To Prince FitzChivalry
Sir. For many years I have held your secret as closely as you have held mine. My king entrusted it to me that I might better understand all that you did in that difficult time. My pride had been gravely injured by the ruses that you and your friend Lord Golden had played upon me. I would let you know that for years now I have better understood your role in those events. I do not forget all you have done for me. I recall well that but for you I would not be alive today. I write to you to remind you that I remain ever in your debt, and that if there is ever any way in which I can serve you, I beg that you will ask it of me.
Please know I make this offer with all sincerity.
Lord Civil Bresinga
The roan mare lifted herself into a gallop and we were through the gate before anyone had a chance to either challenge us or wave us through. She was a spirited creature and seemed to relish the idea of a night gallop. Her Wit shimmered between us, seeking a confirmation from me that we would become the best of friends. But my heart was frozen with fear and I held myself small and still. Her hooves threw up chunks of packed snow from the carriageway, and the wind of our passage squeezed my face in an icy grip. A cart trail turned off toward the Witness Stones. The snowy road was less packed and her pace slowed despite my efforts to hurry her. I blessed the brief break in the storms that let the moon and starlight reflect from the snowy fields. I pressed her and as the trail became just a rumpling in the deep snow, she lunged and surged through it. Long before we reached the stones, I had made my decision. Regal’s apprentices and journeymen had taken horses through Skill-pillars before. True, some had lost their wits doing it, but I was far more seasoned at the Skill than they had been. And my need was far greater.
At the summit of the hill, I pulled her in, let her breathe, and then reined her close to the stones. Roan. With me. I pressed my Wit against all her senses, and it shocked me when she welcomed me. She tossed her head and showed me one white-rimmed eye as I slapped the stone with a bared hand and simultaneously wheeled her in. For a long moment she leapt through a starlit sky, and then we plunged out and she landed, stiff-legged and heaving under me, on the top of Gallows Hill. A three-day journey done in an instant. Wind and falling snow had erased almost every trace of my previous passage. The roan tossed her head, eyes and nostrils wide. Her strange exhilaration swept through me. I fought through a wave of vertigo before I found both common sense and my Wit, then wrapped her in reassurance and comfort, praised her and promised her warmth and oats and fresh water. I walked her down the snowy hill. A small bit of patience now would pay off in the stamina to finish the ride.
Once our path met with a packed trail, I nudged her to a trot, and then as we came to a road, I pushed her up to a gallop. When I felt her begin to labour beneath me, I pulled her in, and again we walked. I had never had a deep faith in either Eda or El, but that night I prayed to Eda that I would find my child hidden but safe. I tormented myself with a thousand theories as to what might have happened. She had been trapped in the walls without food or water. She had been in the stables when they burned. Smoke had overcome her. Shun had done something dreadful to her and then fled after setting the house afire.
But none of my wild theories would explain why my household staff would claim to know nothing of Lady Bee or Lady Shun. I chewed my information a dozen different ways but made a meal from none of it. The night was cold and weariness welled in me. The closer I came to Withywoods, the less inclination I felt to be there. I should have stopped at Oaksbywater for the night. The thought surprised me and I shook my head to clear it from my mind. I pushed the mare back to a gallop, but I felt more heavy-hearted than ever when I saw the lights of Withywoods through the trees.
Steam was rising from the roan’s withers when I pulled her in before the manor house. Even in the cold night, I could smell the stench of the burned stables and the animals that had been in it. The loss of the building and the horses were a separate stabbing blow that made real the possibility that I had lost my little daughter as well. But as I swung down from the saddle, shouting for servants and stableboys, my heart lifted that I could see no damage to the house. The fire had not spread. I suddenly felt incredibly weary and woolly-witted. Bee, I said to myself, and pushed the haze of sleepiness away.
Chade. I’m here. Stables burned.
My Skill-message went nowhere. It was a terrible sensation, as if for one moment I was smothered and fighting for breath. Chade! Nettle! Dutiful! Thick! With each effort, the sense of suffocation increased. The Skill-current was there, I could almost touch it, but something shredded my sending into scattered threads. Exhaustion rose like a tide, stifling my terror. My fear became despair and I abandoned the effort. I shouted again and was relieved to hear my own voice.
A houseman pulled the door open for me and I heard it drag across the threshold. In the light from the lamp he lifted, I saw the damage that had been done to it. Someone had beaten the doors of my home in. That stung me to full alertness again. ‘What’s happened here?’ I demanded breathlessly. ‘Where’s Revel? Where’s FitzVigilant? And Bee and Shun?’
The man goggled at me. ‘Who?’ he demanded. And then, ‘The scribe is long abed, sir. Since his accident, he has been poorly. The whole household is abed, except for me. I can fetch Steward Dixon, but Holder Badgerlock, you look exhausted. Mayn’t I build up the fire in your chamber and see you there? And in the morning—’
‘How did the stable burn down? Where is my daughter? Where is Lord Chade’s messenger Sildwell?’
‘Lady Nettle?’ the man queried me earnestly, and I gave him up for an idiot. Don’t ask questions of idiots: find the likeliest person to have an answer. ‘Wake the steward and have him meet me in my private study immediately. Not the estate study, my private study! Have him bring FitzVigilant!’
I strode past the man, snatching the lamp from his hands and shouting over my shoulder, ‘And find someone to see to that horse!’ before I broke into a run. Bee would be there. I knew she would be there. It was the one place she always felt safe, the secret that only she and I shared. I tried to ignore other damage to the house as I raced through corridors and up stairs. I passed a door that had been forced and still hung off its hinges. A tapestry had sustained a slash and hung crookedly, one corner puddled on the floor. My mind could not encompass it. My stables had been burned, someone had attacked Withywoods and marauded through its corridors, my daughter was missing and the door servant seemed completely at ease with whatever had happened. ‘Bee!’ I shouted as I ran, and I continued to shout her name until I reached the door of the study. Throughout the house, I heard doors opening and querying voices raised. I didn’t care who I roused. Why should anyone be sleeping when the daughter of the house was missing?
