‘It’s all my fault he went away, isn’t it?’ The words of the weav­ing-wo­men echoed in my head. But for the boy, he’d still be in line to be king.

  Burrich paused long. ‘I don’t sup­pose it’s any man’s fault that he’s born …’ He sighed, and the words seemed to come more re­luct­antly. ‘And there’s cer­tainly no way a babe can make it­self not a bas­tard. No. Chiv­alry brought his down­fall on him­self, though that’s a hard thing for me to say.’ I heard his hands go back to work on the geld­ing’s leg.

  ‘And your down­fall, too.’ I said it to Sooty’s shoulder, softly, never dream­ing he’d hear.

  But a mo­ment or two later, I heard him mut­ter, ‘I do well enough for my­self, Fitz. I do well enough.’

  He fin­ished his task and came around into Sooty’s stall. ‘Your tongue’s wag­ging like the town gos­sip today, Fitz. What’s got into you?’

  It was my turn to pause and won­der. Some­thing about Chade, I de­cided. Some­thing about someone who wanted me to un­der­stand and have a say in what I was learn­ing had freed up my tongue fi­nally to ask all the ques­tions I’d been car­ry­ing about for years. But be­cause I couldn’t very well say so, I shrugged, and truth­fully replied, ‘They’re just things I’ve wondered about for a long time.’

  Burrich grunted his ac­cept­ance of the an­swer. ‘Well. It’s an im­prove­ment that you ask, though I won’t al­ways prom­ise you an an­swer. It’s good to hear you speak like a man. Makes me worry less about los­ing you to the beasts.’ He glared at me over the last words, and then gimped away. I watched him go, and re­membered that first night I had seen him, and how a look from him had been enough to quell a whole room full of men. He wasn’t the same man. And it wasn’t just the limp that had changed the way he car­ried him­self and how men looked at him. He was still the ac­know­ledged mas­ter in the stables and no one ques­tioned his au­thor­ity there. But he was no longer the right hand of the King-in-Wait­ing. Other than watch­ing over me, he wasn’t Chiv­alry’s man at all any more. No won­der he couldn’t look at me without re­sent­ment. He hadn’t sired the bas­tard that had been his down­fall. For the first time since I had known him, my war­i­ness of him was tinged with pity.

  FIVE

  Loy­al­ties

  In some king­doms and lands, it is the cus­tom that male chil­dren will have pre­ced­ence over fe­male in mat­ters of in­her­it­ance. Such has never been the case in the Six Duch­ies. Titles are in­her­ited solely by or­der of birth.

  The one who in­her­its a title is sup­posed to view it as a stew­ard­ship. If a lord or lady were so fool­ish as to cut too much forest at once, or neg­lect vine­yards or let the qual­ity of the cattle be­come too in­bred, the people of the duchy could rise up and come to ask the King’s Justice. It has happened, and every noble is aware it can hap­pen. The wel­fare of the people be­longs to the people, and they have the right to ob­ject if their duke stew­ards it poorly.

  When the title-holder weds, he is sup­posed to keep this in mind. The part­ner chosen must be will­ing to be a stew­ard like­wise. For this reason, the part­ner hold­ing a lesser title must sur­render it to the next younger sib­ling. One can only be a true stew­ard of one hold­ing. On oc­ca­sion this has led to di­vi­sions. King Shrewd mar­ried Lady De­sire, who would have been Duch­ess of Far­row, had she not chosen to ac­cept his of­fer and be­come Queen in­stead. It is said she came to re­gret her de­cision, and con­vinced her­self that, had she re­mained Duch­ess, her power would have been greater. She mar­ried Shrewd know­ing well that she was his second queen, and that the first had already borne him two heirs. She never con­cealed her dis­dain for the two older princes, and of­ten poin­ted out that as she was much higher born than King Shrewd’s first queen, she con­sidered her son Regal to be more royal than his two half-broth­ers. She at­temp­ted to in­stil this idea in oth­ers by her choice of name for her son. Un­for­tu­nately for her plans, most saw this ploy as be­ing in poor taste. Some even mock­ingly re­ferred to her as the In­land Queen, when, in­tox­ic­ated, she would ruth­lessly claim that she had the polit­ical in­flu­ence to unite Far­row and Tilth into a new king­dom, one that would shrug off King Shrewd’s rule at her be­hest. But most put her claims down to her fond­ness for in­tox­ic­ants, both al­co­holic and herbal. It is true, how­ever, that be­fore she fi­nally suc­cumbed to her ad­dic­tions, she was re­spons­ible for nur­tur­ing the rift between the In­land and Coastal Duch­ies.

