hands shook and I set it back on the desk. Not now. If somehow I’d merged the girl’s pain into the stone and stored it there, I did not want to know that now, nor share that agony again. Right now, I needed to hunt.

I tugged my sleeves down over my hands, and restored the carving to its place on the mantel. Still a bit shaky, I explored my den, looking for other signs of their presence, but found nothing.

Someone had come here, to my private den, forced the doors and disturbed some very private possessions. There were few things that touched to the heart of me as that carving did, precious few things that tied me to a past when I had served my king with the two dearest friends I had ever known. That someone, a stranger, had dared to handle it and had profaned it with blood he had shed brought me to the edge of a killing fury, and when I considered that it might easily have been stolen, my vision went red for a moment.

I shook my head angrily, forcing cold on myself. Think. How had they found this place? It was obvious. When Revel had been sent to find me, they had followed. But if finding me was the true objective, why hadn’t they attacked then? And how had I missed being aware of them? Were they Forged, as Web had first suspected, humans with every connection to humanity torn from them? I doubted it; they had moved as a group in the ballroom, with trepidation and self-control such as I had never seen in the Forged. Had they, then, had some way of masking their life signatures? I knew of no magic that could do that. When my wolf had been alive, we had, with difficulty, learned to keep our communication private. But that was scarcely the same as being able to completely conceal myself from the awareness of other Witted.

I pushed that concern aside for a moment. I reached for Nettle with the Skill, and swiftly shared most of what I knew with her. I made no mention of the blood or the carving. That was private.

I’m with Mother. Riddle took Hearth and Just with him. He has told Just that he must guard Patience’s door while he and Hearth are checking every unoccupied room in the manor.

Excellent. How is your mother?

Still sleeping. She looks as she always does and I can detect nothing wrong with her. But I was very alarmed when she fainted earlier. Much more worried than I wished her to see. Her father died when he was only two years older than she is now.

He had ruined his health with drink, and the brawling and stupid accidents that go with it.

Her mother died very young.

I pressed my palms to my eyes and pushed on my brow with my fingers. It was too frightening. I could not think about it. Stay there with her, please. I’ve just a few more places that I wish to search, and then I’ll come take your place.

I’m fine here. You needn’t hurry.

Did she suspect what I was about to do? I doubted it. Only Patience and Molly and I knew of the concealed labyrinth of secret passages in Withywoods. While the peepholes within the passage did not give me a view of every single bedchamber, they would allow me to look in on many of them, to see if any harboured more guests than we had invited.

It was closer to dawn than midnight when I emerged from the passageways. I was festooned with cobwebs, chilled to the bone and weary. I had discovered nothing save that at least two of the housemaids were willing, for luck, fancy or perhaps some coin, to spend the night in beds not their own. I’d seen one young wife weeping into her hands while her husband snored drunkenly halfway into their bed, and one old couple indulging in Smoke so potent that the slight drift of it into my secret passageway had dizzied me.

But of the peculiar minstrels or the messenger’s body, there was no sign.

I returned to my room and released Nettle to go to hers. I did not sleep that night or even lie down, but sat in a chair by the hearth and watched over Molly and pondered. Had the intruders been insane enough to flee into the snowstorm, taking the messenger’s body with them? At least one had remained in Withywoods long enough to follow Revel and enter my den. Why? To what end? Nothing had been taken from there, no member of my household injured. I was determined to get to the bottom of it.

But over the next few days it was as if we had dreamed the stray minstrels and the messenger. Molly recovered to feast, dance and laugh with our guests for the rest of Winterfest with no sign of illness or weakness. I felt dirty that I kept my bloody knowledge hidden from her, and even worse that I bound her sons to silence, but both Nettle and Riddle agreed with me. She did not need the extra worry right now.

Snow continued to fall for another day and a night, obscuring all signs of anyone who might have come or gone. Once the blood was cleaned from the floor, no trace remained of our foreign visitors. Revel surprised me by being able to keep a still tongue on the peculiar events, for Riddle, Nettle and I had decided that discreet enquiries might win us more information than trumpeting our concerns about. But other than a few guests who commented on the foreigners who had arrived and departed from the feast without sharing any of the merriment, we discovered nothing. Web had little to say that he had not already told me. He had thought it odd that the woman would not tell him the name of the ‘friend’ she was seeking. And that was all.

Nettle, Riddle and I debated telling Chade of the incident. I did not want to, but in the end they persuaded me. On the first quiet evening after Winterfest, when our guests had departed and Withywoods was comparatively quiet, I went to my study. Nettle accompanied me there, and Riddle with her. We sat, she joined her thoughts to mine, and together we Skilled our tale to Chade. Nettle was a quiet presence as I presented my detailed report. I had thought she might offer more detail, but all I felt from her was a quiet confirmation of my telling. Chade asked few questions but I sensed him storing every detail. I knew he would glean whatever information he could from his far-flung network of spies and share it with me. I was still surprised when he said, ‘I advise you to wait. Someone sent the messenger, and that one may reach out to you again when she does not return. Let Riddle go to Withy and spend some time in the taverns there for a few nights. If there is anything to hear, he will hear it. And I will make a few discreet inquiries. Other than that, I think you’ve done as much as you can. Except, of course, as before I advise you to consider adding a few house-soldiers to your staff. Ones who can serve a cup of tea or cut a throat with equal skill.’

‘I scarcely think that’s necessary,’ I said firmly, and sensed his distant sigh.

‘As you think best,’ he finished and withdrew his mind from ours.

I did as he suggested. Riddle went to the taverns, but heard nothing. No message arrived asking what had become of a messenger. For a time, I walked with my hackles up, alert to anything that might be the slightest bit out of the ordinary. But as days and then months passed, the incident faded from the foreground of my mind. Riddle’s premise that perhaps none of them were what they had claimed to be, and that we had been passing witnesses to someone settling an old debt, was as valid as any I could imagine.

Years later, I would marvel at my stupidity. How could I not have known? For years, I had waited and longed for a message from the Fool. And when finally it came, I had not received it.

THREE
The Felling of Fallstar

A secret is only yours so long as you don’t share it. Tell it to one person, and it’s a secret no more.

Chade Fallstar

Chickens squawked, kids bleated and the savoury smell of sizzling meat floated in the summer air. Blue summer sky arched over the market stalls at Oaksbywater market, the largest market town within an easy journey of Withywoods Manor. Oaksbywater was a crossroads town, with good access to the surrounding farms in the valley and a well-tended Kings Road that led to a port on the Buck River. Goods came from both up and down the river, and in from outlying villages. The tenth-day markets were the most crowded and farmers’ carts filled the market circle while smaller vendors had set up stalls or spread blankets on the village green under the spreading oaks by the lively creek that gave the town its name. The humbler merchants had no more than fresh vegetables or home crafts arranged on mats on the ground, while the farmers with larger holdings set up temporary benches to hold baskets of dyed woollens or rounds of cheese or slabs of smoked pork.

Behind the tenth-day market stalls were the resident merchants of Oaksbywater. There was a cobbler’s shop, a weavers’ mercantile, a tinker, and a large smithy. The King’s Dogs Inn had set out benches and tables outside in the shade. The cloth merchant displayed racks of fabric and twisted hanks of dyed yarn for sale, the smith’s shop offered wares of tin and iron and copper, and the cobbler had brought his bench outside his shop and sat sewing a lady’s soft red slipper. The pleasant din of folks bargaining and gossiping ebbed and flowed on waves against my ears.

I was seated at one of the tavern’s benches under the oak, a mug of cider at my elbow. My errands were completed. We’d had a message from Just, the first to reach us in many a month. He and Hearth had left home almost three years ago. With youth’s fine disregard for the concerns of their elders, they’d sent messages only sporadically. He’d finished the first year of his apprenticeship with a wainwright in Highdowns and his master was very pleased with him indeed. He wrote that Hearth had taken work on a river ferry and seemed content at that occupation. Molly and I had both rejoiced at the news that he was finally settled and doing well. But Just had added that he had lost his favourite belt-knife, a bone-handled one with a thin, slightly curved blade that the smith in Oaksbywater had made for him when he was thirteen. I’d put in the order for a replacement two weeks ago and picked it up today. That single small package was at my feet beside a huddle of Molly’s purchases.

I was watching the cobbler and wondering if Molly would like a pair of red slippers. But evidently that pair was spoken for. As I watched, a slender young woman with a mop of unruly dark curls sauntered from the market crowd to stand before the cobbler. I could not hear the words they spoke, but the man took three more stitches and a knot, bit off his thread and offered the slipper and its mate to her. Her face lit with a saucy grin, she set her stacked coppers on his bench and sat down immediately to try on her new shoes. Freshly shod, she stood up, lifted her skirts almost to her knees and tried a few dancing steps there in the dusty street.

I grinned and looked around for someone to share my enjoyment of her unabashed pleasure. But the two old ploughmen on the other end of my bench were complaining to one another about the prospect of rain or the lack thereof, and my Molly was out among the other shoppers enjoying a day of haggling with merchants. In the past, when the boys were younger and Patience alive, market days had been far more complicated trips. But in the space of little more than a year we’d lost my stepmother, and seen the lads venture out on their own. For most of a year, I think we were both stunned by the abrupt change in our lives. For almost two years after that, we had floundered about in a home that suddenly seemed much too large. Only recently had we cautiously begun to explore our new latitude. Today we had escaped the confines of our life as lady and holder for the estate to take a day to ourselves. We’d planned it well. Molly had a short list of items she wished to buy. I needed no list to remind me that this was my day for idleness. I was anticipating music during an evening meal at the inn. If we lingered too late, we might even stay the night and begin our journey back to Withywoods the next morning. I wondered idly why the idea of Molly and me alone overnight in an inn raised in me thoughts more worthy of a boy of fifteen than a man of fifty years. It made me smile.

FitzChivalry!

The Skill-reaching was a shout inside my mind, an anxious cry that was inaudible to anyone else in the market. I knew in an instant that it was Nettle and that she was full of worry. The Skill was like that: so much information conveyed in an instant. A part of my mind noted that she called me FitzChivalry, not Tom Badgerlock nor Tom nor even Shadow Wolf. She never called me Father or Papa. I’d lost the right to those titles years ago. But the ‘FitzChivalry’ spoke of matters that had more to do with the Farseer crown than with our family ties.

What’s wrong? I settled myself on the bench and fixed an empty smile on my face as I Skill-reached across the distance to Buckkeep Castle on the coast. I saw the uplifted branches of the oak against the blue sky, but was also aware of a darkened room around Nettle.

It’s Chade. We think he took a fall and perhaps struck his head. He was found sprawled on the steps to the Queen’s Garden this morning. We don’t know how long he had been there, and we’ve been unable to rouse him. King Dutiful wishes you to come at once.

I’m here, I assured her. Let me see him.

I’m touching him now. You can’t feel him? I couldn’t and Dutiful couldn’t, and Thick was completely flummoxed. ‘I see him but he’s not there,’ he said to us.

Fear sent cold tendrils from my belly up to my heart. An old memory of Verity’s queen, Kettricken, falling down those same steps – victim of a plot to kill her unborn child in the fall – filled my mind. I immediately wondered if Chade’s fall had been an accident at all. I tried to hide the thought from Nettle as I reached through her to grope for Chade. Nothing. I can’t sense him. Does he live? I asked, scrabbling for some semblance of calm. I pushed my Skill, and became more aware of the room where Nettle sat beside a draped bed. The curtained windows made it dim. There was a small brazier burning somewhere; I smelled the piercing smoke of restorative herbs. I sat out in the fresh air but felt the stuffiness of the closed room all around me. Nettle drew a breath and showed me Chade through her eyes. My old mentor was laid out as straight beneath his blankets as if he were stretched on a funeral pyre. His face was pale, his eyes sunken and a bruise darkened one temple and swelled his brow on that side. I could see King Dutiful’s counsellor through my daughter’s eyes, but had no fuller sense of him.

He breathes. But he will not wake and none of us have any sense of him being here. It’s as if I’m touching—

Dirt. I finished the thought for her. That was how Thick had expressed it years ago, when I had begged him and Dutiful to reach out with the Skill and help me heal the Fool. He had been dead to them. Dead and already turning back into earth. But he’s breathing?

I already told you he was! Frantic impatience bordering on anger tinged her words. Fitz, we would not have reached for you if this was a simple healing. And if he were dead, I’d tell you that. Dutiful wants you to come right now, as soon as possible. Even with Thick lending strength to them, the Skill-coterie has not been able to reach him. If we can’t reach him, we can’t heal him. You are our last hope.

I’m at Oaksbywater market. I’ll need to go back to Withywoods, pack a few things and get a saddle horse. I’ll be there in three days, or less.

That won’t do. Dutiful knows that you won’t like the idea but he wants you to come by the stone portals.

I don’t do that. I asserted it strongly, already knowing that, for Chade, I would risk it, as I had not in all the years since I had been lost in the stones. The thought of entering that gleaming blackness stood up the hair on the back of my neck and my arms. I was terrified to the point of illness just thinking of it. Terrified. And tempted.

Fitz. You have to. It’s the only hope we have. The healers we have called in are completely useless, but on one thing they agree. Chade is sinking. We cannot reach him with the Skill and they say that all their experience tells them that within a few days he will die, his eyes bulging from his face from the blow to his head. If you arrive here in three days, it will be to watch him burn on a pyre.

I will come. I formed the thought dully. Could I make myself do it? I had to.

Through the stones, she pressed me. If you are at Oaksbywater, you are not far from their Judgment Stone on Gallows Hill. The charts we have show that it has the glyph for our Witness Stones. You could be here easily before nightfall.

Through the stones. I tried to keep both bitterness and fear from my thought. Your mother is here at the market with me. We came in the high-wheeled cart. I will have to send her home alone. Parted yet again by Farseer business, the simple pleasure of a shared meal and an evening of a tavern minstrel’s songs snatched away from us.

She will understand, Nettle tried to comfort me.

She will. But she won’t be pleased by it. I broke my thoughts free of Nettle. I had not closed my eyes, but I felt as if I opened them. The fresh air and the clamour of the summer market, the bright sunlight dappling down through the oak’s leaves, even the girl in the red slippers seemed like a sudden intrusion into my grimmer reality. I realized that while I had been Skilling my unseeing gaze had been resting on her. She was now returning my stare with a querying smile. I lowered my eyes hastily. Time to go.

I drained the last of my cider, thudded my empty mug back on the board and stood, searching the milling market for Molly. I spotted her at the same time she saw me. Once she had been as slender as the girl in the red slippers. Now Molly was a woman easing past the middle years of her life. She was moving steadily if not swiftly through the crowd, a small, sturdy woman with bright dark eyes and a determined set to her mouth. She carried a fold of soft grey fabric over her arm as if it were a hard-won war trophy. For a moment, the sight of her drove all other considerations from my mind. I simply stood and watched her coming toward me. She smiled at me and patted her merchandise. I pitied the merchant who had been the victim of her bargaining. She had ever been a thrifty woman; becoming Lady Molly of Withywoods had changed none of that. The sunlight glinted on the silver that threaded her once-dark curls.

I stooped to retrieve her earlier purchases. There was a crock of a particular soft cheese that she enjoyed, and a pouch of culkey leaves for scenting candles and a carefully-wrapped parcel of bright red peppers that she had cautioned me not to touch with my bared hands. They were for our gardener’s granny: she claimed to know a potion formula that could ease the knots in old knuckles. Molly wanted to try it. Of late she suffered from an aching lower back. Beside it was a stoppered pot that held a blood-strengthening tea.

I loaded my arms and as I turned, I bumped into the red-slippers girl. ‘Beg pardon,’ I said, stepping back from her, but she looked up at me with a merry smile.

‘No harm done,’ she assured me, cocking her head. Then the curve of her smile deepened as she added, ‘But if you’d like to make up for nearly treading on my very new slippers, you might buy a mug of cider to share with me.’

I stared at her dumbfounded. She’d thought I’d been watching her when I was Skilling. Well, actually, yes, I had been staring at her, but she had mistaken it for a man’s interest in a pretty girl. Which she was. Pretty, and young, much younger than I’d realized when I first noticed her. Just as I was much older than her interested gaze assumed. Her request was both flattering and unnerving. ‘You’ll have to settle for accepting an apology from me. I’m on my way to meet my lady wife.’ I nodded toward Molly.

The girl turned, looked directly at Molly and turned back to me. ‘Your lady wife? Or did you mean to say your mother?’

I stared down at the girl. Any charm her youth and prettiness had held for me had vanished from my heart. ‘Excuse me,’ I said coldly and stepped away from her and toward my Molly. A familiar ache squeezed my heart. It was a fear I fought against every day. Molly was ageing away from me, the years carrying her further and further from me in a slow and inexorable current. I was nearing fifty years, but my body stubbornly persisted in holding the lines of a man of thirty-five. A Skill-enhanced healing from years before still had the power to waken and rage through me whenever I injured myself. Under its control, I was seldom ill, and cuts or bruises healed rapidly. Last spring, I’d fallen from a hayloft and broken my forearm. I’d gone to sleep that night with it splinted firmly, and awakened ravenously hungry and thin as a winter wolf. My arm had been sore but I could use it. The undesired magic had kept me fit and youthful, a terrible blessing as I watched Molly slowly stoop under the burden of the stacked years she bore. Since her fainting spell at that Winterfest, her ageing had seemed to accelerate. She tired more easily, and had occasional spells of dizziness and blurred vision. It saddened me, for her choice was to dismiss such things and refuse to discuss them afterwards.

As I advanced toward Molly, I noticed that her smile had become fixed. She had not missed the interplay between the girl and me. I spoke before she could, pitching my words for her ears only amidst the market’s din. ‘Nettle Skilled to me. It’s Chade. He’s badly injured. They want me to come to Buckkeep Castle.’

‘You have to leave tonight?’

‘No. Immediately.’

She looked at me. Emotions played over her face. Annoyance. Anger. And then, terribly, resignation. ‘You must go,’ she told me.

‘I’m afraid I must.’

She nodded tightly, and took several of her purchases from my laden arms. Together we walked through the market toward the inn. Our little two-wheeled cart was drawn up outside. I’d stabled our horse, rather hoping that we’d spend the night there. As I put the rest of her purchases under the seat, I said, ‘You don’t have to rush back home, you know. You can stay and enjoy the rest of the market day.’

She sighed. ‘No. I’ll call the ostler to have our horse brought out now. I didn’t come for the market, Fitz. I came for a day with you. And that’s over now. If we go home now, you can be on your way before evening.’

I cleared my throat and broke the news to her. ‘It’s too urgent for that. I’ll have to use the stone on Gallows Hill.’

She stared at me, her mouth ajar. I met that gaze, trying to hide my own fear. ‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ she said breathlessly.

‘I wish I didn’t have to.’

A time longer, her eyes searched my face. For an instant, she folded her faded lips and I thought she would argue with me. Then she said stiffly, ‘Fetch the horse. I’ll drive you there.’

It was an easy walk, but I didn’t argue. She wanted to be there. She wanted to watch me enter the stone and disappear from her sight. She had never seen me do it, and had never wanted to see me do it. But if I must, she would watch me go. I knew her thoughts. It might be the last time she’d ever see me, if my Skill went awry. I offered her the only comfort I could. ‘I’ll have Nettle send a bird from Buckkeep as soon as I’m safely there. So you needn’t worry.’

‘Oh, I’ll worry. For a day and a half, until the bird reaches me. It’s what I’m best at.’

The shadows had just begun to lengthen when I handed her down from the cart at the top of Gallows Hill. She held my hand as we walked the steep trail to the top of the hill. Oaksbywater didn’t boast a circle of standing stones as Buckkeep did. There was only the old gallows, the splintery grey wood baking in the summer sunlight with daisies growing incongruously and cheerfully all round the legs of it. And behind it, on the very crest of the hill, the single standing stone, gleaming black and veined with silver: memory stone. It was easily the height of three men. It had five faces, and each had a single glyph chiselled into it. Since we had discovered the true use of the standing stones, King Dutiful had sent out teams of men to clean each stone and record the glyphs and orientation of each one. Each glyph signified a destination. Some we now knew; most we did not. Even after a decade of studying scrolls about the forgotten Skill-magic, most practitioners regarded travel via the portal stones as dangerous and debilitating.

Molly and I circled the stone together, looking up at it. The sun was shining into my eyes when I saw the glyph that would take me to the Witness Stones near Buckkeep. I stared at it, feeling fear forming cold in my belly. I did not want to do this. I had to.

The stone stood black and still, beckoning me like a still pond of water on a hot summer day. And like a deep pool, it could pull me into its depths and drown me forever.

‘Come back to me as soon as you can,’ Molly whispered. And then she flung her arms around me and held me in a fierce hug. She spoke into my chest. ‘I hate the days when we must be parted. I hate the duties that still tug at you, and I hate how always they seem to tear us apart. I hate your dashing off at a moment’s notice to do them.’ She spoke the words savagely and each was a small knife plunged into me. Then she added, ‘But I love that you are the kind of man who still does what he must do. Our daughter calls, and you go to her. As we both know you must.’ She took a deep breath and shook her head at her flash of temper. ‘Fitz, Fitz, I am still so jealous of every minute of your time. And as I age, it seems that I wish to cling to you more, not less. But go. Go do what you must and come back to me as quickly as ever you can. But not by the stones. Come back to me safely, my dear.’

Simple words, and to this day, I do not know why they bolstered my courage as they did. I held her closer to me and stiffened my own spine. ‘I’ll be fine,’ I assured her. ‘The time I was lost in the stones, it was only because I’d used them so often in the days before. This will be easy. I’ll step in here and stumble out by the Witness Stones above Buckkeep Town. And first thing I’ll have a bird sent to Withywoods to tell you that I’m there.’

‘And it will take at least a day to get here. But I’ll be watching for it.’

I kissed her again, and then stepped free of her. My knees were shaking and abruptly I wished I had pissed earlier. Facing a sudden and unknown danger is different from deliberately plunging oneself into a previously experienced and known life-threatening task. Imagine deliberately walking into a bonfire. Or stepping over the railing of a ship in a storm. I could die. Or worse, not die, forever, in that cool black stillness.

Only four steps away. I could not faint. I could not let my terror show. I had to do this. The stone was only two steps away. I lifted a hand and gave Molly a final wave, but dared not look back at her. My mouth had gone dry in purest fear. With the same hand, I set my palm to the face of the standing stone, right under the glyph that would carry me to Buckkeep.

The stone’s face was cool. The Skill infused me in an indescribable way. I didn’t step into the stone; it engulfed me. A moment of black and sparkling nothing. An indefinable sense of well-being caressed and tempted me. I was on the cusp of understanding something wonderful; in a moment I would grasp it fully. I would not just comprehend it. I would be it. Complete. Unheeding of anything, or anyone, ever again. Fulfilled.

Then I tumbled out. The first coherent thought I had on falling out of the stone onto the wet and grassy hillside above Buckkeep was the same as my last thought before I entered. I wondered what Molly had seen as I left her.

I had dropped to my quivering knees as I emerged. I didn’t try to move. I looked out, breathing air that carried a hint of brine from Buckkeep Bay. It was cooler here and the air was moister. Rain had fallen recently. Sheep grazed the hillside before me. One had lifted its head to regard me; now it dropped it back to the grass. I could see the back walls of Buckkeep Castle across a rumpled distance of stony pasture and wind-gnarled trees. The fortress of black stone stood as it seemed it always had, its towers giving it a sweeping view of the sea. I could not see it, but I knew that on the steep cliffs below it, Buckkeep Town clung like a creeping lichen of people and structures. Home. I was home.

Slowly my heartbeat returned to normal. A creaking cart crested the hill and made its way toward the castle gates. With a critical eye, I approved the slow pace of a sentry along the castle walls above it. We were at peace now, but still Dutiful maintained the watch. Good. Chalced might seem to be preoccupied with its own civil war, but rumour said the duchess now controlled most of her wayward provinces. And as soon as it was at peace with itself, doubtless Chalced would once more seek war with its neighbours.

I looked back at the Skill-pillar. The sudden desire to re-enter it, to bathe again in that unsettling pleasure of sparkling darkness, seized me. There was something there that was immense and wonderful, something that I longed to join. I could step back inside and find it. It waited for me.

I drew a deep breath and reached out with the Skill to Nettle. Let fly a bird to Withywoods. Let Molly know I am here and safe. Choose the swiftest bird that will home there.