The doors of my study had been forced, the fine wood splintered. Two of my scroll-racks leaned drunkenly against one another, their contents spilled to the floor. My desk had been ransacked, my chair overturned. I cared nothing for that destruction nor for any stolen secrets. Where was my little girl? I was panting as I strove to align the doors so that I could close them and work the catch to the hidden labyrinth. ‘Bee,’ I told her, my voice cracking with hope. ‘Papa’s home, I’m coming. Oh, Bee, please be there.’
I worked the catch hidden in the door hinge and then hunched over to enter the secret spy-ways that wended their ways behind the panelled corridors of Withywoods. I found her tiny hidey-hole. It was empty and looked untouched, her cushions and pens just as she had left them. The fragrance of one of her mother’s candles still hung in the air. ‘Bee!’ I called, still hoping I might hear an answer from her. Hunched over, I followed her chalk marks toward the entry in the pantry. I was horrified to see other markings on the walls, her clear letters indicating passageways that I’d never explored.
I saw a litter of objects on the floor of the passage ahead and smelled urine. When I reached a spill of unused candles and the mouse-gnawed remains of a loaf of bread, I was completely puzzled. I travelled on toward the pantry exit. There were burned candle stubs discarded on the floor, a wet shawl that was not Bee’s mouldering in a pile and then I found the pantry entry door ajar. I shouldered it wider and squeezed out, then shut it firmly behind me. Not even I could see where it had been.
This time of year, there should have been a store of hams and smoked fish and strings of sausages swinging from the storage hooks. There was nothing. Taken as plunder? Sausages? It made no sense. I knew of no one who would attack Withywoods. Adding that the culprits had stolen sausages only made the riddle ridiculous.
I stepped from the pantry into the kitchen. A scullery maid was there, her winter shawl flung around her shoulders over her nightdress. Lark. That was her name, a second cousin to Cook Nutmeg and a recent hire. ‘Oh! Holder Badgerlock! Where did you come from? We didn’t expect you home so soon, sir!’
‘Obviously not! Where is my daughter? And where is Lady Shun?’
‘Sir, I’m sure I don’t know. I thought you had gone to Buckkeep Castle to see Lady Nettle. And I don’t know Lady Shun. Still new here, sir.’
‘What happened here while I was gone?’ I met her question with one of my own.
She pulled her shawl more warmly around her shoulders. ‘Well, sir, you went to town. Scribe FitzVigilant returned and told us you had decided to travel on to Buckkeep Castle. And then we had the Winterfest. And the fire in the stables. And that fight, though no one saw that. Someone was drunk probably, or several someones. Scribe Lant couldn’t even say who stabbed him or why. Some of the other men were knocked about, a black eye here, a tooth gone there. You know how menfolk are. And then we had that messenger, who I think is less than a half-wit, with his parcels for folk no one’s heard of. And now, tonight, you popping out of the pantry. And that’s all I know, sir. Oh, and the steward, shouting us out of bed and telling us to bring you a tray with hot tea and some food to your study. Is that why you’re here in the kitchen, sir? Was there something else you wanted?’
I turned away from her prattling and ran once more through the halls of my home. My heart pounded in my ears and I was thirsty but there was no time to stop to drink. I was trapped in a hideous, twisted nightmare, a dragon-tainted dream in which nothing made sense and I could not awaken. Bee’s room was empty, the hearth-fire burned out to ashes and the stones long cold, her wardrobe dragged open and her little tunics flung about. I looked under her bed, crying her name hopelessly. I felt I could not drag enough air into my lungs. I could not order my thoughts. I suddenly, desperately wanted to just curl up on her bed and sleep. Not think about any of this.
No. Onward.
I opened Lady Shun’s door to the same sort of chaos it always was. I could not tell if her room had been ransacked. Her bed was cold and unslept-in, the bedding dragged half onto the floor. One of the hangings had been torn loose. On I went. My chamber had been rummaged through as well. I didn’t care. Where was my child? I left the corridors of bedrooms and ignored the few sleepy and frightened servants I passed in the hall as I ran again to the schoolroom and the scribe’s quarters adjacent to it. I flung open the door to FitzVigilant’s room and felt an unmanning wave of relief when he sat up in his bed. ‘What is it?’ he demanded, face pale and eyes wide. ‘Oh. Badgerlock! Back so soon?’
‘Thank Eda! Lant, where are they, where are Shun and Bee? What happened to the stables?’
The growing consternation on his face made me want to strike him. ‘The stables burned down on Winterfest eve. I suppose someone was careless with a lamp. Shunanbee? What is that?’
I was gasping for air now. ‘Lady Shun. My daughter, Lady Bee, my little girl. Where are they? Did they perish in the fire?’
‘Holder Badgerlock, calm yourself. I do not know the ladies you speak of. Surely your step-daughter is Lady Nettle, the Skillmistress at Buckkeep Castle?’
He sat up slowly and painfully, his blankets falling back to reveal heavy bandaging around his chest. It startled me. ‘What happened to you?’ I demanded.
His eyes flew wide and for a moment his pupils became so large I felt I looked into blackness inside his head. Then he rubbed his face with both hands and when he looked at me again, a sickened and awkward smile spread over his face. ‘So embarrassing to admit this. I drank too much on Winterfest eve. I was found after the fire. Somehow I took a stab wound. Possibly from a hayfork or a tool of some kind during the fire? It seems to have missed anything vital, but given the injuries I was already recovering from, it has made me an invalid again. I must apologize to Lady Nettle that I have been quite unable to function as an instructor for the children since then.’
