by Robin Hobb
‘What, exactly, do you want of me?’ The question was as good as surrender. I had already hastened to his side at his call. He knew I was still his. So did I.
‘Find the Prince. Return him to us, discreetly, and Eda save us, unharmed. And do it while my excuses for his absence are still believable. Get him home safely to us before the Outislander delegation arrives to formalize the betrothal to their princess.’
‘How soon is that?’
He shrugged helplessly. ‘It depends on the winds and the waves and the strength of their oarsmen. They have already departed the Out Islands. We had a bird to tell us so. The formality is scheduled for the new moon. If they arrive before that and the Prince is not here, I could, perhaps, fabricate something about his meditating alone before such a serious event in his life. But it would be a thin façade, one that would crumble if he did not appear for the ceremony.’
I reckoned it quickly in my head. ‘That’s more than a fortnight away. Plenty of time for a recalcitrant boy to change his mind and run home again.’
Chade looked at me sombrely. ‘Yet if the Prince has been taken, and we do not yet know by whom or why, let alone how we will recover him, then sixteen days seems but a pittance of time.’
I put my head in my hands for a moment. When I looked up, my old mentor was still regarding me hopefully. Trusting me to see a solution that eluded him. I wanted to flee; I wanted never to have known any of this. I took a steadying breath. Then I ordered his mind as he had once disciplined mine. ‘I need information,’ I announced. ‘Don’t assume I know anything about the situation, because it is likely I don’t. I need to know, first of all, who gave him the cat. And how does that person feel about the Wit, and the Prince’s betrothal? Expand the circle from there. Who rivals the gift-giver, who allies with him? Who at court most strongly persecutes those with the Wit, who most directly opposes the Prince’s betrothal, who supports it? Which nobles have most recently been accused of having the Wit in their families? Who could have helped Dutiful run, if run he did? If he was taken, who had the opportunity? Who knew his midnight habits?’ Each question I formulated seemed to beget another, yet in the face of that volley, Chade seemed to grow steadier. These were questions he could answer, and his ability to answer them strengthened his belief that together we might prevail. I paused for breath.
‘And I still need to report to you the events of those days. However, you seem to be forgetting that the Skill might save us hours of talk. Let me show you the scrolls, and see if they make more sense to you than they do to me.’
I looked around me, but he shook his head. ‘I do not bring the Prince here. This part of the castle remains a secret from him. I keep the Skill-scrolls in Verity’s old tower, and it is there that the boy has his lessons. I keep the tower room well secured, and a trusted guard is always before the door.’
‘Then how am I to have access to them?’
He cocked his head at me. ‘There is a way to them, from here to Verity’s tower. It’s a winding and narrow way, with many steps, but you’re a young man. You can manage them. Finish eating. Then I will show you the way.’
TWELVE
Charms
Kettricken of the Mountains was wed to King-in-Waiting Verity of the Six Duchies before she had reached her twentieth year. Their marriage was a political expedient, part of a larger negotiation to cement an alliance of trade and protection between the Six Duchies and the Mountain Kingdom. The death of her elder brother on the eve of her wedding bestowed an unexpected benefit to the Six Duchies: any heir she now bore would inherit the Mountain crown as well as that of the Six Duchies.
Her transition from Mountain princess to Six Duchies Queen was not an easy one, yet she faced it with the acceptance of duty that is the stamp of the Mountain rulers. She came to Buckkeep alone, without so much as a lady’s maid to sustain her. She brought to Buckkeep her personal standards that required her to be ever ready to sacrifice herself in any way that her new station might demand of her. For in the Mountains, that is the accepted role of the ruler: that the King is Sacrifice for his people.
Bedel’s Mountain Queen
Night was ebbing towards morning before I made my way down the hidden stairs to seek my own bed. My head was stuffed full of facts, few of which seemed useful to my puzzle. I’d go to sleep, I decided. Somehow, when I awoke, my mind would have sorted it all out.