Done. And why didn’t you let me know before you entered the stone? I heard her speak to someone in the room. ‘He’s here. Send a lad with a horse for him, now.’ Then she focused on me again. What if you had emerged senseless and without words as you did all those years ago?

I let her rebuke flow past me. She was right, of course, and Chade would be furious with me. No. The thought came with freezing dismay. Chade might never be furious with me again. I started walking toward the keep, and then could not prevent myself from breaking into a trot. I Skilled to Nettle again. Do the guards on the gate know I’m coming?

King Dutiful himself ordered them to expect Holder Badgerlock, with an important message for me from my mother. No one will delay you. I’ll send a boy with a horse.

I’ll be there before he clears the stables. I broke into a run.

Chade’s bedchamber was grand. And still as death. It was on the same floor as Dutiful’s royal apartments, and I doubted that my king’s chambers were as indulgent as those of the old assassin-turned-adviser. My feet sank into the thick, moss-green rugs. The heavy hangings over the windows admitted not a ray of daylight. Instead, flickering candles filled the room with the scent of melting beeswax. In a gleaming brass brazier beside his bed a smoke of restorative herbs thickened the air. I coughed and groped my way to the bedside. There was a pitcher there and a filled cup. ‘Only water?’ I asked of the hovering healers, and someone assented. I drained the cup, and coughed again. I was still trying to catch my breath from my dash up the wide stairways of the castle.

King Dutiful was coming somewhere behind me, as was Nettle. Thick sat on a stool in the corner, the tip of his tongue resting on his lower lip and his simpleton’s face welling sadness and tears. His Skilled music was a muted dirge. He squinted at me for a long moment and then his froggy mouth spread in a smile of welcome. ‘I know you,’ he told me.

And I know you, old friend, I Skilled to him. I pushed from my thoughts that he had not aged well; those of his kind seldom did. He had already lived longer than any of the Buckkeep healers had expected.

Old Chade is acting dead, he conveyed to me anxiously.

We’ll do what we can to wake him, I assured the little man.

Steady, half-brother to my Nettle and part of the King’s Skill-coterie now, stood at Thick’s side. I nodded a quick greeting to him. I had pushed my way through hovering healers and their various assistants to reach Chade’s bedside. The room was thick with the smells of anxious people: they pressed on my Wit-sense as if I were wading through a pen of beasts awaiting slaughter.

I did not hesitate. ‘Open those curtains and the windows as well. Get some light and air in here!’

One of the healers spoke. ‘We have judged that dark and quiet may best encourage—’

‘Open them!’ I snapped, for a sudden rush of memories of my first king, King Shrewd, in a stuffy room full of tonics and medicines and the smoke of drugs filled me with fear.

The healers stared at me, hostile and unmoving. Who was this stranger to enter Lord Chade’s chamber, drink from his cup and then order them about? Resentment simmered.

‘Open them,’ Dutiful echoed me as he entered the chamber, and the healers and their assistants leapt to obey.

I turned to him and asked, ‘Can you get them all out of here?’

Someone gasped. ‘My king, if you please,’ I added hastily. In the pressure of the moment, I had forgotten that they saw me merely as Tom Badgerlock, Holder for Withywoods. Quite possibly, they had no idea as to why I might be called in to consult on Chade’s health. I tried to compose myself and saw a wry and weary smile twitch the corner of Dutiful’s mouth as he issued the orders that would clear the room of the clustering healers. As light and air refreshed the room and the number of folk diminished, the pressure on my senses eased. I asked no permission as I dragged the hangings on the bed wide open. Nettle helped me. The last light of sunset fell across the bed and the features of my old mentor, my old friend, my great-uncle, Chade Fallstar. Despair rose in me.

He looked cadaverous. His mouth had fallen open, his lower jaw hanging to one side. His closed eyes were sunken. The bruise I had glimpsed in my Skill-session with Nettle had spread and darkened half his face. I took his hand and was rewarded with a Wit-sense of his life. Not strong, but it was there. It had been masked by the huddle of mourning healers when I first entered. His lips looked parched, his tongue a greyish pad in his mouth. I found a clean cloth by the bedside, moistened it from the pitcher and touched it to his lips, pushing his mouth closed as I did so. I dabbed it over his lined face. He had used his Skill to slow the erosion of years, but no magic could reverse time’s tread or the tracks it left on his body. I tried to guess his true age. I’d thought him an old man when he first took me as his apprentice some forty years ago. I decided I didn’t want to know and put my mind to more useful tasks. As I wet the cloth again and set it gently against the bruising, I asked, ‘Did you already try to heal this? Even if we cannot reach him with the Skill, healing his body may free his mind to return to us.’

‘Of course we tried.’ I forgave Dutiful for the irritation in his voice. It was an obvious question and he gave me the obvious answer. ‘We tried to reach into him, to no avail.’

I set the cloth aside and sat down on the edge of the bed. Chade’s hand in mine was warm. I closed my eyes. With my fingers, I sensed the bones and the muscles and the flesh. I tried to push past my physical awareness of him to Skill-sensations I had not felt in years. I tried to enter his body with my thoughts, to be aware of what was right in the flow of his blood and the rush of his breath. I could not. I pushed, but the barriers did not yield.

Barriers. I drew back from them and opened my eyes. I spoke aloud my consternation. ‘He’s walled off. Deliberately sealed against the Skill. Like Chivalry did to Burrich.’

Thick was rocking in the corner. I looked at him and he hunched his blunt head closer between his shoulders. His small eyes met mine. ‘Yah. Yah. Closed like a box. Can’t get in.’ He shook his head solemnly, the tip of his tongue curled over his upper lip.

I looked around the room. The king stood quietly by Chade’s bed, his young wolfhound leaning comfortingly against his knee. Of the king’s coterie only Nettle and Steady were there. That told me that his formal Skill-assemblage had already joined their strength and attempted to batter a way into Chade. And failed. That Nettle had resorted to calling on me and bringing Thick spoke volumes. As Skillmistress, she had decided that all conventional uses of the magic had been ineffective. Those of us gathered now were those who would, if commanded, venture into dangerous and unknown applications of Skill.

Thick, our beloved halfwit, was prodigiously strong with the magic, though not creative with it. The king himself possessed a goodly amount of ability for it, while Nettle’s strongest talent was the Skill-manipulation of dreams. Her half-brother, Steady, was a reservoir of strength for her, one who could be completely trusted with any secret. But they were all looking at me, the Solo, the bastard Farseer with a wild and erratic talent, as if I were the one who would know what to do.

But I didn’t. I didn’t know any more about it than the last time we had attempted to use Skill to heal a sealed man. We hadn’t succeeded. Burrich had died. In Burrich’s youth, he had been Chivalry’s right-hand man and a source of strength for the King-in-Waiting. And so Burrich had been sealed by his king, lest enemies of the Farseers use him as a conduit to discover Chivalry’s secrets. Instead that wall had kept out the magic that might have saved him.

‘Who did this?’ I tried and failed to keep accusation from my voice. ‘Who sealed him from the Skill like this?’ Treachery from within the coterie was the most likely explanation. It chilled me to think of it. Already my assassin’s mind had linked the sealing with his fall. Double treachery to kill the old man. Cut him off from his magic so he could not cry for help, and then see that he was badly injured. If Chade had been the target of such treachery, was the king the next mark?

King Dutiful puffed his lips out in an exclamation of surprise and dismay. ‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it, if you are right. But you can’t be right. Just a few days ago, he and I conducted a small experiment with the Skill. I reached him without effort. He certainly wasn’t sealed then! Even with all his practice, he’s never become exceptionally strong with the Skill, but he’s very competent with what talent he has. But strong enough to wall us all out? I doubt that he …’ I saw my own suspicions take root in his mind. Dutiful drew up a chair on the other side of Chade’s bed. He sat down and looked across the bed at me. ‘Someone did this to him?’

‘What was the “small experiment”?’ I demanded. All eyes were on our king.

‘Nothing dark! He had a small block of the black stone, the memory stone brought from the ancient Elderling stronghold on Aslevjal Island. He pressed a thought into it, and then gave it to a messenger who brought it to me. I was able to retrieve his message. It was just a simple little rhyme, something about where to find violets in Buckkeep Castle. I used the Skill to confirm with him that I was correct. He was certainly able to Skill well enough to impress it into memory stone, and receive my response to it. So he wasn’t sealed on that day.’

A tiny motion caught my eye. It wasn’t much. Steady had opened his mouth and then shut it again. It was not much of a trail but I’d pursue it. I looked at him suddenly, pointed my finger and demanded, ‘What did Chade tell you not to tell anyone?’

Again, his mouth opened for just that betraying moment and then snapped shut again. He shook his head mutely and set his jaw. He was Burrich’s son. He couldn’t lie. I drew breath to press him but his half-sister was swifter. Nettle crossed the room in two strides, reached up to grab her younger brother’s shoulders and tried to shake him. It was like watching a kitten attack a bull. Steady didn’t move under her onslaught; he only sank his head down between his broad shoulders. ‘Tell the secret!’ she demanded. ‘I know that look. You tell, right now, Steady!’

He bowed his head and closed his eyes. He was caught on a bridge with both ends torn free of shore. He could not lie and he could not break his promise. I calmed my voice and spoke slowly, more to Nettle than to him. ‘Steady won’t break his promise. Don’t ask him to. But let me make a guess. Steady’s talent is to lend strength to someone who can Skill. To serve as a king’s man if the king should need extra strength in a time of great need for Skill-magic.’

Steady bowed his head, a clear assent to what we already knew about him. Once, I had served in that capacity to King Verity. In his need and my inexperience, I had let him drain me, and he had been angry at how close he had come to doing me permanent harm. But Steady was not like me; he had been trained specifically for his task.

Laboriously, I built my castle of logic from what I knew of Chade. ‘So Chade summoned you. And he borrowed your strength to … do what? Do something that burned his Skill out of him?’

Steady was very still. That wasn’t it. I suddenly knew. ‘Chade drew on your strength to put a block on himself?’

Steady was unaware of that tiny dip of his head that was assent. Dutiful broke in, outraged at my suggestion. ‘That makes no sense. Chade always wanted more of the Skill, not to be blocked from the use of it.’

I heaved a great sigh. ‘Chade loves his secrets. He lives his life in a castle of secrets. The Skill is a way into a man’s mind. If a strong Skill-user catches a man unaware, he can suggest anything to him and the man will believe it. Tell him his ship faces a great storm and he will turn back to safe harbour. Persuade a war leader that his army is outnumbered, and he will change his tactics. Your father, King Verity, spent many of his days using the Skill exactly that way to turn back the Red Ships from our shores. Think of all the ways we have used the Skill over the years. We all know how to raise walls against other Skill-users, for privacy in our own lives. But if you know that others are stronger in the Skill than you are …’ I let my words dwindle away.

Dutiful groaned. ‘Then you would seek help to raise a more powerful wall. One that could not be breached without your consent, one only you could lower at will.’

‘If you were awake or aware enough to do so.’ I spoke the last words softly. Tears were rolling down Steady’s cheeks. He looked so much like his father that my breath caught in my throat. Nettle had ceased trying to worry at her younger brother. Instead, she rested her forehead on his chest. Thick’s Skill-magic music surged into a storm of despair. I battered my way through it, organized my thoughts and asked Steady a question.

‘We know what happened. You haven’t broken your promise not to tell. But this is a different question. If you helped a Skill-user block himself, do you know how to break through it?’

He folded his lips tightly and shook his head.

‘The man who is strong enough to build a wall should be strong enough to break it,’ Dutiful suggested sternly.

Steady shook his head. When he spoke, his voice was deep with pain. Now that we knew the secret, he felt he could speak the details. ‘Lord Chade read about it in one of the old scrolls. It was a defence suggested for the coterie closest to the king or queen, so that the coterie could never be corrupted. It makes a wall that only the Skill-user himself can open. Or the king or queen, or whoever knows the key word.’

My gaze shot to Dutiful. He spoke immediately. ‘I don’t know it! Chade never spoke to me of such a thing!’ He set his elbow to his knee and his forehead to his hand, looking suddenly very much like an anxious boy again. It wasn’t reassuring.

Nettle spoke. ‘If he didn’t tell Dutiful, then you have to know it, Fitz. You were always closest to him. It has to be one of you two. Who else would he entrust it to?’

‘Not me,’ I said brusquely. I didn’t add that we hadn’t spoken to one another in several months, not even via the Skill. It was not a rift of anger, but only time. We’d slowly grown apart over the last few years. Oh, in times of extreme turmoil, he would not hesitate to reach into my mind and demand my opinion or even my aid. But over the years, he’d had to accept that I would not be drawn back into the intricate dance that was life at Buckkeep Castle. Now I regretted our distance.

I rubbed my brow and turned to Thick. ‘Did Lord Chade tell you a special word, Thick? One to remember?’ I focused on him, trying to smile reassuringly. Behind me, I heard the door to the room open but I kept my attention on Thick.

He scratched one of his tiny ears. His tongue stuck out of his mouth as he pondered. I forced myself to be patient. Then he smiled and straightened up. He leaned forward and smiled at me. ‘Please. He told me to remember “please”. And “thank you”. Words to get what you want from people. You don’t just grab. Say “please” before you take something.’

‘Could it be that simple?’ Nettle asked in wonder.

Kettricken spoke from behind me. ‘Does it involve Chade? Then simple? Absolutely not. That man never makes anything simple.’ I turned to regard my erstwhile queen and despite the gravity of our situation, I could not help but smile at her. She stood straight and regal as ever. As always, the king’s mother was dressed with a simplicity that would have looked more appropriate on a serving-girl, save that she wore it with such dignity. And power. Her fair hair, gone to early silver, flowed unbound down her back, past the shoulders of her Buckkeep-blue robe. Another anomaly. She had encouraged the Six Duchies to reach out in trade, and in my lifetime I had seen our kingdom embrace all that the wider world had to offer. Exotic foods and seasoning from the Spice Islands, peculiar styles of dress from Jamaillia and the lands beyond and foreign techniques for working with glass, iron and pottery had altered every aspect of life in Buckkeep Castle. The Six Duchies shipped out wheat and oats, iron ore and ingots, Sandsedge brandy and the fine wines from the inland duchies. Timber from the Mountain Kingdom became lumber that in turn we shipped to Jamaillia. We prospered and embraced change. Yet here was my former queen, immune to the changes she had encouraged, dressed as simply and old-fashioned as a servant from my childhood, without even a diadem in her hair to mark her rank as the king’s mother.

She crossed to me and I rose to accept her firm embrace. ‘Fitz,’ she said by my ear. ‘Thank you. Thank you for coming, and for taking great risk by coming so swiftly. When I heard that Dutiful had conveyed to Nettle that you must come at once, I was horrified. And full of hope. How selfish we are, to tear you from your well-earned peace and demand that you once more come to our aid.’

‘You are always welcome to any help I can bring you.’ Any lingering irritation I had felt for how I had been pressed to use the stone pillar vanished at her words. It was her gift. Queen Kettricken had always acknowledged the sacrifices that people made in service to the Farseer throne. In exchange, she had always been willing to surrender her own comfort and safety for those loyal to her. In that moment, her gratitude seemed a fair exchange for the danger I had faced.

She released me and stepped back. ‘So. Do you think you can help him?’

I shook my head regretfully. ‘Chade has put a block on himself, similar to the way that Chivalry sealed Burrich off from the Skill. He drew on Steady’s Skill-strength to do it. If we could break through it, we might be able to use our joined Skill-magic to aid his body in healing itself. But he has locked us out, and lacks the awareness to either permit us in or to heal himself.’

‘I see. And how is he?’

‘Losing strength. I feel an ebbing in his vitality even in the short time I’ve been here.’

She flinched at my words but I knew she prized honesty. She opened her hands and gestured to all of us. ‘What can we do?’

King Dutiful spoke. ‘Little to nothing. We can call the healers back, but they only seem to squabble with one another. One says to cool him with wet cloths, another to light the hearth and cover him with blankets. One wanted to bleed him. I do not think any of them truly have a remedy for this type of injury. If we do nothing, I suspect he will die before two more nights go by.’ He lifted off his crown, ran his hands through his hair, and set it back on his head slightly ajar. ‘Oh, Chade,’ he said, a combination of rebuke and plea in his voice. He turned to me. ‘Fitz. Are you sure you’ve had no message from him, either on paper or by the Skill, that would hint to what key will open him to us?’

‘Nothing. Not for months.’

Kettricken looked around the room. ‘One of us knows.’ She spoke slowly and precisely. She considered each of us with another slow sweeping gaze, and then said, ‘I think it is most likely you, Fitz.’

She was probably right. I looked at Steady. ‘How does one use this key word, if one knows it?’

The young man looked uncertain. ‘He didn’t instruct me in that, but I suspect it is something you Skill to him, and it is what permits you in.’

My heart sank. Had Burrich had a key word, something that would have allowed me to reach him? A key that Chivalry had taken to his grave after his riding ‘accident’? I suddenly felt ill to know that I might have saved Burrich from death if I’d known his key. Well, it wasn’t going to happen again. Kettricken was correct. Chade was far too clever a man to have closed a lock without entrusting one of us with a key.

I took Chade’s hand in both of mine. I looked at his sunken face, at his lips puffing slightly with every expelled breath. I focused on him and reached again with the Skill. My mental grip on him slid and slipped, as if I tried to grasp a glass orb with soapy hands. I set my teeth and did a thing he had always decried. I found him with my Wit, focused on the animal life that I felt ebbing through his body, and then I needled my Skilled at him. I began with a list of names. Chivalry. Verity. Shrewd. Fallstar. Farseer. Burrich. Kettricken. I went through everyone dear to us, hoping for a twitch of response. There was nothing. I finished with Lady Thyme. Lord Golden. Slink.

I gave up on that list and opened my eyes. The room was quiet around me. King Dutiful still sat on the other side of the bed. In the window behind him, the sun was foundering on the horizon. ‘I sent the others away,’ he said quietly.

‘I had no luck.’

‘I know. I was listening.’

I studied my king in that unguarded moment. He and Nettle were nearly of an age and resembled one another in small ways, if one knew to look for them. They had the dark curly hair typical of the Farseer line. She had a straight nose and a determined mouth, as did he. But Dutiful had grown taller than I had while Nettle was not much taller than her mother. Dutiful sat now, his hands steepled with the fingertips touching his mouth and his eyes grave. My king. The third Farseer king I had served.

Dutiful rose, groaning as he stretched his back. His hound imitated him, rising and then bowing low to the floor. He walked to the door, opened it and said, ‘Food, please. And a dish of water for Courser. And some of the good brandy. Two cups. Let my lady mother know that as of yet we’ve had no success.’ He shut the door and turned back to me. ‘What? Why are you smiling?’

‘Such a king as you became, Dutiful! Verity would be proud of you. He was the same way, able to say “please” to the lowliest servant with no trace of irony. So. We have not spoken in months. How sits the crown?’

In response, he took it off and gave his head a shake. He set it on Chade’s bedside table and said, ‘Heavy, sometimes. Even this one, and the formal one I must wear when I sit in judgment is worse. But it has to be borne.’

I knew he was not speaking of the actual weight of it. ‘And your queen, and the princes?’

‘They are well.’ He sighed. ‘She misses her home, and the freedom of being the Narcheska rather than the Queen of the Six Duchies. She has taken the boys to visit her mothershouse yet again. I know it is the way of her folk, that the maternal lineage is the one that counts. But both my mother and Chade believe I am foolish to risk both sons on the sea so often.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Yet it is still hard for me to deny her anything she wants. And, as she points out, they are as much her sons as mine. After Prosper took a bad fall in a hunt last winter, she compared me doing that with them to her taking them across the water. And she frets that as yet she has not borne a daughter for her mothershouse. While for me, it has almost been a relief that we have only sons. If I never have to confront the issue of where my daughter would be raised, I would count it a blessing. But she frets that she has gone four years now with no pregnancy. Well.’ He sighed.

‘She’s young yet,’ I said boldly. ‘You are what, barely thirty? And she is younger still. You have time.’

‘But there have been two miscarriages …’ His words trickled away and he stared at a shadow in the corner. The dog at his feet whined and looked at me accusingly. Dutiful stooped to set a hand to him. For a moment, we all were quiet. Then, plainly changing the direction of our conversation, he tipped his head toward Chade. ‘He’s sinking, Fitz. What do we do now?’

A knock at the door interrupted us. This time I rose and went to open it. A page came in bearing a tray with food. Three others followed, one with a carafe of warmed water, a basin and cloths, and the other with the brandy and cups. The girl came in last, carrying a small table and puffing a bit with the effort. Dutiful and I were silent as our repast and washwater was set out for us. The pages lined up, bowed in unison, and waited to receive Dutiful’s thanks before retiring. When the door was shut, I gestured at the table. Courser was already at his bowl of water, lapping noisily.

‘We eat. We drink. And we try again,’ I told him.

And we did.

In the deeps of night, by candlelight, I damped a cloth and moistened Chade’s lips. I felt I was keeping a death watch now. I had given up on specific words long ago, and simply begun a long conversation with him about all the things I recalled doing with him during my apprenticeship to be an assassin. I had wandered from a time of him teaching me the mixing of poisons to our wild ride to Forge. I had recited a number of learning poems about the healing properties of herbs. I had recalled our quarrels as well as the moments when we had been closest, all in the hopes that a random word might be the key. Nothing had worked. Dutiful had kept the vigil with me. The others had come and gone during the night, entering and leaving the room like shadows moving with the sun’s passage. Thick had sat with us for a time, unhelpfully offering words that we’d already tried. Nettle had visited Chade’s old study and rummaged through the scrolls and other items left on his table. She had brought them down to us to inspect. None of them had given us a clue. Hope had been peeled away from us like a sodden bandage covering a festering wound. I had moved from feeble optimism to wishing it were all over.

‘Did we try names of herbs?’

‘Yes. Remember?’

‘No.’ Dutiful admitted. ‘I’m too tired. I can’t think of what we have tried and what we haven’t tried.’

I set Chade’s hand down on his slowly rising and falling chest and moved to the table that now held the litter of items from his workbench. The half-spent candles showed me the Skill-scroll about imbuing stone with a message, a scroll about cheese making, and an old vellum about scrying the future in a bowl of water. In addition to these, there was a block of memory stone with nothing stored in it, a broken knife-blade, and a wine glass with some withered flowers in it. Dutiful drifted over to join me. ‘The broken blade?’ he asked.

I shook my head. ‘Not significant. He was always getting in a hurry and trying to pry things open with a knife blade.’ I nudged the block of memory stone. ‘Where did this come from? Aslevjal?’

Dutiful nodded. ‘He has made a few trips there over the last five years. He was intensely curious about all you had told him about Kebal Rawbread’s stronghold, and the Elderlings who created it and occupied it ages ago. None of us approved of his adventuring, but you know Chade. He needs no one’s approval except his own. Then, abruptly, he stopped going. I suspect something happened to frighten him into having good sense, but he’s never spoken about it. Too proud, I suspect, and he didn’t want any of us to have the satisfaction of saying, “we warned you”. On one journey to the island he found a room with scattered blocks of memory stone and he brought back a small bag of cubes of the stuff. Some held memories, mostly poetry and songs. Others were empty.’

‘And he put something on one of them, and sent it to you recently.’

‘Yes.’

I stared at Dutiful. He straightened slowly, dismay vying with relief.

‘Oh. It’s the key, isn’t it?’

‘Do you remember what it said?’

‘Absolutely.’ He walked to Chade’s side, sat down and took his hand to make the Skill-contact easier. He spoke aloud. ‘Where violets bloom in a lady’s lap, the wise old spider spun his trap.’

We were both smiling. But as the smile faded from Dutiful’s face, I asked him, ‘What’s wrong?’

‘No response. He’s as invisible to my Skill as he has been all day.’

I crossed the room quickly, sat, and took Chade’s hand. I focused myself at him, and used both voice and Skill. ‘Where violets bloom in a lady’s lap, the wise old spider spun his trap.’

There was nothing. Only Chade’s hand lax in mine.

‘Maybe he’s too weak to respond,’ Dutiful suggested.

