So here I was, in my lady’s cham­ber, and she was skirt­ing about me and talk­ing past me as if I were an an­imal that might sud­denly strike out at her or soil the car­pets. I could tell that it af­forded Lacey much amuse­ment.

  ‘Yes. I already knew that, you see, be­cause I was the one who had asked the King that you be sent here,’ Lady Pa­tience ex­plained care­fully to me.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ I shif­ted on my bit of seat-space and tried to look in­tel­li­gent and well-mannered. Re­call­ing the earlier times we had met, I could scarcely blame her for treat­ing me like a dolt.

  A si­lence fell. I looked around at things in the room. Lady Pa­tience looked to­ward a win­dow. Lacey sat and smirked to her­self and pre­ten­ded to be tat­ting lace.

  ‘Oh. Here.’ Swift as a diving hawk, Lady Pa­tience stooped down and seized the black ter­rier pup by the scruff of the neck. He yelped in sur­prise, and his mother looked up in an­noy­ance as Lady Pa­tience thrust him into my arms. ‘This one’s for you. He’s yours now. Every boy should have a pet.’

  I caught the squirm­ing puppy and man­aged to sup­port his body be­fore she let go of him. ‘Or maybe you’d rather have a bird? I have a cage of finches in my bed­cham­ber. You could have one of them, if you’d rather.’

  ‘Uh, no. A puppy’s fine. A puppy is won­der­ful.’ The second half of the state­ment was made to the pup. My in­stinct­ive re­sponse to his high-pitched yi-yi-yi had been to quest out to him with calm. His mother had sensed my con­tact with him, and ap­proved. She settled back into her bas­ket with the white pup with blithe un­con­cern. The puppy looked up at me and met my eyes dir­ectly. This, in my ex­per­i­ence, was rather un­usual. Most dogs avoided pro­longed dir­ect eye-con­tact. But also un­usual was his aware­ness. I knew from sur­repti­tious ex­per­i­ments in the stable that most pup­pies his age had little more than fuzzy self-aware­ness, and were mostly turned to mother and milk and im­me­di­ate needs. This little fel­low had a solidly-es­tab­lished iden­tity within him­self, and a deep in­terest in all that was go­ing on around him. He liked Lacey, who fed him bits of meat, and was wary of Pa­tience, not be­cause she was cruel, but be­cause she stumbled over him and kept put­ting him back in the bas­ket each time he la­bor­i­ously clambered out. He thought I smelled very ex­cit­ing, and the scents of horses and birds and other dogs were like col­ours in my mind, im­ages of things that as yet had no shape or real­ity for him, but that he non­ethe­less found fas­cin­at­ing. I im­aged the scents for him and he climbed my chest, wrig­gling, sniff­ing and lick­ing me in his ex­cite­ment. Take me, show me, take me.

  ‘… even listen­ing?’

  I winced, ex­pect­ing a rap from Burrich, then came back to aware­ness of where I was and of the small wo­man stand­ing be­fore me with her hands on her hips.

  ‘I think some­thing’s wrong with him,’ she ob­served ab­ruptly to Lacey. ‘Did you see how he was sit­ting there, star­ing at the puppy? I thought he was about to go off into some sort of fit.’

  Lacey smiled be­nignly and went on with her tat­ting. ‘Fair re­minded me of you, my lady, when you start pot­ter­ing about with your leaves and bits of plants and end up star­ing at the dirt.’

  ‘Well,’ said Pa­tience, clearly dis­pleased. ‘It is quite one thing for an adult to be pens­ive,’ she ob­served firmly. ‘And an­other for a boy to stand about look­ing daft.’

  Later, I prom­ised the pup. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and tried to look re­pent­ant. ‘I was just dis­trac­ted by the puppy.’ He had cuddled into the crook of my arm and was cas­u­ally chew­ing the edge of my jer­kin. It is dif­fi­cult to ex­plain what I felt. I needed to pay at­ten­tion to Lady Pa­tience, but this small be­ing snuggled against me was ra­di­at­ing de­light and con­tent­ment. It is a heady thing to be sud­denly pro­claimed the centre of someone’s world, even if that someone is an eight-week-old puppy. It made me real­ize how pro­foundly alone I had felt, and for how long. ‘Thank you,’ I said, and even I was sur­prised at the grat­it­ude in my voice. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘It’s just a puppy,’ Lady Pa­tience said, and to my sur­prise she looked al­most ashamed. She turned aside and stared out the win­dow. The puppy licked his nose and closed his eyes. Warm. Sleep. ‘Tell me about your­self,’ she de­man­ded ab­ruptly.

