The dis­par­ity of the items on Fed­wren’s list took me all over the town. I had no idea what use a scribe had for dried Sea-Maid’s Hair, or for a peck of for­ester’s nuts. Per­haps he used them to make his col­oured inks, I de­cided, and when I could not find them in the usual shops, I took my­self down to the har­bour bazaar, where any­one with a blanket and some­thing to sell could de­clare him­self a mer­chant. The sea­weed I found swiftly enough there, and learned it was a com­mon in­gredi­ent in chow­der. The nuts took longer, for those were some­thing that would have come from in­land rather than from the sea, and there were fewer traders who dealt in such things.

  But find them I did, along­side bas­kets of por­cu­pine quills and carved wooden beads and nut­cones and poun­ded bark fab­ric. The wo­man who presided over the blanket was old, and her hair had gone sil­ver rather than white or grey. She had a strong, straight nose and her eyes were on bony shelves over her cheeks. It was a ra­cial her­it­age both strange and oddly fa­mil­iar to me, and a shiver walked down my back when I sud­denly knew she was from the moun­tains.

  ‘Kep­pet,’ said the wo­man at the next mat as I com­pleted my pur­chase. I glanced at her, think­ing she was ad­dress­ing the wo­man I had just paid. But she was star­ing at me. ‘Kep­pet,’ she said, quite in­sist­ently, and I wondered what it meant in her lan­guage. It seemed a re­quest for some­thing, but the older wo­man only stared coldly out into the street, so I shrugged at her younger neigh­bour apo­lo­get­ic­ally and turned away as I stowed the nuts in my bas­ket.

  I hadn’t gone more than a dozen steps when I heard her shriek, ‘Kep­pet!’ yet again. I looked back to see the two wo­men en­gaged in a struggle. The older one gripped the younger one’s wrists and the younger one thrashed and kicked to be free of her. Around her, other mer­chants were get­ting to their feet in alarm and snatch­ing their own mer­chand­ise out of harm’s way. I might have turned back to watch had not an­other more fa­mil­iar face met my eyes.

  ‘Nosebleed!’ I ex­claimed.

  She turned to face me full-on, and for an in­stant I thought I had been mis­taken. A year had passed since I’d last seen her. How could a per­son change so much? The dark hair that used to be in sens­ible braids be­hind her ears now fell free past her shoulders. And she was dressed not in a jer­kin and loose trousers but in blouse and skirt. The adult gar­ments put me at a loss for words. I might have turned aside and pre­ten­ded I ad­dressed someone else had her dark eyes not chal­lenged me as she asked me coolly, ‘Nosebleed?’

  I stood my ground. ‘Aren’t you Molly Nosebleed?’

  She lif­ted a hand to brush some hair back from her cheek. ‘I’m Molly Chand­ler.’ I saw re­cog­ni­tion in her eyes, but her voice was chill as she ad­ded, ‘I’m not sure that I know you. Your name, sir?’

  Con­fused, I re­acted without think­ing. I ques­ted to­ward her, found her nervous­ness, and was sur­prised by her fears. Thought and voice I sought to soothe it. ‘I’m New­boy,’ I said without hes­it­a­tion.

  Her eyes widened with sur­prise, and then she laughed at what she con­strued as a joke. The bar­rier she had erec­ted between us burst like a soap bubble, and sud­denly I knew her as I had be­fore. There was the same warm kin­ship between us that re­minded me of noth­ing so much as Nosy. All awk­ward­ness dis­ap­peared. A crowd was form­ing about the strug­gling wo­men, but we left it be­hind us as we strolled up the cobbled street. I ad­mired her skirts, and she calmly in­formed that she had been wear­ing skirts for sev­eral months now and that she quite pre­ferred them to trousers. This one had been her mother’s; she was told that one simply couldn’t get wool woven this fine any more, or a red as bright as it was dyed. She ad­mired my clothes, and I sud­denly real­ized that per­haps I ap­peared to her as dif­fer­ent as she to me. I had my best shirt on, my trousers had been washed only a few days ago and I wore boots as fine as any man-at-arms, des­pite Burrich’s ob­jec­tions about how rap­idly I out­grew them. She asked my busi­ness and I told her I was on er­rands for the writ­ing mas­ter at the keep. I told her too that he was in need of two beeswax tapers, a total fab­ric­a­tion on my part, but one that al­lowed me to re­main by her side as we strolled up the wind­ing street. Our el­bows bumped com­pan­ion­ably and she talked. She was car­ry­ing a bas­ket of her own on her arm. It had sev­eral pack­ets and bundles of herbs in it, for scent­ing candles, she told me. Beeswax took the scent much bet­ter than tal­low, in her opin­ion. She made the best scen­ted candles in Buck­keep; even the two other chand­lers in town ad­mit­ted it. This, smell this, this was lav­ender, wasn’t it lovely? Her mother’s fa­vour­ite, and hers, too. This was crush­sweet, and this bee­balm. This was thresher’s root, not her fa­vour­ite, no, but some said it made a good candle to cure head­aches and winter-glooms. Mavis Thread­snip had told her that Molly’s mother had mixed it with other herbs and made a won­der­ful candle, one that would calm even a col­icky baby. So Molly had de­cided to try, by ex­per­i­ment­ing, to see if she could find the right herbs to re-cre­ate her mother’s re­cipe.