‘Hush.’ I leaned back, not speaking. Violets in a lady’s lap. Violets in a lady’s lap. There was something, something from long ago. Then I had it. A statue in the Women’s Garden. It was in the back corner of the garden, overhung by a plum thicket. There, where the shadows were deep and cool even in the height of summer, was a statue of Eda. She was seated with her hands loose in her lap. She had been there a long time. I recalled tiny ferns growing in the mossy folds of her gown. And yes, violets in her lap.

‘I need a torch. I know where he hid the key. I have to go to the Women’s Garden and the statue of Eda.’

Chade took a sudden gasp of air. For an instant, I feared it was his final breath. Then Dutiful said fiercely, ‘That was the key. The old spider is Chade. Eda, in the Women’s Garden.’

As he said the goddess’s name, it was as if heavy draperies were parted and Chade opened to the Skill. Dutiful sent out a Skill-summoning for Nettle, Thick and Steady, but he did not wait for the rest of the king’s coterie to arrive.

‘Does he have the strength for this?’ I demanded, knowing well that a forced healing burns the reserves of a man’s body without mercy. The magic itself does not heal; it but forces the body to speed the process.

‘We can let what remains of his strength be slowly consumed by his dying, or we can burn it up trying to heal him. If you were Chade, which would you prefer?’

I set my teeth against my reply. I did not know. I did know that Chade and Dutiful had once made that decision for me and that I still lived with the consequences; a body that aggressively repaired every ill done to it, whether I would or no. But surely I could keep that fate from befalling Chade: I would know when to stop the healing. I made that resolution and refused to wonder if that was the choice Chade would have made for himself.

I secured my Skill-link with Dutiful and together we sank into Chade. Dimly I was aware of Nettle coming to join us, and then Thick, bewildered with sleepiness but obedient to the call, and finally Steady surging in to add his strength to our melded effort.

I led. I was not the strongest of the Skilled there. That would be Thick, his natural talent disguised by the façade of his simple-mindedness. Steady was next, a well of strength for a Skill-user even if he seemed unable to reach within himself and use it on his own. Dutiful was better taught in the varied uses of the Skill than I was, and Nettle, my daughter, more intuitive in how she wielded it. But I led by virtue of my years and my hard-won knowledge of how a man’s body is put together. Chade himself had taught me those things, though not as a healer, but as an assassin’s apprentice, to know where a pressed finger can choke a man, or a small blade make a gout of blood leap out with every beat of his heart.

Even so, I did not ‘see’ within Chade’s body with my Skill. Rather, I listened to his body, and felt where it struggled to repair itself. I lent strength and purpose to that effort, and used my knowledge to apply it where the need was greatest. Pain is not always the best indicator of damage. The greater pain can confuse the mind into thinking that is the place of most damage. And so, Skill-linked as we were to Chade, we swam against the tide of his pain and fear to see the hidden damages behind the bone of his skull, a place of constriction where once blood had rushed freely, and a pocket of pooled blood that had gone toxic.

I had the collected strength of a trained coterie behind me, something I had never experienced before. It was a heady sensation. I drew their attention to what I wished repaired and they united their strength to persuade Chade’s body to focus its energy there. It was so easy. The tempting possibilities of what I could do unfurled before me in a lush tapestry. What I could do! I could remake the man, restore him to youth! But the coins of Chade’s flesh were not mine to spend. We had strength to spare for our task, but Chade did not. And so, when I felt that we had lent his body as much of our strength as it could use and directed it effectively, I drew the coterie back, shepherding them out of Chade’s flesh as if they were a well-meaning flock of chickens trespassing in a garden.

I opened my eyes to the darkened room and a circle of anxious candlelit faces. Trickles of perspiration lined Steady’s face and the collar of his shirt was wet with it. He was breathing like a messenger who had just delivered his baton. Nettle’s chin was propped in both her hands, her fingers splayed across her face. Thick’s mouth hung ajar and my king’s hair was sweated flat to his brow. I blinked and felt the distant drumbeat of a headache to come. I smiled at them. ‘We’ve done what we can. Now we must leave him alone and let his body take its time.’ I stood slowly. ‘Go. Go rest now. Go on. There’s no more to do here just now.’ I shooed them out of the room, ignoring their reluctance to leave.

Steady now leaned on his sister’s arm. ‘Feed him,’ I whispered as they passed and my daughter nodded. ‘Ya,’ Thick agreed heartily and followed them. Only Dutiful dared defy me, resuming his seat by Chade’s bed. His dog sighed and dropped to the floor at his feet. I shook my head at them, took my place and ignored my own orders to them as I reached for Chade’s awareness.

Chade?

What has happened? What happened to me? His mind touch was muzzy and confused.

You fell and struck your head. You were unconscious. And because you had sealed yourself to the Skill, we found it hard to reach you and heal you.

I felt his instant of panic. He reached out to his body like a man patting his pockets to be sure a cutpurse had not robbed him. I knew he found the tracks we had left and that they were extensive. I’m so weak. I nearly died, didn’t I? Give me water, please. Why did you let me sink so low?

At his rebuke, I felt a flash of anger. I counselled myself that now was not the time. I held the cup to his lips, propping his head as I did so. Eyes closed, he lipped feebly at the edge of the cup and sucked water in noisily. I refilled the cup and this time he drank more slowly. When he turned away from it as a sign he had had enough, I set it aside and asked him, ‘Why were you so obtuse? You didn’t even let any of us know that you’d sealed yourself against the Skill. And why do it at all?’

He was still too weak to speak. I took his hand again and his thoughts touched mine.

Protect the king. I know too many of his secrets. Too many Farseer secrets. Cannot leave such a chink in armour. All coteries should be sealed.

Then how could we reach one another?

Shielded only when asleep. Awake, I would sense who was reaching for me.

You were not asleep. You were unconscious and you needed us.

Unlikely. Just … a bit of bad luck. And if it did … you came. You understood the riddle.

His thoughts were fading. I knew how weary he was. My own body had begun to clamour at me for rest. Skilling was serious work. As draining as hunting. Or fighting. It had been a fight, hadn’t it? An invasion of Chade’s private territory …

I twitched awake. I still held Chade’s hand, but he was deeply asleep now. Dutiful sprawled in his chair on the other side of the bed, snoring softly. His dog lifted his head to stare at me for a moment, and then dropped it back to his forepaws. We were all exhausted. By the last flames on the candle stubs, I studied Chade’s ravaged face. He looked as if he had fasted for days. The pads of flesh on his cheeks were gone, and I saw the shape of his skull. The hand I still held was a bundle of bones in a sack of skin. He would live now, but he would be days rebuilding his body and his strength. Tomorrow he would be ravenous.

I leaned back with a sigh. My back ached from sleeping in the chair. The rugs on the floor of the chamber were thick and inviting. I stretched out on the floor by his bedside like a faithful dog. I slept.

I came awake to Thick stepping on my hand. I sat up with a curse, nearly knocking the tray from his hands. ‘You should not sleep on the floor!’ he rebuked me.

I sat up, trapping my bruised fingers under my arm. It was hard to argue with Thick’s remark. I clambered to my feet and then dropped back into my familiar chair. In the bed, Chade was partially propped up. The old man was skeletal, and his grin at my discomfort was frightening in his wasted face. Dutiful’s chair was empty. Thick was arranging the tray on Chade’s lap. I smelled tea and biscuits and warmed jam. A bowl on the tray held soft-cooked eggs mashed up with a little butter, salt and pepper next to a rank of thick rashers of bacon. I wanted to fall on it and devour it all. I think it must have showed on my face for Chade’s bony grin widened. He didn’t speak, but flapped a hand, dismissing me.

Once I would have gone directly to the kitchens. As a boy, I’d been Cook’s pet there. As a youngster and then a young man, I’d eaten with the guardsmen in their noisy and untidy dining hall. Now I Skilled to King Dutiful, asking if he’d eaten yet. I was immediately invited to join him and his mother in a private chamber. I went, anticipating food and the good conversation that would go with it.

Kettricken and Dutiful were both waiting for me. Kettricken, true to her Mountain heritage, had arisen early and eaten lightly. Still she shared a table with us, a delicate cup of pale tea steaming before her. Dutiful was as hungry as I was, and even wearier, for he had arisen early to share details about Chade’s healing with her. A small caravan of pages arrived with food and arranged it for us on the table. Dutiful dismissed them and the door closed to leave us in relative privacy. Other than a morning greeting, Kettricken held her silence while we filled our plates and then our bellies.

After we had emptied our first plates, Dutiful talked, sometimes through a mouthful of food, while I ate. The healers had visited Lord Chade while I slept. They had been horrified at how wasted he was, but his appetite and short temper had convinced them he would mend. Steady had been royally forbidden to lend strength to Chade in any attempt to seal himself again. Dutiful hoped that would be enough to prevent future mishaps. Privately I suspected that Chade could always find a way to either bribe or deceive Thick into helping him.

When our eating had slowed, and Kettricken had filled our cups with tea for the third time, she spoke softly. ‘Once again, FitzChivalry, you have answered our desperate call. You can see how much we still need you. I know you enjoy your quiet life now, and I will not dispute that you have earned it. But I will ask you to consider spending perhaps one month of every season here at Buckkeep Castle with us. I am sure that Lady Molly would enjoy being closer to both Nettle and Steady for those times. Swift also comes and goes frequently. She must miss her sons, and I know that we would love to have you here.’

It was an old discussion. I had been proffered this invitation any number of times, in all sorts of forms. We had been offered chambers in the keep, a lovely house atop the cliffs with an amazing view of the waters below, a cosy cottage on the edge of the sheep meadows, and now the offer of coming and going as guests four times a year. I smiled at both of them. They read the answer in my eyes.

For me, it was not a question of where I lived. It was that I did not want a day-to-day intimacy with the politics of being a Farseer. Dutiful had previously opined that enough time had passed that few people would even care if FitzChivalry Farseer were miraculously resurrected from the dead, no matter how much disgrace had once been attached to me. I doubted that. But even as the humbler Holder Tom Badgerlock, even as Lord Badgerlock as they had offered, I did not wish to navigate those waters again. It was inevitable that their currents would drag me down and away from Molly and drown me in Farseer politics. They knew that as clearly as I did.

So now I said only, ‘If you have urgent need of me, I will always come. I’ve demonstrated that, over and over. And having used the stones once to get here swiftly, if need drives me hard, I would probably do it again. But I do not think I will ever again live within the keep walls, nor be adviser to the throne.’

Kettricken drew breath as if to speak and Dutiful said quietly, ‘Mother.’ It was not a rebuke. Perhaps a reminder that we had trodden this path before. Kettricken looked at me and smiled.

‘It’s kind of you to invite me,’ I told her. ‘Truly it is. If you didn’t, I’d fear that you thought me useless now.’

She returned my smile, and we finished our meal. As we rose, I said, ‘I’m going to visit Chade, and if he seems strong enough that I’m not fearful for him, I will want to return to Withywoods today.’

‘Via the stones?’ Kettricken asked me.

I wanted, badly, to be at home. Was that why the thought tempted me? Or was it the lure of the Skill-current that flowed so deep and swift behind those graven surfaces? They were both watching me closely. Dutiful spoke softly. ‘Remember what the Black Man told you. Using the stones too often in quick succession is dangerous.’

I needed no reminder. The memory of losing weeks inside a pillar chilled me. I gave my head a small shake, scarce able to believe that I had even considered using the Skill-portals for my return journey. ‘Can I borrow a horse?’

Dutiful smiled. ‘You can have any horse in the stable, Fitz. You know that. Choose a good one to add to your stock.’

I did know that. But it wasn’t a thing I would ever take for granted.

It was mid-afternoon when I went to see the old man. Chade was propped up by a multitude of pillows in all shades of green velvet. The drapes of his bed were pulled back and secured with heavy cords of twisted silk. The bell pull had been placed within his reach, as had a bedside table with a bowl of hothouse fruit. There were fruits and nuts that I did not recognize, evidence of our lively trade with new partners to the south. His hair had been freshly brushed and bound back in a warrior’s tail. It had been shot with grey when first I met him; now it gleamed an even silver. The purpled swelling and bruise had vanished, leaving only a yellowish-brown shadow where they had been. His green eyes were as bright as polished jade. But those signs of health could not restore the flesh he had lost to our forced healing. He was, I thought, a very vital skeleton. As I entered the room, he set aside a scroll he had been reading.

‘What is that you are wearing?’ I demanded curiously.

He glanced down at himself without the slightest shadow of self-consciousness. ‘A bed jacket, I think it is called. A gift from a Jamaillian noblewoman who arrived with a trade envoy a few months ago.’ He smoothed his fingers down the heavily embroidered sleeve. ‘It’s quite comfortable, really. It’s meant to keep the shoulders and back warm if one decides to stay in bed and read.’

I drew a stool up beside his bed and sat down. ‘It seems to be a very specialized garment.’

‘In that, it is very Jamaillian. Did you know that they have a special robe to wear while they are praying to their two-faced god? You put it on one direction if you’re begging something of the male aspect, or turn it round if you’re praying to the female aspect. And …’ He sat up straighter in bed, his face becoming more animated as it always did when he fastened on to one of his fascinations. ‘If a woman is pregnant, she wears one sort of garment to ensure a boy child, and another for a daughter.’

‘And does that work?’ I was incredulous.

‘It’s supposed to be helpful, but not absolute. Why? Are you and Molly still trying for a child?’

Chade had never regarded any part of my life as private since he’d learned of my existence. And he never would. It was easier to tell him than to rebuke him for his prying. ‘No. We’ve had no real hope left for some time. She’s long past her bearing years now. Nettle will be our only daughter.’

His face softened. ‘I’m sorry, Fitz. I’ve been told that nothing completes a man’s life in quite the way that children do. I know that you wanted—’

I interrupted. ‘I had the raising of Hap. I flatter myself that I did well enough for a man handed an eight-year-old orphan at short notice. He keeps in touch with me still, when his travels and minstrel duties allow it. And Nettle turned out well, and Molly has shared all her younger children with me. I watched Hearth and Just grow to manhood, and we watched them ride off together. Those were good years, Chade. There’s no good to be had from pining after lost chances. I have Molly. And truly, she’s enough for me. She’s my home.’

And there, I’d successfully cut him off before he could importune me to stay a while, or move back to Buckkeep Castle just for a season or a year or two. His litany was as familiar as Kettricken’s, but flavoured more with guilt than duty. He was an old man, and still had so much to teach me. I had always been his most promising student. Dutiful still had need of an accomplished assassin, and I was a unique weapon in that the young king could converse silently with me via the Skill. And there was the Skill itself. There were still so many mysteries to unravel. So much translating left to do, so many secrets and techniques to be mined from the trove of scrolls we had retrieved from Aslevjal.

I knew all his arguments and persuasions. Over the years, I had heard them all. And resisted them all. Repeatedly. Yet the game had to be played. It had become our farewell ritual. As had his assigning of tasks.

‘Well, if you will not stay and do the work with me,’ he said, just as if we had already discussed it all, ‘then will you at least take some of the burden with you?’

‘As always,’ I assured him.

He smiled. ‘Lady Rosemary has packed a selection of scrolls for you, and arranged a mule from the stables to bear them. She was going to put them in a pack but I told her you would be travelling by horseback.’

I nodded silently. Years ago, Rosemary had taken my place as his apprentice. She had served him now for a score of years, doing the ‘quiet work’ of an assassin and spy for the royal family. No. Longer than that. Idly I wondered if she had yet taken an apprentice of her own.

But Chade’s voice called me back to the present as he listed off some herbs and roots he wished me to obtain discreetly for him. He brought up again his idea that the crown should station an apprentice Skill-user at Withywoods to provide swift communication with Buckkeep Castle. I reminded him that as a Skill-user, I could facilitate that myself without welcoming another of his spies into my household. He smiled at that and diverted me to a discussion as to how often the stones could be used and how safely. As the only living person who had been lost in the stones and survived, I tended to be more conservative than Chade the experimenter. This time, at least, he did not challenge my opinion.

I cleared my throat. ‘The secret keyword is a bad idea, Chade. If you must have one, let it be written down and put into the king’s care.’

‘Anything written can be read. Anything hidden can be found.’

‘That’s true. Here is something else that is true. Dead is dead.’

‘I’ve been loyal to the Farseers all my life, Fitz. My death is preferable to being used as a weapon against the king.’

Painful to realize that I agreed. Still, ‘Then by your logic, every member of his coterie should be Skill-locked. Each with a separate word that can only be discovered by answering a riddle.’

His hands, large and agile still, spidered bonily along the edge of his coverlet. ‘That would probably be best, yes. But until I can persuade the rest of the coterie that it’s needed, I will take steps to protect the most valuable member of the coterie from corruption.’

His opinion of himself had never been small. ‘And that would be you.’

‘Of course.’

I looked at him. He bridled. ‘What? Do you not agree with that assessment? Do you know how many secrets I hold in trust for our family? How much family history and lineage, how much knowledge of the Skill now resides only in my mind, and on a few mouldering scrolls, most of them nearly unreadable? Imagine me falling into someone else’s control. Imagine someone plundering my thoughts of those secrets and using them against the Farseer reign.’

It chilled me to discover that he was absolutely correct. I hunched over my knees and thought. ‘Can you simply tell me the word you will use for your lock, and trust me to keep it secret?’ I already accepted that he would find a way to do it again.

He leaned slightly forward. ‘Will you consent to Skill-locking your mind?’

I hesitated. I didn’t want to do it. I recalled too vividly how Burrich had died, sealed off from the help that could have saved him. And how Chade had nearly died. I had always believed that given a choice between a Skill-healing and death, I’d now choose death. His question made me confront the truth. No. I’d want the option available. And it would be more available if my mind wasn’t locked against those who could help me.

Chade cleared his throat. ‘Well, until you are ready, I’ll do as I think best. As you will, too, I’m sure.’

I nodded. ‘Chade, I—’

He waved a dismissive hand at me. His voice was gruff. ‘I already know that, boy. And I’ll be a bit more careful. Get to work on those scrolls as soon as you can, would you? The translations will be tricky, but not beyond your abilities. And now I need to rest. Or eat. I can’t decide if I’m hungrier or more tired. That Skill healing—’ He shook his head.

‘I know,’ I reminded him. ‘I’ll return each scroll as it’s translated. And keep a copy secreted at Withywoods. You should rest.’

‘I will,’ he promised.

He leaned back on his multitude of pillows and closed his eyes, exhausted. I slipped quietly from the room. And before the sun had set, I was well on my way home.

FOUR
Preservation

I did not know who my father was until I arrived at Buckkeep Castle. My mother was a foot-soldier in the Farseer army in the two years that the Six Duchies forces were massed on the border of Farrow and Chalced. Her name was Hyacinth Fallstar. Her parents had been farmers. In the year of the choking sickness they both died. My mother was unable to keep up the farm by herself, so she leased the land to her cousins and went to Byslough to seek her fortune. There she became a soldier for Duchess Able of Farrow. She was instructed in swordplay and showed an affinity for it. When war broke out along the borderlands and the King of the Six Duchies himself came to lead his troops into battle, she was there. She remained with the forces on the Chalcedean border until the invaders’ army was pushed back into their own territory and a new boundary established.

She returned to her farm in Farrow and there gave birth to me. A man named Rogan Hardhands followed her back to her farm and she took him to husband. He had soldiered alongside her. He loved her. Toward me, her bastard son and not his at all, he did not feel so kindly, and I returned his sentiments with vigour. Yet we both loved my mother and were loved by her, and so I will speak fairly of him. He knew nothing of farming, but he tried. He was the father I knew until the day my mother died, and though he was a callous man who found me an unwelcome nuisance, I have seen far worse fathering. He did what he thought a father should do with a boy; he taught me to obey, to work hard, and not question those in authority. Moreover, he toiled alongside my mother to find coin that I might go to a local scribe and be taught to read and figure, skills he did not possess, but my mother thought vital. I do not think he ever considered whether or not he loved me. He did right by me. I hated him, of course.

Yet in those final days of my mother’s life, we were united in our grieving. Her death shocked us both for it was so useless and foolish a fate to befall a strong woman. Climbing up to the loft in the cow byre, she slipped on the old ladder and took a deep splinter in her wrist. She pulled it out and it scarcely bled. But the next day, her whole arm was swollen and on the third day, she died. It was that swift. Together we buried her. The following morning, he put me on the mule with a satchel that held late apples, biscuits and twelve strips of dried meat. Two silvers he gave me also, and told me not to leave the king’s highway and eventually I would get to Buckkeep Castle. Into my hands he put a scroll, much battered, for me to deliver to the King of the Six Duchies. I have never seen that scroll since the day I gave it over, hand to hand, to the king. I know that Rogan Hardhands had no letters. It must have been written by my mother. I read only the one line on the outside of it. To be opened only by the King of the Six Duchies.

My Early Days, Chade Fallstar

Chade’s intrusion was like a whisper by my ear. Except that I could have slept through a whisper. A Skill-intrusion cannot be ignored.

Do you ever regret writing it all down, Fitz?

Chade never slept. Not when I was a lad, and it seemed to me that the older he got, the less sleep he needed. As a result, he assumed that I never slept, and if I dozed off after a hard day of physical labour without my wards set tight around my mind, he was prone to intrude into my sleeping thoughts with no greater sense of my privacy than he had had about entering my bedchamber when I lived at Buckkeep Castle. When I was a boy, he had simply triggered the secret door to my room and come down the hidden staircase from his concealed tower room to my chamber in the keep. Now, a lifetime later and days away, he could simply step into my thoughts. The Skill, I thought to myself, is truly a wonderful magic, and an incredible nuisance in the hands of an old man.

I rolled over in my bed, disoriented. His voice always echoed in my thoughts with the same command and urgency as it had when I was a boy and he was a much younger man and my mentor. But it wasn’t just the force of his words. It was that his Skill-contact with my mind brought with it the imprint of his impression of me. Just as Nettle had once seen me as more wolf than man, and her sense that I was a wild and wary beast still tinged our Skill-conversations, so with Chade I would always be twelve years old and an apprentice completely at his disposal.

I mustered my Skill-strength and reached back to him. I was asleep.

Surely it’s not that late! I became aware of his surroundings. A comfortable room. He leaned back on a cushioned chair, staring into a small hearth fire. A table was at his elbow and I smelled the rich red wine that he lifted in a delicate glass and the apple wood burning on his hearth. All so different from his assassin’s workroom above my boyhood bedroom at Buckkeep Castle. The secret spy that had served the royal Farseer family was now a respected elder statesman, adviser to King Dutiful. I wondered sometimes if his new respectability bored him. Certainly it did not seem to tire him!

Not so late at night for you, old man. But I spent hours on the record-keeping for Withywoods tonight, and tomorrow I have to be up at dawn to go to the market at Oaksbywater to speak to a wool buyer.

Ridiculous. What do you know of wool and sheep? Send one of your sheep-tenders to speak to him.

I can’t. It’s my task, not theirs. And actually, I’ve learned a great deal about sheep and wool in my time here. I drew my body carefully away from Molly’s before I eased out from under our blankets and groped with a foot for the robe I had discarded on the floor. I found it, kicked it up, caught it and I pulled it on over my head. I crossed the darkened room on soundless feet.

Even if I was not speaking aloud, I did not want to take the chance of disturbing Molly. She had not been sleeping well of late, and several times I had caught her regarding me with a speculative smile on her face. Something occupied her thoughts by day and left her restless at night. I longed to know her secret, but knew better than to press her. When she was ready, she would share it with me. Tonight, at least, she slept deeply and I was grateful. Life was harder for my Molly than it was for me; the aches and pains of ageing took a toll on her that I did not have to pay. Unfair, I thought to myself and then, as I slipped from our bedroom into the corridor, I banished the thought.

Too late.

Molly is not well?

She isn’t ill. Just our years catching up with us.

Chade seemed surprised. She need not feel those pains. The coterie would be glad to assist with a small re-ordering of her body. Not a major change, just …

She would not welcome that sort of interference, Chade. We’ve spoken of it and that was her decision. She deals with ageing on her own terms.

As you wish. I could feel that he thought I was foolish for not intervening

No. As she wishes. The Skill could indeed have banished a lot of her aches. I knew that I went to bed with twinges that were gone by morning. The price of those tiny healings was that I ate like a longshoreman, with impunity. No cost at all, really. But Molly’s health is not why you woke me out of a sound sleep. Are you well?

Well enough. Still regaining flesh since my Skill-healing. But as that healing seems to have set right a host of other small ailments, I still judge it a good bargain.