  It took me aback. ‘What would you like to know, lady?’

  She made a small, frus­trated ges­ture. ‘What do you do each day? What have you been taught?’

  So I at­temp­ted to tell her, but I could see that it didn’t sat­isfy her. She fol­ded her lips tightly at each men­tion of Burrich’s name. She wasn’t im­pressed with any of my mar­tial train­ing. Of Chade, I could say noth­ing. She nod­ded in grudging ap­proval of my study of lan­guages, writ­ing and ci­pher­ing.

  ‘Well,’ she in­ter­rup­ted sud­denly. ‘At least you’re not totally ig­nor­ant. If you can read, you can learn any­thing. If you’ve a will to. Have you a will to learn?’

  ‘I sup­pose so.’ It was a luke­warm an­swer, but I was be­gin­ning to feel badgered. Not even the gift of the puppy could out­weigh her be­little­ment of my learn­ing.

  ‘I sup­pose you will learn, then. For I have a will that you will, even if you do not yet.’ She was sud­denly stern, in a shift­ing of at­ti­tude that left me be­wildered. ‘And what do they call you, boy?’

  The ques­tion again. ‘Boy is fine,’ I muttered. The sleep­ing puppy in my arms whimpered in agit­a­tion. I forced my­self to be calm for him.

  I had the sat­is­fac­tion of see­ing a stricken look flit briefly across Pa­tience’s face. ‘I shall call you, oh, Thomas. Tom for every­day. Does that suit you?’

  ‘I sup­pose so,’ I said de­lib­er­ately. Burrich gave more thought to nam­ing a dog than that. We had no Black­ies or Spots in the stables. Burrich named each beast as if they were roy­alty, with names that de­scribed them or traits he as­pired to for them. Even Sooty’s name masked a gentle fire I had come to re­spect. But this wo­man named me Tom after no more than an in­drawn breath. I looked down so that she couldn’t see my eyes.

  ‘Fine, then,’ she said, a trifle briskly. ‘Come to­mor­row at the same time. I shall have some things ready for you. I warn you, I shall ex­pect will­ing ef­fort from you. Good day, Tom.’

  ‘Good day, lady.’

  I turned and left. Lacey’s eyes fol­lowed me, and then dar­ted back to her mis­tress. I sensed her dis­ap­point­ment, but did not know what it was about.

  It was still early in the day. This first audi­ence had taken less than an hour. I wasn’t ex­pec­ted any­where; this time was my own. I headed for the kit­chens, to wheedle scraps for my pup. It would have been easy to take him down to the stables, but then Burrich would have known about him. I had no il­lu­sions about what would hap­pen next. The pup would stay in the stables. He would be nom­in­ally mine, but Burrich would see that this new bond was severed. I had no in­ten­tion of al­low­ing that to hap­pen.

  I made my plans. A bas­ket from the laun­der­ers, an old shirt over straw for his bed. His messes now would be small, and as he got older, my bond with him would make him easy to train. For now, he’d have to stay by him­self for part of each day. But as he got older, he could go about with me. Even­tu­ally, Burrich would find out about him. I res­ol­utely pushed that thought aside. I’d deal with that later. For now, he needed a name. I looked him over. He was not the curly-haired yappy type of ter­rier. He would have a short smooth coat, a thick neck and a mouth like a coal scuttle. But, grown, he’d be less than knee-high, so it couldn’t be too weighty a name. I didn’t want him to be a fighter. So no Rip­per or Char­ger. He would be ten­a­cious, and alert. Grip, maybe. Or Sen­try.

  ‘Or An­vil. Or Forge.’

  I looked up. The Fool stepped out of an al­cove and fol­lowed me down the hall.

  ‘Why?’ I asked. I no longer ques­tioned the way the Fool could guess what I was think­ing.

  ‘Be­cause your heart will be hammered against him, and your strength will be tempered in his fire.’

  ‘Sounds a bit dra­matic to me,’ I ob­jec­ted. ‘And Forge is a bad word now. I don’t want to mark my pup with it. Just the other day, down in town, I heard a drunk yell at a cut-purse, “May your wo­man be Forged!” Every­one in the street stopped and stared.’

  The Fool shrugged. ‘Well they might.’ He fol­lowed me into my room. ‘Smith, then. Or Smithy. Let me see him?’

  Re­luct­antly I gave over my puppy. He stirred, awakened and then wiggled in the Fool’s hands. No smell, no smell. I was as­ton­ished to agree with the pup. Even with his little black nose work­ing for me, the Fool had no de­tect­able scent. ‘Care­ful. Don’t drop him.’