I reached the panel that would lead back into my bedchamber and paused. Chade had already taught me all his cautions for using these passages. Breath pent, I peered through the tiny slit in the stone. It afforded me a very narrow view of the room. I could see a candle guttering on a small table set in the centre of the room. That was all. I listened, but heard nothing. Silently I eased a lever that set unseen counter-weights into motion. The door swung open and I slipped back into my room. A nudge from me sent the door back into place. I stared at the wall. The portal was as invisible as ever.
Lord Golden had thoughtfully provided a couple of scratchy wool blankets for the narrow cot in the stuffy little room. Tired as I was, it still looked remarkably uninviting. I could, I reminded myself, return to the tower room and sleep in Chade’s magnificent bed. He no longer used it. But that prospect was uninviting in a different way. Recently used or not, that bed was Chade’s bed. The tower room, the maps and the scroll racks, the arcane laboratory and the two hearths: all of that was Chade’s, and I had no desire to make it mine by using it. This was better. The hard bed and the stuffy room were comforting reminders that my stay here was to be very brief. After a single evening of secrets and machinations, I was already weary of Buckkeep politics.
My pack and Verity’s sword were on the bed. I threw the pack to the floor, leaned Verity’s sword in a corner, kicked my discarded clothing under the table, blew out the candle and groped my way to bed. I thrust Dutiful and the Wit and all the attendant threads resolutely aside. I expected to fall asleep immediately. Instead I stared open-eyed into the dark room.
More personal worries found me and chewed on me. My boy and my wolf would be on the road to Buckkeep tonight. It was unsettling to realize I was now counting on Hap to care for the old wolf that had always been his protector. He had his bow, and he was good with it. They’d be fine. Unless they were set on by highwaymen. Even then, Hap would probably eliminate one or two before they were captured. Which would probably anger the rest of them. Nighteyes would fight to the death before he’d let Hap be taken. Which left me with the pleasant image of my wolf dead in the road and my son captured by angered highwaymen. And I’d be too far away to do anything for them.
Wool blankets itch even more when you sweat. I rolled over to stare at a different patch of darkness. I wouldn’t think about Hap just now. There was no point to worrying about disasters that hadn’t happened yet. Unwillingly, I let my mind wander back to Chade’s Skill-scrolls and the present crisis. I had expected three or four scrolls. What he had shown me were several chests of scrolls, in various degrees of preservation. Even he had not been through all of them, though he thought he had them somewhat sorted into topics and levels of difficulty. He had presented me with a large table with three scrolls unrolled on it. My heart sank. The lettering on two of the scrolls was so archaic I could barely decipher it. The other seemed more recent, but almost immediately I encountered words and phrases that made no sense to me. It recommended an ‘anticula trance’ and suggested a helpful infusion made from an herb called Shepherd’s Wort. I’d never heard of it. The scroll further cautioned me to beware of ‘dividing my partner’s self-barrier’ as I might then ‘diffuse his anma’. I looked up at Chade in bewilderment. He divined my problem instantly.
‘I thought you would know what it meant,’ he said defeatedly.
I shook my head. ‘If Galen ever knew what these words and terms mean, he never divulged them to me.’
Chade gave a snort of contempt. ‘I doubt our “Skillmaster” could even read these characters.’ He sighed. ‘Half of any trade is understanding the v
ocabulary and idiom that the practitioners use. With time, we might piece it together with clues from the other scrolls. But we have precious little time. With every passing moment, the Prince may be carried farther from Buckkeep.’
‘Or he may never even have left the town. Chade, you have cautioned me many times not to take action simply for the sake of taking action. If we rush forth, we may be rushing in the wrong direction. First think, then act.’
It had felt so strange to remind my master of his own wisdom. I had watched him grudgingly nod to it. While he pored over the archaic lettering, muttering as his pen flowed a clear translation onto paper, I had carefully read the more accessible scroll. Then I had read it again, hoping it would make more sense. On my third attempt, I found myself nodding off over the old, blurred lettering. Chade had leaned across the table to clasp my wrist gently. ‘Go to bed, boy,’ he ordered me gruffly. ‘Lack of sleep makes a man stupid, and this will demand your best wits.’ I had conceded and left him there, still hunched over his pen and paper.