I padded through the wood-panelled corridors in the dark, leaving our comfortable chambers in the main house and making my way to the little-used West Wing. With the shrinking of our household, Molly and I felt that the main house was more than ample space for the two of us and our rare guests. The West Wing was the oldest part of the house, chilly in winter and cool in summer. Since we had closed most of it, it had become a last refuge for creaking chairs and wobbly tables and anything else that Revel considered too worn for daily use but still too good to discard. I shivered as I hurried down a dark corridor. I opened a narrow door and in the blackness I descended one flight of servant stairs. Down a much narrower hall I went, my fingertips lightly brushing the wall, and then I opened the door to my private study. A few embers still winked on the hearth. I wended my way through the scroll-racks and knelt by the fire to light a candle from it. I carried the flame to my desk and one after another lit some half-spent tapers in their holders. My last evening’s translation work was still spread on my desk. I sat down in my chair and yawned hugely. Come to the point, old man!

No. I didn’t wake you to discuss Molly, though I do care for her health as it affects your happiness and Nettle’s focus. I woke you to ask you a question. All your journals and diaries, written through the years … have you ever regretted all the writing you’ve done?

I pondered it very briefly. The light from the flickering candles danced teasingly along the edges of the laden scroll-racks behind me. Many of the spindled scrolls were old, some almost ancient. Their edges were tattered, the vellum stained. My copies of them were made onto fine paper these days, often bound together with my translations. Preserving what was written on the tattering vellums was a work I enjoyed and, according to Chade, still my duty to him.

But those were not the writings that Chade referred to. He meant my numerous attempts to chronicle the days of my own life. I had seen many changes in the Six Duchies since I had come to Buckkeep Castle as a royal bastard. I had seen us change from an isolated and some would say backward kingdom to a powerful trading destination. In the years between, I had witnessed treachery born of evil, and loyalty paid for in blood. I had seen a king assassinated, and as an assassin, I had sought my own vengeance. I had sacrificed my life and my death for my family, more than once. I had seen friends die.

At intervals throughout my life, I had tried to record all I had seen and done. And often enough I’d had to hastily destroy those accounts when I feared they would fall into the wrong hands. I winced as I thought of it. I only regret the time I spent writing them when I had to burn them. I always think of all the time I spent carefully writing, only to have it burn to ash in a matter of minutes.

But you always began again. Writing it down.

I almost laughed aloud. I did. And each time I’ve done so, I’ve found that the story changed as my perspective on life changed. There were a few years where I fancied myself quite the hero, and other times when I saw myself as star-crossed and unjustly oppressed by my life. My thoughts wandered for a moment. Before the whole court I had chased my king’s killers through Buckkeep Castle. Brave. Foolish. Stupid. Necessary. I could not count the ways I had thought of that incident through the years.

Young, Chade suggested. Young and full of righteous fury.

Hurt and heartbroken, I suggested. So tired of being thwarted. Tired of being bound by rules that no one else had to follow.

That, too, he agreed.

Abruptly, I didn’t want to think about that day, not who I had been nor what I had done, and most of all, not why I had done it. It was from a different life, one that could no longer touch me now. Old pain could not hurt me now. Could it? I turned the question back on him. Why do you ask? Are you thinking of writing down your life’s memories?

Perhaps. It is something to do during my recovery time. I think I understand a bit better now why you have warned us about the judicious use of Skill-healings. El’s balls, but it has taken me far too long to feel like myself. My clothing hangs on me so that I am almost shamed to be seen. I totter about like a man made of sticks. Abruptly, I felt him shift the conversation away from himself, almost as if he had turned his back on me. He never cared to admit any weakness. When you wrote things down, why did you begin it? You were always writing things down.

An easy question. It was Fedwren. And Lady Patience. The scribe who had taught me and the woman who had longed to be my mother. Both of them said often that someone should write an orderly history of the Six Duchies. I took their words to mean that I should do it. But every time I tried to write about the kingdom, I ended up writing about myself.

Who did you think would read it? Your daughter?

Another old bruise. I answered honestly. At first, I didn’t think about who might read it. I wrote it for myself, as if by doing so, I could make sense of it. All the old tales I had ever heard made sense; good triumphed, or perhaps the hero died tragically, but he accomplished something with his death. So I wrote down my life as if it were a tale, and I searched for the happy ending. Or the sense of it.

My mind wandered for a time. Back through the years I went, back to the boy who had been apprenticed to an assassin so that he might serve the family who would never acknowledge him as a son. Back to the warrior, fighting with an axe, against ships full of invaders. Back to the spy, to a man serving his missing king while all descended into chaos around him. Was that me? I wondered. So many lives lived. So many names I’d borne. And always, always, I had longed for a different life.

I reached toward Chade again. For all the years when I couldn’t speak to Nettle or Molly, I sometimes told myself that some day they might read it and understand why I had not been with them. Even if I never came back to them, perhaps one day they would know that I had always wanted to. So at first, yes, it was like a long letter to them, explaining all that had kept me from them. I tightened my walls, not wanting Chade to sense my private thought that perhaps I had not been as honest in those early attempts as I might have been. I had been young, I excused myself, and who does not put himself in the best possible light when he presents his tale to someone he loves? Or his excuses to someone he had wronged. I thrust that thought away and pushed a question back at Chade.

Who would you write your memoir for?

His answer shocked me. Perhaps it’s the same for me. He paused, and when he spoke again, I felt he had changed his mind about telling me something. Perhaps I write for you. You’re as close to being my son as makes no difference to me. Perhaps I want you to know who I was when I was a young man. Perhaps I want to explain to you why I shaped your life as I did. Maybe I want to justify to you decisions that I’ve made.

The idea shocked me, and not that he would speak of me as a son. Did he sincerely believe that I did not know and understand his motives for what he had taught me, for all he had asked of me? Did I want him to explain himself? I thought not. I warded my thoughts, trying to think of a response. Then I felt his amusement. Gentle amusement. Had it been an object lesson?

You think I underestimate Nettle. That she would not need or want me to reveal myself completely to her.

I do. But I also understand the urge to explain yourself. What is harder for me to understand is how you make yourself sit down and do it. I’ve tried, because I think it’s something I need to do, more for myself than anyone else who might come after me. Perhaps, as you say, to impose some sort of order or sense on my past. But it’s hard. What do I put in, what do I leave out? Where does my tale begin? What should come first?

I smiled and leaned back in my chair. I usually start trying to write about something else, and end up writing about myself. A sudden insight came to me. Chade, I would like it if you wrote it down. Not to explain it, but just because there is so much I’ve always wondered about you. You’ve told me some bits of your life. But … who decided you’d become a royal assassin? Who taught you?

A cold wind blew through me, and for a moment, I felt as if I were being choked mercilessly. As abruptly as it had begun, it stopped, but I felt the wall that Chade had quickly erected. There were dark, harsh memories back there. Was it possible he’d had a tutor whom he had dreaded and feared as much as I had Galen? Galen had been more interested in trying to kill me quietly than teach me how to Skill. And the so-called Skillmaster had almost succeeded. Under the guise of creating a new Skill-coterie to aid King Verity in his efforts against the Red-Ship Raiders, Galen had battered and humiliated me and almost extinguished my talent for the magic. And he had corrupted the coterie’s loyalty to the true Farseer monarch. Galen had been Queen Desire’s tool and then Prince Regal’s as they had tried to rid themselves of the Farseer bastard and put Regal upon the throne. Dark days. I knew Chade could tell where my thoughts had gone. I admitted it to him, hoping to draw him out a bit. Well. There’s an ‘old friend’ I hadn’t thought about in years.

Scarcely a friend. But speaking of old friends, have you heard from your old companion lately? The Fool?

Did he deliberately change the topic so abruptly, to try to catch me off guard? It worked. As I blocked him from my reaction, I knew that my defensive impulse told him just as much as all I tried to hide from him. The Fool. I had not heard from the Fool in years.

I found I was staring at the Fool’s last gift to me, the carving of the three of us, him, me and my wolf Nighteyes. I lifted a hand toward it, and then pulled it back. I never again wanted to see his expression change from that half-quirked smile it wore. Let me remember him that way. We had journeyed through life together for many years, endured hardships and near-death together. More than one death, I thought to myself. My wolf had died, and my friend had parted from me without a farewell, and with never a message since. I wondered if he thought I was dead. I refused to wonder if he was dead. He couldn’t be. Often he’d told me that he was far older than I knew, and expected to live much longer than I would. He had cited that as one reason for leaving. He had warned me that he was going away before we last parted. He had believed he was freeing me of bond and obligation, setting me loose finally to pursue my own inclinations. But the unfinished parting had left a wound, and over the years, the wound had become the sort of scar that ached at the change of the seasons. Where was he now? Why had he never sent as much as a missive? If he had believed me dead, why had he left a gift for me? If he had believed I would appear again, why had he never contacted me? I pulled my eyes away from the carving.

I haven’t seen him or received a message from him since I left Aslevjal. That’s been, what, fourteen years? Fifteen? Why do you ask now?

I thought as much. You will recall that I was interested in the tales of the White Prophet long before the Fool declared himself as such.

I do. I first heard the term from you. I kept my curiosity on a tight leash, refusing to ask any more questions. When Chade had first begun to show me writings about the White Prophet, I had regarded them as yet another odd religion from a faraway place. Eda and El I understood well enough. El, the sea god, was a god best left alone, merciless and demanding. Eda, the goddess of the farmlands and the pastures, was generous and maternal. But even for those Six Duchies gods, Chade had taught me small reverence, and even less for Sa, the two-faced and double-gendered god of Jamaillia. So his fascination with the legends of the White Prophet had mystified me. The scrolls foretold that to every generation was born a colourless child who would be gifted with prescience and the ability to influence the course of the world by the manipulation of events great and small. Chade had been intrigued by the idea, and with the legendary accounts of White Prophets who had prevented wars or toppled kings by triggering tiny events that cascaded into great ones. One account claimed a White Prophet had lived thirty years by a river simply so he could warn a single traveller on a certain night that the bridge would give way if he tried to cross it during a storm. The traveller, it revealed, went on to be the father of a great general who was instrumental in winning a battle in some distant country. I had believed it all charming nonsense until I met the Fool.

When he had declared himself a White Prophet, I had been sceptical, and even more so when he declared that I would be his Catalyst who would change the course of history. And yet, undoubtedly we had done so. Had he not been at Buckkeep during my lifetime, I would have died. More than once, some intervention of his had preserved my life. In the Mountains, when I lay fevered and dying in the snow, he had carried me to his cottage there and nursed me back to health. He had kept me alive so that dragons might be restored to their rightful place in the world. I was still not sure that was beneficial to humanity, but there was no denying that without him, it would not have happened.

I only realized how deeply I had retreated into my memories when Chade’s thoughts jolted me back to awareness of him.

Well, we had some odd folk come through Buckkeep Town recently. About twenty days ago. I did not hear of them until after they had departed, or I would have found a way to learn more about them. The fellow who told me about them said they claimed to be travelling merchants, but the only wares they had were cheap gewgaws and very common bartering items, glass jewellery, brass bracelets, that sort of thing. Nothing of any real value, and though they claimed to have come a long way, my fellow said that it all looked to him as if it were the sort of common wares that a city merchant might take to a village fair, to be sure he had something for a lad or lass with only a half-copper to spend. No spices from a distant land or unique gemstones. Just tinker’s trash.

So your spy thought they were only pretending to be merchants. I tried not to be impatient. Chade believed in thorough reporting, for the truth could only be found in details. I knew he was right but wished he would jump right to the heart of the matter and embroider it later.

He thought they were actually hoping to buy rather than to sell, or better yet, to hear information for free. They were asking if anyone had encountered a friend of theirs, a very pale person. But the odd part was that there were several descriptions of the ‘pale friend’. Some said a young man, travelling alone. Another said she was a woman grown, pale of face and hair, travelling with a young man with red hair and freckles. Yet another was asking after two young men, one very blonde and the other dark-haired but white-skinned. As if the only description they had was that they were seeking a traveller who was unnaturally pale, who might be travelling alone or with a companion.

Or they were looking for people who might be travelling in disguise. But it sounds as if they were looking for a White Prophet. But why in Buckkeep?

They never used the word White Prophet, and they did not seem like devout pilgrims on a quest. He paused. My fellow seemed to think they were hirelings sent on a mission, or perhaps were mercenary hunters, promised a reward for their prey. One of them got drunk one night, and when his fellows came to the tavern to haul him away, he cursed them. In Chalcedean.

Interesting. I did not think the White Prophecies had any followers in Chalced. In any case, the Fool has not lived in Buckkeep for decades. And when last he was there, he was more tawny than pale. He masqueraded as Lord Golden.

Well, of course! I know all that! He took my musings to be a prod to his ageing memory and was irritated by it. But few others do. Even so, their questions provoked some old tales of King Shrewd’s pale jester. But the merchants were not interested in such old news. They sought news of someone who had passed through Buckkeep recently.

And so you thought perhaps The Fool had returned?

It occurred to me to wonder. And I thought that if he had, he would have sought you out first. But if you have not heard from him, well, then it’s a mystery with few clues.

Where did these merchants go?

I sensed his frustration. The report reached me late. My fellow had not realized how much it would interest me. The rumour is that they followed the River Road inland.

Toward Withy. You said twenty days ago. And there are no more tidings of them?

They seem to have vanished quite effectively.

Not merchants, then.

No.

We both fell silent for a time, pondering the few bits of information we had. If their destination had been Withywoods, they should have arrived. Perhaps they had, and then passed through the town, to a more distant destination. There were not enough facts to even make a puzzle let alone a solution.

Here is another interesting bit for you. When my spies reported back to me that they had no news of either a pale traveller or those merchants, one asked if I had interest in tales of other strangely pale folk. When I replied that I did, he told me of a murder along the King’s Road four years ago. Two bodies were found, both in foreign garb. They were discovered by the King’s Guard during a routine patrol. One fellow had been bludgeoned to death. Beside him was found another body, described as a young girl, pale as a fish’s belly with hair the colour of an icicle. She too was dead, but there was no sign of violence done to her. Instead, she appeared to have been dying of some wasting disease. She was near skeletal but had died after the man, for she had torn strips from her cloak to try to bandage his wound. Perhaps her companion had been tending her, and when he was slain, she had died as well. She was found a short distance from his corpse, near a small campfire. If they had had supplies or mounts, they were stolen. No one ever came to ask after them. It seemed a strange murder to my spy. They killed the man, but left the sickly woman alive and untouched. What sort of highwaymen would do that?

I felt oddly chilled by the tale. Perhaps she was hiding when they were attacked. It could be nothing.

Or, it could be something. Chade’s considering tone invited me to speculate. A small bit of information. She wore yellow boots. As did your messenger.

Unease prickled my scalp. That Winterfest night flooded back into my mind. How had Revel described the messenger? Hands as white as ice. I had thought them bloodless with cold. What if she had been a White? But Chade’s news of a murder was four years old. My messenger had come three winters ago. And his spies had brought him news of another messenger, or perhaps two, only twenty days ago. So possibly a succession of messengers, possibly Whites. Possibly from the Fool? I wanted to think about it alone. I wanted none of it to be so. The thought of a missed message from him tore my heart. I denied it. And it could be something that has absolutely nothing to do with either of us.

Somehow, I doubt that. But I shall let you go back to your bed now. Lack of sleep always made you irritable.

You saw to that often enough, I retorted, and he annoyed me even further by laughing. He vanished from my mind.

One of the candles was guttering now. I pinched it out. Morning was not far away now; might as well light another taper, for there would be no more sleep for me. Why had Chade Skilled to me? To ask me about writing, or to tease me with a bit of news about foreign travellers who might or might not be connected to the Fool? I didn’t have enough information to ponder it, only enough to keep me awake. Perhaps I should remain at my desk and resume that translation; I certainly wasn’t going to find peace again tonight, thanks to Chade. I stood slowly and looked around me. The room was untidy. There was an empty brandy cup on the desk, and the two quills I’d botched cutting the night before. I should tidy the place. I didn’t allow the servants in here; indeed I would have been surprised to find that any of the servants other than Revel were aware of how much I used this chamber. I seldom came here during daylight hours or in the long evenings that Molly and I shared. No. This place was my refuge from restless nights, from the times when sleep forsook me or nightmares relentlessly assaulted me. And always I came here alone. Chade had inculcated in me a habit of stealth that had never left me. I was the sole custodian of this chamber in a little-used wing of the house. I brought the firewood in, and took the ashes out. I swept and tidied … well, sometimes I swept and tidied. The room was in sore need of such attention now, but somehow I could not muster that sort of energy.

Instead, I stretched where I stood, and then halted, my hands reached up over my head, my eyes fixed on Verity’s sword over the mantel. Hod had made it for him, and she had been the finest swordsmith that Buckkeep had ever known. She’d died defending King Verity. Then Verity had surrendered his human life for his people as he entered into his dragon. Now he slept in stone, beyond my reach forever. My sudden pang of loss was almost physical. Abruptly I had to get out of the room. There was too much within those walls that connected me to the past. I allowed myself one more slow sweep of the room. Yes. Here was where I stored my past and all the confusing emotions it engendered in me. This was where I came to try to make sense of my history. And it was also where I could barricade it behind a latched door, and go back to my life with Molly.

And for the first time, it came to me to wonder why. Why had I gathered it here in mimicry of Chade’s old chambers in Buckkeep Castle, and why did I come here, alone and sleepless, to dwell on tragedies and disasters that could never be undone? Why didn’t I leave this room, close the door behind me and never return? I felt a stab of guilt, and seized that dagger to study it. Why? Why was it my duty to recall those I had lost, and mourn them still? I had fought so hard to win a life of my own, and I had triumphed. It was mine now, it was in my hands. Here I stood, in a room littered with dusty scrolls, spoiled quills and reminders of the past, while upstairs a warm woman who loved me slumbered alone.

My gaze fell on the Fool’s last gift to me. The three-faced memory-stone carving rested on the mantel over the fireplace. Whenever I looked up from my work at the desk, the Fool’s gaze met mine. I challenged myself; slowly I picked it up. I had not handled it since that Winterfest night three winters ago when I had heard the scream. Now I cradled it in my hands and stared into his carved eyes. A tremor of dread went through me but I set my thumb to his brow. I ‘heard’ the words it always spoke to me. ‘I have never been wise.’ That was all. Just those parting words, in his voice. Healing and tearing in the same moment. Carefully, I put the carving back on the mantel.

I walked to one of the two tall narrow windows. I pushed aside the heavy drape and looked down onto the kitchen garden of Withywoods. It was a humble view, fit for a scribe’s room, but lovely all the same. There was a moon and the pearly light laced the leaves and buds of the growing herbs. White-pebbled paths ran between the beds and gathered the light to themselves. I lifted my eyes and looked beyond the gardens. Behind the grand manor that was Withywoods were rolling meadows and in the distance the forested flanks of mountains.

On this fine summer night and in this tamed valley the sheep had been left out in the pasture. The ewes were larger blots with the half-grown lambs clustered beside them. Above all, in the black sky, the stars glittered like a different sort of scattered flock. I could not see the vineyards on the hills behind the sheep pasture, nor the Withy River that wound through the holdings to eventually join with Buck River. To call it a river was something of a conceit, for in most places a horse could easily splash across it, and yet it never ran dry in the summer. Its generous and noisy flow fed the rich little valley. Withywoods was a placid and gentle holding, a place where even an assassin might mellow when pastured out here. I might tell Chade that I must go to town to discuss wool prices but in truth he had the right of it. The old shepherd Lin and his three sons more tolerated than relied on me; I had learned a great deal from them but my insisting on visiting Withy to speak with the wool buyer was mostly for my own pride. Lin would accompany me and two of his sons, and though my handshake might seal whatever agreement we reached, Lin’s nod would tell me when to extend that clasp.

It was a very good life I had. When melancholy overtook me, I knew it was not for anything in my present, but only darkness from the past. And those bleak regrets were only memories, powerless to hurt me. I thought of that, and yawned suddenly. I could sleep now, I decided.

I let the drape fall back into place and then sneezed at the cloud of dust it released. Truly the room needed a good cleaning. But not tonight. Perhaps not any night. Maybe I would leave it tonight, let the door close behind me, and allow the past to keep its own company. I toyed with that notion as some men toy with the ambition of giving up drink. It would be good for me. It might be better for Molly and me. I knew I would not do it. I couldn’t say why. Slowly, I pinched the remaining candle flames out. Some day, I promised myself, and knew I lied.

When I shut the door behind me, the cool darkness of the corridor engulfed me. The floor was cold. An errant draught wandered the hallways; I sighed. Withywoods was a rambling place that required constant upkeep and repair. There was always something to do, something to busy Holder Badgerlock. I smiled to myself. What, did I wish that Chade’s midnight summons had been an order for me to assassinate someone? Better far that tomorrow’s project was consulting with Revel about a blocked chimney in the parlour.

I padded hastily along as I backtracked through the sleeping house. When I reached my bedchamber, I eased the door open silently and as quietly closed it behind me. My robe fell to the floor again as I slid under the coverlets. Molly’s warm flesh and sweet scent beckoned me. I shivered, waiting for the blankets to warm the chill from me and trying not to wake her. Instead, she rolled to face me and drew me into her embrace. Her small warm feet perched on top of my icy ones and she nestled her head under my chin and on my chest.

‘I didn’t mean to wake you,’ I whispered.

‘You didn’t. I woke up and you weren’t here. I was waiting for you.’ She spoke quietly but not in a whisper.

‘Sorry,’ I said. She waited. ‘It was Chade Skilling to me.’

I felt but did not hear her sigh. ‘All is well?’ she asked me quietly.

‘Nothing wrong,’ I assured her. ‘Just a sleepless old man looking for some company.’

‘Mm.’ She made a soft sound of agreement. ‘I can understand that well. I do not sleep as well as I did when I was young.’

‘As true for me. We’re all getting older.’

She sighed and melted into me. I put my arms around her and closed my eyes.

She cleared her throat softly. ‘As long as you’re not asleep … if you’re not too tired.’ She moved suggestively against me, and as always, my breath caught in my throat. I smiled into the darkness. This was my Molly, as I knew her of old. Lately she had been so pensive and quiet that I had feared I had somehow hurt her feelings. But when I had asked her, she had shaken her head, looking down and smiling to herself. ‘I’m not ready to tell you, yet,’ she had teased me. Earlier in the day, I had walked into the room where she processed her honey and made the candles she created for our personal use. I had caught her standing motionless, the long taper she had been dipping dangling forgotten from her fingers as she stared off into the distance.

She cleared her throat, and I realized I was the one who was wool-gathering now. I kissed the side of her throat and she made a sound almost like a purr.

I gathered her closer. ‘I am not too tired. And I hope never to be that old.’

For a time, in that room, we were as young as we had ever been, save that with the experience of years of each other, there was no awkwardness, no hesitation. I once knew of a minstrel who bragged of having had a thousand women, one time each. He would never know what I knew, that to have one woman a thousand times, and each time find in her a different delight is far better. I knew now what gleamed in the eyes of old couples when they saw one another across a room. More than once, I had met Molly’s glance at a crowded family gathering, and known from the bend of her smile and her fingers touching her mouth exactly what she had in mind for us once we were alone. My familiarity with her was a more potent love elixir than any potion sold by a hedge-witch in the market.

Simple and good was our lovemaking, and very thorough. Afterwards, her hair was netted across my chest, her breasts pressed warm against my side. I drifted, warm and content. She spoke softly by my ear, the breath of her words tickling.

‘My love?’

‘Um?’

‘We’re going to have a baby.’

My eyes flew open. Not with the joy I had once hoped to feel, but with the shock of dismay. I took three slow breaths, trying to find words, trying to find thoughts. I felt as if I had stepped from the warm lapping of water at a river’s edge into the cold deep current. Tumbled and drowning. I said nothing.

‘Are you awake?’ she persisted.

‘I am. Are you? Are you talking in your sleep, my dear?’ I wondered if she had slipped off into a dream, and was perhaps recalling another man and another time when she had whispered such momentous words and they had been true.

‘I’m awake.’ And sounding slightly irritated with me, she added, ‘Did you hear what I told you?’