I staggered to a chair and sat down. The room whirled around me. Lant regarded me with deep concern. I could not stand his stupefied sympathy. I wanted to pound his face to a bloody ruin with my fists. I closed my eyes and reached out to the king’s Skill-coterie.
I have been in howling storms in which a shout is reduced to a whisper, moved across the sea’s featureless face in a grey fog that does not yield to human eyes. That was what I found. My Skill was quenched, damped like wet firewood that will not catch regardless of the flame put to it. I focused, I strained my Skill to a needle-point, then flung it wide to the sky. Nothing. I was trapped in my body. I could not reach for help. I wondered suddenly how I could be sure I was not in a dream of a dragon’s making. Could I be sure I was not trapped inside the Skill-pillar and this all some insane illusion of my own making? What test could I give myself?
‘Where is Revel?’ I demanded of FitzVigilant. Again he stared at me blankly. ‘I told Dixon to bring you and Revel, and meet me in my private study. Oh.’ Perhaps it was unreasonable to expect him to find me here in Lant’s room. I rose. ‘Get up, Lant. I need you with me.’
Something flickered in his eyes. I thought he would whine and protest that he was hurt and it was the middle of the night. Instead I think I glimpsed, finally, the man that Nettle and Riddle had claimed him to be. ‘Give me a moment,’ he said quietly. ‘And I will be with you. In your private study?’
‘The estate study,’ I amended.
I left him there, rising slowly and stiffly from his bed. My boots rang in the halls as I strode back to the study. Time after time, I saw the marks that suggested there had been armed invaders in my home. A long score down the panelling as if an edged weapon had been parried aside and dragged there. A broken wall sconce.
The double doors to the estate study had been battered open. Inside the room, a tray with a steaming pot of tea and sliced meat, bread and cheese awaited me. There were slashes in the hangings that covered the doors to the garden and something dark had stained the carpet. The wolf in me woke. I took a deep snuff of the room. Old blood. That was blood, on the floor of my study. The wolf within me crouched low and every sense I possessed suddenly flared. There was danger here still. Be still, be silent, and watchful.
Dixon, Revel’s assistant arrived, bearing a tray with brandy on it. ‘It’s so pleasant to have you home again, sir, even on such short notice. I went to your private study, but when you were not there, I brought your food here.’ His words said one thing, his tone quite another. He was a short stout man, dressed impeccably, even at this late hour. He smiled at me.
Contained. Time to be contained. Everything I felt was compressed into a cold stone box. I needed answers. ‘Thank you. Put it on the table and sit down, Dixon.’
I waited until he had tentatively settled on a chair. He looked around and gave a tiny sigh of disapproval. The put-upon servant summoned late by the unworthy master. I watched him with every fibre of my being as I asked him, ‘Where is Steward Revel tonight?’
I got what I had feared. That wash of confusion across his face, his dilated pupils and then a shamed laugh as he said, ‘Sir, I don’t know of whom you speak. I am steward for Withywoods. Or have I displeased you so that this is how you tell me I am replaced?’
‘Not at all. Revel was steward before you, of course. Do you recall him now?’
The confusion again and a flickering of fear on his features. Then his face smoothed. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I do not. I think … perhaps he had left before I was hired?’
‘Lady Shun spoke highly of you.’
Confusion crawled toward panic. ‘Sir, I don’t know—’
‘And little Lady Bee.’ I pressed blindly on, not knowing what I was seeking, but willing to crack the man like a nutshell to get at the knowledge I needed.
‘Bee …’
‘Who set fire to the stables?’
He made a sound without words.
‘Who attacked the manor? Did they take Lady Bee and Lady Shun? Kill them? What happened?’
The man’s head bobbed and his chest heaved. His lips puffed in and out with his audible breathing. He rocked back and forth in his chair, his mouth working wordlessly. Froth began to gather at the corner of his mouth.
‘Holder Badgerlock! Sir! Please!’ A shrill young voice full of anxiety. Out in the corridor, another outraged voice shouted, ‘You, boy, come back here! Don’t you dare go in there!’
I turned my head away just as Dixon collapsed to the floor. He twitched and shuddered. A fit. I’d had many in my lifetime. My conscience squirmed but I kicked it aside and left him jerking as I turned to see who had interrupted me.
It was Tallerman’s son. The stableboy with the unlikely name. His face was white and strained, and he carried one arm curled protectively against his chest. He darted toward me as the study door was snatched wide open by an outraged Bulen. Lant’s manservant had obviously dressed hurriedly, for his shirt was half-buttoned. ‘Your pardon, Holder Badgerlock. This boy is ill and half-mad, and this is how he repays our care of him! Young sir, come with me immediately, or risk being turned out in the morning.’
‘Holder Badgerlock! Say you know me! Please, say you know me!’ The boy’s voice had gone shrill and broken as Bulen advanced on him. He leaned away from Bulen’s grasping hand as he made his plea.
‘Of course I know you. You’re Tallerman’s son, from the stables.’ I turned to Bulen and spoke severely. ‘And it is not your place to turn out any of my people, Bulen!’
Bulen halted where he stood. He had not been long employed at Withywoods. I had assigned him to be Lant’s manservant. He was still learning his duties. And his place. He looked at me uncertainly as he protested, ‘Sir, the boy is a beggar, found injured and taken in. He insisted on speaking with Scribe FitzVigilant when we found him, and the scribe summoned a healer and has allowed him to stay in the classroom during his recovery. But he speaks wild and fearsome and …’
‘Leave, Bulen. Take Dixon with you and put him in his bed. I’ll deal with the boy. Perseverance. That’s it, that’s your name, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, thank the gods, you know me, I’m not mad! I’m not a beggar! Sir, sir, they came and they killed and burned, and I tried to get away with her, I got her on a horse and we rode, but they shot me and I fell. And I didn’t know any more until they were leaving and they went past me in a sleigh drawn by white horses and I saw Bee, all wrapped in white furs, in the sleigh. They took her, sir, and they left the stables afire, and no one here but me even tried to put out the flames. Some of the horses got out and some were stolen I think and some burned in their stalls. With my pa and grandpa’s bodies, sir! I saw them dead there! And my own ma does not know me and says she never had such a son as me! Oh, sir, they took Bee, they took her and no one knows me. No one!’
