‘And you’re afraid you’d be caught. See, I told you it had best wait a month or two, un­til your skills are bet­ter.’

  ‘It’s not the pun­ish­ment. It’s that if I were caught … the King and I … we made a bar­gain …’ My words dwindled away. I stared at him in con­fu­sion. Chade’s in­struc­tion was a part of the bar­gain Shrewd and I had made. Each time we met, be­fore he began in­struct­ing me, he form­ally re­minded me of that bar­gain. I had given to Chade, as well as to the King, my word that I would be loyal. Surely he could see that if I ac­ted against the King, I’d be break­ing my part of the bar­gain.

  ‘It’s a game, boy,’ Chade said pa­tiently. ‘That’s all. Just a bit of mis­chief. It’s not really as ser­i­ous as you seem to think it. The only reason I’m choos­ing it as a task is that the King’s room and his things are so closely watched. Any­one can make off with a seam­stress’s shears. We’re talk­ing about a real bit of stealth now, to enter the King’s own cham­bers and take some­thing that be­longs to him. If you could do that, I’d be­lieve I’d spent my time well in teach­ing you. I’d feel you ap­pre­ci­ated what I’d taught you.’

  ‘You know I ap­pre­ci­ate what you teach me,’ I said quickly. That wasn’t it at all. Chade seemed to be com­pletely miss­ing my point. ‘I’d feel … dis­loyal. As if I was us­ing what you’d taught me to trick the King. Al­most as if I were laugh­ing at him.’

  ‘Ah!’ Chade leaned back in his chair, a smile on his face. ‘Don’t let that bother you, boy. King Shrewd can ap­pre­ci­ate a good jest when he’s shown one. Whatever you take, I’ll re­turn my­self to him. It will be a sign to him of how well I’ve taught you and how well you’ve learned. Take some­thing simple if it wor­ries you so; it needn’t be the crown off his head or the ring from his fin­ger! Just his hair­brush, or any bit of pa­per that’s about – even his glove or belt would do. Noth­ing of any great value. Just a token.’

  I thought I should pause to think, but I knew I didn’t need to. ‘I can’t do it. I mean, I won’t do it. Not from King Shrewd. Name any other, any­one else’s room, and I’ll do it. Re­mem­ber when I took Regal’s scroll? You’ll see, I can creep in any­where and …’

  ‘Boy?’ Chade’s voice came slowly, puzzled. ‘Don’t you trust me? I tell you it’s all right. It’s just a chal­lenge we’re talk­ing about; not high treason. And this time, if you’re caught, I prom­ise I’ll step right in and ex­plain it all. You won’t be pun­ished.’

  ‘That’s not it,’ I said frantic­ally. I could sense Chade’s grow­ing puz­zle­ment over my re­fusal. I scrabbled frantic­ally within my­self to find a way to ex­plain to him. ‘I prom­ised to be loyal to Shrewd. And this …’

  ‘There’s noth­ing dis­loyal about this!’ Chade snapped. I looked up to see angry glints in his eyes. Startled, I drew back from him. I’d never seen him glare so. ‘What are you say­ing, boy? That I’m ask­ing you to be­tray your king? Don’t be an idiot. This is just a simple little test, my way of meas­ur­ing you and show­ing Shrewd him­self what you’ve learned, and you balk at it. And try to cover your cow­ardice by prat­tling about loy­alty. Boy, you shame me. I thought you had more back­bone than this, or I’d never have be­gun teach­ing you.’

  ‘Chade!’ I began in hor­ror. His words had left me reel­ing. He pulled away from me, and I felt my small world rock­ing around me as his voice went on coldly.

  ‘Best you get back to your bed, little boy. Think ex­actly how you’ve in­sul­ted me to­night. To in­sinu­ate I’d some­how be dis­loyal to our King. Crawl down the stairs, you little craven. And the next time I sum­mon you … Hah, if I sum­mon you again, come pre­pared to obey me. Or don’t come at all. Now go.’

  Never had Chade spoken to me so. I could not re­call that he had even raised his voice to me. I stared, al­most without com­pre­hen­sion, at the thin pock-scarred arm that pro­truded from the sleeve of his robe, at the long fin­ger that poin­ted so dis­dain­fully to­ward the door and the stairs. As I rose, I felt phys­ic­ally sick. I reeled, and had to catch hold of a chair as I passed. But I went, do­ing as he told me, un­able to think of any­thing else to do. Chade, who had be­come the cent­ral pil­lar of my world, who had made me be­lieve I was some­thing of value, was tak­ing it all away. Not just his ap­proval, but our time to­gether, my sense that I was go­ing to be some­thing in my life­time.