‘I did.’ I steeled myself. ‘Molly. You know that can’t be so. You yourself told me that your days of bearing were past now. It has been years since—’

‘And I was wrong!’ There was no mistaking the annoyance in her voice now. She seized my wrist and set my hand to her belly. ‘You must have seen that I’m getting larger. I’ve felt the baby move, Fitz. I didn’t want to say anything until I was absolutely certain. And now I am. I know it’s peculiar, I know it must seem impossible for me to be pregnant so many years after my courses have stopped flowing. But I know I am not mistaken. I’ve felt the quickening. I carry your child, Fitz. Before this winter is out, we will have a baby.’

‘Oh, Molly,’ I said. My voice shook and as I gathered her closer, my hands were shaking. I held her, kissed her brow and her eyes.

She slipped her arms around me. ‘I knew you would be pleased. And astonished,’ she said happily. She settled against me. ‘I’ll have the servants move the cradle from the attic. I went looking for it a few days ago. It’s still there. It’s fine old oak, with not a joint loose in it. Finally, it will be filled! Patience would have been so thrilled to know there will be a Farseer’s child at Withywoods. But I won’t use her nursery. It’s too far from our bedchamber. I think I will make one of the rooms on the ground floor into a special nursery for me and for our child. Perhaps the Sparrow Chamber. I know that as I get heavier, I will not want to climb the stairs too often …’

She went on, breathlessly detailing her plans, speaking of the screens she would move from Patience’s old sewing room, and how the tapestries and rugs must be cleaned well, and talking of lamb’s wool she wished spun fine and dyed especially for our child. I listened to her, speechless with terror. She was drifting away from me, her mind gone to a place where mine could not follow. I had seen her ageing in the last few years. I’d noticed the swelling of her knuckles, and how she sometimes paused on the stairs to catch her breath. I’d heard her, more than once, call Tavia the kitchen maid by her mother’s name. Lately Molly would begin a task, and then wander off, leaving it half done. Or she would enter a room, look around and ask me, ‘Now what was it I came here to get?’

We had laughed about such lapses. But there was nothing funny about this slipping of her mind. I held her close as she prattled on about the plans she had obviously been making for months. My arms wrapped her and held her, but I feared I was losing her.

And then I would be alone.

FIVE
Arrival

It is common knowledge that once a woman has passed her child-bearing years, she becomes more vulnerable to all sorts of ailments of the flesh. As her monthly courses dwindle and then cease, many women experience sudden flushes of heat or bouts of heavy sweating, often occurring in the night. Sleep may flee from them and a general weariness possess them. The skin of her hands and feet become thinner, making cuts and wounds to these extremities more common. Desire commonly wanes, and some women may actually assume a more mannish demeanour, with shrinking breasts and facial hair. Even the strongest of farm women will be less able than they were in the heavy tasks that they once accomplished with ease. Bones will break more easily, from a simple slip in the kitchen. She may lose teeth as well. Some begin to develop a hump on the back of the neck and to walk with a peering glance. All of these are common parts of a woman ageing.

Less well known is that women may become more prone to fits of melancholy, anger or foolish impulses. In a vain grasping at lost youth, even the steadiest of women can give way to fripperies and wasteful practices. Usually these storms pass in less than a year, and the woman will resume her dignity and calm as she accepts her own ageing.

Sometimes, however, these symptoms can precede the downfall of her mind. If she becomes forgetful, calling people by the wrong names, leaving ordinary tasks incomplete and, in extreme cases, losing recognition of her own family members, then her family must recognize that she can no longer be considered reliable. Small children should not be entrusted to her care. Forgotten cooking may lead to a kitchen blaze, or the livestock left unwatered and unfed on a hot day. Remonstrances and rebukes will not change these behaviours. Pity is a more appropriate response than anger.

Let such a woman be given work that is of less consequence. Let her sit by the fire and wind wool or do some such task that will endanger no one else. Soon enough, the body’s decline will follow the mind’s absence. The family will experience less grief at her death if she has been treated with patience and kindness during her decline.

If she becomes exceedingly troublesome, opening doors in the night, wandering off in rainstorms or exhibiting flashes of fury when she can no longer comprehend her surroundings, then administer to her a strong tea of valerian, one that puts her into a manageable state. This remedy may bring peace both to the old woman and to the family weary of caretaking for her.

On the Ageing of the Flesh, Healer Molingal

Molly’s madness was all the harder to bear in that she remained so pragmatic and sensible in all other parts of her life.

Molly’s courses had stopped flowing early in our marriage. She had told me then that she would not ever conceive again. I had tried to comfort her and myself, pointing out that we had a daughter we shared, even if I had missed her childhood. It was foolish to ask more of fate than what we’d been gifted with already. I told her that I accepted there would be no last child for us, and I truly thought she had accepted it as well. We had a full and comfortable life at Withywoods. Hardships that had complicated her early life were a thing of the past, and I had separated myself from politics and machinations of the court at Buckkeep Castle. We finally had time enough for each other. We could entertain travelling minstrels, afford whatever we desired, and celebrate the passing holidays as lavishly as we wished. We went out riding together, surveying the flocks of sheep, the blossoming orchard, the hayfields and the vineyards in idle pleasure at such a serene landscape. We returned when we were weary, dined as we would, and slept late when it pleased us.

Our house steward, Revel, had become so competent as to make me nearly irrelevant. Riddle had chosen him well, even if he had never become the door soldier that Riddle had hoped for. The steward met weekly with Molly to talk of meals and supplies, and he worried me as often as he dared with lists of things he thought needed repairing or updating or, I swear to Eda, changed simply because the man delighted in change. I listened to him, allocated funds and left it mostly in his capable hands. The estates generated enough income to more than compensate for their upkeep. Still, I watched the accounts carefully and set aside as much as I could for Nettle’s future needs. Several times she rebuked me for spending my own funds on repairs the estate could have paid for. But the crown had allocated me a generous allotment in return for my years of service to Prince Dutiful. Truly, we had plenty and to spare. I had believed that we were in the quiet backwater of our days, a time of peace for both of us. Molly’s collapse at that Winterfest had alarmed me, but I had refused to accept that it was a foreshadowing of what was to come.

In the year after Patience died, Molly grew more pensive. She often seemed distracted and absent-minded. Twice she had dizzy spells, and once she spent three days in bed before she felt fully recovered. She lost flesh and slowed down. When the last of her sons decided it was time to make their own ways in the world, she let them go with a smile for them, and quiet tears with me in the evening. ‘I am happy, for them. This is their beginning time. But for me, it is an ending, and a difficult one.’ She began to spend more time at quiet pursuits, was very thoughtful of me, and showed more of her gentle side than she had in previous years.

The next year, she recovered a bit. When spring came, she cleaned out the beehives she had neglected, and even went out and captured a new swarm. Her grown children came and went, always full of news of their busy lives, bringing her grandchildren to visit. They were happy to see that their mother had recaptured some of her old energy and spirit. Desire came back to her, to my delight. It was a good year for both of us. I dared to hope that whatever had caused her fainting spells was past. We grew closer, as two trees planted apart from one another finally find that their branches reach and intertwine. It was not that her children had been a barrier between us so much as how she had always given her first thought and time to them. I will shamelessly admit that I enjoyed becoming the centre of her world, and did all I could to show her, in every way, that she had always held that place in my life.

More recently, she had begun to put on flesh again. Her appetite seemed endless and as her belly rounded out, I teased her a bit. I stopped the day she looked at me and said, almost sadly, ‘I cannot be ageless as you seem to be, my love. I will grow older and fatter perhaps, and slower. My years of being a girl are long gone, as are my years of childbearing. I am become an old woman, Fitz. I only hope that my body gives out before my mind. I have no desire to linger on past a time when I don’t recall who you are or I am.’

So when she announced her ‘pregnancy’ to me, I began to fear that her worst fears and mine were coming true. She grew heavier in the belly. Her back ached and she walked more slowly. Her thoughts grew distant from our daily life, she neglected the tasks she had once enjoyed, and often I found her staring off into the distance, perplexed and yet wondering.

When a few weeks had passed and she persisted in believing she was pregnant, I tried again to make her see reason. We had retired to our bed, and she was in my arms. She had spoken, again, of a child to come. ‘Molly. How can this be so? You told me yourself …’

And with a flash of her old temper, she lifted her hand and covered my mouth. ‘I know what I said. And now I know something different. Fitz, I’m carrying your child. I know how strange that must seem to you, for I myself find it more than passing strange. But for months I’ve suspected it, and I kept silent, not wanting you to think me foolish. But it’s true. I felt the baby move inside me. For as many children as I’ve had, it’s not a thing I would mistake. I’m going to have a baby.’

‘Molly,’ I said. I still held her, but I wondered if she was truly with me. I could think of nothing more to say to her. Coward that I am, I did not challenge her. But she sensed my doubt. I felt her stiffen in my arms and I thought she would thrust herself away from me.

But then I felt her anger die. She eased out the deep breath she had taken to rebuke me, leaned her head against my shoulder and spoke. ‘You think I’m mad, and I suppose I can hardly blame you. For years, I thought I was a dried-up husk, never to bear again. I did my best to accept it. But I’m not. This is the baby we’ve hoped for, our baby, yours and mine, to rear together. And I don’t really care how it’s happened, or if you think I’m mad right now. Because, soon enough, when the child is born, you will know that I was right. And until then, you may think me as mad or as feeble-minded as you please, but I intend to be happy.’

She relaxed in my arms and in the darkness I saw her smile at me. I tried to smile back. She spoke gently as she settled back into the bed beside me. ‘You’ve always been such a stubborn man; always sure that you know what is really happening far better than anyone else. And perhaps, a time or two, that has been true. But this is woman’s knowing that I’m talking about now, and in this, I know better than you do.’

I tried a last time. ‘When you want a thing so badly for so long, and then it comes time to face that you cannot have it, sometimes—’

‘Sometimes you can’t believe it when it comes to you. Sometimes you’re afraid to believe it. I understand your hesitation.’ She smiled into the darkness, pleased at turning my own words against me.

‘Sometimes wanting what you can’t have can turn your mind,’ I said hoarsely, for I felt compelled to say the terrible words aloud.

She sighed a little sigh, but she smiled as she did so. ‘Loving you should have turned my mind long ago, then. But it didn’t. So, you can be as stubborn as you want. You can even think me mad. But this is what is true. I’m going to have your baby, Fitz. Before winter ends, there’s going to be a baby in this house. So tomorrow you had best have the servants bring the cradle down out of the attic. I want to arrange his room before I get too heavy.’

And so Molly stayed in my home and my bed, and yet she left me, departing on a path where I could not follow her.

The very next day, she announced her condition to several of the maid-servants. She ordered the Sparrow Chamber transformed into a nursery and parlour for herself and her imaginary child. I did not contradict her, but I saw the faces of the women as they left the room. Later, I saw two of them, heads together and tongues clucking. But when they looked up and saw me, they stilled their talk and earnestly wished me good day, never meeting my eyes.

Molly pursued her illusion with energy I thought long lost to her. She made small gowns and little bonnets. She supervised the cleaning of the Sparrow Chamber from top to bottom. The chimney was freshly swept and new draperies ordered for the windows. She insisted that I Skill the news to Nettle, and ask her to come and spend the dark months of winter with us, to help us welcome our child.

And so Nettle came, even though in our Skill-discussions we had agreed that Molly was deceiving herself. She celebrated Winterfest with us, and stayed until the snow started to slump and the bare paths to show. No baby arrived. I thought Molly would be forced to admit her delusion then, but she steadfastly insisted that she had but been mistaken as to how pregnant she was.

Spring came into full blossom. In the evenings we spent together she would sometimes drop her needlework and exclaim, ‘Here! Here, he’s moving, come feel!’ But every time I obediently set my hand to her belly, I felt nothing. ‘He’s stopped,’ she would insist, and I would nod gravely. What else could I do?

‘Summer will bring him,’ she assured us both, and the little garments she crocheted now were light rather than warm and woolly. As the hot days of summer ticked by to the chirping of grasshoppers, they became another layer of garments in the chest of clothing she had made for her imaginary child.

Autumn went out in a blaze of glory. Withywoods was lovely as it ever was in fall, with scarlet sprays of alder and golden birch leaves like coins and thin yellow willow leaves in curls, drifting down for the wind to push into deep banks at the edges of the carefully-tended grounds. We no longer went out riding together, for Molly insisted she might lose the child if she did so, but we went for walks. I gathered hickory nuts with her, and listened to her plan to move screens into her nursery to make an enclosed area for the cradle. As the days passed, the river that threaded the valley grew swift with rain. Snow arrived and Molly knit warmer things for our phantom baby, sure now that it would be a winter child, in need of soft blankets and woolly boots and caps. And just as the ice covered and hid the river, so did I strive to conceal from her the growing despair I felt.

But I am sure she knew it.

She had courage. Against the current of doubt that all others pressed her way, she swam. She was aware of the talk of the servants. They thought her daft or senile, and wondered that so sensible a woman as she had been could so foolishly assemble a nursery for an imaginary child. She kept her dignity and restraint before them and by that forced them to treat her with respect. But she also withdrew from them. Once she had socialized with the local gentry. Now she planned no dinners and never went out to the crossroads market. She asked no one to weave or sew for her baby.

Her imaginary child consumed her. She had little time for me or the other things that had once interested her. She spent her evenings and sometimes her nights in her nursery-parlour. I missed her in my bed but did not press her to climb the stairs and join me there. Sometimes of an evening, I would join her in her cosy room, bringing whatever translation I was working on. She always welcomed me. Tavia would bring us a tray with cups and herbs, and set a kettle to boil on the hearth and leave us to our own devices. Molly would sit in a cushioned chair, her swollen feet propped up on a small hassock. I had a small table in the corner for my work, and Molly kept her hands busy with knitting or tatting. Sometimes I would hear the ticking of her needles cease. Then I would look up and see her staring into the fire, her hands on her belly and her face wistful. At such times I longed with all my heart that her self-deception were true. Despite our ages, I thought she and I could manage an infant. I even asked her, once, what she thought of us taking in a foundling. She sighed softly and said, ‘Be patient, Fitz. Your child grows within me.’ So I said no more of it to her. I told myself her fancy brought her happiness, and truly, what harm did it do? I let her go.

In high summer of that year, I received the news that King Eyod of the Mountains had died. It was not unexpected but it created a delicate situation. Kettricken, the former Queen of the Six Duchies, was Eyod’s heir and her son King Dutiful in line after her. Some in the Mountains would hope that she would return to them, to reign there, even though she had often and clearly stated that she expected her son Dutiful to bring the Mountains under his rule as a sort of seventh duchy in our monarchy. Eyod’s death marked a transition that the Six Duchies must observe with gravity and respect. Kettricken would of course travel there, but also King Dutiful and Queen Elliania, the princes Prosper and Integrity, Skillmistress Nettle and several of the coterie, Lord Chade, Lord Civil … the list of those who must attend seemed endless, and many minor nobles attached themselves to the party as a way to curry favour. And my name was appended to it. Go I must, as Holder Badgerlock, a minor officer in Kettricken’s guard. Chade insisted, Kettricken requested, Dutiful all but ordered me, and Nettle pleaded. I packed my kit and chose a mount.

Over the year, Molly’s obsession had ground me down to a weary acceptance. I was not surprised when she declined to accompany me as she felt her ‘time was very close now’. A part of me did not wish to leave her when her mind was so unsettled, and another part of me longed for a respite from indulging her delusion. I called Revel aside and asked that he pay special attention to her requests while I was gone. He looked almost offended that I thought such a command necessary. ‘As ever, sir,’ he said, and added his stiff little bow that meant, ‘you idiot.’

And so I left her and rode away from Withywoods alone and quietly joined the procession of noble folk from the Six Duchies going north to the Mountains for the funeral rites. It was passing strange for me to relive a journey I had once made when I was not yet twenty, and had travelled to the Mountain Kingdom to claim Kettricken as bride for King-in-Waiting Verity. In my second journey to the Mountains, I had often avoided the roads and travelled cross-country with my wolf.

I had known that Buck had changed. Now I saw that the changes had happened all through the Six Duchies. The roads were wider than I recalled, and the lands more settled. Fields of grain grew where there had once been open pasturage. Towns sprawled along the road, so that sometimes it seemed one scarcely ended before the next began. There were more inns and towns along the way, though the size of our party sometimes overwhelmed the accommodations. The wild lands were being tamed, brought under the plough and fenced for pasture. I wondered where the wolves hunted now.

As one of Kettricken’s guardsmen, clad in her white and purple, I rode close to the royal party. Kettricken had never been one to stand upon formality, and her request that I ride at her stirrup was simply accepted by those who knew her. We spoke quietly, the jingling and clopping of the other travellers granting us a strange privacy. I told her stories of my first journey to the Mountains. She spoke of her childhood and of Eyod, not as king but as her loving father. I said nothing of Molly’s disorder to Kettricken. Her sorrow at the death of her father was enough for her to bear.

My position as a member of her guard meant that I was accommodated at the same inns where Kettricken stayed. Often that meant that Nettle was there as well, and sometimes we were able to find a quiet place and time for conversation. It was good to see her and a relief to discuss frankly with her how her mother’s illusion persisted. When Steady joined us, we were not as blunt, but that was Nettle’s choice of reticence. I could not decide if she thought her younger brother was too young for such tidings or if she thought it too much of a woman’s matter. Burrich had named his son well. Of all his boys, Steady wore most of Burrich’s features and his sturdy build, and shared too his deliberate way of moving and unflinching values for both honour and duty. When he was with us, it was as if his father sat at the table. I marked Nettle’s easy dependence on her brother’s strength, and not just for the Skill. I was glad he was so often at her side, and yet wistful. I wished he could have been my son, even as I was glad to see his father live on in him. I think he sensed how I felt. He was deferential to me, and yet there were times when his black eyes bore into mine as if he could see my soul. And at those times, I missed Burrich with a cutting sorrow.

In more private times, Nettle shared with me her mother’s monthly letters detailing the progress of a pregnancy that had now seemingly stretched over two years. It broke my heart to hear Molly’s words as Nettle read aloud of her mulling of names, and progress on her sewing projects for a baby that would never exist. Yet neither one of us had any solution other than to take a small comfort in the sharing of our worry.

When we arrived in the Mountains, we were given a warm welcome. The bright structures that made up Jhaampe, the Mountain capital, still reminded me of the bells of flowers. The older structures were as I recalled them, incorporating the trees they were built among. But even to the Mountains change had come, and the outskirts of that city were more like the towns of Farrow and Tilth, buildings of stone and plank. It made me sad for I felt that the change was not a good one, as if such structures were a canker growing over the forest.

For three days we mourned a king whom I had respected deeply, not with wild wailing and oceans of tears, but with quietly shared stories of who he had been and how well he had ruled. His people grieved for their fallen king but in equal measure they welcomed his daughter home. They were happy to see King Dutiful and the Narcheska and the two princes. Several times I heard people mention with quiet pride that young Integrity greatly resembled Kettricken’s brother and his late uncle, Prince Rurisk. I had not seen that resemblance until I heard it spoken, and then I could not forget it.

At the end of the time of mourning, Kettricken stood before them and reminded them that her father and King-in-Waiting Chivalry had begun the process of peace between the Six Duchies and the Mountains. She spoke of how wisely they had secured that peace with her marriage to Verity. She asked that they look at her son King Dutiful as their future monarch and recall that the peace they now enjoyed should be viewed as King Eyod’s greatest triumph.

With the formalities of King Eyod’s funeral over, the true work of the visit commenced. Daily there were meetings with Eyod’s advisors, and there were lengthy discussions on the orderly handing over of the governance of the Mountains. I was present for some of it, sometimes standing at the side of the room, as Chade and Dutiful’s extra eyes and ears, and sometimes sitting outside in the sun, my eyes closed but Skill-linked to both of them in the higher-level meetings. But in the evenings, I was sometimes released to have time on my own.

And so it was that I found myself standing outside an elaborately carved and painted door, looking wistfully at the work of the Fool’s hands. Here was the house where he had lived when he thought he had failed to fulfil his fate as the White Prophet. On the night King Shrewd had died, Kettricken had fled Buckkeep and the Fool had gone with her. Together they had made the arduous journey to the Mountain Kingdom where she believed she and her unborn child would be safe in her father’s home. But there fate had dealt the Fool two blows. Kettricken’s child did not live, and news of my death in Regal’s dungeons reached him. He had failed in his quest to ensure there was an heir to the Farseer line. He had failed in his quest to bring about his prophecy. His life as a White Prophet was over.

When he believed me dead, he had stayed in the Mountains with Kettricken, lived in this small house and tried to make a little life for himself as a wood carver and toy maker. Then he had found me, broken and dying, and brought me here to the dwelling he shared with Jofron. When he took me in, she had moved out. When I was recovered, the Fool and I accompanied Kettricken on a hopeless quest to follow her husband’s cold trail into the mountains. The Fool had left the little house and all his tools for Jofron. By the colourfully-painted marionettes dangling in the window, I suspected she still lived there and still made toys.

I did not knock on the door but stood in the long summer evening and studied the carved imps and pecksies that frolicked on the trim of the shutters. Like many of the old-fashioned Mountain dwellings, this structure was painted with bright colours and details as if it were a child’s treasure box. An emptied treasure box, my friend long gone from it.

The door opened and yellow lamplight spilled out. A tall, pale lad of about fifteen, fair hair falling to his shoulders, stood framed there. ‘Stranger, if you seek shelter, you need but knock and ask. You are in the Mountains now.’ He smiled as he spoke and opened wide the door, stepping aside to gesture me in.

I walked slowly toward him. His features were vaguely familiar. ‘Does Jofron still live here?’

His smiled widened. ‘Lives and works. Grandmother, you have a visitor!’

I moved slowly into the room. She sat at a workbench by the window, a lamp at her elbow. She was painting something with a small brush, even strokes of goldenrod yellow. ‘A moment,’ she begged without looking up from her task. ‘If I let this dry between strokes, the colour will be uneven.’

I said nothing but stood and waited. Jofron’s long blonde hair was streaked with silver now. Four braids trapped it away from her face. The cuffs of a brightly-embroidered blouse were folded back to her elbows. Her arms were sinewy and flecked with paint, yellow, blue and a pale green. It was much longer than a moment before she set down her brush and leaned back and turned to me. Her eyes were just as blue as I recalled them. She smiled easily at me. ‘Welcome, guest. A Buckman, by the look of you. Come to honour our king’s final rest, I take it.’

‘That is true,’ I said.

When I spoke, recognition flickered and then caught fire in her eyes. She sighed and shook her head slowly. ‘You. His Catalyst. He stole my heart and lifted my spirit to search for wisdom. Then you came and stole him from me. As was right.’ She lifted a mottled cloth from her work desk and wiped vainly at her fingers. ‘I never thought to see you under this roof again.’ There was no enmity in her voice, but there was loss. Old loss.

I spoke words that might comfort her. ‘When he thought our time together was over, he left me as well, Jofron. Close to seventeen years ago we parted company, and never a word or a visit have I had from him since.’

She cocked her head at that. Her grandson closed the door softly. He ventured to the edge of our conversation and cleared his throat. ‘Stranger, may we offer you tea? Bread? A chair to sit on or a bed for the night?’ Plainly the lad longed to know what connection I had to his grandmother, and hoped to lure me to stay.

‘Please bring him a chair and tea,’ Jofron told him without consulting me. The lad scuttled off and returned with a straight-back chair for me. When her blue eyes came back to me, they were full of sympathy. ‘Truly? Not a word, not a visit?’

I shook my head. I spoke to her, thinking here was one of the few people in my life who might understand my words. ‘He said he had lost his sight of the future. That our tasks together were done, and that if we stayed together, we might unwittingly undo some of what we had accomplished.’

She received the information without blinking. Then very slowly, she nodded.

I stood, uncertain of myself. Old memories of Jofron’s voice as I lay on the floor before that hearth came to me. ‘I do not think I ever thanked you for helping me when the Fool first brought me here, all those years ago.’

She nodded again, gravely, but corrected me, saying, ‘I helped the White Prophet. I was called to do so and have never regretted it.’

Again the silence stretched between us. It was like trying to converse with a cat. I resorted to banality. ‘I hope you and your family are well.’

And like a cat, her eyes narrowed for just an instant. Then she said, ‘My son is not here.’

‘Oh.’

She took up her rag again, wiping her fingers very carefully. The grandson returned with a small tray. A little cup, smaller than my closed fist, held one of the aromatic tisanes of the Mountains. I was grateful for the distraction. I thanked him and then sipped from it, tasting wild currant and a certain spice from a Mountain tree bark that I had not tasted in years. It was delicious. I said so.