I shifted onto my back. I ached from all the stairs I had climbed today. Well, as long as I could not sleep, I might as well see what good I could do. I closed my eyes to the pressing darkness and composed myself. I emptied my mind of my concerns, and tried only to recall the last dream I had had of the boy and the cat. I conjured up their exhilaration at the night and the hunt. I summoned my recollection of the scents that had flavoured the air, and reached for the indefinable aura of a dream not my own. Almost I could enter that dream, but that was not what I sought. I tried to recall a tenuous Skill-link I had not been aware of at the time I experienced it.
Prince Dutiful. The son of my body. These titles in my mind had no impressions attached to them, yet oddly they interfered with what I was trying to do. My preconceived notions of Dutiful, my possessive idealizations of what my natural son would be like, stood between me and the frail threads of the Skill-link I sought to untangle. From somewhere in the keep, the stone bones of the castle carried a stray bit of music to my ears. It distracted me. I blinked at the dark before me. I had lost all sense of time; night stretched eternally around me. I hated this windowless room, shut off from the natural world. I hated the confinement I had to endure. I had lived with the wolf too long to find it tolerable.
In frustration, I abandoned the Skill and reached out with the Wit for my companion. He still had up the guard he had so often employed of late. I could sense him sleeping, and as I leaned against his walls, I felt the dull thunder of pain in his hips and back. I withdrew quickly when I sensed that my focusing on his pain was bringing it to the forefront of his mind. I had sensed no fear or foreboding in him, only weariness and aching joints. I wrapped him in my thoughts, drawing gratefully on his senses.
I’m sleeping, he grumpily informed me. Then, You’re worried about something?
It’s nothing. I just wanted to know you were fine.
Oh, yes, we’re fine. We’ve had a lovely day of walking down a dry, dusty road. Now we’re sleeping at the edge of it. Then, more kindly, he added, Don’t worry about things you can’t change. I’ll be with you soon.
Watch Hap for me.
Of course. Go to sleep.
I could smell damp grass and the trickling smoke of the campfire, and even Hap’s salty sweat as he lay nearby. It reassured me. All was well in my world then. I let go of all save those simple sensations and finally spiralled down into sleep.
‘Might I remind you that you are to serve as my valet, not the reverse?’
The words that jolted me from sleep were spoken in Lord Golden’s arrogant sneer, but the smile on the Fool’s face was entirely his own. A set of clothing hung over his arm, and I could smell warm, scented water. He was already faultlessly dressed in garb that was even more elegantly understated than what he had worn yesterday. His colours today were cream and forest green, with a thin edging of gilt at his cuffs and collar. He wore a new earring, a filigreed golden orb. I knew what was inside it. He looked fresh and alert. I sat up and then cradled my aching head in my hands.
‘Skill-headache?’ he asked sympathetically.
I shook my head and the pain rattled inside it. ‘I only wish it were,’ I muttered. I glanced up at him. ‘I’m just tired.’
‘I thought perhaps you would sleep in the tower.’
‘It didn’t feel right.’ I rose and tried to stretch but my back kinked in protest. The Fool set the clothing across the foot of the bed, and then sat down on my rumpled blankets. ‘So. Any thoughts on where our prince might be?’
‘Too many. Anywhere in Buck Duchy, or even beyond the borders by now. There are too many nobles who might want to take him. If he ran on his own, that only increases the number of places he might have gone.’ The washwater was still steaming. A few leaves of lemon balm floated fragrantly on the surface of the plain pottery bowl. I plunged my face into it gratefully and came up rubbing my hands over my face. I felt more awake and aware of the world. ‘I need a bath. Are the steam baths behind the guard barracks still there?’
‘Yes, but servants don’t use them. You’ll have to be wary of falling back into old habits. Personal servants, generally speaking, get the second use of their master’s or mistress’s bathwater. Or they haul their own from the kitchens.’
I gave him a look. ‘I’ll haul my own tonight.’ I proceeded to make the best use I could of the handbasin while he sat and silently watched me. While I was shaving, he observed quietly, ‘You’ll have to get up earlier tomorrow. All the kitchen staff know that I’m an early riser.’
I looked at him in consternation. ‘And?’