  I stumbled and staggered down the stairs. Never had they seemed so long or so cold. The bot­tom door grated shut be­hind me, and I was left in total dark­ness. I groped my way to my bed, but my blankets could not warm me, nor did I find any trace of sleep that night. I tossed in agony. The worst part was that I could find no in­de­cision in my­self. I could not do the thing Chade asked of me. There­fore, I would lose him. Without his in­struc­tion, I would be of no value to the King. But that was not the agony. The agony was simply the loss of Chade from my life. I could not re­mem­ber how I had man­aged be­fore when I had been so alone. To re­turn to the drudgery of liv­ing day to day, go­ing from task to task seemed im­possible.

  I tried des­per­ately to think of some­thing to do. But there seemed no solu­tion. I could go to Shrewd him­self, show my pin and be ad­mit­ted, and tell him of my di­lemma. But what would he say? Would he see me as a silly little boy? Would he say I should have obeyed Chade? Worse, would he say I was right to dis­obey Chade and be angry with Chade? These were very dif­fi­cult ques­tions for a boy’s mind, and I found no an­swers that helped me.

  When morn­ing fi­nally came, I dragged my­self from my bed and re­por­ted to Burrich as usual. I went about my tasks in a grey list­less­ness that first brought me scold­ings, and then an in­quiry as to the state of my belly. I told him simply that I had not slept well, and he let me off without the threatened tonic. I did no bet­ter at weapons. My state of dis­trac­tion was such that I let a much younger boy de­liver a stout clout to my skull. Hod scol­ded us both for reck­less­ness and told me to sit down for a bit.

  My head was pound­ing and my legs were shaky when I re­turned to the keep. I went to my room, for I had no stom­ach for the noon meal or the loud con­ver­sa­tions that went with it. I lay on my bed, in­tend­ing to close my eyes for just a mo­ment, but fell into a deep sleep. I awoke halfway through the af­ter­noon, and thought of the scold­ings I would face for miss­ing my af­ter­noon les­sons. But it wasn’t enough to rouse me and I dropped off, only to be awakened at sup­per time by a serving-girl who had come to in­quire after me at Burrich’s be­hest. I staved her off by telling her I had a sour gut and was go­ing to fast un­til it cleared. After she left, I drowsed but did not sleep. I couldn’t. Night deepened in my un­lit room, and I heard the rest of the keep go off to rest. In dark­ness and still­ness, I lay wait­ing for a sum­mons I would not dare an­swer. What if the door opened? I could not go to Chade, for I could not obey him. Which would be worse: if he did not sum­mon me, or if he opened the door for me and I dared not go? I tor­men­ted my­self from rock to stone, and in the grey creep­ing of morn­ing I had the an­swer. He hadn’t even bothered to call for me.

  Even now, I do not like to re­call the next few days. I hunched through them, so sick at heart that I could not prop­erly eat or rest. I could not fo­cus my mind on any task, and took the re­bukes that my teach­ers gave me with bleak ac­cept­ance. I ac­quired a head­ache that never ceased, and my stom­ach stayed so clenched on it­self that food held no in­terest for me. The very thought of eat­ing made me weary. Burrich put up with it for two days be­fore he cornered me, and forced down me both a worm­ing draught and a blood tonic. The com­bin­a­tion made me vomit up what little I’d eaten that day. He made me wash out my mouth with plum wine af­ter­wards, and to this day I can­not drink plum wine without gag­ging. Then, to my weary amazement, he dragged me up the stairs to his loft and gruffly ordered me to rest there for the day. When even­ing came, he chiv­vied me up to the keep, and un­der his watch­ful eye I was forced to con­sume a wa­tery bowl of soup and a hunk of bread. He would have taken me back to his loft again, had I not in­sisted that I wanted my own bed. In real­ity, I had to be in my room. I had to know whether Chade at least tried to call me, whether I could go or not. Through an­other sleep­ness night, I stared in black­ness at a darker corner of my room.

  But he didn’t sum­mon me.

  Morn­ing greyed my win­dow. I rolled over and kept to my bed. The depth of bleak­ness that settled over me was too solid for me to fight. All of my pos­sible choices led to grey ends. I could not face the fu­til­ity of get­ting out of bed. A head­achey sort of near-sleep claimed me. Any sound seemed too loud, and I was either too hot or too cold no mat­ter how I fussed with my cov­ers. I closed my eyes, but even my dreams were bright and an­noy­ing. Ar­guing voices, as loud as if they were in the bed with me, and all the more frus­trat­ing be­cause it soun­ded like one man ar­guing with him­self and tak­ing both sides. ‘Break him as you broke the other one!’ he’d mut­ter an­grily. ‘You and your stu­pid tests!’ and then, ‘Can’t be too care­ful. Can’t put your trust in just any­one. Blood will tell. Test his mettle, that’s all.’ ‘Metal! You want a brain­less blade, go ham­mer it out your­self. Beat it flat.’ And more quietly, ‘I’ve got no heart for this. I’ll not be used again. If you wanted to test my tem­per, you’ve done it.’ Then, ‘Don’t talk to me about blood and fam­ily. Re­mem­ber who I am to you! It isn’t his loy­alty she’s wor­ry­ing about, or mine.’