Jofron rose from her work bench. She walked across the room, her back very straight. One wall of the room had been shaped in a bas-relief of a tree. It must have been her work, for it had not been that way the last time I had stayed here. Leaves and fruit of all sorts projected from its carved branches. She reached over her head to a large leaf, gently eased it aside to reveal a small cubby-hole and brought out a little box.

She returned and showed it to me. It was not the Fool’s work, but I recognized the hands curved protectively to form a lid over the box’s contents. Jofron had carved his hands as a lid for her box. I nodded at her that I understood. She moved her fingers and I heard a distinctive ‘snick’ as if a hidden catch had given way. When she opened the little box, a fragrance came from it, unfamiliar but enticing. She was not trying to hide its contents from me. I saw small scrolls, at least four and possibly more concealed under them. She took one from the box and closed the lid.

‘This was his most recent message to me,’ she said.

Most recent. I knew a moment of the sharpest, greenest envy I had ever felt. He had not sent me as much as a bird message, but Jofron had a small casket of scrolls! The soft brown paper was tied closed with a slender orange ribbon. She tugged at it and it gave way. Very gently she unrolled it. Her eyes moved over it. I thought she would read it aloud to me. Instead she lifted her blue gaze and met my eyes in an uncompromising stare. ‘This one is short. No news of his life. No fond greeting, no wish for my continued health. Only a warning.’

‘A warning?’

There was no hostility in her face, only determination. ‘A warning that I should protect my son. That I should say nothing of him to strangers who might ask.’

‘I don’t understand.’

She lifted one shoulder. ‘Nor do I. But understanding completely is not necessary for me to take heed of his warning. And so I tell you, my son is not here. And that is all I will say about him.’

Did she think me a danger? ‘I did not even know you had a son. Nor a grandson.’ My thoughts rattled like seeds in a dry pod. ‘And I did not ask after him. Nor am I a stranger to you.’

She nodded agreeably to each of my statements. Then she asked, ‘Did you enjoy your tea?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

‘My eyes tire easily these day. I find sleeping helps, for then I wake refreshed, to do my best work in the early dawn light.’ She spindled the little brown paper, and looped the orange ribbon round it. As I watched she returned it to the box. And shut the lid.

The Mountain folk were so courteous. She would not tell me to get out of her house. But it would have been the worst of manners for me to attempt to stay. I rose immediately. Perhaps if I left right away, I could come back tomorrow and try again to ask more about the Fool. I should go now, quietly. I knew I should not ask. I did. ‘How did the messages reach you, please?’

‘By many hands and a long way.’ She almost smiled. ‘The one who put this last one into my hands is long gone from here.’

I looked at her face and knew that this was my final chance for words with her. She would not see me tomorrow. ‘Jofron, I am not a danger to you or your family. I came to bid farewell to a wise king who treated me well. Thank you for letting me know that the Fool sent you messages. At least I know that he still lives. I shall keep that comfort as your kindness to me.’ I stood up and bowed deep to her.

I think I saw a tiny crack in her façade, the smallest offer of sympathy when she said, ‘The last message arrived two years ago. And it had taken at least a year to reach me. So as to the White Prophet’s fate, neither of us can be certain.’

Her word brought cold to my heart. Her grandson had gone to the door and opened it, holding it for me. ‘I thank you for your hospitality,’ I said to both of them. I set the tiny cup on the corner of her work table, bowed again, and left. I did not try to return the next day.

Two days later, King Dutiful and his retinue departed from the Mountains. Kettricken remained behind to have more time with her extended family and her people and to assure her people that she would more often visit there as they began the long transition to becoming the seventh duchy under King Dutiful.

Unnoticed, I remained behind as well, lingering until the last of the king’s company were out of sight, and then waiting until late afternoon before I departed. I wanted to ride alone and think. I left Jhaampe with no care or thought as to where I would sleep that night or how.

I had believed I would find some sort of serenity in the Mountains. I had witnessed how gracefully they surrendered their king to death and made room for life to continue. But when I departed, I took more envy than serenity with me. They had lost their king after a lifetime of his wisdom. He had died with his dignity and his mind intact. I was losing my beloved Molly, and I knew with dread that it would only get worse, much worse, before the end. I had lost the Fool, the best friend I had ever had, years ago. I thought I had accepted it, become immune to missing him. But the deeper Molly ventured into madness, the more I missed him. Always he had been the one I turned to for counsel. Chade did his best, but he was ever my elder and mentor. When I had visited the Fool’s old home, I had thought only to look at it for a time and touch the stone that once I had had a friend who had known me that well and still loved me.

Instead, I had discovered that perhaps I had not known him as well as I had thought. Had his friendship with Jofron meant so much more to him than what we had shared? A startling thought pricked me. Had she been more to him than a friend or follower of the White Prophet?

Would you have begrudged him that? That for a time, he lived in the now and had something that was good when all hope had left him?

I lifted my eyes. I wished with all my heart to see a grey shape flitting through the trees and brush beside the road. But of course, there was not. My wolf was gone these many years, gone longer than the Fool had been gone. He lived only in me now, in the way his wolfness could suddenly intrude into my thoughts. At least I still had that of him. It was thin soup.

‘I would not have begrudged him that,’ I said aloud, and wondered if I lied so that I need not be ashamed of myself. I shook my head and tried to put my mind into the now. It was a beautiful day, the road was good, and while problems might await me when I returned home, they were not here with me now. And truly, my missing the Fool today was no different from how I had missed him on any of the yesterdays I’d spent without him. So he had sent missives to Jofron and not to me? That had been true for years, apparently. Now I knew of it. That was the only difference.

I was trying to persuade myself that knowing that small fact made no difference when I heard hoofbeats on the road behind me. Someone was riding a horse at a gallop. Perhaps a messenger. Well, the road was wide enough that he could pass me effortlessly. Nonetheless, I reined my mount more to one side and glanced back to watch him come.

A black horse. A rider. And in three strides, I knew it was Nettle on Inky. I thought she had gone on with the others, and then realized she must be hurrying to catch up with them after being delayed for some reason. I pulled in my horse and waited for her, fully expecting her to pass me with a wave.

But as soon as she saw I had halted, she slowed her mount and by the time she reached me Inky had reduced her pace to a trot. ‘Ho!’ Nettle called to her, and Inky halted neatly beside us.

‘I thought you were going to stay another night, and then when I realized you were gone, I had to race to catch up with you,’ she announced breathlessly.

‘Why aren’t you with the king? Where are your guards?’

She gave me a look. ‘I told Dutiful I’d be with you and needed no other guard. He and Chade both agreed.’

‘Why?’

She stared at me. ‘Well, among them, you do have a certain reputation as a very competent assassin.’

That silenced me for a moment. They still thought of me that way when I did not? I put my thoughts back in order. ‘No, I meant, why did you stay to travel with me? Not that I’m not glad to see you, I’m just surprised.’ I added the last as her glance at me darkened. ‘I had not even realized anyone had noticed that I had not remained with the main party.’

She cocked her head at me. ‘Would you have noticed if I were not there?’

‘Well, of course!’

‘Everyone noticed when you quietly withdrew. Dutiful spoke to me several days ago, saying that you seemed even more morose than one might expect you to be at a funeral and perhaps it was best if you were not left alone. Kettricken was a party to his words, and she added that this visit might have stirred old memories for you. Sad ones. So. Here I am.’

And indeed, there she was. I was almost annoyed at her for spoiling my perfectly good sulk. And that was when I realized that was what I had been doing. I’d been sulking because the Fool had sent letters to Jofron and not to me. And like a child, I’d been testing the people who loved me, pulling away from them almost for the sole reason of seeing if anyone would come after me.

And she had. I felt thwarted in my petulance, and as foolish as I knew that to be, it still stung when Nettle laughed at me. ‘I wish you could see the look on your face!’ she exclaimed. ‘Come. Will it be so terrible that after all these years, you and I finally will have a few days and nights of being able to talk to one another, without disasters or small boys interrupting us?’

‘It would be good,’ I conceded, and just that simply, my mood lifted. And our homeward journey together began.

I had never travelled in such indulgence. I had brought few supplies, thinking I would live rough on the way home. Nettle was likewise travelling light, save for a wallet full of silvers. The first time I proposed that if we were going to camp for the night, we should begin to look for a likely place, she stood up in her stirrups, looked all around and then pointed to smoke rising. ‘That’s a house at the least, and more likely a village with an inn, however humble. And that is where I intend to stop tonight, and if there is a hot bath to be had, it will be mine. And a good meal!’

And she was right. There were all three of those things, in fact, and she put silver out for me as well as herself, saying, ‘Chade told me not to let you do anything to punish yourself for being sad.’

For a few quiet moments, I handled her words, trying to see if they truly applied to me. They didn’t, I was sure, but I could think of no defence. She cleared her throat. ‘Let’s talk about Hap, shall we? Did you know that there is rumour that despite being a minstrel, and a wandering one at that, he has a sweetheart at Daratkeep, and he is true to her? She is a weaver in the town there.’

I had not known that, or much of the other gossip she shared with me. That evening, although there were several other minor nobles occupying the same inn, Nettle kept company with me. And we remained long by the hearth fire in the central room after the others had sought their beds. From her, I learned that Buckkeep politics were as tangled and the intimate royal gossip as thorny as ever. She had quarrelled with King Dutiful, for she feared for the safety of the adolescent princes, too often off to the OutIslands with their mother. He had dared to tell her it was none of her business and she had replied that if it was his business that she could not wed because he consistently exposed his heirs to danger, then she had a right to add her thoughts on it. Queen Elliania had recently suffered a miscarriage: it had been a girl child, the child she had dreamed of; it was a terrible loss as well as a bad omen to her mothershouse. When they had departed so hastily for Buckkeep, it was so that Elliania could take the princes for yet another long visit to her homeland. Some of the dukes had begun to grumble about how often the lads were away. King Dutiful was caught between his dukes and his queen, and seemed able to find no compromise.

When I asked after Riddle, Nettle said he was well the last time she had seen him and then decisively steered our conversation away from that. She seemed to have given up all hopes of ever gaining King Dutiful’s permission to wed, and yet I had never seen her evince interest in another man. I longed to know what was in her heart, and wished she were more inclined to confide in me as she once had in her mother.

Instead she turned our talk to other problems brewing along our border.

Dragons were ranging over Chalced, preying where they pleased, and they had begun sometimes to cross the border and ravage the herds of Shoaks and even Farrow. The Six Duchies folk expected the Skill-coterie of the king to turn back the dragons or at least negotiate with them. But the concept of diplomacy and compromise was laughable to a dragon. If they laughed, which both Nettle and I doubted.

We pondered if one could negotiate with dragons, and what the repercussions would be of slaying a dragon, and if paying tribute to dragons with slaughter herds were cowardly or simply pragmatic.

Some of her news was not political but of family. Swift and Web had recently visited Buckkeep. Swift’s bird-partner was healthy and strong. But Web’s gull was so poorly that Web had taken a room in Buckkeep Town that overlooked the water. The bird mostly lived on his windowsill; he fed her, for she flew little now. The end was coming and they were both awaiting it. While Nettle herself was not Witted, through me and her brother Swift she understood what it was to lose a Wit-partner.

But it was not only gossip we shared. We talked of food, and music we enjoyed, and which old tales were our favourites. She told me stories of her childhood, mostly of the mischief she and her brothers had perpetrated. In turn, I spoke of my days as a boy in Buckkeep, and how different both castle and town had been then. Burrich figured much in all our tales

On our last evening together, before we left the River Road to follow the narrower road that led to Withywoods, she asked me about Lord Golden. Had he truly once been a jester for King Shrewd? Yes, he had. And he and I had been … very close? ‘Nettle,’ I said, as she rode looking straight ahead. I waited until she turned to look at me. Her tanned cheeks were a bit more flushed than usual. ‘I loved that man as I have loved no one else. I do not say I loved him more than I love your mother. But that the way I loved him was different. But if you have heard there was anything improper in our bond, there was not. That was not what we were to one another. What we had went beyond that.’

She did not meet my eyes but she nodded. ‘And what became of him?’ she asked in a softer voice.

‘I do not know. He left Buckkeep while I was still lost in the stones. I never heard from him again.’

I think my voice told her far more than my words did. ‘I am so sorry, Da,’ she said quietly.

Did she know that it was the first time she had honoured me with that title? I held a very careful silence, savouring the moment. And then we crested a slight rise, and the village of Withy was before us, cupped in a gentle valley beside a river. And I knew we would reach Withywoods before the afternoon was old. I found I suddenly regretted how soon our journey together must end. Even more, I dreaded what she would think of her mother and how far her delusions had carried her away from us.

And yet the visit began well. When we arrived, Molly hugged me warmly and then turned delightedly to her eldest child. She had not expected me to return so soon, and had not expected to see Nettle at all. We had arrived shortly after noon and were both ravenous. All three of us retired to the kitchen where we merrily dismayed the household staff by insisting on raiding the pantry for a simple feast of bread, cheese, sausage and ale instead of waiting for them to prepare something more elaborate for us. When Cook Nutmeg put her foot down and chased us out of her kitchen, we picnicked at one end of the great dining table. We told Molly all about our journey, the simple but moving ceremonies that had preceded the king’s interment, and of Kettricken’s decision to stay for a time in the Mountains. And as there is from any journey, no matter how solemn the destination, there were humorous stories to tell that set us all laughing.

Molly had stories of her own to share with us. Some goats had managed to get into the vineyards and done damage to some of the oldest vines there. They would recover, but most of this year’s grapes from that section of the vineyard were lost. We’d had several major incursions of wild pigs into the hayfield; the major damage they did was trampling the hay to where it was almost impossible to harvest it. Lozum from the village had brought his dogs and gone after them. He’d killed one big boar, but one of his dogs had been badly ripped in the process. I sighed to myself. I was sure that would be one of the first problems I’d have to tackle. I’d never enjoyed boar hunts, but it would be necessary now. And Tallman would once again renew his plea for hounds of our own.

And somehow, while I was silently wool-gathering on boars and dogs and hunting, the topic changed, and then Molly was tugging at my sleeve and asking me, ‘Don’t you want to see what we’ve done?’

‘Of course,’ I replied, and arose from the pitiful remains of our haphazard meal to follow my wife and my daughter.

My heart sank when I realized she was leading us to her nursery. Nettle glanced back at me over her shoulder but I kept my expression bland. Nettle had not seen the room since Molly had taken it over. And when she opened the door, I realized I hadn’t, either.

The room had originally been a parlour intended for greeting important guests. In my absence, it had become a carefully-appointed room, rich with every luxury that a gravid woman could wish for her child to come.

The cradle in the centre of it was of mellow oak, cunningly fashioned so that if one stepped on a lever, it would gently rock the child. A carved Farseer buck watched over the head of the cradle. I believe Lady Patience had had it built in her early days at Withywoods, when she still hoped to conceive a child. It had waited, empty, for decades. Now the cradle was heaped with soft bedding, and netted with lace so that no insect might sting the occupant. The low couch now boasted fat cushions where a mother might recline to feed her child, and there were thick rugs underfoot. The deep windows looked out onto a garden cloaked in the first fall of autumn leaves. The thick glass was curtained first with lace, and then translucent silk, and finally with a tightly-woven curtain that would keep out both bright sunlight and cold. There was a painted glass enclosure Molly could put around the lamp to dim its light as well. Behind a fanciful screen of flowers and bees wrought in iron, the low fire danced for her in the large hearth.

She smiled at our amazement. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ she asked quietly.

‘It’s … beautiful. Such a peaceful room,’ Nettle managed to say.

I tried to find my tongue. I’d been holding Molly’s fancy at a distance; now I had stepped into her delusion. The stupid wanting that I thought I had smothered roared up like a fire through charred twigs. A baby. How sweet would it have been, to have our own little baby here, where I could watch him grow, where I could see Molly be mother to our child? I feigned a cough and rubbed my face. I walked to the lamp and examined the painted flowers on the screen with a scrutiny they didn’t merit.

Molly went on talking to Nettle. ‘When Patience was alive, she showed me this cradle. It was up in the attic. She’d had it made in the years when she and Chivalry lived here, when she dreamed it was still possible she might conceive. All those years, it has waited. It was far too heavy for me to move by myself, but I called Revel and showed it to him. And he had it carried down here for me, and once the wood was polished, it was such a lovely thing that we decided we really needed to make the whole room as fine a nursery as the cradle deserved.

‘Oh, and come here, just look at these trunks. Revel found them in a different attic, but isn’t it wonderful how close a match the wood is? He thought that perhaps the oak was grown right here at Withywoods, which could explain why the colour is so close to the cradle. This one has blankets, some of wool for winter months and some lighter, for the spring. And this entire trunk, I’m shocked to say, is all clothing for the baby. I had not realized how much I’d actually sewn for him until Revel suggested we put it all in one place. There are different sizes, of course. I wasn’t as foolish as that, as to make all the little gowns for a newborn.’

And on. The words poured out of Molly, as if she had longed for months to be able to speak openly about her hopes for her child. And Nettle looked at her mother and smiled and nodded. They sat on the couch and took clothing from the trunk and laid it out to look at it. I stood and watched them. I think that for a moment, Nettle was caught in her mother’s dream. Or perhaps, I thought to myself, it was the same longing they shared, Molly for a child she was long past bearing and Nettle for a child she was forbidden to bear. I saw Nettle take up a little gown and lay it across her breast as she exclaimed, ‘So tiny! I had forgotten how small babies were; it has been years since Hearth was born.’

‘Oh, Hearth, he was almost the biggest of my babies. Only Just was larger. The things I’d made for Hearth he outgrew within a few months.’

‘I remember that!’ Nettle exclaimed. ‘His little feet hung out of the bottoms of his gown and we’d cover him, only to have him kick all his blankets off a moment later.’

Purest envy choked me. They were gone, both of them, back to a time when I hadn’t existed in either of their lives, back to a cosy, noisy home full of children. I did not begrudge Molly her years of marriage to Burrich. He had been a good man for her. But this was like a slow knife turning in me, to watch them recollect an experience I would never have. I stared at them, the outsider again. And then, as if a curtain had lifted or a door opened, I realized that I excluded myself. I went over and sat down beside them. Molly lifted a tiny pair of knit boots from the chest. She smiled and offered them to me. Without a word, I took them. They scarcely filled the palm of my hand. I tried to imagine the tiny foot that would go into one, and could not.

I looked over at Molly. There were lines at the corners of her eyes and lines framing her mouth. Her rosy, full lips had faded to pale pink arcs. I suddenly saw her not as Molly, but as a woman of some fifty-odd years. Her lush dark hair had thinned and grey streaked it. But she looked at me with such hope and love, her head turned just slightly to one side. And I saw something else in her eyes, something that had not been there ten years ago. Confidence in my love. The wariness that had tinged our relationship was gone, worn to nothing by our last decade together. She finally knew that I loved her, that I would always put her first. I had finally earned her trust.

I looked down at the little booties in my hand and slipped my two fingers inside them. I stood them up on my palm. I danced them a couple of steps on my hand. She reached to still my fingers, and slid the soft grey boots away. ‘Soon enough,’ she told me, and leaned against me. Nettle looked up at me and such gratitude shone in her eyes that I felt I had suddenly won a battle I had not even known I was fighting.

I cleared my throat and managed to speak without huskiness. ‘I want a hot cup of tea,’ I told them, and Molly sat up, exclaiming, ‘You know, that would be exactly what I want right now, myself.’

And despite our weariness from travel, the afternoon passed pleasantly. Much later that night, we shared a dinner that met Cook Nutmeg’s standards, and a jot of brandy that exceeded mine. We had retired to the estate study, where Nettle had refused to look at my careful book-keeping, saying she was certain all was well. Nettle had insisted she must leave in the morning. Molly had tried to dissuade her to no avail. I was nearly dozing in a chair by the fire when Nettle spoke softly from her corner of a settee. ‘Seeing it is much worse than hearing about it.’ She sighed heavily. ‘It’s real. We are losing her.’

I opened my eyes. Molly had left us, saying she wished to see if there was any of that pale sharp cheese left in the larder, as she suddenly fancied it. She’d put her desire for it down to her pregnancy, and Molly-like, had disdained the idea of ringing for a servant at such a late hour. She was beloved by our servants simply because she spared them such thoughtless abuse.

I looked at the place where Molly had been sitting. The imprint of her body was still on the cushions and her scent lingered in the air. I spoke softly. ‘She’s slowly sliding away from me. Today was not too bad. There are days when she is so focused on this “baby” that she speaks of nothing else.’

‘She makes it seem so real,’ Nettle said, her words faltering away between wistfulness and dread.

‘I know. It’s hard. I’ve tried to tell her it’s impossible. And when I do, I feel like I’m being cruel. But today, playing along … that feels crueller now. As if I’ve given up on her.’ I stared at the dying fire. ‘I’ve had to ask the maidservants to indulge her. I’d seen them rolling their eyes after she’d passed by. I rebuked them for it, but I think it only—’

Angry sparks sprang in Nettle’s eyes. She sat up straight. ‘I don’t care if my mother is mad as a hatter! They must be made to treat her with respect. You can’t indulge them in any smirking “tolerance”! She is my mother and your wife. Lady Molly!’

‘I’m not sure how to deal with it without making it worse,’ I confided to her. ‘Molly has always taken care of the running of the household. If I step in and start disciplining the servants, she may resent me usurping her authority. And what can I say to them? We both know your mother’s not pregnant! How long must I order them to maintain this pretence? Where does it end? With the birth of an imaginary child?’

Nettle’s face went pale at my words. For a moment, the planes of her face were white and stark like the frozen flanks of a mountain under snow. Then she abruptly dropped her face into her hands. I looked at the pale parting in her gleaming dark hair. She spoke through her fingers. ‘We’re losing her. It’s only going to get worse. We know that. What will you do when she no longer knows you? When she cannot take care of herself any more? What will become of her?’

She lifted her face. Silent tears gleamed in streaks down her cheek.

I crossed the room and took her hand. ‘I promise this. I will take care of her. Always. I will love her. Always.’ I steeled my will. ‘And I will speak to the servants privately, and tell them that regardless of how long they have worked here, if they value their positions, they will treat Lady Molly as befits the mistress of this household. No matter what they may think of her requests.’

Nettle sniffed and drew her hands free of mine, to wipe the backs of her wrists across her eyes. ‘I know I’m not a child any more. But just the thought of losing her …’

She let her words trail away, her voice stilling as she did not utter the words we both knew welled up her. She still mourned Burrich, the only real father she’d ever known. She did not want to lose her mother as well, and even worse would be to have Molly look at her and not know her.

‘I’ll take care of her,’ I promised again. And you, I thought to myself. And wondered if she would ever let me step into that role. ‘Even if it means pretending for her that I believe she has a child growing inside her. Though it makes me feel false to her when I do so. Today …’ I faltered, guilt welling up in me. I had behaved as if Molly were truly pregnant, indulging her as if she were a fanciful child. Or a madwoman.

‘You were being kind,’ Nettle said quietly. ‘I know my mother. You won’t convince her to give up this delusion. Her mind is unsettled. You may as well be—’

Molly set down the tray with a solid clack on the table. We both jumped guiltily. Molly stared at me, her eyes black. She folded her lips tightly and at first I thought she would yet again ignore our disagreement. But Nettle was right. She stood her ground and spoke plainly. ‘You both think me mad. Well. This is fine, then. But I will tell you plainly that I feel the child move within me and my breasts have begun to swell with milk. The time is not far when you will both have to beg my pardon.’

Nettle and I, caught in our secret worrying, sat dumbstruck. Nettle had no reply for her mother, and Molly turned and stalked from the room. We looked at one another, guilt-stricken. But neither of us went after her. Instead, we soon after sought our beds. I had looked forward, on my ride home, to a sweet reunion with my wife and a shared night. Instead, Molly had sought out the couch in her nursery. I went alone to our bedchamber, and it seemed a cold and empty place.

The very next day, Nettle left, before noon, to return to Buckkeep Castle. She said she had been long away from her Skill-apprentices and that there would be all sorts of neglected work awaiting her. I didn’t doubt her, but neither did I believe that was her prime reason for leaving. Molly hugged her farewell, and a stranger might have thought all was well between mother and daughter. But Molly had not mentioned the baby since she had left us the evening before, nor asked if Nettle would return for the birth.

