I awoke near dawn and re­por­ted to Burrich after a hearty break­fast. I was quick at my chores and at­tent­ive to my charges and could not at all un­der­stand why he had awakened so head­achey and grumpy. He muttered some­thing once about ‘his father’s head for spir­its’, and then dis­missed me early, telling me to take my whist­ling else­where.

  Three days later, King Shrewd summoned me in the dawn. He was already dressed, and there was a tray and food for more than one per­son set out on it. As soon as I ar­rived, he sent away his man and told me to sit. I took a chair at the small table in his room, and without ask­ing me if I were hungry, he served me food with his own hand and then sat down across from me to eat. The ges­ture was not lost on me, but even so I could not bring my­self to eat much. He spoke only of the food, and said noth­ing of bar­gains or loy­alty or keep­ing one’s word. When he saw I had fin­ished eat­ing, he pushed his own plate away. He shif­ted un­com­fort­ably.

  ‘It was my idea,’ he said sud­denly, al­most harshly. ‘Not his. He never ap­proved of it. I in­sisted. When you’re older, you’ll un­der­stand. I can take no chances, not on any­one. But I prom­ised him that you’d know this right from me. It was all my own idea, never his. And I will never ask him to try your mettle in such a way again. On that you have a king’s word.’

  He made a mo­tion that dis­missed me. And I rose, but as I did so, I took from his tray a little sil­ver knife, all en­graved, that he had been us­ing to cut fruit with. I looked him in the eyes as I did so, and quite openly slipped it up my sleeve. King Shrewd’s eyes widened, but he said not a word.

  Two nights later, when Chade summoned me, our les­sons re­sumed as if there had never been a pause. He talked, I listened, I played his stone game and never made an er­ror. He gave me an as­sign­ment, and we made small jokes to­gether. He showed me how Slink the weasel would dance for a saus­age. All was well between us again. But be­fore I left his cham­bers that night, I walked to his hearth. Without a word, I placed the knife on the centre of his man­tel-shelf. Ac­tu­ally, I drove it, blade first, into the wood of the shelf. Then I left without speak­ing of it or meet­ing his eyes. In fact, we never spoke of it.

  I be­lieve that the knife is still there.

  SIX

  Chiv­alry’s Shadow

  There are two tra­di­tions about the cus­tom of giv­ing royal off­spring names sug­gest­ive of vir­tues or abil­it­ies. The one that is most com­monly held is that some­how these names are bind­ing; that when such a name is at­tached to a child who will be trained in the Skill, some­how the Skill melds the name to the child, and the child can­not help but grow up to prac­tise the vir­tue ascribed to him or her by name. This first tra­di­tion is most dog­gedly be­lieved by those same ones most prone to doff their caps in the pres­ence of minor no­bil­ity.

  A more an­cient tra­di­tion at­trib­utes such names to ac­ci­dent, at least ini­tially. It is said that King Taker and King Ruler, the first two of the Outis­landers to rule what would be­come the Six Duch­ies, had no such names at all. Rather that their names in their own for­eign tongue were very sim­ilar to the sounds of such words in the duch­ies’ tongue, and thus came to be known by their hom­onyms rather than by their true names. But for the pur­poses of roy­alty, it is bet­ter to have the com­mon folk be­lieve that a boy given a noble name must grow to have a noble nature.

  ‘Boy!’

  I lif­ted my head. Of the half-dozen or so other lads loun­ging about be­fore the fire, no one else even flinched. The girls took even less no­tice as I moved up to take my place at the op­pos­ite side of the low table where Mas­ter Fed­wren knelt. He had mastered some trick of in­flec­tion that let all know when Boy meant ‘boy’ and when it meant ‘the bas­tard’.

  I tucked my knees un­der the low table and sat on my feet, then presen­ted Fed­wren with my sheet of pith-pa­per. As he ran his eyes down my care­ful columns of let­ters, I let my at­ten­tion wander.

  Winter had har­ves­ted us and stored us here in the Great Hall. Out­side, a sea storm lashed the walls of the keep while break­ers poun­ded the cliffs with a force that oc­ca­sion­ally sent a tremor through the stone floor be­neath us. The heavy over­cast had stolen even the few hours of wa­tery day­light that winter had left us. It seemed to me that a dark­ness lay over us like a fog, both out­side and within. The dim­ness pen­et­rated my eyes, so that I felt sleepy without feel­ing tired. For a brief mo­ment, I let my senses ex­pand, and felt the winter slug­gish­ness of the hounds where they dozed and twitched in the corners. Not even there could I find a thought or im­age to in­terest me.