  The angry voice broke up, merged, be­came an­other ar­gu­ment, this one shriller. I cracked open my eye­lids. My cham­ber had be­come the scene of a brief battle. I woke to a spir­ited dis­agree­ment between Burrich and Mis­tress Hasty as to whose jur­is­dic­tion I fell un­der. She had a wicker bas­ket, from which pro­truded the necks of sev­eral bottles. The scents of mus­tard in a plaster and chamo­mile waf­ted over me so strongly that I wanted to retch. Burrich stood stoic­ally between her and my bed. His arms were crossed on his chest and Vixen sat at his feet. Mis­tress Hasty’s words rattled in my head like pebbles. ‘In the keep’, ‘Those clean lin­ens’, ‘Know about boys’, ‘That smelly dog’. I don’t re­call that Burrich said a word. He just stood there so solidly that I could feel him with my eyes closed.

  Later, he was gone, but Vixen was on the bed, not at my feet, but be­side me, pant­ing heav­ily but re­fus­ing to aban­don me for the cooler floor. I opened my eyes again, later, to early twi­light. Burrich had tugged free my pil­low, shook it a bit, and was awk­wardly stuff­ing it back un­der my head, cool side up. He then sat down heav­ily on the bed.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Fitz, there’s noth­ing the mat­ter with you that I’ve ever seen be­fore. At least, whatever’s the mat­ter with you isn’t in your guts or your blood. If you were a bit older, I’d sus­pect you had wo­man prob­lems. You act like a sol­dier on a three-day drunk, but without the wine. Boy, what’s the mat­ter with you?’

  He looked down on me with sin­cere worry. It was the same look he wore when he was afraid a mare was go­ing to mis­carry, or when hunters brought back dogs that boars had gored. It reached me, and without mean­ing to, I ques­ted out to­ward him. As al­ways, the wall was there, but Vixen whined lightly and put her muzzle against my cheek. I tried to ex­press what was in­side me without be­tray­ing Chade. ‘I’m just so alone now,’ I heard my­self say, and even to me it soun­ded like a feeble com­plaint.

  ‘Alone?’ Burrich’s brows knit. ‘Fitz, I’m right here. How can you say you’re alone?’

  And there the con­ver­sa­tion ended, with both of us look­ing at one an­other and neither un­der­stand­ing at all. Later he brought me food, but didn’t in­sist I eat it. And he left Vixen with me for the night. A part of me wondered how she would re­act if the door opened, but a lar­ger part of me knew I didn’t have to worry. That door would never open again.

  Morn­ing came again, and Vixen nosed at me and whined to go out. Too broken to care if Burrich caught me, I ques­ted to­ward her. Hungry and thirsty and her blad­der was about to burst. And her dis­com­fort was sud­denly my own. I dragged on a tu­nic and took her down the stairs and out­side, and then back to the kit­chen to eat. Cook was more pleased to see me than I had ima­gined any­one could be. Vixen was given a gen­er­ous bowl of last night’s stew, while Cook in­sisted on giv­ing me six rash­ers of thick-cut ba­con on the warm crust of the day’s first bak­ing of bread. Vixen’s keen nose and sharp ap­pet­ite sparked my own senses, and I found my­self eat­ing, not with my nor­mal ap­pet­ite, but with a young creature’s sens­ory ap­pre­ci­ation for food.

  From there she led me to the stables, and though I pulled my mind back from her be­fore we went in­side, I felt some­what re­ju­ven­ated from the con­tact. Burrich straightened up from some task as I came in, looked me over, glanced at Vixen, grunted wryly to him­self, and then handed me a suckle bottle and wick. ‘There isn’t much in a man’s head,’ he told me, ‘that can’t be cured by work­ing and tak­ing care of some­thing else. The rat-dog whelped a few days ago, and there’s one pup too weak to com­pete with the oth­ers. See if you can keep him alive today.’