‘And they’ll be expecting my servant to come down for my breakfast tray.’
The sense sank in slowly. He was right. I needed to do a better job of stepping into my role if I was to find out anything useful. ‘I’ll go now,’ I offered.
He shook his head. ‘Not looking like that. Lord Golden is a proud and temperamental man. He would not keep such a rough-thatched servant as you show yourself now. We must make you look your part. Come here and sit down.’
I followed him out into the light and air of the master chamber. He had set out comb, brush and shears on his table, and propped a large mirror on it. I steeled myself to endure this. I crossed to the door to be sure it was securely bolted against untimely intrusion. Then I sat in a chair and waited for him to lop my hair into a servant’s short cut. I freed my hair from its tail as Lord Golden took up the shears. When I looked into his ornately-framed mirror, I saw a man I scarcely recognized. There is something about a large glass and seeing oneself all at once. Starling was right, I decided. I did look much older than my years. When I leaned back from the mirror and regarded my face, I was surprised to see how my scar had faded. It was still there as a seam, but it was not as remarkable as it had been on a young man’s unlined face. The Fool let me look at myself for a time in silence. Then he gathered my hair into his hands. I glanced up at his face in the mirror. His lower lip was caught in his teeth in an agony of indecision. Abruptly he clacked the shears back onto the table. ‘No,’ he said emphatically. ‘I can’t bring myself to do it, and I don’t think we need to.’ He took a breath, then rapidly curried my hair back into its warrior tail. ‘Try the clothing,’ he urged me. ‘I had to guess at size, but no one expects a servant’s clothing to be well tailored.’
I went back to the small chamber and looked at the garments draped across the foot of my cot. They were cut from the familiar blue homespun that servants at Buckkeep had always worn. It was not all that different from the clothing I had worn as a child. But as I put it on, it felt different. I was donning the garments that marked me to all eyes as a serving-man. A disguise, I told myself. I was not truly anyone’s servant. But with a sudden pang, I wondered how Molly had felt the first time she had donned the blue dress of a serving-girl. Bastard or not, I was the son of a prince. I had never expected to wear the garments of a servant. In place of my Farseer charging buck, there was an embroidery of Lord Golden’
s golden cock-pheasant. Yet the garments fitted me well, and, ‘Actually, these are the best quality clothes I’ve worn in years,’ I admitted ruefully. The Fool leaned round the door to look at me, and for a second I thought I saw anxiety in his eyes. But at the sight of me he grinned, then made a show of walking a slow circle of inspection around me.
‘You’ll do, Tom Badgerlock. There are boots by the door, made a good three finger-widths longer than my foot, and wider, too. Best you put your things away in the chest, so that if anyone does become curious to look about our rooms, there will be nothing to arouse suspicion.’
This I did hastily while the Fool quickly tidied his own chamber. Verity’s sword went under the clothing in my chest. There were scarcely enough garments to cover it. The boots fitted as well as new boots usually did. Time would make them comfortable.
‘I’m sure you remember the way to the kitchens. I always eat my breakfast on a tray in my room; the kitchen boys will be glad to see you’re taking on the task of bringing it to me. It may give you an opening for gossip.’ He paused. ‘Tell them I ate little last night and hence am ravenous this morning. Then bring up enough for both of us.’
It was strange to have him direct me so minutely, but, I reminded myself, I had best get used to it. So I bobbed a bow at him and essayed a, ‘Yes, sir,’ before I went out of the door of the chamber. He started to smile, caught himself, and inclined a slow nod to me.
Outside the chamber, the castle was well awake. Other servants were busy, replenishing candles and sweeping soiled rushes away or scurrying about with fresh linens or buckets of washwater. Perhaps it was my new perspective, but it seemed to me that there were far more servants in Buckkeep than I recalled. It was not the only aspect that had changed. Queen Kettricken’s Mountain ways were in more evidence than ever. In her years of residence, the inside of the castle had been raised to a new standard of cleanliness. A sparse simplicity characterized the rooms I passed, replacing decades of ornate clutter that had once filled them. The tapestries and banners that remained were clean and free of cobwebs.