‘I know you,’ I said in a trembling voice. ‘I know you, boy. Oh my Bee! Was she hurt? Who were they? Where did they go?’
But the lad had begun to shake as if he had an ague, and when I put my arms around him to steady him, he fell toward me, crying like a much younger child. I gathered him to my chest and held him, my thoughts racing. He spoke against my chest. ‘They shot me. I felt the arrow go right through me. Through my shoulder,’ he sobbed. ‘I woke up under a cloak. Her cloak. She hid me with it, I think. I kept it. So fine and light. I was trying to save Bee and she saved me.’
My mind leapt. ‘A butterfly cloak.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Come over by the fire. Sit down.’ I looked around. Bulen still stood in the doorway, eyes wide. Dixon lay on the floor, no longer jerking, but lying half-curled on his side, staring at nothing. ‘Bulen!’ I snapped and the young man jumped. ‘See to Dixon. Take him to his bed. Then ask Scribe FitzVigilant to give me bandages and some of the salves Lord Chade gave him, if he has any left. Go quickly.’
‘I can fetch the salves for you, if you wish.’ That was Lant, holding onto the doorframe with one hand. He looked pale and as his gaze took in Dixon on the floor, he demanded, ‘What is going on here? Is this boy bothering you with his wild tales?’
‘Lant. Just the salves and bandages, please. Let Bulen deal with Dixon. He’s had some sort of fit.’ Then I ignored all of them as I steered the stable-lad toward the fire. I hooked a chair with one foot and dragged it close to the hearth. ‘Sit here, Perseverance. And let me see your injury.’
The boy sat down as soddenly as an armful of wet laundry. He hunched there, staring at the fire. I left him and went to the brandy. I poured a jot, tossed it down, and then poured another and took it to the boy. ‘Drink this,’ I told him. He didn’t respond. I leaned down to look in his face. He shifted his eyes to meet mine. I put the glass in his hand.
‘They said I was a beggar. And crazy. My own Ma wouldn’t let me in the door. I was all blood and she sent me up to the manor and wouldn’t take me in.’ His voice rose higher and higher on each word until it ended in a strangled squeak.
I said the only words I had to comfort him. ‘I know you,’ I said. ‘You are Perseverance, son of Tallerman, grandson of Tallman, and you worked in my stables. You cared for my daughter’s horse and you’ve been teaching her to ride. Drink that.’
He lifted the glass and smelled it. He took a sip, shuddered, but at a look from me, drank the rest in a gulp. He gasped and took three breaths before he could speak. ‘What happened to them? What’s wrong with them? All of them? I told them Steward Revel was dead and they said, “Who’s Revel?” I said, “They took Bee. We have to go after her!” and they said they didn’t know her. And when I tried to go after her by myself, they accused me of trying to steal her horse.’
I refilled his glass. ‘You went after them?’ Did he know where they’d taken her?
‘I tried, sir. But the snow and the wind erased everything. I had to turn back. I was still bleeding. I’m so sorry, sir. I’m sorry I didn’t bring her back.’
‘Perseverance. I don’t know what happened here, but we will puzzle it out. First you have to think back to the very beginning. I saw you watching us as we left for Oaksbywater. You were about to exercise a horse. Tell me everything from there. Every single thing. As it happened. Each and every thing you remember from that moment on. Go on. Drink the brandy. One gulp and it’s down. There. Oh, it wasn’t that bad, was it? Now. Talk to me. Just talk.’
I thudded a chair down facing him and sat, our knees almost touching. I focused myself on him, Wit and Skill. I felt almost nothing from him with my Skill-sense. Some folk were like that. But all of us live inside animals and even though I did not know him well, we had both loved Bee. So I did as Burrich had done so often to me, breathing calmness and safety at him, willing that he would smell and sense that I was here to protect him and he was safe. I forced my own body to relax as well and I slowed my breathing. In a few moments, I saw his shoulders ease. Brandy and the Wit. ‘Just talk to me,’ I suggested again. He nodded slowly.
He was well into describing a day of ordinary stablework when Lant brought the bandages and salves. I motioned the scribe to be silent and sit down. He was grateful to do so. As Perseverance spoke of his routine day and the tears for things lost rolled down his cheeks, I opened his shirt and looked at his shoulder. I doubted the bandage had been changed today. He winced as I peeled it off him. The wound was ugly. The arrow had gone through his shoulder, but not as cleanly as I’d hoped. His injury had been given all the careful attention that I’d expect most healers to devote to a beggar-child.
I set out salves and bandaging and washed the wound front and back with wine. He gritted his teeth when I picked at a scrap of his shirt fabric working out of the wound. I got a grip on it and tugged it out. Blood followed. He looked down at it and went paler. ‘Keep talking,’ I told him and he recounted how a man had come with a donkey and cart and some abused bull-pups. I nodded, and washed his shoulder again with the wine.
I was pushing salve into the wounds when he told me what I didn’t know, which was how Lant and Lady Shun and Bee had returned late that night. Lant had escorted Shun into the house and left my Bee in the cold and snowy wagon. Lant’s brow wrinkled at the tale, and when the boy told of the house steward coming to carry her inside, Lant stood up and said stiffly, ‘I don’t know why you are listening to the boy. He’s either mad or malicious beyond explaining. I know nothing of a Lady Shun, nor a child named Bee. Call the house steward and see what Dixon has to say of this wild tale.’