  ‘I’m a Fool, not a dolt,’ said the Fool, but he sat on my bed and put the pup be­side him. Smithy in­stantly began snuff­ling and ruck­ing my bed. I sat on the other side of him lest he ven­ture too near the edge.

  ‘So,’ the Fool asked cas­u­ally. ‘Are you go­ing to let her buy you with gifts?’

  ‘Why not?’ I tried to be dis­dain­ful.

  ‘It would be a mis­take, for both of you.’ The Fool tweaked Smithy’s tiny tail, and he spun round with a puppy growl. ‘She’s go­ing to want to give you things. You’ll have to take them, for there’s no po­lite way to re­fuse. But you’ll have to de­cide whether they’ll make a bridge between you, or a wall.’

  ‘Do you know Chade?’ I asked ab­ruptly, for the Fool soun­ded so like him I sud­denly had to know. I had never men­tioned Chade to any­one else, save Shrewd, or heard talk of him from any­one around the keep.

  ‘Shade or sun­light, I know when to keep a grip on my tongue. It would be a good thing for you to learn as well.’ The Fool rose sud­denly and went to the door. He lingered there a mo­ment. ‘She only hated you for the first few months. And it wasn’t truly hate of you; it was blind jeal­ousy of your mother, that she could bear a babe to Chiv­alry, but Pa­tience could not. After that, her heart softened. She wanted to send for you, to raise you as her own. Some might say she merely wanted to pos­sess any­thing that touched Chiv­alry. But I don’t think so.’

  I was star­ing at the Fool.

  ‘You look like a fish, with your mouth open like that,’ he ob­served. ‘But of course, your father re­fused. He said it might ap­pear he was form­ally ac­know­ledging his bas­tard. But I don’t think that was it at all. I think it would have been dan­ger­ous for you.’ The Fool made an odd pass with his hand, and a stick of dried meat ap­peared in his fin­gers. I knew it had been up his sleeve, but I was un­able to see how he ac­com­plished his tricks. He flipped the meat onto my bed and the puppy sprang on it greed­ily.

  ‘You can hurt her, if you choose,’ he offered me. ‘She feels such guilt at how alone you have been. And you look so like Chiv­alry, any­thing you say will be as if it came from his lips. She’s like a gem with a flaw. One pre­cise tap from you, and she will fly to pieces. She’s half-mad as she is, you know. They would never have been able to kill Chiv­alry if she hadn’t con­sen­ted to his ab­dic­a­tion. At least, not with such blithe dis­missal of the con­sequences. She knows that.’

  ‘Who is “they”?’ I de­man­ded.

  ‘Who “are” they?’ the Fool cor­rec­ted me, and whisked out of sight. By the time I got to the door, he was gone. I ques­ted after him, but got noth­ing. Al­most as if he were Forged. I shivered at that thought, and went back to Smithy. He was chew­ing the meat to slimy bits all over my bed. I watched him. ‘The Fool’s gone,’ I told Smithy. He wagged a cas­ual ac­know­ledge­ment and went on wor­ry­ing his meat.

  He was mine, given to me. Not a stable-dog I cared for, but mine, and bey­ond Burrich’s know­ledge or au­thor­ity. Other than my clothes and the cop­per brace­let that Chade had given me, I had few pos­ses­sions. But he made up for all lack I might ever have had.

  He was a sleek and healthy pup. His coat was smooth now, but would grow bristly as he ma­tured. When I held him up to the win­dow, I could see faint mot­tlings of col­our in his coat. He’d be a dark brindle, then. I dis­covered one white spot on his chin, and an­other on his left hind foot. He clamped his little jaws on my shirt-sleeve and shook it vi­ol­ently, ut­ter­ing sav­age puppy growls. I tussled him on the bed un­til he fell into a deep, limp sleep. Then I moved him to his straw cush­ion and went re­luct­antly to my af­ter­noon les­sons and chores.