  Her calm flaunt­ing of her know­ledge and skills left me burn­ing to dis­tin­guish my­self in her eyes. ‘I know the thresher’s root,’ I told her. ‘Some use it to make an oint­ment for sore shoulders and backs. That’s where the name comes from. But if you dis­til a tinc­ture from it and mix it well in wine it’s never tasted, and it will make a grown man sleep a day and a night and a day again, or make a child die in his sleep.’

  Her eyes widened as I spoke, and at my last words a look of hor­ror came over her face. I fell si­lent and felt the sharp awk­ward­ness again. ‘How do you know such things?’ she de­man­ded breath­lessly.

  ‘I … I heard an old trav­el­ling mid­wife talk­ing to our mid­wife up at the keep,’ I im­pro­vised. ‘It was … a sad story she told, of an in­jured man given some to help him rest, but his baby got into it as well. A very, very sad story.’ Her face was soften­ing and I felt her warm­ing to­ward me again. ‘I only tell it to be sure you are care­ful of the root. Don’t leave it about where any child can get at it.’

  ‘Thank you. I shan’t. Are you in­ter­ested in herbs and roots? I didn’t know a scriber cared about such things.’

  I sud­denly real­ized that she thought I was the scriber’s help-boy. I didn’t see any reason to tell her oth­er­wise. ‘Oh, Fed­wren uses many things for his dyes and inks. Some cop­ies he makes quite plain, but oth­ers are fancy, all done with birds and cats and turtles and fish. He showed me a Herbal with the greens and flowers of each herb done as the bor­der for the page.’

  ‘That I should dearly love to see,’ she said in a heart­felt way, and I in­stantly began think­ing of ways to pur­loin it for a few days.

  ‘I might be able to get you a copy to read … not to keep, but to study for a few days,’ I offered hes­it­antly.

  She laughed, but there was a slight edge in it. ‘As if I could read! Oh, but I ima­gine you’ve picked up some let­ters, run­ning about for the scribe’s er­rands.’

  ‘A few,’ I told her, and was sur­prised at the envy in her eyes when I showed her my list and con­fessed I could read all seven words on it.

  A sud­den shy­ness came over her. She walked more slowly, and I real­ized we were get­ting close to the chand­lery. I wondered if her father still beat her, but dared not ask about it. Her face, at least, showed no sign of it. We reached the chand­lery door and paused there. She made some sud­den de­cision, for she put her hand on my sleeve, took a breath and then asked, ‘Do you think you could read some­thing for me? Or even any part of it?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ I offered.

  ‘When I … now that I wear skirts, my father has given me my mother’s things. She had been dress-help to a lady up at the keep when she was a girl, and had let­ters taught her. I have some tab­lets she wrote. I’d like to know what they say.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ I re­peated.

  ‘My father’s in the shop.’ She said no more than that, but some­thing in the way her con­scious­ness rang against mine was suf­fi­cient.

  ‘I’m to get Scribe Fed­wren two beeswax tapers,’ I re­minded her. ‘I dare not go back to the keep without them.’

  ‘Be not too fa­mil­iar with me,’ she cau­tioned me, and then opened the door.

  I fol­lowed her, but slowly, as if co­in­cid­ence brought us to the door to­gether. I need not have been so cir­cum­spect. Her father slept quite soundly in a chair be­side the hearth. I was shocked at the change in him. His skin­ni­ness had be­come skeletal, the flesh on his face re­mind­ing me of an un­der­cooked pastry over a lumpy fruit pie. Chade had taught me well. I looked to the man’s fin­ger­nails and lips, and even from across the room, I knew he could not live much longer. Per­haps he no longer beat Molly be­cause he no longer had the strength. Molly mo­tioned me to be quiet. She van­ished be­hind the hangings that di­vided their home from their shop, leav­ing me to ex­plore the store.