  I grew to look for­ward to my dark-time en­coun­ters with Chade. They never had a sched­ule, nor any pat­tern that I could dis­cern. A week, even two, might go by between meet­ings, or he might sum­mon me every night for a week straight, leav­ing me stag­ger­ing about my day-time chores. Some­times he summoned me as soon as the castle was abed; at other times, he called upon me in the wee hours of the morn­ing. It was a strenu­ous sched­ule for a grow­ing boy, yet I never thought of com­plain­ing to Chade or re­fus­ing one of his calls. Nor do I think it ever oc­curred to him that my night les­sons presen­ted a dif­fi­culty for me. Noc­turnal him­self, it must have seemed a per­fectly nat­ural time for him to be teach­ing me. And the les­sons I learned were oddly suited to the darker hours of the world.

  There was tre­mend­ous scope to his les­sons. One even­ing might be spent in la­bor­i­ous study of the il­lus­tra­tions in a great herbal he kept, with the re­quire­ment that the next day I was to col­lect six samples that matched those il­lus­tra­tions. He never saw fit to hint as to whether I should look in the kit­chen garden or the darker nooks of the forest for those herbs, but find them I did, and learned much of ob­ser­va­tion in the pro­cess.

  There were games we played, too. For in­stance, he would tell me that I must go on the mor­row to Sara the cook and ask her if this year’s ba­con were leaner than last year’s. And then I must that even­ing re­port the en­tire con­ver­sa­tion back to Chade, as close to word per­fect as I could, and an­swer a dozen ques­tions for him about how she stood, and was she left-handed and did she seem hard of hear­ing and what she was cook­ing at the time. My shy­ness and reti­cence were never ac­coun­ted a good enough ex­cuse for fail­ing to ex­ecute such an as­sign­ment, and so I found my­self meet­ing and com­ing to know a good many of the lesser folk of the keep. Even though my ques­tions were in­spired by Chade, every one of them wel­comed my in­terest and was more than will­ing to share ex­pert­ise. Without in­tend­ing it, I began to garner a repu­ta­tion as a ‘sharp young­ster’ and a ‘good lad’. Years later I real­ized that the les­son was not just a memory ex­er­cise but also in­struc­tion in how to be­friend the com­moner folk, and to learn their minds. Many’s the time since then that a smile, a com­pli­ment on how well my horse had been cared for, and a quick ques­tion put to a stable-boy brought me in­form­a­tion that all the coin in the king­dom couldn’t have bribed out of him.

  Other games built my nerve as well as my powers of ob­ser­va­tion. One day Chade showed me a skein of yarn, and told me that, without ask­ing Mis­tress Hasty, I must find out ex­actly where she kept the sup­ply of yarn that matched it, and what herbs had been used in the dye­ing of it. Three days later I was told I must spirit away her best shears, con­ceal them be­hind a cer­tain rack of wines in the wine cel­lar for three hours, and then re­turn them to where they had been, all un­detec­ted by her or any­one else. Such ex­er­cises ini­tially ap­pealed to a boy’s nat­ural love of mis­chief, and I sel­dom failed at them. When I did, the con­sequences were my own look-out. Chade had warned me that he would not shield me from any­body’s wrath, and sug­ges­ted that I have a worthy tale ready to ex­plain away be­ing where I should not be, or pos­sess­ing that which I had no busi­ness pos­sess­ing.

  I learned to lie very well. I do not think it was taught me ac­ci­dent­ally.

  These were the les­sons in my as­sas­sin’s primer. And more. Sleight of hand and the art of mov­ing stealth­ily. Where to strike a man to render him un­con­scious. Where to strike a man so that he dies without cry­ing out. Where to stab a man so that he dies without too much blood welling out. I learned it all rap­idly and well, thriv­ing un­der Chade’s ap­proval of my quick mind.