‘Sit down,’ I said to Lant through gritted teeth. Something had been done to his mind, and I could forgive him not recalling Bee or Shun, but I could not forgive how he had left my child to the care of a stableboy and a house steward after I had placed her in his care. ‘Be absolutely silent. And no, you are not dismissed to your room. Stay until I tell you that you may go.’
‘Do you speak this way to me because I am a bastard? For my blood is just as good as yours and—’
‘I doubt that. I am Prince FitzChivalry, as you well know, son of King-in-Waiting Chivalry Farseer, and now recognized as such by the king. So sit and be silent.’
Such a dark moment to flaunt my grand new status. He looked at me, uncertain how to react. Then he closed his lips. I took out my belt-knife and began to cut bandaging to the proper size. ‘You are truly him? The Witted Bastard?’ Those words came from Perseverance. The boy’s eyes were wide.
‘I am.’
I did not expect what he next said. A tremulous smile broke on his tear-stained face. ‘He was right. He did know. My grandfather said as much, for he knew your father and said no one could be mistaken who had seen him. My father used to agree with him, but I think it was only so he would stop insisting on it. Sir, I am proud to serve you, as my family has served your family for generations. And here and now, I vow my loyalty to you. And to your daughter, Princess Bee. Forever and ever.’
‘Thank you.’ What else does one say when a boy promises his life and loyalty? I closed my heart to the storm of emotions his words woke in me and spoke soothingly. ‘Continue telling me what happened, Perseverance.’
‘I mean it, sir.’ A boy’s tender feelings that such an offer might be disdained as childishness rode in his words.
‘I know you do.’ I spoke severely. ‘And right now, I am holding you to it. I need what you are doing now. I need to know every bit of what you know. Keep talking.’
And so I heard of how he had gone to his lessons the next day, and my daughter had been there. He spoke of his conversation with Bee and how she had told him what I’d done. She’d been proud of me. Proud. I glanced at Lant as the lad spoke. His face was a mixture of emotions. Did he remember snatches of that day, scrubbed clean of Shun’s presence? But as Perseverance began to tell of the sounds they had heard and how Lant had gone to see what they were, the scribe began shaking his head again. I gave him a look and he stopped.
So I learned that Revel had spent the last moments of his life trying to save the Withywoods children. Truly, I’d never given the man the credit he deserved. And as the tale wound on, I heard of my Bee hiding the children where she had believed they would be safe, only to be deprived of that safety herself. Perseverance told me of the slaughter he’d seen in the stables, slain men sprawled with their throats cut as they did their daily chores, his own father and grandfather among them, and of stepping over bodies to saddle Priss, and the wild ride he and Bee had made in the hope of getting help.
His detailed account of the attack ended with the arrow. He had come to consciousness only in time to see them leaving with Bee. He had returned to the manor, to the stables still on fire and the folk he had known all his life denying that he had ever existed. I stopped him there. He had begun to shake as he spoke of it. ‘That’s enough. Let it go for now, Perseverance. I know the truth of your words. Now. I want you to think, but not speak, of the people you saw. Think about each one of them, and when you are ready, tell me about them, one at a time.’ This, I had been taught by Chade, was the best way to gain information from one who had not been trained to report as I had. A question such as ‘was he tall?’ or ‘was he bearded?’ could carry the untrained mind to imagining something that had not been there.
He was silent as I bandaged his shoulder. It was infected, but no worse than such wounds always were. When I had finished, I helped him with his shirt and then brought him food and another jot of brandy. ‘Drink that first. Down in a gulp. Then you can eat while you talk to me.’
He took the brandy down, gasped and choked even more than he had on the first two, and quickly took a piece of bread to clear the taste from his mouth. I waited. He was as close to drunk as I wanted him, his thoughts wide and unguarded. And he told me what I would expect a stableboy to notice. White horses, with peculiar flat saddles and big horses suited for men who might wear chainmail. Saddles on the big horses that sounded almost Chalcedean in design.
They spoke a foreign tongue. I asked no question, but he told me of a man on a horse who shouted, ‘krintzen, krintzen!’ over and over.
Kar inte jhen. Chalcedean for ‘sit down’.
Chalcedeans in Buck. A raiding force? One that had crossed Shoaks Duchy and Farrow to raid an isolated manor in Buck? Why? To steal my daughter? It made no sense. Not until he told me that a pleasant-faced woman was with them, seeking a pale boy or young man. Then I knew what they had come seeking. The Unexpected Son, the child that the Fool’s messenger had urged me to find and protect. I still had no idea who or where that lad might be, but the puzzle began to make sense. Hostages to exchange. Who better to take than the daughter of the house and a noble lady?
When he spoke of how markedly pale some of the younger invaders were, the ones who wielded no weapons but aided those who did, when he spoke of their light hair and pale eyes and their pale garments, my blood ran cold. Were these the messenger’s pursuers? Of course they were. She had said she was being hunted. The Fool’s wild warnings were suddenly solid and real. These pale folk must be Servants from Clerres. As the Fool had warned me, the Servants had been tracking the messenger. And following him as well? Would they want to recover the Fool as well as find this Unexpected Son? Did they think I had found and concealed him at Withywoods and so sought him there? But what were they doing with Chalcedeans? Were they mercenaries in their hire? How had they come so far and deep into Buck Duchy without being reported to anyone? There was a regular patrol that rode the king’s highways, mostly to discourage highwaymen, but also to take reports of unusual events. A troop of horses of that size, ridden by obvious foreigners would certainly have been reported to them. If people remembered seeing them.
‘That’s all I remember, sir.’ The boy looked drained. And suddenly appeared as tired as I felt. I doubted that he had been sleeping well.
I sorted the information I had and tried to find sense in it. They would have taken Bee and Shun as hostages. They would want the Unexpected Son in trade for them. I did not have him, but I did have the Fool. Could I use him as bait to lure them in? Did he have the strength to agree to such a gambit?