And in the days that followed, she no longer spoke of her phantom child to me. We ate breakfast together; we spoke of the matters of the estate, and over dinner shared the events of our days. And each of us slept alone. Or, in my case, did not sleep. I did more translation work for Chade in the late-night hours than I had in the previous six months. Ten days after the incident, one late evening, I made bold to seek her in her nursery. The door was closed. I stood before it for several long moments before deciding that I should knock rather than walk in. I tapped, waited, and then knocked more loudly.

‘Who is it?’ Molly’s voice sounded surprised.

‘It’s me.’ I opened the door a crack. ‘May I come in?’

‘I never said you couldn’t,’ she replied tartly. The words stung and yet a smile tugged at my face. I turned slightly away from her lest she see it. Now there was the Molly Redskirts I knew.

‘That’s true,’ I said quietly. ‘But I know that I hurt your feelings, badly, and if you wanted to avoid me for a time, I thought I should not intrude.’

‘Not intrude,’ she said quietly. ‘Fitz, are you certain you are not the one who has been avoiding me? For how many years have I awakened at night to find your side of the bed cool and empty? Slipping out of our bed in the dead of night, to hide away in your dusty little scroll-hole, scribbling until your fingers are all ink?’

I bowed my head to that. I had not realized she was aware of those times. I had been tempted to point out that she had left our bed for this nursery. I put that barb down. It was not time to begin a battle. I was inside her door now, and felt like the wolf the first time he had ventured inside a house. I wasn’t sure where I should stand or if I could sit. She sighed, and sat up on the divan where she had been reclining. She was in her nightrobe, but she moved a half-finished bit of embroidery to make room for me. ‘I suppose I do spend too many hours there,’ I apologized. I sat down beside her. Her scent reached me and I suddenly said, ‘Whenever I smell you, I always want to kiss you.’

She stared at me in astonishment, laughed and then said sadly, ‘Of late, I wondered if you even wanted to be near me at all any more. Old and wrinkly, and now you think me mad …’

I gathered her close before she could say more. I kissed her, the top of her head, the side of her face and then her mouth. ‘I will always want to kiss you,’ I said into her hair.

‘You don’t believe I’m pregnant.’

I didn’t let go of her. ‘You’ve been telling me for over two years that you are pregnant. What am I to think, Molly?’

‘I don’t understand it myself,’ she said. ‘But all I can tell you is that I must have somehow been mistaken at first. I must have thought I was pregnant before I was. Perhaps I knew, somehow, that I was going to be pregnant.’ She leaned her brow on my shoulder. ‘It has been hard for me, to have you gone for days at a time. I know that the maidservants giggle about me behind their hands. They know so little of us. They think it scandalous for a man as young and hale as you to be married to an old woman like me. They gossip that you married me for my money and position! They make me feel an old fool. Who do I have who understands who we are and what we have been to each other? Only you. And when you abandon me, when you think me as foolish as they do, then … Oh, Fitz, I know it’s hard for you to believe it. But I have believed much harder things for your sake and with only your word to go on.’

I felt as if the whole world went still around me. Yes. She had. I’d never stopped to see it from that perspective. I bent my head and kissed her salt-tear cheek. ‘You have.’ I took a breath. ‘I will believe you, Molly.’

She choked on a laugh. ‘Oh, Fitz. Please. No, you won’t. But I’m going to ask you to pretend that you do. Only when we are in here, together. And in return, when I am not in this room, I will pretend I am not pregnant, as best I can.’ She shook her head, her hair rubbing against my cheek. ‘I am sure that will be much easier for the servants. Except for Revel. Our steward seemed absolutely delighted to help me construct this nest.’

I thought of Revel, tall, almost gaunt in his thinness, always grave and correct with me. ‘Was he?’ It didn’t seem believable.

‘Oh, yes. He found the screens with the pansies on them, and had them cleaned before he even told me. I came in here one day, and they were set up around the cradle. And the lace over it, to keep insects away.’

Pansies. From Patience, I knew they were sometimes called heart’s ease. I owed Revel.

She stood, pulling herself out of my arms. She stepped away from me, and I looked at her. Her long nightgown was scarcely revealing, and she had always been a woman of curves. She went to the hearth and I saw that there was a tray set on a stand with tea things on it. I studied her profile. She looked little different to me than she had five years ago. Surely if she were pregnant, I’d be able to tell. I measured the slight swell of her belly, her ample hips and generous breasts and suddenly I was not thinking of babies at all.

She glanced over at me, asking, teapot in hand, ‘Would you like some?’ Then, as I stared at her, her eyes slowly widened and a wicked smile curved her mouth. It was a smile worthy of a naked girl wearing only a holly crown.

‘Oh, indeed I would,’ I replied. As I rose and went to her, she came to meet me. We were gentle and slow with one another, and that night we both slept in her bed in the nursery.

Winter found Withywoods the next day, with a fall of wet snow that brought down the remaining leaves on the birches and lined their graceful branches with white. The stillness that the first snowfall always brings settled like a mantle over the land. Within Withywoods Manor, it suddenly seemed a time for wood fires and hot soup and fresh bread at noon. I had returned to the manor’s study and a clear-flamed fire of apple wood was crackling on the hearth when there was a tap at the door.

‘Yes,’ I called, looking up from a missive from Web.

The door opened slowly and Revel entered. His fitted coat hugged his wide shoulders and narrow waist. He was always impeccably attired and correct in his manners. Decades younger than me, he had a bearing that made me feel like a boy with dirty hands and a stained tunic when he looked down at me. ‘You sent for me, Holder Badgerlock?’

‘I did.’ I set Web’s letter to one side. ‘I wanted to speak to you about Lady Molly’s chamber. The screens with the pansies on them …’

The expectation of my disapproval flickered in his eyes. He drew himself up to his full height and looked down on me with the dignity that a truly good house steward always radiates. ‘Sir. If you please. The screens have not seen use in decades, and yet they are lovely things worthy of display. I know I acted without direct authorization, but Lady Molly has seemed … dispirited of late. Before you departed, you had directed me to see to her needs. I did. As for the cradle, I came upon her sitting at the top of the stairs, all out of breath and near weeping. It is a heavy cradle, sir, and yet she had managed to move it that far on her own. I felt shamed that she had not come to me and simply told me what she wished me to do. And so, with the screens, I tried to anticipate what she would wish. She has always been kind to me.’

He stopped talking. Plainly he felt there was much more he could have said to someone as thick-witted and rock-hearted as I apparently was. I met his gaze and then spoke quietly.

‘As she has to me. I am grateful for your service to her and to the estate. Thank you.’ I had called him in to tell him that I had decided to double his wages. While the gesture still seemed correct, speaking aloud of it suddenly seemed a mercenary thing to do. He had not done this for money. He had repaid a kindness with a kindness. He would discover our largesse when he received his month’s wages, and he would know what it was for. But money was not what would matter to this man. I spoke quietly. ‘You’re an excellent steward, Revel, and we value you highly. I want to be sure you know that.’

He inclined his head slightly. It wasn’t a bow, it was an acceptance. ‘I do now, sir.’

‘Thank you, Revel.’

‘I’m sure you’re welcome, sir.’

And he left the room as quietly as he’d come.

Winter deepened around Withywoods. The days shortened, the snow piled up, and the nights were black and frosty. Molly and I had made our truce and we both kept it. It made life simpler for both of us. I truly think peace was what we most desired. Most early evenings I spent in the room I had come to think of as Molly’s study. She tended to fall asleep there, and I would cover her well and then creep away to my own disorderly den and my work there. So it was, very late one night as we were drawing close to midwinter. Chade had sent me a very intriguing set of scrolls, in a language that was almost OutIslander. There were three illustrations in them, and they seemed to be of standing stones, with small notations at the side that could have been glyphs. This were the sort of puzzle that I dreaded, for I did not have enough clues to solve it, and yet I could not leave it alone. I was working on the scrolls, creating a page beside the first one that duplicated the faded illustrations and substituting the words I could translate and leaving room for the others. I was trying to gain a general idea of what the scroll was about, but was totally mystified by the apparent use of the word ‘porridge’ in the title.

It was late, and I believed myself the only one awake in the house. Wet snow was falling thickly outside and I had closed the dusty curtains against the night. When the wind blew, the wet snow splatted against the glass. I was half-wondering if we’d be snowed in by morning and if the wet snow would put an ice glaze on the grapevines. I looked up abruptly, my Wit-sense stirred and a moment later the door eased open. Molly peered around it.

‘What is it?’ I asked, sudden anxiety making my query sharper than I intended. I could not recall the last time she had sought me out in my study.

She clutched at the door frame. For an instant she was quiet, and I feared I had injured her feelings. Then she spoke through a held breath. ‘I’m here to break my word.’

‘What?’

‘I can’t pretend I’m not pregnant any more. Fitz, I’m in labour. The baby will come tonight.’ A faint smile framed her gritted teeth. An instant later, she took a sudden deep breath.

I stared at her.

‘I’m certain,’ she replied to my unasked question. ‘I felt the first pangs hours ago. I’ve waited until they were strong and closer together, to be sure. The baby is coming, Fitz.’ She waited.

‘Could it be bad food?’ I asked her. ‘The sauce on the mutton at dinner seemed very spicy to me and perhaps—’

‘I’m not sick. And I didn’t eat dinner, not that you noticed. I’m in labour. Eda bless us all, Fitz, I’ve had seven children that were born alive, and two miscarriages in my life. Don’t you think I know what I’m feeling now?’

I stood slowly. There was a faint sheen of sweat on her face. A fever, leading her delusion to deepen? ‘I’ll send for Tavia. She can go for the healer while I help you lie down.’

‘No.’ She spoke the word bluntly. ‘I’m not sick. So I don’t need a healer. And the midwife won’t come. She and Tavia think me just as daft as you do.’ She took a breath and held it. She closed her eyes, folded her lips, and her grip on the door’s edge grew white-knuckled. After a long moment she spoke. ‘I can do this alone. Burrich always helped me with my other births, but I can do this alone if I must.’

Did she mean that to sting as much as it did? ‘Let me help you to your nursery,’ I said. I half-expected her to swat at me as I took her arm, but instead she leaned on me heavily. We walked slowly through the darkened halls, pausing three times, and I thought I might have to carry her. Something was deeply wrong with her. The wolf in me, so long dormant, was alarmed at her scent. ‘Have you vomited?’ I asked her. And ‘Do you have fever?’ She didn’t answer either question.

It took forever to reach her chamber. Inside, a fire burned on the hearth. It was almost too warm in the room. When she sat down on the low couch and groaned with the cramp that took her, I said quietly, ‘I can bring you a tea that would purge you. I really think—’

‘I labour to bring forth your child. If you won’t be any help, then leave me,’ she told me savagely.

I couldn’t stand it. I rose from my seat beside her, turned and walked as far as the door. There I halted. I will never know why. Perhaps I felt that joining her in madness would be better than letting her go there alone. Or perhaps that joining her would be better than remaining in a rational world without her. I changed my voice, letting my love rule it. ‘Molly. Tell me what you need. I’ve never done this. What should I bring, what should I do? Should I call some of the women to attend you?’

Her muscles were tight when I asked; it was a moment before she answered. ‘No. I want none of them. They would only titter and simper at the foolish old woman. So only you would I have here. If you can find the will to believe me. At least within this room, Fitz, keep your word to me. Pretend to believe me.’ Her breath caught again and she leaned forward over her belly. A time passed, and then she told me, ‘Bring a basin of warmed water to bathe the child when he comes. And a clean cloth to dry him. A bit of twine to tie the cord tight. A pitcher of cool water and a cup for me.’ And then she curled forward again, and let out a long, low moan.

And so I went. In the kitchen I filled a pitcher with hot water from the simmering kettle always kept near the hearth. Around me was the comfortable, familiar clutter of the kitchen at night. The fire muttered to itself, crocks of dough were slowly rising for the next day’s bread; a pot of brown beef stock gave off its fragrant aroma near the back of the hearth. I found a basin, and filled a large mug with cold water. I took a clean cloth from a stack there, found a big tray to put it all on and loaded it. I stood for a long moment, breathing in the serenity, the sanity of an organized kitchen in a quiet moment. ‘Oh, Molly,’ I said to the silent walls. Then I bared my courage as if I were drawing a heavy blade, hefted the tray, balanced it, and set off through the quiet halls of Withywoods.

I shouldered the unlatched door open, set the tray down on a table and walked around to the divan by the fireside. The room smelled of sweat. Molly was silent; her head drooped forward on her chest. After all this, had she fallen asleep sitting in front of the fire?

She sat spraddled on the edge of the couch, her nightrobe hiked to her hips. Her cupped hands were between her knees and the tiniest child I had ever seen rested in her hands. I staggered, nearly fell, and then dropped to my knees, staring. Such a small being, streaked with blood and wax. The baby’s eyes were open. My voice shook as I asked, ‘It’s a baby?’

She lifted her eyes and stared at me with the tolerance of years. Stupid, beloved man. Even in her exhaustion, she smiled at me. Triumph in that look and love I did not deserve. No rebuke for my doubts. She spoke softly. ‘Yes. She’s our baby. Here at last.’ The tiny thing was a deep red, with a pale thick umbilical cord coiling from her belly to the afterbirth on the floor at Molly’s feet.

I choked as I tried to take in a breath. Utter joy collided with deepest shame. I had doubted her. I didn’t deserve this miracle. Life would punish me, I was sure of it. My voice sounded childish to me as I begged, against all odds, ‘Is she alive?’

Molly sounded exhausted. ‘She is, but so small. Half the size of a barn cat! Oh, Fitz, how can this be? So long a pregnancy and so small a child.’ She took in a shaky breath, refusing tears for practicality. ‘Bring me the basin of warm water and the soft towels. And something to cut the cord.’

‘Right away!’

I brought them to her and set them at her feet. The baby still rested in her mother’s hands, looking up at her. Molly ran her fingertip across the baby’s small mouth, patted her cheek. ‘You’re so still,’ she said, and her fingers moved to the child’s chest. I saw her press them and feel for a heart beating there. Molly looked up at me. ‘Like a bird’s heart,’ she said.

The infant stirred slightly and took a deeper breath. Suddenly she shivered and Molly held her close to her breast. She looked into the little face as she said, ‘So tiny. We’ve waited for you so long, we’ve waited years. And now you’ve come, and I doubt that you will stay a day.’

I wanted to reassure her, but I knew she was right. Molly had begun to tremble with the fatigue of her labour. Still, she was the one to tie the cord and cut it. She leaned down to test the warm water, and then to slide the baby into it. Gently her hands smoothed the blood away. The tiny skull was coated with downy pale hair.

‘Her eyes are blue!’

‘All babies are born with blue eyes. They’ll change.’ Molly lifted the baby and with an easy knack I envied, transferred her from towel to soft white blanket and swaddled her into a tidy bundle, smooth as a moth’s cocoon. Molly looked at up me and shook her head at my numb astonishment. ‘Take her, please. I need to see to myself now.’

‘I might drop her!’ I was terrified.

Molly’s solemn gaze met mine. ‘Take her. Do not put her down. I do not know how long we may have her. Hold her while you can. If she leaves us, she will leave as we are holding her, not alone in her cradle.’

Her words made the tears course down my cheeks. But I obeyed her, completely meek now in the knowledge of how wrong I had been. I moved to the end of her couch, sat down, and held my new little daughter and looked into her face. Her blue eyes met mine unflinchingly. She did not wail, as I had always believed newborns did. She was utterly calm. And so very still.

I met her gaze; she looked to me as if she knew the answer to every mystery. I leaned in closer, taking her scent in and the wolf in me leapt high. Mine. Suddenly she was obviously mine in every way. My cub, to protect. Mine. From this moment, I would die rather than see harm come to her. Mine. The Wit told me that this little spark of life burned strong. Tiny as she was, she would never be prey.

I glanced at Molly. She was washing herself. I set a forefinger to my child’s brow and very carefully, I extended my Skill toward her. I was not certain of the morality of what I did but I pushed away all compunctions about it. She was too young to ask her permission. I knew clearly what I intended. If I found something wrong with the baby, something physical, I would do whatever I could to mend it, even though it might task my abilities to their limit and might use all the small reserves of strength she had. The child was calm, her deep blue eyes meeting mine as I probed her. Such a tiny body. I felt her heart pumping her blood, her lungs taking in air. She was tiny, but if there was aught else wrong with her, I could not find it. She squirmed feebly, puckering her tiny mouth as if she would cry, but I was firm.

A shadow fell between us. I looked up guiltily. Molly stood over us in a clean, soft robe, already reaching to take the child back from me. As I handed her over, I said quietly, ‘She’s perfect, Molly. Inside and out.’ The baby settled into her embrace, visibly relaxing. Had she resented my Skill-probe? I looked aside from Molly, ashamed of my ignorance as I asked, ‘Is she truly so small for a newborn?’

Her words struck me like arrows. ‘My love, I’ve never seen a baby this small survive more than an hour.’ Molly had opened the baby’s wrappings and was looking at her. She unfolded the tiny hand and looked at her fingers, stroked the small skull, and then looked at her little red feet. She counted each toe. ‘But maybe … she didn’t come early, that’s for certain! And every part of her is formed well; she even has hair, though it’s so blonde you can barely see it. All my other children were dark. Even Nettle.’

The last she added as if she needed to remind me that I had fathered her first daughter, even if I had not been there to see her born or watch her grow. I needed no such reminder. I nodded and reached out to touch the baby’s fist. She pulled it in close to her chest and closed her eyes. I spoke quietly. ‘My mother was Mountain-born,’ I said quietly. ‘Both she and my grandmother were fair-haired and blue-eyed. Many of the folk from that region are so. Perhaps I’ve passed it on to our child.’

Molly looked startled. I thought it was because I seldom spoke of the mother who had given me up when I was a small child. I no longer denied to myself that I could recall her. She’d kept her fair hair bound back in a single long braid down her back. Her eyes had been blue, her cheekbones high and her chin narrow. There had never been any rings on her hands. ‘Keppet’ she had named me. When I thought of that distant Mountain childhood, it seemed more like a tale I had heard than something that belonged to me.

Molly broke into my wandering thoughts. ‘You say she is perfect, “inside and out”. Did you use the Skill-magic to know that?’

I looked at her, guiltily aware of how uneasy that magic made her. I lowered my eyes and admitted, ‘Not only the Skill but the Wit tells me that we have a very small but otherwise healthy child here, my love. The Wit tells me the life spark in her is strong and bright. Tiny as she is, I find no reason that she will not live and thrive. And grow.’ A light kindled in Molly’s face as if I had given her a treasure of inestimable value. I leaned over and traced a soft circle on the babe’s cheek. She startled me by turning her face toward my touch, her little lips puckering.

‘She’s hungry,’ Molly said and laughed aloud, weakly but gratefully. She arranged herself in a chair, opened her robe and set the babe to her bared breast. I stared at what I had never seen before, moved far past tears. I edged closer to her, knelt beside them on the floor and carefully set my arm around my wife and looked down at the suckling infant.

‘I’ve been such an idiot,’ I said. ‘I should have believed you from the start.’

‘Yes. You should have,’ she agreed, and then she assured me, ‘No harm done,’ and leaned into my embrace. And that quarrel was ever done between us.

SIX
The Secret Child

The hunger for using the Skill does not diminish with use or with age. Curiosity disguises itself as a legitimate desire for wisdom and adds its temptation. Only discipline can keep it in check. For this reason, it is best that members of a coterie are kept in proximity to one another throughout the span of their lives, so that they can reinforce with one another the proper use of the Skill. It is also vital that journeymen coteries monitor the apprentices and that masters monitor both journeymen and apprentice coteries. With your Solos, be most vigilant of all. Often Solos exhibit an adventurous and arrogant nature, and this is what keeps them from successfully joining a coterie. It is absolutely essential that the Skillmaster be vigilant in overseeing every Solo. If a Solo becomes secretive and excessively private in his habits, it may be necessary for all Masters of the Skill to convene and discuss containing his magic, lest it gain control of the Solo and he hurt himself or others.

But who shall watch over the shepherd?

This question presents the problem neatly. The Skillmaster, at his elevated level, can be disciplined only by himself. This is why the position must never be political, nor granted as an honour, but only bestowed to the most learned, the most powerful and the most disciplined of Skill-users. When we convened to discuss the abuse of the Skill, the horrific damage inflicted on Cowshell Village and the fall of Skillmaster Clarity, we had to confront what the politicization of this title had done to us all. Unchecked, Skillmaster Clarity entered dreams, influenced thinking, passed judgment on those he considered evil, rewarded his ‘good’ with advantages in trading and arranged marriages in this small community, all in an ill-considered attempt ‘to create a harmonious town where jealousy, envy, and excessive ambition were checked for the good of all’. Yet we have witnessed what this lofty goal actually created: a village where folk were compelled to act against their own natures, where their emotions could not be expressed, and where ultimately, in a single season, suicides and murders took the lives of more than half the population.

In considering the magnitude of the suffering that was created, we can only find fault with ourselves that the Master level of Skill-users remained ignorant of what Skillmaster Clarity was doing until the damage had been done. In order to avoid such a disastrous misuse of the Skill in the future, the following actions have been taken.

Skillmaster Clarity is to be sealed from use of the Skill in any form henceforth. The selection of a new Skillmaster will be made by a process in which the queen or king suggests three candidates from among the Masters and a vote of the masters chooses the new Skillmaster. The vote will be done in secrecy, the ballots counted publicly and the results announced by three randomly chosen minstrels dedicated to the truth.

This gathering of the masters concludes that no Solo must ever hold the rank of Skillmaster again. If Clarity had had a coterie of his own, he would have been unable to conceal his actions.

Henceforth, the Skillmaster shall submit himself to a review of all the masters at least once a year. If he is found incompetent by a vote of the masters, he will be replaced. In extreme cases of abuse or poor judgement, he will be sealed.

Compensation and care will be provided to the survivors of the Cowshell Village Tragedy. While it cannot be revealed to any of them that the Skill was the source of the madness that overtook their village that night, all amends that can be made to them must be made, with open-handed generosity and no cessation of such reparation until their natural deaths.

Resolution of the Masters following the Cowshell Village Tragedy

That first evening that the baby existed outside of Molly’s body, I was dazed by her. Long after Molly fell asleep with the baby cradled against her, I sat by the fire and watched them both. I invented a hundred futures for her, all of them bright with promise. Molly had told me she was small; I dismissed that concern. All babies were small! She would be fine, and more than fine. She would be clever, this little girl of mine, and lovely. She would dance like thistledown on the wind, and ride as if she were part of her mount. Molly would teach her of bees and to know the names and properties of every herb in the garden; I would teach her to read and to figure. She would be a prodigy. I imagined her little hands stained with ink as she helped with a transcription, or copied over the illustrations that would never go right for me. I imagined her on the floor of the ballroom of Buckkeep Castle, twirling in a scarlet gown. My heart was full of her and I wanted the world to celebrate with me.

I laughed aloud, ruefully, at how astounded everyone would be to hear of her. Nettle and I had not noised about Molly’s claim to be pregnant. We had thought it a sorrow we should keep to ourselves. And now, how foolish we would both look when the word went out that I had a child, a little daughter, fair as a daisy. I imagined a gathering to welcome her to the world. Her brothers would come, with their families, and Hap. Oh, that I could somehow send word to the Fool of the joy that had come into my life! I smiled to think of it and longed that it could be so. There would be music and feasting on her naming day. Kettricken, and Dutiful and his queen, and the princes, even Chade would make the journey to Withywoods.

And with that thought, my elation began to unravel. A child imagined is not the same as a child sleeping in her mother’s arms. What would Kettricken and Chade see when they looked at her? I could imagine Chade’s scepticism that such a fair-haired child could be of Farseer lineage. And Kettricken? If she recognized that my own Mountain mother had likely been fair and acknowledged the babe as the daughter of FitzChivalry Farseer, what then? What would she think she had the right to ask of my daughter? Would this infant, like Nettle, be seen as a secret reserve of Farseer blood, an heir that could be produced if the recognized line should somehow fail?

Trepidation rose in me, a cold tide that drowned my heart in fear. How could I have longed for this child and never considered the dangers that would surround her, simply by virtue of her being my daughter? Chade would want to test her for the Skill. Kettricken would believe that the Farseer throne had the right to select a husband for her.