  Fires burned in all three of the big hearths, and dif­fer­ent groups had gathered be­fore each. At one, fletch­ers busied them­selves with their work, lest to­mor­row be a clear enough day to al­low for a hunt. I longed to be there, for Sherf’s mel­low voice was rising and fall­ing in the telling of some tale, broken fre­quently with ap­pre­ci­at­ive laughter from her listen­ers. At the end hearth, chil­dren’s voices piped along in the chorus of a song. I re­cog­nized it as the Shep­herd’s Song, a count­ing tune. A few watch­ful moth­ers tapped toes as they tat­ted at their lace­mak­ing while Jer­don’s withered old fin­gers on the harp strings kept the young voices al­most in tune.

  Here, at our hearth, chil­dren old enough to sit still and learn let­ters, did. Fed­wren saw to that. His sharp blue eyes missed noth­ing. ‘Here,’ he said to me, point­ing. ‘You’ve for­got­ten to cross their tails. Re­mem­ber how I showed you? Justice, open your eyes and get back to your pen­work. Doze off again and I’ll let you bring us an­other log for the fire. Char­ity, you can help him if you smirk again. Other than that,’ and his at­ten­tion was sud­denly back on my work again, ‘your let­ter­ing is much im­proved, not only on these Duch­ian char­ac­ters, but on the Outis­lander runes as well. Though those can’t really be prop­erly brushed onto such poor pa­per. The sur­face is too por­ous, and takes the ink too well. Good, poun­ded bark sheets are what you want for runes,’ and he ran a fin­ger ap­pre­ci­at­ively over the sheet he was work­ing on. ‘Con­tinue to show this type of work, and be­fore winter’s out I’ll let you make me a copy of Queen Bidewell’s Rem­ed­ies. What do you say to that?’

  I tried to smile and be prop­erly flattered. Copy­work was not usu­ally given to stu­dents; good pa­per was too rare, and one care­less brush­stroke could ruin a sheet. I knew the Rem­ed­ies was a fairly simple set of herbal prop­er­ties and proph­ecies but any copy­ing was an hon­our to as­pire to. Fed­wren gave me a fresh sheet of pith-pa­per. As I rose to re­turn to my place, he lif­ted a hand to stop me. ‘Boy?’

  I paused.

  Fed­wren looked un­com­fort­able. ‘I don’t know who to ask this of, ex­cept you. Prop­erly, I’d ask your par­ents, but …’ Mer­ci­fully he let the sen­tence die. He scratched his beard med­it­at­ively with his ink-stained fin­gers. ‘Winter’s soon over, and I’ll be on my way again. Do you know what I do in sum­mer, boy? I wander all the Six Duch­ies, get­ting herbs and ber­ries and roots for my inks, and mak­ing pro­vi­sions for the pa­pers I need. It’s a good life, walk­ing free on the roads in sum­mers and guest­ing at the keep here all winter. There’s much to be said for scrib­ing for a liv­ing.’ He looked at me med­it­at­ively. I looked back, won­der­ing what he was get­ting at.

  ‘I take an ap­pren­tice, every few years. Some of them work out, and go on to do scrib­ing for the lesser keeps. Some don’t. Some don’t have the pa­tience for the de­tail, or the memory for the inks. I think you would. What would you think about be­com­ing a scribe?’

  The ques­tion caught me com­pletely off-guard, and I stared at him mutely. It wasn’t just the idea of be­com­ing a scribe; it was the whole no­tion that Fed­wren would want me to be his ap­pren­tice, to fol­low him about and learn the secrets of his trade. Sev­eral years had passed since I had be­gun my bar­gain with the old King. Other than the nights I spent in Chade’s com­pany or my stolen af­ter­noons with Molly and Kerry, I had never thought of any­one find­ing me com­pan­ion­able, let alone good ma­ter­ial for an ap­pren­tice. Fed­wren’s pro­posal left me speech­less. He must have sensed my con­fu­sion, for he smiled his gen­ial young-old smile.

  ‘Well, think on it, boy. Scrib­ing’s a good trade, and what other pro­spects do you have? Between the two of us, I think that some time away from Buck­keep might do you good.’

  ‘Away from Buck­keep?’ I re­peated in won­der. It was like someone open­ing a cur­tain. I had never con­sidered the idea. Sud­denly the roads lead­ing away from Buck­keep gleamed in my mind, and the weary maps I had been forced to study be­came places I could go. It trans­fixed me.