And then my logic fell into discordant pieces. If Bee was a hostage, their power was in dangling her before me, not vanishing without a trace and clouding the memories of those they left behind. Unless they had a stronghold close by, a secure place from which to negotiate. What would I do in their place? Take the hostages to the Chalcedean border or the seacoast? Negotiate from there, demand that we bring the Unexpected Son there? Perhaps. ‘Eat some food. I’ll be back in a moment.’ I turned and pointed a finger at Lant. ‘Stay there. I want to talk to you.’
He didn’t say a word.
As I walked down the corridor to the chamber that had been Bee’s nursery, the enormity of the disaster suddenly swept through me. I staggered to one side and caught myself on the wall. I stood for a moment, my vision black at the edges. Then with a surge I slashed at my weakness, damning it for daring to overcome me just when I most needed to be calm and rational. All emotion must be contained until I had all the information I needed with which to plan a course of action. Now was not the time to hate myself or give in to useless wishes for what I should have, might have, could have done. There was only the now, and I must be keen and remorseless if I was to find and follow their trail. I entered the nursery. Here, at least, no one had bothered to toss furniture and search for plunder. Perhaps no one had hidden here, perhaps the room had been missed. Why couldn’t Bee have hidden here and been safe? Useless question.
I found cushions and a blanket and went back to my study. I threw them down on the hearth, refusing to feel anything about Molly’s pretty things so roughly used. I pointed at them. ‘Perseverance. After you’ve eaten, rest there. Try to sleep. If you recall anything more, no matter how trivial it might seem, I want to hear it.’
‘Sir,’ he said. He put his attention back on the food, hunching over it like a half-starved hound. He’d probably been unable to eat much the last few days. Now he would eat and then he’d be able to sleep. I looked at him for a moment. Fatherless, unknown to his mother, and I was the only one in his world who remembered his name. Mine, now, sworn to me. First vassal for the bastard prince. So fitting, somehow.
I seized my chair, dragged it across the room and sat down facing Lant. I’d moved so close that he had to sit up straight to avoid his sprawled legs tangling with mine as I sat down. ‘It’s your turn. Tell me everything you remember from the time I cut the dog’s throat.’
He stared at me and then licked his lips. ‘We had gone to town. And a man was cruel to his dog, so you knocked him down and gave the dog a quick death.’
‘Why had we gone to town, Lant?’
I watched his face, saw his mind skip and jump, finding what he was allowed to recall. ‘To get some more tablets for my students.’
I nodded. ‘Then we went to the inn to eat. And both Riddle and I left in a hurry. Why?’
He swallowed. ‘You didn’t say.’
I nodded again. I moved toward him, not with my body, but first with my Wit, sensing him as another living creature, and then with my Skill. I did not know if I could push into his mind, but I suspected someone had. I recalled a brief conversation I’d had with Chade. He’d asked me if I thought the Skill could be used to make a man forget something. I’d told him I didn’t want to consider ever using the magic that way. Both times I’d seen it done had been disastrous for me. When my father Chivalry had made the Skillmaster Galen forget how much he hated him, the man had turned his hatred for my father onto his son. The irony was that Galen had used the magic in a similar way on me. He’d invaded my mind and left me ‘misted’ as Verity had put it. Galen had used his Skill to convince me that I had little talent for the magic. Even after my king had done his best to clear the clouds from my mind, I’d never had full confidence in my abilities again. I’d always wondered if that forced forgetting had been what made my Skill-magic so erratic.
I didn’t want to invade the man’s mind. My repeated questioning of Dixon had not given me any information and had pushed him into a seizure. I couldn’t risk that with Lant. From what Perseverance had told me, Lant had taken that stab wound when he’d been held captive with the others in the carriageway. Did that mean he’d tried to fight them? Perhaps that was where I should begin.
‘Let me see your injury,’ I requested.
He startled and leaned back from me. ‘The healer has treated it. It’s healing as well as could be expected.’
‘And what did he say it looked like?’
‘It’s a puncture. From a tine.’
‘Or a blade. He said it looked like a sword thrust, didn’t he?’
His eyes went very wide. He began to shake his head, a small denial at first and then a more frantic one.
‘Sir? Prince FitzChivalry Farseer?’
I turned my attention from him to the man who stood in the doorway, startled at how he had named me. He was young, scarcely past his teens and dressed in the livery of a royal messenger. His nose and the tops of his cheeks were bright red with cold and he looked exhausted. ‘Sildwell,’ I greeted him.
He looked mildly surprised that I knew his name. ‘Yes. They told me to come back here and talk to you.’
I heaved a sigh. ‘Come in, get warm by the fire, and please start this conversation as if you have at least a little training as a messenger.’
‘It’s the fog,’ he said. He walked to the fire and stood beside Perseverance. ‘It makes it hard to care. All I want to do is sleep and not think about anything.’ I became aware the boy had curled up and was deeply asleep on the floor. The messenger looked down at him, glanced at the glowering FitzVigilant, and then stood straighter. Reaching into the satchel at his side, he took out the baton that proclaimed him a true messenger. He held it as he spoke. ‘Sir, I bring you tidings from Lord Chade of Buckkeep Castle. I was to deliver these tidings and gifts to Lady Bee, Lady Shun and Scribe FitzVigilant of Withywoods. But on arriving here, I was told that two of those recipients were unknown here. I endeavoured to Skill this information to Lord Chade to request his further instructions. Although I am not highly Skilled, I have never encountered difficulties with the simple relaying of information. This time, however, I was not able to make myself understood. I next undertook to send a messenger bird. I asked for one to be brought to me and was told the manor had no such birds. I knew that was untrue. I found all the birds dead on the floor of the pigeon-house. Throttled, their necks broken. No one had even cleared the bodies away. When I endeavoured to bring this to the attention of the steward, he said that the manor had no pigeon-house. He said this as he stood looking at it with me.