I rose and soundlessly paced the room, a wolf guarding his den. Molly slept on, the sleep of exhaustion. The swaddled babe next to her stirred softly and then subsided. I had to protect them, to give the child a future she could determine for herself. My mind swirled with ideas. Flight. We would pack tomorrow and flee; we’d travel to where we could settle as simply Molly and Tom and our baby … no. Molly would never consent to breaking off contact with her other children, nor could I just walk away from those I loved, no matter what threat they might seem to present right now.

So what could I do? I looked at them, sleeping so peacefully, so vulnerable. I would keep them safe, I vowed to myself. It suddenly came to me that the child’s fair hair and blue eyes might be in our favour. No one would look at her and assume that she was the natural child of Molly or me. We could claim she was a foundling, taken in. The falsehood blossomed in my mind. So easy to claim! Not even Nettle need know; once I had shown Molly the threat to the child, perhaps she would agree to the deception. Nettle would believe we had adopted the babe to placate her mother’s longing for an infant. No one need know that she was truly a Farseer. One simple lie could keep her safe.

If I could get Molly to agree to it.

That night, I went to our room for bedding and took it back down to the nursery. I slept across the door, on the floor, like a wolf guarding his den and cub. It felt right.

The next day was filled with both sweetness and trepidation. By the light of dawn, I saw my plans for denying my child as the foolishness it was. The servants in a great house know all, and Revel would immediately know that no foundling had been delivered to us the night before. I could not possibly conceal from the staff that Molly had borne her child, so I warned them that the babe was small, and her mother weary. I am sure they considered me quite as mad as they had Molly as I insisted that I would take Molly’s meals in to her and that she must absolutely not be disturbed. Not only my veracity as to there being a baby in the house but my authority as a male in such a female area was instantly dismissed. By ones and twos and threes, the women of the Withywoods staff each found some pressing errand that demanded entrance to the nursery. First it was Cook Nutmeg, insisting that she must speak with Molly to know exactly what her mistress would wish to have made for her luncheon and supper on such a momentous day. Her daughter Mild slipped in behind her, a slender shadow to her mother’s generous figure. Molly had been unaware of my efforts to keep her undisturbed. I could not blame her for a certain starchy smugness as she presented the baby to Cook and her daughter.

Molly, I think, was aware only that she was proving them wrong, that she had been pregnant and that all their snide dismissal of her insistence that a nursery be prepared was now proven wrong. She was regal as a queen as they advanced to look at the tiny bundle she held so protectively. Cook held her control of herself, smiling at what a ‘dear little thing’ our baby was. Mild was less schooled to decorum. ‘She’s so tiny!’ the girl exclaimed. ‘Like a doll! And pale as milk! Such blue eyes! Is she blind?’

‘Of course not,’ Molly replied, gazing at her child adoringly. Cook swatted her daughter and hissed, ‘Manners!’

‘My mother was fair. With blue eyes,’ I asserted.

‘Well, then, that explains it,’ Cook Nutmeg asserted with an unnatural amount of relief. She bobbed a curtsey to Molly. ‘Well, Mistress, shall it be the river fish or the salt cod then? For all know fish is best for a woman who has just delivered a child.’

‘River fish, please,’ Molly replied, and with that vast decision settled, Cook whisked herself and her child from the room.

Scarcely had enough time elapsed for Cook to return to her duties before two housemaids presented themselves, asking if the baby or her mother required fresh linens. Each bore an armful and they all but trampled me as they overran my position in the door, insisting, ‘Well, if not now, then soon, for all know how quickly a baby will soil her crib.’

And again I witnessed the unnerving spectacle of women barely controlling their shock and then expressing admiration for my daughter. Molly seemed blind to it, but every instinct I had alarmed me. Well I knew how small creatures that were too different were treated. I’d seen crippled chicks pecked to death, witnessed cows that nudged away a weak calf, the runt piglet pushed away from a nipple. I had no reason to think that people were any better than animals in that regard. I would keep watch.

Even Revel presented himself, bearing a tray with low vases of flowers on it. ‘Winter pansies. So hardy that they bloom through most of the winter in Lady Patience’s hothouses. Not that they are truly hot any more. They are not as well tended as they once were.’ He rolled a look in my direction, one I steadfastly ignored. And then Molly honoured him as she had none of the others. Into his gangly arms she gave over the tiny bundle of child. I watched him catch his breath as he took her. His long-fingered hand spanned her chest and a doting smile made foolish his usually-sombre face. He looked up at Molly, their eyes met, and I was as close to jealous as a man could feel to see them share their mutual delight in her. He spoke not a word as he held her, and only gave her back when a housemaid tapped at the door and requested his expertise. Before he left, he carefully arranged each vase of little flowers, so that the flowers and the screens echoed one another charmingly. It made Molly smile.

That first day of her life, I kept up with the bare minimum of the supervision and work of running the estate. Every moment I could spare, I was in the nursery. I watched Molly and our child, and as I did, my trepidation changed to wonder. The infant was such a tiny entity. Each glimpse of her seemed a wonder. Her tiny fingers, the whorl of pale hair at the back of her neck, the delicate pink of her ears: to me it seemed amazing that such a collection of wondrous parts could simply have grown so secretly inside my lady wife. Surely she was the dedicated work of some magical artist rather than the product of chance love. When Molly left to bathe, I stayed by her cradle. I watched her breathe.

I had no desire to pick her up. She seemed too delicate a creature for me to have in my hands. Like a butterfly, I thought. I feared that with a touch I might damage the shimmer of life that kept her moving. Instead I watched her sleep, the minuscule rise and fall of the blanket that covered her. Her pink lips moved in and out in sleepy mimicry of nursing. When her mother returned, I observed them more intently than if she and Molly were players acting out a tale. Molly was as I had never seen her, so calm and competent and focused as a mother. It healed something in me, a gulf I had never known existed until she filled it. So this was what a mother was! My child was so safe and cared for in her embrace. That she had been a mother seven times before made it seem no less wondrous to me. I wondered, as I must, about the woman who had held and watched me so. A wistful sorrow rose in me as I wondered if that woman still lived, if she knew at all what had become of me. Did my little daughter’s features mirror hers at all? But when I looked at her sleeping profile, I saw only how unique she was.

That night, Molly climbed the stairs with me to our bedchamber. She lay down with the swaddled child in the centre of the bed, and when I joined them there, I felt as if I formed the other half of a shell around a precious seed. Molly dropped off to sleep immediately, one of her hands resting lightly on our slumbering baby. I lay perfectly still on the edge of the bed, preternaturally aware of the tiny life that rested between us. Slowly I moved my hand until I could stretch out one of my fingers and touch Molly’s hand. Then I closed my eyes and skimmed sleep. I woke when the baby stirred and whimpered. Even without light in the room, I felt how Molly shifted her to put her to the breast. I listened to the small sounds the babe made as she suckled and Molly’s deep slow breathing. Again, I dipped down into sleep.

I dreamed.

I was a boy again, at Buckkeep Castle, and I walked along the top of a stone wall near the herb gardens. It was a warm and sunny spring day. Bees were busy in the fragrant blossoms of a heavy-laden cherry tree that leaned over the wall. I slowed my balancing act as I stepped through the reaching embrace of the pink-petalled branches. Half-concealed there, I froze at the sound of voices. Children were shouting excitedly, obviously in the grip of some competitive game. A longing to join them filled me.

But even in the grip of the dream, I knew that was impossible. Within Buckkeep Castle, I was neither meat nor fish. I was too common to seek friends among the well-born and my illegitimate blood too noble to allow me to play with the children of the servants. So I listened, keenly envious, and in a moment a small, lithe figure came eeling through the gate to the herb garden, pushing it almost closed behind him. He was a scrawny child, clad all in black save for his white sleeves. A close-fitting black cap confined all but the ends of his pale hair. He went skipping lightly across the garden, hurtling over the herb beds without breaking a leaf to land on a stone path with a near-soundless scuff before flinging himself over the next bed. He moved almost in silence, yet his noisy pursuers were not far behind. They flung the gate open with a shout just as he slid behind a climbing rose on a trellis.

I held my breath for him. His hiding place was not perfect. Spring was young, and he was a black shadow behind the slender branches and unfurling green leaves of the espaliered rose. A smile bent my mouth as I wondered who would win this game. Other children were spilling into the garden, half a dozen of them. Two girls and four boys, all probably within three years of my own age. Their dress revealed them as the children of servants. Two of the older boys were already clad in Buckkeep blue tunics and hose, and probably were truant from lesser tasks about the keep.

‘Did he come in here?’ one of the girls cried in a shrill voice.

‘He had to!’ a boy shouted, but there was a note of uncertainty in his voice. The pursuers spread out quickly, each competing to see who should first spot their quarry. I stood very still, heart beating fast, wondering if they might see me and suddenly include me in their game. Even knowing where the boy hid, I could only just make out his silhouette. His pale fingers gripped the trellis. I could see the very slight rise and fall of his chest that betrayed how long he had been running.

‘He went past the gate! Come on!’ one of the elder boys decided, and like a pack of dogs whipped off a fox the children surged back, milling about him as he led the way back to the gate. Behind them, their prey had turned and was already seeking handholds in the sun-warmed stone wall behind the trellis. I saw him take a step up it, and then a shout from one of the seekers betrayed that someone had glanced back and caught that motion.

‘He’s there!’ A girl shouted, and the pack raced back into the garden. As the black-clad boy spidered up the tall wall, the children hastily stooped. In an instant, the air was full of flung earth clods and rocks. They hit the rosebush, the trellis, the wall, and I heard the hollow thuds as they hammered against the slim youth’s back. I heard his hoarse gasp of pain, but he kept his grip on the wall and climbed.

The game was suddenly not a game at all, but a cruel hunt. Splayed on the wall, he could not seek cover, and as he climbed the hunters stooped for more rocks and clods. I could have cried out to them to stop. But I knew that if I did, it would not save him. I would simply become an extra target for them.

One of the stones hit the back of his head hard enough to snap his head forward against the wall. I heard the slap of flesh on stone, and saw how he halted, half-stunned, fingers slipping. But he did not cry out again. He shuddered, and then began to move again, more swiftly. His feet slipped, gained purchase, slipped and then he had a hand on the top of the wall. As if gaining that goal had changed the game, the other children surged forward. He reached the top of the wall, clung there for the bare instant that it took his eyes to meet mine, and then he tipped over onto the other side. The blood running down his chin had been shockingly red against his pasty face.

‘Go round, go round!’ one of the girls was shrieking, and yelping like hounds, the other children turned and poured back out of the garden. I heard the harsh clang of the gate as they flung it closed behind them, and the wild pattering of their feet on the path. They were laughing wildly as they ran. A moment later, I heard a shrill and desperate scream.

I awoke. I was breathing as harshly as if I’d just fought a bout. My nightshirt was sweated to my chest and twisted about me. Disoriented, I sat up and fought free of the blanket.

‘Fitz!’ Molly rebuked me as she flung a sheltering arm over our child. ‘What are you thinking?’

Abruptly I was myself again, a grown man, not a horrified child. I crouched in our bed, next to Molly, next to our tiny baby that I might have crushed in my thrashing. ‘Did I hurt her?’ I cried out in horror, and in response the baby began a thin wailing.

Molly reached across and seized my wrist. ‘Fitz. It’s all right. You just woke her, that’s all. Lie down. It was just a dream.’

After all our years together she was familiar with my nightmares. She knew, to my chagrin, that it could be hazardous to wake me from one. Now I felt shamed as a whipped dog. Did she think me a danger to our child? ‘I think I’d best sleep somewhere else,’ I offered.

Molly did not let go of my wrist. She rolled onto her side, snugging the baby closer to her. In response, the infant gave a small hiccup and immediately began to root for a nipple. ‘You will sleep right here beside us,’ Molly declared. Before I could say anything else, she laughed softly and said, ‘She thinks she’s hungry again.’ She released her grip on me to free her breast for the child. I lay very still as she arranged herself and then listened to the small, contented sounds of a young creature filling her belly. They both smelled so good, the baby with her infant smell and Molly’s femaleness. I suddenly felt large and brutal and male, an intruder in the safety and peace of domesticity.

I began to ease away from them. ‘I should—’

‘You should stay right where you are.’ She caught my wrist again, and tugged on it, pulling me nearer to both of them. She was not content until I was close enough that she could reach up and run her fingers through my hair. Her touch was light, lulling, as she lifted the sweaty curls from my brow. I closed my eyes to her touch, and after a few moments, my awareness drifted.

The dream that had faded into obscurity when I awoke painted itself into my mind again. I had to force myself to breathe gently and slowly despite how my chest constricted. A dream, I told myself. Not a memory. I had never hidden and watched as the other children of the keep tormented the Fool. Never.

But I might have, my conscience insisted. If I had been in such a place and time, I might have. Any child would. As one does at such an hour and after such a dream, I sieved my memories for connections, trying to discover why such an unsettling dream had invaded my sleep. There were none.

None except the memories of how the children of the keep had spoken of King Shrewd’s pale jester. The Fool was there, in my childhood memories, as far back as the first day I had arrived at Buckkeep. He had been there before I was, and if he were to be believed, he had been waiting for me, all that time. Yet it had been years before our encounters in Buckkeep Castle had progressed beyond a rude gesture from him in the hallway or unflattering imitations of me as he followed me down a corridor. I had avoided him as assiduously as the other children had. I had not, I thought as I granted myself an exemption from guilt, treated him with cruelty. I had never mocked him or even expressed abhorrence of him in any way. No. I had merely avoided him. I had believed him a nimble, silly fellow, a tumbler who delighted the king with his antics, but was, for all that, rather simple-minded. If anything, I had pitied him, I told myself. Because he was so different.

Just as my daughter would be so different from all her playmates.

Not all children in Buck were dark-eyed and dark-haired and warm-skinned, but the preponderance of playmates she would find would be so. And if she did not grow quickly to match them in size, if she remained tiny and pale, what then? What sort of a childhood would she have?

Cold began in my belly and radiated up to my heart. I moved even closer to Molly and my child. They both slept now, but I did not. Vigilant as a watching wolf, I put my arm lightly across both of them. I would protect her, I promised myself and Molly. No one would mock her or torment her in any way. Even if I had to keep her secret from the entire outside world, I would keep her safe.

SEVEN
The Presentation

Once upon a time there was a good man and his wife. They had both worked hard all their lives, and slowly fortune had favoured them with everything that they could desire save one. They had no child.

One day as the wife was walking in her garden and weeping that she had no child, a pecksie came out of the lavender bush and said to her, ‘Woman, why do you weep?’

‘I weep that I have no babe of my own,’ the woman said.

‘Oh, as to that, how foolish you are,’ said the pecksie. ‘If you but say the word, I can tell you how a babe can be in your arms before the year is out.’

‘Tell me then!’ the woman implored.

The pecksie smiled. ‘As to that, it is easily done. Tonight, just as the sun kisses the horizon, set out on the ground a square of silk, taking care that it rests flat on the ground with never a wrinkle in it. And tomorrow, whatever is under the silk is yours.’

The woman hastened to do as she was bid. As the sun touched the horizon, she set the silk flat to the ground, with never a wrinkle. But as the garden darkened and she hurried back to her house, a curious mouse came to the silk, sniffed it, and scampered across it, leaving a tiny wrinkle at the edge.

In the earliest light of dawn, the woman hastened to the garden. She heard small sounds and saw the silk moving. And when she lifted the square of silk, she found a perfect child with bright black eyes. But the babe was no bigger than the palm on her hand …

Old Buckkeep Tale

Ten days after our baby’s birth, I finally resolved that I must make confession to Molly. I dreaded it, but there was no avoiding it, and delaying it any longer was not going to make it easier.

Since both Nettle and I had doubted Molly’s pregnancy, we had not shared the news with anyone outside our immediate family. Nettle had informed her brothers, but only in the context that their mother was ageing and her mind had begun to wander. The lads all had busy lives of their own, and in Chivalry’s case, that meant three youngsters as well as a wife and a holding to tend to. They were far too caught up in their own lives and wives and children to give more than a passing worry that their mother might be losing her mind. Nettle and Tom, they were sure, would handle any crisis in that area, and in any case, what could any of them do about their mother’s increasing senility? It is the way of the young to accept the debilitations of old age very gracefully on behalf of their elderly parents. And now there was a baby to explain to them. And not just to them, but to the whole rest of the world.

I had confronted this difficulty by ignoring it. No one beyond Withywoods had been told. Not even to Nettle had I passed the news.

But now I had to admit that to Molly.

I armed myself for the task. I had requested from the kitchen a tray of the little sweet biscuits Molly loved, along with a dish of thick, sweetened cream and raspberry preserves. A large pot of freshly-brewed black tea joined it on my tray. I assured Tavia that I was perfectly capable of carrying a tray, and set out for Molly’s nursery. On the way, I arrayed my reasons as if I were facing a battle and setting my weapons to hand. First, Molly had been weary and I had not wanted any guests to trouble her. Second, there was the baby herself, so tiny and possibly frail. Molly herself had told me she might not survive, and surely keeping her undisturbed had been for the best. Third, I never wanted anyone to put any obligations on our baby beyond her need to be herself … No. That was not a reason to share with Molly. Not right now, at least.

I managed to open the door of the room without dropping the tray. I set it down carefully on a low table and then managed to move the small table with the tray on it so that it was next to Molly’s seat without oversetting anything. She had the baby on her shoulder and was humming as she patted her back. The soft gown hung far past our daughter’s feet and her arms and hands were lost in the sleeves.

Molly had a honeysuckle candle burning; it lent a sharp sweet scent to the room. There was an apple-wood fire burning in the small hearth, and no other light: it made the room as cosy as a cottage. She enjoyed the luxury of not worrying constantly about money, but she had never become completely comfortable with the life of a noble lady. ‘I like to do for myself,’ she had told me more than once when I had suggested that a personal maid was entirely appropriate to her new station. The larger work of the manor, the scrubbing and dusting, cooking and laundering, that the servants might do. But Molly was the one who dusted and swept our bedchamber, who spread fresh sun-dried linens on our bed or warmed the feather bed before the hearth on a cold night. In that chamber, at least, we remained Molly and Fitz.

The pansy screens had been moved to catch and hold the warmth of the fire. The burning logs crackled softly and shadows danced in the room. The baby was close to sleep in her mother’s arms when I set down the table and the tray.

‘What’s this?’ Molly asked with a startled smile.

‘I just thought we might have some quiet time, and perhaps a bite of something sweet.’

Her smile widened. ‘I can’t think of anything I’d like better!’

‘And true for me as well.’ I sat down beside them, careful not to jostle her. I leaned around her to look into my daughter’s tiny face. She was red, her pale brows drawn together in concentration. Her hair was only wisps, her fingernails smaller than a fish’s scale and as delicate. For a time, I just looked at her.

Molly had taken a biscuit and dipped it in the raspberry preserves and then scooped a small amount of cream onto it. ‘It smells and tastes like summer,’ she said after a moment. I poured tea for both of us, and the fragrance of it mingled with the scent from the raspberries. I took a biscuit for myself, and was more generous with both jam and cream than she had been.

‘It does,’ I agreed. For a short time, we simply shared food and tea and the warmth of the fire. Outside a light snow was falling. We were here, inside, safe and warm as a den. Perhaps tomorrow would be a better time to tell her.

‘What is it?’

I turned startled eyes to her. She shook her head at me. ‘You’ve sighed twice and shifted about as if you have fleas but aren’t allowed to scratch. Out with it.’

It was like ripping a bandage off a wound. Do it quickly. ‘I didn’t tell Nettle the baby was born. Or send your letters to the boys.’

She stiffened slightly and the baby opened her eyes. I felt the effort Molly made to relax and be calm for the infant’s sake. ‘Fitz. Why ever not?’

I hesitated. I didn’t want to anger her, but I desperately wanted my own way about this. I finally spoke, my words awkward. ‘I thought we might keep her a secret for a time. Until she was bigger.’

Molly shifted her hand on the baby. I saw how she measured the tiny chest, less than the span of her fingers. ‘You’ve realized how different she is,’ she said quietly. ‘How small.’ Her voice was husky.

I nodded at her. ‘I heard the maids talking. I wish they hadn’t seen her. Molly, they were frightened of her. “Like a doll come to life, so tiny and with those pale blue eyes always staring. Like she ought to be blind but instead she’s looking right through you.” That’s what Tavia said to Mild. And Mild said she “wasn’t natural”. That no child that tiny and young should seem as alert as she is.’

It was as if I had hissed at a cat. Molly’s eyes narrowed and her shoulders tightened. ‘They came in here to tidy yesterday. I’d told them I didn’t need their help, but that’s why they came in, I’m sure. To see her. Because yesterday I took her to the kitchen with me, and Cook Nutmeg saw her. She said, “The little mite hasn’t grown a bit yet, has she?” She has, of course. But not enough for Cook to notice.’ She clenched her teeth. ‘Let them go. All of them. The maids and Cook. Send them all away.’ There was as much pain as anger in her voice.

‘Molly.’ I kept my voice calm as I called her back to reason. ‘They’ve been here for years. Mild’s cradle was in that kitchen, and only last year she took employment with us as a scullery girl. She’s scarcely more than a child, and this has always been her home. Patience hired Cook Nutmeg, all those years ago. Tavia has been with us sixteen years, and her mother Salin before her. Her husband works in the vineyards. It will cause hard feelings among the whole staff if we let them go! And it would cause talk. And rumours that there was something about our babe that we needed to hide. And we’d know nothing of those we hired to replace them.’ I rubbed my face, and then added more quietly, ‘They need to stay. And perhaps we need to pay them well to be sure of their loyalty.’

‘We already pay them well,’ Molly snapped. ‘We’ve always been generous with them. We’ve always hired their children as they came of age to be useful. When Tavia’s husband broke his leg and had to sit out the harvest that year, we kept him on. And Cook Nutmeg spends more time sitting than cooking these days, but we’ve never spoken of letting her go. We simply hired more help. Fitz, are you seriously saying that I need to bribe them not to think ill of my baby? Do you think they’re a danger to her? Because if they are, I’ll kill them both.’

‘If I thought they were a danger, I’d already have killed them,’ I retorted. The words horrified me as they came out of my mouth, because I recognized they were absolutely true.

Any other woman might have been alarmed by what I had said. But I saw Molly relax, comforted by my words. ‘Then you love her?’ she asked quietly. ‘You aren’t ashamed of her? Appalled that I’ve given you such a peculiar child?’

‘Of course I love her!’ The question jolted me. How could she doubt me? ‘She’s my daughter, the child we hoped for all those years! How could you think I wouldn’t love her?’

‘Because some men wouldn’t,’ she said simply. She turned the child and held her on her knees for my inspection. It woke her, but she didn’t cry. She looked up at both of us with her wide blue eyes. She was nearly lost in the soft gown. Even the neck opening was too large for her, baring a small shoulder. Molly tugged it closed. ‘Fitz. Let’s say aloud what we both know. She’s a strange little thing. I was pregnant so long; I know, you doubt that, but trust me in this. I carried her inside me for over two years. Perhaps even longer than that. And yet she was born so tiny. Look at her now. She seldom cries, but she watches, just as Tavia said. Still too young to even hold her head up, but she looks so knowing. She watches, and her eyes go from you to me as we speak, as if she listens and already knows every word we say.’

‘Maybe she does,’ I said with a smile, but I didn’t give any credence to her words. Molly folded her close in her arms again and forced out words. She didn’t look at me as she spoke them. ‘Any other man would look at her and call me a whore. Hair pale as a spring lamb and such blue eyes. Any other man would doubt that this was your child.’

I laughed out loud. ‘Well, I don’t! She is mine. Mine and yours. Given to us as miraculously as any child bestowed by the pecksies in an old tale. Molly. You know I have the Wit. And I tell you plainly, from the first time I scented her, I knew her as mine. And yours. Ours. I have never doubted that.’ I drew one of Molly’s hands free from the baby, unfolded her clenched fingers and kissed her palm. ‘And I have never doubted you.’

Gently I pulled her closer to lean on me. I found a curl of her hair and twined it about my finger. It took a bit of waiting, but I felt her clenched muscles ease. She relaxed. For a short time, there was peace. The fire muttered softly to itself and outside the wind wound through the ancient willows that gave the place its name. We were a simple family for a few heartbeats. Then I girded up my courage and spoke again.

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