  Soon he began to use me for small jobs about the keep. He never told me, ahead of time, if they were tests of my skill, or ac­tual tasks he wished ac­com­plished. To me it made no dif­fer­ence; I pur­sued them all with a single-minded de­vo­tion to Chade and any­thing he com­manded. In spring of that year, I treated the wine cups of a vis­it­ing del­eg­a­tion from the Bing­town traders so that they be­came much more in­tox­ic­ated than they had in­ten­ded. Later that same month, I con­cealed one pup­pet from a vis­it­ing pup­pet­eer’s troupe, so that he had to present the In­cid­ence of the Match­ing Cups, a light-hearted little folk tale in­stead of the lengthy his­tor­ical drama he had planned for the even­ing. At the High-Sum­mer Feast, I ad­ded a cer­tain herb to a serving-girl’s af­ter­noon pot of tea, so that she and three of her friends were stricken with loose bowels and could not wait the tables that night. In the au­tumn I tied a thread around the fet­lock of a vis­it­ing noble’s horse, to give the an­imal a tem­por­ary limp that con­vinced the noble to re­main at Buck­keep two days longer than he had planned. I never knew the un­der­ly­ing reas­ons for the tasks Chade set me. At that age, I set my mind to how I would do a thing, rather than why. And that, too, was a thing that I be­lieve it was in­ten­ded I learn: to obey without ask­ing why an or­der was given.

  There was one task that ab­so­lutely de­lighted me. Even at the time, I knew that the as­sign­ment was more than a whim of Chade’s. He summoned me for it in the last bit of dark be­fore dawn. ‘Lord Jes­sup and his lady have been vis­it­ing this last two weeks. You know them by sight; he has a very long mous­tache, and she con­stantly fusses with her hair, even at the table. You know who I mean?’

  I frowned. A num­ber of nobles had gathered at Buck­keep, to form a coun­cil to dis­cuss the in­crease in raids from the Outis­landers. I gathered that the Coastal Duch­ies wanted more war­ships, but the In­land Duch­ies op­posed shar­ing the taxes for what they saw as a purely coastal prob­lem. Lord Jes­sup and Lady Dah­lia were In­land­ers. Jes­sup and his mous­taches both seemed to have fit­ful tem­pera­ments and to be con­stantly im­pas­sioned. Lady Dah­lia, on the other hand, seemed to take no in­terest at all in the coun­cil, but spent most of her time ex­plor­ing Buck­keep.

  ‘She wears flowers in her hair, all the time? They keep fall­ing out?’

  ‘That’s the one,’ Chade replied em­phat­ic­ally. ‘Good. You know her. Now, here’s your task, and I’ve no time to plan it with you. Some time today, at any mo­ment today, she will send a page to Prince Regal’s room. The page will de­liver some­thing; a note, a flower, an ob­ject of some kind. You will re­move the ob­ject from Regal’s room be­fore he sees it. You un­der­stand?’

  I nod­ded and opened my mouth to say some­thing, but Chade stood ab­ruptly and al­most chased me from the room. ‘No time; it is nearly dawn!’ he de­clared.

  I con­trived to be in Regal’s room, in hid­ing, when the page ar­rived. From the way the girl slipped in, I was con­vinced this was not her first mis­sion. She set a tiny scroll and a flower bud on Regal’s pil­low, and slipped out of the room. In a mo­ment both were in my jer­kin, and later un­der my own pil­low. I think the most dif­fi­cult part of the task was re­frain­ing from open­ing the scroll. I turned scroll and flower over to Chade late that night.

  Over the next few days, I waited, cer­tain there would be some sort of furore, and hop­ing to see Regal thor­oughly dis­com­fited. But to my sur­prise, there was none. Regal re­mained his usual self, save that he was even sharper than usual, and seemed to flirt even more out­rageously with every lady. As for Lady Dah­lia, she sud­denly took an in­terest in the coun­cil pro­ceed­ings, and con­foun­ded her hus­band by be­com­ing an ar­dent sup­porter of war­ship taxes. The Queen ex­pressed her dis­pleas­ure over this change of al­li­ance by ex­clud­ing Lady Dah­lia from a wine-tast­ing in her cham­bers. The whole thing mys­ti­fied me, but when I at last men­tioned it to Chade, he re­buked me.

  ‘Re­mem­ber, you are the King’s man. A task is given you, and you do it. And you should be well sat­is­fied with your­self that you com­pleted the given task. That is all you need to know. Only Shrewd may plan the moves and plot his game. You and I, we are play­ing pieces, per­haps. But we are the best of his mark­ers; be as­sured of that.’

  But early on, Chade found the lim­its of my obed­i­ence. In lam­ing the horse, he had sug­ges­ted I cut the frog of the an­imal’s foot. I never even con­sidered do­ing that. I in­formed him, with all the worldly wis­dom of one who has grown up around horses, that there were many ways to make a horse limp without ac­tu­ally harm­ing him, and that he should trust me to choose an ap­pro­pri­ate one. To this day, I do not know how Chade felt about my re­fusal. He said noth­ing at the time to con­demn it, or to sug­gest he ap­proved my ac­tions. In this as in many things, he kept his own coun­sel.