  It was an ugly little pup, pink skin show­ing through his brindle fur. His eyes were shut tight still, and the ex­tra skin he’d use up as he grew was piled on top of his muzzle. His skinny little tail looked just like a rat’s, so that I wondered his mother didn’t worry her own pups to death just for the re­semb­lance’s sake. He was weak and pass­ive, but I bothered him with the warm milk and wick­ing un­til he sucked a little, and got enough all over him that his mother was in­spired to lick and nuzzle him. I took one of his stronger sis­ters off her teat and plugged him into her place. Her little belly was round and full any­way; she had only been suck­ing for the sake of ob­stin­acy. She was go­ing to be white with a black spot over one eye. She caught my little fin­ger and suckled at it, and already I could feel the im­mense strength those jaws would someday hold. Burrich had told me stor­ies about rat-dogs that would latch onto a bull’s nose and hang there no mat­ter what the bull did. He had no use for men that would teach a dog to do so, but could not con­tain his re­spect for the cour­age of a dog that would take on a bull. Our rat-dogs were kept for rat­ting, and taken on reg­u­lar patrols of the corn cribs and grain barns.

  I spent the whole morn­ing there, and left at noon with the grat­i­fic­a­tion of see­ing the pup’s small belly round and tight with milk. The af­ter­noon was spent muck­ing out stalls. Burrich kept me at it, adding an­other chore as soon as I com­pleted one, with no time for me to do any­thing but work. He didn’t talk with me or ask me ques­tions, but he al­ways seemed to be work­ing only a dozen paces away. It was as if he had taken my com­plaint about be­ing alone quite lit­er­ally, and was re­solved to be where I could see him. I wound up my day back with my puppy who was sub­stan­tially stronger than he had been that morn­ing. I cradled him against my chest and he crept up un­der my chin, his blunt little muzzle quest­ing there for milk. It tickled. I pulled him down and looked at him. He was go­ing to have a pink nose. Men said the rat-dogs with the pink noses were the most sav­age ones when they fought. But his little mind now was only a muzzy warmth of se­cur­ity and milk-want and af­fec­tion for my smell. I wrapped him in my pro­tec­tion of him, praised him for his new strength. He wiggled in my fin­gers. And Burrich leaned over the side of the stall and rapped me on the head with his knuckles, bring­ing twin yelps from the pup and me.

  ‘Enough of that,’ he warned sternly. ‘That’s not a thing for a man to do. And it won’t solve whatever is chew­ing on your soul. Give the pup back to his mother, now.’

  So I did, but re­luct­antly, and not at all sure that Burrich was right that bond­ing with a puppy wouldn’t solve any­thing. I longed for his warm little world of straw and sib­lings and milk and mother. At that mo­ment, I could ima­gine no bet­ter one.

  Then Burrich and I went up to eat. He took me into the sol­diers’ mess, where man­ners were whatever you had and no one de­man­ded talk. It was com­fort­ing to be cas­u­ally ig­nored, to have food passed over my head with no one be­ing so­li­cit­ous of me. Burrich saw that I ate, though, and then af­ter­wards we sat out­side be­side the kit­chen’s back door and drank. I’d had ale and beer and wine be­fore, but I had never drunk in the pur­pose­ful way that Burrich now showed me. When Cook dared to come out and scold him for giv­ing strong spir­its to a mere boy, he gave her one of his quiet stares that re­minded me of the first night I had met him, when he’d faced down a whole room of sol­diers over Chiv­alry’s good name. And she left.

  He walked me up to my room, dragged my tu­nic off over my head as I stood un­stead­ily be­side my bed, and then cas­u­ally tumbled me into the bed and tossed a blanket over me. ‘Now you’ll sleep,’ he in­formed me in a thick voice. ‘And to­mor­row we’ll do the same again. And again. Un­til one day you get up and find out that whatever it was didn’t kill you after all.’

  He blew out my candle and left. My head reeled and my body ached from the day’s work. But still I didn’t sleep. What I found my­self do­ing was cry­ing. The drink had loosened whatever knot held my con­trol, and I wept. Not quietly. I sobbed, and hic­cuped and then wailed with my jaw shak­ing. My throat closed up, my nose ran, and I cried so hard I felt I couldn’t breathe. I think I cried every tear I had never shed since the day my grand­father forced my mother to aban­don me. ‘Mere!’ I heard my­self call out, and sud­denly there were arms around me, hold­ing me tight.

  Chade held me and rocked me as if I were a much younger child. Even in the dark­ness I knew those bony arms and the herb-and-dust smell of him. Dis­be­liev­ing, I clung to him and cried un­til I was hoarse, and my mouth so dry no sound would come at all. ‘You were right,’ he said into my hair, quietly, calm­ingly. ‘You were right. I was ask­ing you to do some­thing wrong, and you were right to re­fuse it. You won’t be tested that way again. Not by me.’ And when I was fi­nally still, he left me for a time, and then brought back to me a drink, luke­warm and al­most taste­less, but not wa­ter. He held the mug to my mouth and I drank it down without ques­tions. Then I lay back so sud­denly sleepy that I don’t even re­mem­ber Chade leav­ing my room.