  ‘Yes,’ Fed­wren said softly. ‘Leave Buck­keep. As you grow older, Chiv­alry’s shadow will grow thin­ner. It will not al­ways shel­ter you. Bet­ter you were your own man, with your own life and call­ing to con­tent you be­fore his pro­tec­tion is en­tirely gone. But you don’t have to an­swer me now. Think about it. Dis­cuss it with Burrich, per­haps.’

  And he handed me my pith-pa­per and sent me back to my place. I thought about his words, but it was not Burrich I took them to. In the feeble hours of a new day, Chade and I were crouched, head to head, I pick­ing up the red shards of a broken crock that Slink had over­set while Chade salvaged the fine black seeds that had scattered in all dir­ec­tions. Slink clung to the top of a sag­ging tapestry and chirred apo­lo­get­ic­ally, but I sensed his amuse­ment.

  ‘Come all the way from Kalibar, these seeds, you skinny little pelt!’ Chade scol­ded him.

  ‘Kalibar,’ I said, and dredged out, ‘A day’s travel past our bor­der with Sandsedge.’

  ‘That’s right, my boy,’ Chade muttered ap­prov­ingly.

  ‘Have you ever been there?’

  ‘Me? Oh, no. I meant that they came from that far. I had to send to Fir­crest for them. They’ve a large mar­ket there, one that draws trade from all six duch­ies and many of our neigh­bours as well.’

  ‘Oh. Fir­crest. Have you ever been there?’

  Chade con­sidered. ‘A time or two, when I was a younger man. I re­mem­ber the noise, mostly, and the heat. In­land places are like that: too dry, too hot. I was glad to re­turn to Buck­keep.’

  ‘Was there any other place you ever went that you liked bet­ter than Buck­keep?’

  Chade straightened slowly, his pale hand cupped full of fine black seed. ‘Why don’t you just ask me your ques­tion in­stead of beat­ing around the bush?’

  So I told him of Fed­wren’s of­fer, and also of my sud­den real­iz­a­tion that maps were more than lines and col­ours. They were places and pos­sib­il­it­ies, and I could leave here and be someone else, be a scribe, or …

  ‘No.’ Chade spoke softly but ab­ruptly. ‘No mat­ter where you went, you would still be Chiv­alry’s bas­tard. Fed­wren is more per­spic­a­cious than I be­lieved him to be, but he still doesn’t un­der­stand. Not the whole pic­ture. He sees that here at court you must al­ways be a bas­tard, must al­ways be some­thing of a pariah. What he doesn’t real­ize is that here, par­tak­ing of King Shrewd’s bounty, learn­ing your les­sons, un­der his eye, you are not a threat to him. Cer­tainly, you are un­der Chiv­alry’s shadow here. Cer­tainly it does pro­tect you. But were you away from here, far from be­ing un­need­ful of such pro­tec­tion, you would be­come a danger to King Shrewd, and a greater danger to his heirs after him. You would have no simple life of free­dom as a wan­der­ing scribe. Rather you would be found in your inn bed with your throat cut some morn­ing, or with an ar­row through you on the high road.’

  A cold­ness shivered through me. ‘But why?’ I asked softly.

  Chade sighed. He dumped the seeds into a dish, dus­ted his hands lightly to shake loose those that clung to his fin­gers. ‘Be­cause you’re a royal bas­tard, and host­age to your own blood-lines. For now, as I say, you’re no threat to Shrewd. You’re too young, and be­sides, he has you right where he can watch you. But he’s look­ing down the road. And you should be, too. These are rest­less times. The Outis­landers are get­ting braver about their raids. The coast folk are be­gin­ning to grumble, say­ing we need more patrol ships, and some say war­ships of our own, to raid as we are raided. But the In­land Duch­ies want no part of pay­ing for ships of any kind, es­pe­cially not war­ships that might pre­cip­it­ate us into a full-scale war. They com­plain the coast is all the king thinks of, with no care for their farm­ing. And the moun­tain folk are be­com­ing more chary about the use of their passes. The trade fees grow steeper every month. So the mer­chants mumble and com­plain to each other. To the south, in Sandsedge and bey­ond, there is drought, and times are hard. Every­one there curses, as if the King and Ver­ity were to blame for that as well. Ver­ity is a fine fel­low to have a mug with, but he is neither the sol­dier nor the dip­lo­mat that Chiv­alry was. He would rather hunt winter buck, or listen to a min­strel by the fireside than travel winter roads in raw weather, just to stay in touch with the other duch­ies. Sooner or later, if things do not im­prove, people will look about and say, “Well, a bas­tard’s not so large a thing to make a fuss over. Chiv­alry should have come to power; he’d soon put a stop to all this. He might have been a bit stiff about pro­tocol, but at least he got things done, and didn’t let for­eign­ers trample all over us”.’