  Once every three months or so, King Shrewd would sum­mon me to his cham­bers. Usu­ally the call for me came in the very early morn­ing. I would stand be­fore him, of­ten-times while he was in his bath, or hav­ing his hair bound back in the gold-wired queue that only the King could wear, or while his man was lay­ing out his clothes. Al­ways the ritual was the same. He would look me over care­fully, study­ing my growth and groom­ing as if I were a horse he was con­sid­er­ing buy­ing. He would ask a ques­tion or two, usu­ally about my horse­man­ship or weapons study, and listen gravely to my brief an­swer. And then he would ask, al­most form­ally, ‘And do you feel I am keep­ing my bar­gain with you?’

  ‘Sir, I do,’ I would al­ways an­swer.

  ‘Then see that you keep your end of it as well,’ was al­ways his reply and my dis­missal. And whatever ser­vant at­tend­ing him or open­ing the door for me to enter or leave never ap­peared to take the slight­est no­tice of me or of the King’s words at all.

  Come late au­tumn of that year, on the very cusp of winter’s tooth, I was given my most dif­fi­cult as­sign­ment. Chade had summoned me up to his cham­bers al­most as soon as I had blown out my night candle. We were shar­ing sweet­meats and a bit of spiced wine, sit­ting in front of Chade’s hearth. He had been lav­ishly prais­ing my latest es­capade, one that re­quired me turn­ing in­side out every shirt hung to dry on the laun­dry court­yard’s dry­ing-lines without get­ting caught. It had been a dif­fi­cult task, the hard­est part of which had been to re­frain from laugh­ing aloud and be­tray­ing my hid­ing place within a dye­ing-vat when two of the younger laun­dry-lads had de­clared my prank the work of wa­ter sprites and re­fused to do any more wash­ing that day. Chade, as usual, knew of the whole scen­ario even be­fore I re­por­ted to him. He de­lighted me by let­ting me know that Mas­ter Lew of the laun­der­ers had de­creed that Sin­jon’s Wort was to be hung at every corner of the court­yard and gar­landed about every well to ward off sprites from to­mor­row’s work.

  ‘You’ve a gift for this, boy,’ Chade chuckled and tousled my hair. ‘I al­most think there’s no task I could set you that you couldn’t do.’

  He was sit­ting in his straight-backed chair be­fore the fire, and I was on the floor be­side him, lean­ing my back against one of his legs. He pat­ted me the way Burrich might pat a young bird dog that had done well, and then leaned for­ward to say softly, ‘But I’ve a chal­lenge for you.’

  ‘What is it?’ I de­man­ded eagerly.

  ‘It won’t be easy, even for one with as light a touch as yours,’ he warned me.

  ‘Try me!’ I chal­lenged him in re­turn.

  ‘Oh, in an­other month or two, per­haps, when you’ve had a bit more teach­ing. I’ve a game to teach you to­night, one that will sharpen your eye and your memory.’ He reached into a pouch and drew out a hand­ful of some­thing. He opened his hand briefly in front of me; col­oured stones. The hand closed. ‘Were there any yel­low ones?’

  ‘Yes. Chade, what is the chal­lenge?’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Two that I could see. Chade, I bet I could do it now.’

  ‘Could there have been more than two?’

  ‘Pos­sibly, if some were con­cealed com­pletely un­der the top layer. I don’t think it likely. Chade, what is the chal­lenge?’

  He opened his bony old hand, stirred the stones with his long fore­finger. ‘Right you were. Only two yel­low ones. Shall we go again?’

  ‘Chade, I can do it.’

  ‘You think so, do you? Look again, here’s the stones. One, two, three, and gone again. Were there any red ones?’

  ‘Yes. Chade, what is the task?’

  ‘Were there more red ones than blue? To bring me some­thing per­sonal from the King’s night-table.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Were there more red stones than blue ones?’

  ‘No, I mean, what was the task?’

  ‘Wrong, boy!’ Chade an­nounced it mer­rily. He opened his fist. ‘See, three red and three blue. Ex­actly the same. You’ll have to look quicker than that if you’re to meet my chal­lenge.’

  ‘And seven green. I knew that, Chade. But … you want me to steal from the King?’ I still couldn’t be­lieve I had heard it.

  ‘Not steal, just bor­row. As you did Mis­tress Hasty’s shears. There’s no harm in a prank like that, is there?’

  ‘None ex­cept that I’d be whipped if I were caught. Or worse.’