‘I believe you were with the others when Lady Nettle attempted to Skill to me. You already know how little success we had. After a long and frustrating day of disbelief and lies, I decided to go down to Withy and have a glass of ale. My insistence that I had a message for two non-existent ladies had not made me the most welcome fellow here. But as I rode, the fog and heaviness that seemed to fill the air began to dissipate. By the time I reached Withy, I was able to communicate clearly with Lord Chade and the King’s Own Coterie. They directed me to return here as swiftly as possible and say that Thick and Lord Chade hope to arrive here by morning. He directed me to arrange to have mounts waiting for them at the Judgment Stone on Gallows Hill as soon as there is daylight. So I did.’ He looked uneasy for a moment. ‘I feared no one here would obey me, so I hired horses in Withy, to be taken to the Gallows Hill in the morning. I said you would pay very well.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Will Lady Nettle not accompany Lord Chade and Thick?’
He raised his brows. ‘Sir, I was told she is with child. Hence she cannot use the pillars.’
‘And why not?’
‘It was in a recent translation that Lord Chade brought to our attention. Perhaps you have not heard of it. A pregnant Skill-user who moves through the stones often emerges, er, unpregnant.’
‘She miscarries her child?’
‘No, sir. It’s darker than that. Her pregnancy vanishes. There are two accounts of it happening. And a third account of a fine mare that was led through a Skill-portal to be serviced by a stallion. Close to her time to bear, she was taken home again, but emerged from the Skill-pillar empty-wombed.’
Cold rose in me. I had never heard of such a thing. It came to me again that we knew nothing of how the portals worked. An unborn child vanished. To where? How? It didn’t matter in some ways. Gone was gone. I spoke faintly. ‘Thank Eda Chade found that scroll!’
‘Yes sir. So Lady Nettle will stay behind. Lord Chade and Thick will come here to experience this fog I’ve described. And perhaps to see if Thick can prevail against it.’
I tried not to feel hope. I dreaded seeing Chade and telling him that I had no idea what had become of Shun. Time to dig a bit more. I rang for a servant and waited. When some small time had passed, I stepped out into the hall and shouted for Bulen. As I re-entered the room, FitzVigilant asked, ‘Are you finished with me? Can I go back to my bed now? I am not well, as you can see.’
I tried to speak kindly. ‘I can see that, Lant. And I see something that you cannot see. Your mind has been hazed. Things have happened here in the last few days that you can no longer recall. You know what the Skill-magic is; you’ve heard of it. Someone has used the Skill or something very like it to confuse you. You walk past carpet stained with blood, and doors that have been battered open and you see nothing odd. Servants have been slaughtered and you do not miss them. Two of our household are missing. Lady Bee, my young daughter, has been taken, and Lady Shun has vanished. I don’t know if she was killed and her body burned in the stable fire, or if she is also kidnapped.’ My voice had begun to shake. I paused and took several long breaths. ‘Tonight I will try to find out if anyone in our household recalls any detail of that night. For that sleeping lad is truly a stableboy born and bred here, the third generation of his family to serve mine. And he spoke the truth, a truth you cannot recall.’
FitzVigilant’s face had grown more and more still as I spoke. Halfway through my speech, he had begun to shake his head. When I had finished, he sat back in his chair and folded his arms on his chest. ‘Holder Badgerlock, you sound as mad as he does.’
‘I’m sure I do. But I assure you, I am not. Where is Bulen?’
‘Gone back to bed, I imagine. As I wish I could.’
I wanted to strike him. Then, as swiftly as the hot anger had come, it drained out of me. He could not help how clouded his mind was. I looked at Sildwell. ‘It’s hopeless,’ he said. ‘Perhaps Lord Chade and Thick will be able to get through to him. But I have never felt anything like this myself. As if I think and move through a thick soup of weariness and discouragement.’
I was silent for a moment. ‘I thought it was only me,’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘No. The further I got from this place, the more my spirits lifted and my mind cleared. Making myself come back was difficult. I simply did not want to travel up the road. It’s like someone placed a magical spell over all of Withywoods to discourage visitors.’
‘Maybe they did,’ I wondered grudgingly. I looked at FitzVigilant and tried to make my voice kind. ‘Go to bed, Lant. I’m sorry for all that has befallen you, for what you know and what you don’t know. Go to bed and sleep while you can. Tomorrow will be a long and weary day for all of us.’
Lant needed no more urging. He rose and glared at me with narrowed eyes. ‘Wakened in the middle of the night to be insulted and ordered about. This is not why I came here.’
He was angry. As I would have been angry, I imagined. I tried to keep my voice level. ‘If you could remember that Nettle and Chade actually sent you here as a tutor for young Lady Bee …’ Then I gave it up as hopeless.
He turned from me and went out of the door without a word. I turned to Sildwell. ‘Did they give you a chamber?’
‘They did.’
‘Then I suggest you get what rest you can as well.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ He tipped his head toward the brandy. ‘Would you mind if I took that with me for company?’
He was certainly not a shy fellow. Appalling manners indeed. I liked him. ‘Go ahead. And thank you for all you have done today.’
‘You’re welcome, sir. But I shall be very happy to leave your home as soon as I possibly can.’ He sketched me a bow and hooked the bottle of brandy on his way to the door.
I sat down in the chair that Lant had vacated and stared at the fire. I could not feel anything. I tried to find my heartache over Bee, my anger at what had happened, but not even my guilt came to torment me. Discouragement as thick as soup. I felt useless, helpless and weary. Sildwell was right. A cloud of dullness and discouragement hung over Withywoods. Sadness was all I could provoke in myself. I should be furious. I should thirst for vengeance. Instead I thought of killing myself. No. Not yet. I rose and covered the stableboy more warmly. My vassal.