  It was a pleas­ant place, not large, but the ceil­ing was higher than in most of the shops and dwell­ings in Buck­keep Town. I sus­pec­ted it was Molly’s di­li­gence that kept it swept and tidy. The pleas­ant smells and soft light of her in­dustry filled the room. Her wares hung in pairs by their joined wicks from long dow­els on a rack. Fat sens­ible candles for ships’ use filled an­other shelf. She even had three glazed pot­tery lamps on dis­play, for those able to af­ford such things. In ad­di­tion to candles, I found she had pots of honey, a nat­ural by-product of the bee­hives she ten­ded be­hind the shop that fur­nished the wax for her finest products.

  Then Molly re­appeared and mo­tioned to me to come and join her. She brought a branch of tapers and a set of tab­lets to a table and set them out on it. Then she stood back and pressed her lips to­gether as if won­der­ing if what she did were wise.

  The tab­lets were done in the old style. Simple slabs of wood had been cut with the grain of the tree and sanded smooth. The let­ters had been brushed in care­fully, and then sealed to the wood with a yel­low­ing rosin layer. There were five, ex­cel­lently lettered. Four were care­fully pre­cise ac­counts of herbal re­cipes for heal­ing candles. As I read each one softly aloud to Molly, I could see her strug­gling to com­mit them to memory. At the fifth tab­let, I hes­it­ated. ‘This isn’t a re­cipe,’ I told her.

  ‘Well, what is it?’ she de­man­ded in a whis­per.

  I shrugged and began to read it to her. ‘“On this day was born my Molly Nose­gay, sweet as any bunch of posies. For her birth la­bours, I burned two tapers of bay­berry and two cup-candles scen­ted with two hand­fuls of the small vi­ol­ets that grow near Dow­ell’s Mill and one hand­ful of re­d­root, chopped very fine. May she do like­wise when her time comes to bear a child, and her la­bour will be as easy as mine, and the fruit of it as per­fect. So I be­lieve.”’

  That was all, and when I had read it, the si­lence grew and blos­somed. Molly took that last tab­let from my hands and held it in her two hands and stared at it, as if read­ing things in the let­ters that I had not seen. I shif­ted my feet, and the scuff­ing re­called to her that I was there. Si­lently she gathered up all her tab­lets and dis­ap­peared with them once more.

  When she came back, she walked swiftly to the shelf and took down two tall beeswax tapers, and then to an­other shelf whence she took two fat pink candles.

  ‘I only need …’

  ‘Shush. There’s no charge for any of these. The sweet­berry blos­som ones will give you calm dreams. I very much en­joy them, and I think you will, too.’ Her voice was friendly, but as she put them into my bas­ket, I knew she was wait­ing for me to leave. Still, she walked to the door with me, and opened it softly lest it wake her father. ‘Good­bye, New­boy,’ she said, and then gave me one real smile. ‘Nose­gay. I never knew she called me that. Nosebleed, they called me on the streets. I sup­pose the older ones who knew what name she had given me thought it was funny. And after a while they prob­ably for­got it had ever been any­thing else. Well. I don’t care. I have it now. A name from my mother.’

  ‘It suits you,’ I said in a sud­den burst of gal­lantry, and then, as she stared and the heat rose in my cheeks, I hur­ried away from the door. I was sur­prised to find that it was late af­ter­noon, nearly even­ing. I raced through the rest of my er­rands, beg­ging the last item on my list, a weasel’s skin, through the shut­ters of the mer­chant’s win­dow. Grudgingly he opened his door to me, com­plain­ing that he liked to eat his sup­per hot, but I thanked him so pro­fusely he must have be­lieved me a little daft.

  I was hur­ry­ing up the steep­est part of the road back to the keep when I heard the un­ex­pec­ted sound of horses be­hind me. They were com­ing up from the dock sec­tion of town, rid­den hard. It was ri­dicu­lous. No one kept horses in town, for the roads were too steep and rocky to make them of much use. Also, the town was crowded into such a small area as to make rid­ing a horse a van­ity rather than a con­veni­ence. So these must be horses from the keep’s stables. I stepped to one side of the road and waited, curi­ous to see who would risk Burrich’s wrath by rid­ing horses at such speed on slick and un­even cobbles in poor light.