  ‘So Chiv­alry might yet be­come King?’ The ques­tion sent a queer thrill through me. In­stantly I was ima­gin­ing his tri­umphant re­turn to Buck­keep, our even­tual meet­ing, and … What then?

  Chade seemed to be read­ing my face. ‘No, boy. Not likely at all. Even if the folk all wanted him to, I doubt that he’d go against what he set upon him­self, or against the King’s wishes. But it would cause mum­blings and grumblings, and those could lead to ri­ots and skir­mishes, oh, and a gen­er­ally bad cli­mate for a bas­tard to be run­ning around free in. You’d have to be settled one way or an­other. Either as a corpse, or as the King’s tool.’

  ‘The King’s tool. I see.’ An op­pres­sion settled over me. My brief glimpse of blue skies arch­ing over yel­low roads and me trav­el­ling down them astride Sooty sud­denly van­ished. I thought of the hounds in their ken­nels in­stead, or of the hawk, hooded and strapped, that rode on the King’s wrist and was loosed only to do the King’s will.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be that bad,’ Chade said quietly. ‘Most pris­ons are of our own mak­ing. A man makes his own free­dom, too.’

  ‘I’m never go­ing to get to go any­where, am I?’ Des­pite the new­ness of the idea, trav­el­ling sud­denly seemed im­mensely im­port­ant to me.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’ Chade was rum­ma­ging about for some­thing to use as a stop­per on the dish full of seeds. He fi­nally con­ten­ted him­self with put­ting a sau­cer on top of it. ‘You’ll go to many places. Quietly, and when the fam­ily in­terests re­quire you to go there. But that’s not all that dif­fer­ent for any prince of the blood. Do you think Chiv­alry got to choose where he would go to work his dip­lomacy? Do you think Ver­ity likes be­ing sent off to view towns raided by Outis­landers, to hear the com­plaints of folks who in­sist that if only they’d been bet­ter for­ti­fied or bet­ter manned, none of this would have happened? A true prince has very little free­dom when it comes to where he will go or how he will spend his time. Chiv­alry has prob­ably more of both now than he ever had be­fore.’

  ‘Ex­cept that he can’t come back to Buck­keep?’ The flash of in­sight made me freeze, my hands full of shards.

  ‘Ex­cept he can’t come back to Buck­keep. It doesn’t do to stir folks up with vis­its from a former King-in-Wait­ing. Bet­ter he faded quietly away.’

  I tossed the shards into the hearth. ‘At least he gets to go some­where,’ I muttered. ‘I can’t even go to town …’

  ‘And it’s that im­port­ant to you? To go down to a grubby, greasy little port like Buck­keep Town?’

  ‘There are other people there …’ I hes­it­ated. Not even Chade knew of my town friends. I plunged ahead. ‘They call me New­boy. And they don’t think “the bas­tard” every time they look at me.’ I had never put it into words be­fore, but sud­denly the at­trac­tion of town was quite clear to me.

  ‘Ah,’ said Chade, and his shoulders moved as if he sighed, but he was si­lent. And a mo­ment later he was telling me how one could sicken a man just by feed­ing him rhu­barb and spin­ach at the same sit­ting, sicken him even to death if the por­tions were suf­fi­cient, and never set a bit of poison on the table at all. I asked him how to keep oth­ers at the same table from also be­ing sickened, and our dis­cus­sion wandered from there. Only later did it seem to me that his words re­gard­ing Chiv­alry had been al­most proph­etic.

  Two days later I was sur­prised to be told that Fed­wren had re­ques­ted my ser­vices for a day or so. I was sur­prised even more when he gave me a list of sup­plies he re­quired from town, and enough sil­ver to buy them, with two ex­tra cop­pers for my­self. I held my breath, ex­pect­ing that Burrich or one of my other mas­ters would for­bid it, but in­stead I was told to hurry on my way. I went out of the gates with a bas­ket on my arm and my brain giddy with sud­den free­dom. I coun­ted up the months since I had last been able to slip away from Buck­keep, and was shocked to find it had been a year or bet­ter. Im­me­di­ately I planned to re­new my old fa­mili­ar­ity with the town. No one had told me when I had to re­turn, and I was con­fid­ent I could snatch an hour or two to my­self and no one the wiser.