I took a candle and wandered the halls. I went first to my own room, but could not settle there. I went again to Lady Shun’s room, but if there were clues in that disorder, they escaped me. I did not like the woman, but had no desire to see her kidnapped or dead and burned. I went to Bee’s room. Amongst the scattered possessions I glimpsed the seashells we had bought for her strewn across the floor. And the warm red shawl sprawled across a chair. The kerchiefs she had intended for Revel rested undisturbed on a table by her bed. She’d never had the pleasure of gifting them to him.
I left her room and drifted through the halls until I came to my ruined study. I entered and almost thought of building a fire there and ordering my thoughts by writing them down. Instead, I triggered the secret door and returned to Bee’s tiny hidden chamber. As I turned the corner to enter it, my Wit told me that someone awaited me there. I felt a sudden leap of hope only to confront a small black cat blinking resentfully at my candlelight. He was curled on the cushions in perfect ease and regarded me as an annoying but unimportant intruder. We looked at one another.
She’s not here.
She is Bee?
The girl who promised me fish and sausage if I would catch rats and mice for her.
I contained my impatience. Someone stole her. Can you tell me about the people who took her?
They took all the fish. And the sausages, too.
I noticed that. What else?
Some of them stank. Some did not.
I waited for a time. Cats themselves may be very chatty, but they seem to resent it in anyone else. Cats like listeners. But when he had sat regarding me for some time, I dared to ask, Anything else?
They came for her. The ones that did not stink.
What?
A silence fell between us. My question went unanswered. Finally I said aloud, ‘I wonder if they found all the fish and sausages? I think I shall go down to the pantry to find out.’
I took my shortened candle and left him, feeling my way through the wandering passages. I stepped over the gnawed bread, and took up one of the fallen candles and kindled it from my failing one. It had been nibbled by mice, but not badly. I listened at the door before pushing it open and emerging into the storage room. The sacks of beans and peas and grains had been left. The raiders had taken meat and fish, the two supplies that any traveller depletes first. Could I deduce anything from that?
Gone. Confirmed the cat.
‘Do you care for cheese at all? Or butter?’
The cat looked at me speculatively. I pushed the door to the labyrinth closed and went into the cold room. It was down a short stairway into a room lined with stone. Here on shelves were crocks of summer butter and wheels of cheese. Either the raiders had not fancied these or they had not discovered the cold room. I took out my belt-knife and carved a wedge of cheese. As I did so, I became aware that I was hungry. I felt shamed by that. My child and Lady Shun had vanished from Withywoods. Carried off by brutes into the cold and dark. How could I feel such ordinary things as hunger? Or sleepiness?
Yet I did.
I pared off another generous wedge and went back to the kitchen. The cat followed me and when I sat down at the table, he leapt up and sat down on it. He was a handsome fellow, very tidy in black and white, the picture of health save for the kink in his tail. I broke off a chunk of the cheese and set it down before him. By the time I returned to the table with a piece of bread and a mug of ale, he had finished it and hooked a second slab toward himself. I ignored that. We ate together and I tried to be patient. What could a cat know, I wondered, that would do me any good?
He finished before I did and sat cleaning his whiskers and dabbing at his face. When I set my mug down on the table, he stopped and looked at me. The ones that didn’t stink had no scent of their own at all.
A shiver ran up my spine. The Scentless One, my wolf had called the Fool. Because he had no scent. And he was invisible to my Wit. Would that be true of all folk with White in their bloodlines?
Once they had her, they stopped killing. They took only her. And one other.
I did not appear too interested. I rose and went back to the cold room. I emerged with more cheese. I sat down at the table, broke off a respectable piece and placed it before the cat. He looked down at it, and then up at me. They took a woman.
Lady Shun.
I do not bother with the names of humans. But that might have been her name. He bent his head to eat his cheese.
‘The girl who promised you fish and sausages. Did they … hurt her?’
He finished part of the cheese, sat up, and then suddenly decided to groom his front claws. I waited. After a time, he looked up at me. I scratched her once. Hard. She took it. He hunched over the remainder of the cheese. Pain is not the thing she fears. I teetered between feeling comforted and horrified. I left him eating and went back to the estate study. The boy did not stir as I put the last of the wood into the fire. With a sigh, I took up Chade’s wet cloak and the lantern I’d earlier taken from the door servant. I lit it again and carried it down the hall.
My errand had been firewood, but when I stepped outside into the clear night, my mind cleared. The bite of the cold seized me and the terrible lassitude that was misting my mind receded a bit in the physical discomfort. I walked instead to the burned ruin of my stables. As I did so, I crossed the drive in front of Withywoods. Snow had fallen recently. There were no tracks to read. I moved in wide circles around the stable and then between the house and stables, looking for sleigh tracks. But the fresh snow had gentled all tracks to dimples. The tracks the runners had left were indistinguishable from the marks of the carts and wagons we used on the estate. I walked through the darkness down the long drive that led up to Withy. Somewhere, Per had bled and somewhere Bee had been captured. But I found no traces of either event. I found my horse’s tracks, and the hoofprints of Sildwell’s horse. No others. No one else had come this way for days. Falling snow and wind had softened all traces of the raiders’ passage as smoothly as whatever magic had misted my people’s memories of them.
I stood for a time staring off into the darkness as the wind chilled and stiffened my body. Where had they taken my child and why? What good was it to be a prince if he was as helpless as a penniless bastard?
I turned and walked slowly up the carriageway to the manor, feeling as if I breasted an icy winter storm. I did not want to go to this place. With every step, I felt more downhearted. I went slowly to one of the firewood stacks and filled a sling of my cloak with enough wood for what remained of the night. My steps dragged as I carried it up the steps of my home.