  To my shock it was Regal and Ver­ity on the matched blacks that were Burrich’s pride. Ver­ity car­ried a plumed baton, such as mes­sen­gers to the keep car­ried when the news they bore was of the ut­most im­port­ance. At the sight of me stand­ing quietly be­side the road they both pulled in their horses so vi­ol­ently that Regal’s spun aside and nearly went down on his knees.

  ‘Burrich will have fits if you break that colt’s knees!’ I cried out in dis­may and ran to­ward him.

  Regal gave an in­ar­tic­u­late cry, and a half-in­stant later, Ver­ity laughed at him shakily. ‘You thought he was a ghost, same as I. Whoah, lad, you gave us a turn, stand­ing so quiet as that. And look­ing so much like him. Eh, Regal?’

  ‘Ver­ity, you’re a fool. Hold your tongue.’ Regal gave his mount’s mouth a vin­dict­ive jerk, and then tugged his jer­kin smooth again. ‘What are you do­ing out on this road so late, bas­tard? Just what do you think you’re up to, sneak­ing away from the keep and into town at this hour?’

  I was used to Regal’s dis­dain for me. This sharp re­buke was some­thing new, how­ever. Usu­ally, he did little more than avoid me, or hold him­self away from me as if I were fresh ma­nure. The sur­prise made me an­swer quickly, ‘I’m on my way back, not to, sir. I’ve been run­ning er­rands for Fed­wren.’ And I held up my bas­ket as proof.

  ‘Of course you have,’ he sneered. ‘Such a likely tale. It’s a bit too much of a co­in­cid­ence, bas­tard.’ Again he flung the word at me.

  I must have looked both hurt and con­fused, for Ver­ity snorted in his bluff way and said, ‘Don’t mind him, boy. You gave us both a bit of a turn. A river ship just came into town, fly­ing the pen­nant for a spe­cial mes­sage. And when Ver­ity and I rode down to get it, lo and be­hold, it’s from Pa­tience, to tell us Chiv­alry’s dead. Then, as we come up the road, what do we see but the very im­age of him as a boy, stand­ing si­lent be­fore us and of course we were in that frame of mind and—’

  ‘You are such an idiot, Ver­ity!’ Regal spat. ‘Trum­pet it out for the whole town to hear be­fore the King’s even been told. And don’t put ideas in the bas­tard’s head that he looks like Chiv­alry. From what I hear, he has ideas enough, and we can thank our dear father for that. Come on. We’ve got a mes­sage to de­liver.’

  Regal jerked his mount’s head up again, and then set spurs to him. I watched him go, and for an in­stant I swear all I thought was that I should go to the stable when I got back to the keep, to check on the poor beast and see how badly his mouth was bruised. But for some reason I looked up at Ver­ity and said, ‘My father’s dead.’

  He sat still on his horse. Big­ger and bulkier than Regal, he still al­ways sat a horse bet­ter. I think it was the sol­dier in him. He looked at me in si­lence for a mo­ment. Then he said, ‘Yes. My brother’s dead.’ He gran­ted me that, my uncle, that in­stant of kin­ship, and I think that ever after it changed how I saw him. ‘Up be­hind me, boy, and I’ll take you back to the keep,’ he offered.

  ‘No, thank you. Burrich would take my hide off for rid­ing a horse double on this road.’

  ‘That he would, boy,’ Ver­ity agreed kindly. Then, ‘I’m sorry you found out this way. I wasn’t think­ing. It does not seem it can be real.’ I caught a glimpse of his true grief, and then he leaned for­ward and spoke to his horse and it sprang for­ward. In mo­ments I was alone on the road again.

  A fine mist­ing rain began and the last nat­ural light died, and still I stood there. I looked up at the keep, black against the stars, with here and there a bit of light spill­ing out. For a mo­ment I thought of set­ting my bas­ket down and run­ning away, run­ning off into the dark­ness and never com­ing back. Would any­one ever come look­ing for me? I wondered. But in­stead I shif­ted my bas­ket to my other arm and began my slow trudge back up the hill.

  SEVEN

  An As­sign­ment

  There were ru­mours of poison when Queen De­sire died. I choose to put in writ­ing here what I ab­so­lutely know as truth. Queen De­sire did die of pois­on­ing, but it had been self-ad­min­istered, over a long period of time, and was none of her king’s do­ing. Of­ten he had tried to dis­suade her from us­ing in­tox­ic­ants as freely as she did. Phys­i­cians had been con­sul­ted, as well as herb­al­ists, but no sooner had he per­suaded her to de­sist from one than she dis­covered an­other to try.