  That ini­tial week with Pa­tience was a try­ing time for both of us. I learned to keep a thread of my at­ten­tion al­ways with Smithy, so he never felt alone enough to howl when I left him. But that took prac­tice, so I felt some­what dis­trac­ted. Burrich frowned about it, but I per­suaded him it was due to my ses­sions with Pa­tience. ‘I have no idea what that wo­man wants from me,’ I told him by the third day. ‘Yes­ter­day it was mu­sic. In the space of two hours, she at­temp­ted to teach me to play the harp, the sea-pipes, and then the flute. Every time I came close to work­ing out a few notes on one or the other of them, she snatched it away and com­manded that I try a dif­fer­ent one. She ended that ses­sion by say­ing that I had no aptitude for mu­sic. This morn­ing it was po­etry. She set her­self to teach­ing me the one about Queen Healsall and her garden. It has a long bit, about all the herbs she grew and what each was for. And she kept get­ting it bungled, and got angry at me when I re­peated it back to her that way, say­ing that I must know that cat­mint is not for poult­ices and that I was mock­ing her. It was al­most a re­lief when she said I had given her such a head­ache that we must stop. And when I offered to bring her buds from the lady­shand bush for her head­ache, she sat right up and said, “There! I knew you were mock­ing me.” I don’t know how to please her, Burrich.’

  ‘Why would you want to?’ he growled, and I let the sub­ject drop.

  That even­ing, Lacey came to my room. She tapped, then entered, wrink­ling her nose. ‘You’d bet­ter bring up some strew­ing herbs if you’re go­ing to keep that pup in here. And use some vin­egar and wa­ter when you scrub up his messes. It smells like a stable in here.’

  ‘I sup­pose it does,’ I ad­mit­ted. I looked at her curi­ously and waited.

  ‘I brought you this. You seemed to like it best.’ She held out the sea-pipes. I looked at the short, fat tubes bound to­gether with strips of leather. I had liked it best of the three in­stru­ments. The harp had far too many strings, and the flute had seemed shrill to me even when Pa­tience had played it.

  ‘Did Lady Pa­tience send it to me?’ I asked, puzzled.

  ‘No. She doesn’t know I’ve taken it. She’ll as­sume it’s lost in her lit­ter, as usual.’

  ‘Why did you bring it?’

  ‘For you to prac­tise on. When you’ve a little skill with it, bring it back and show her.’

  ‘Why?’

  Lacey sighed. ‘Be­cause it would make her feel bet­ter. And that would make my life much easier. There’s noth­ing worse than be­ing maid to someone as heart­sick as Lady Pa­tience. She longs des­per­ately for you to be good at some­thing. She keeps try­ing you out, hop­ing that you’ll mani­fest some sud­den tal­ent, so that she can flout you about and tell folk, “There, I told you he had it in him.” Now I’ve had boys of my own, and I know boys aren’t that way. They don’t learn, or grow, or have man­ners when you’re look­ing at them. But turn away, and turn back, and there they are, smarter, taller, and charm­ing every­one but their own moth­ers.’

  I was a little lost. ‘You want me to learn to play this, so that Pa­tience will be happy?’

  ‘So that she can feel she’s given you some­thing.’

  ‘She gave me Smithy. Noth­ing she can ever give me will be bet­ter than him.’

  Lacey looked sur­prised at my sud­den sin­cer­ity. So was I. ‘Well. You might tell her that. But you might also try to learn to play the sea-pipes or re­cite a bal­lad or sing one of the old pray­ers. That she might un­der­stand bet­ter.’

  After Lacey left, I sat think­ing, caught between an­ger and wist­ful­ness. Pa­tience wished me to be a suc­cess and felt she must dis­cover some­thing I could do. As if be­fore her, I had never done or ac­com­plished any­thing. But as I mulled over what I had done, and what she knew of me, I real­ized that her im­age of me must be a rather flat one. I could read and write, and take care of a horse or dog. I could also brew pois­ons, make sleep­ing-draughts, smuggle, lie and do sleight-of-hand; none of which would have pleased her even if she had known. So, was there any­thing to me, other than a spy or as­sas­sin?

  The next morn­ing I arose early and sought Fed­wren. He was pleased when I asked to bor­row brushes and col­ours from him. The pa­per he gave me was bet­ter than prac­tice sheets, and he made me prom­ise to show him my ef­forts. As I made my way up the stairs, I wondered what it would be like to ap­pren­tice with him. Surely it could not be any harder than what I had been set to lately.

  But the task I had set my­self proved harder than any Pa­tience had put me to. I could see Smithy asleep on his cush­ion. How could the curve of his back be dif­fer­ent from the curve of a rune, the shades of his ears so dif­fer­ent from the shad­ing of the herbal il­lus­tra­tions I painstak­ingly copied from Fed­wren’s work? But they were, and I wasted sheet after sheet of pa­per un­til I sud­denly saw that it was the shad­ows around the pup that made the curve of his back and the line of his haunch. I needed to paint less, not more, and put down what my eye saw rather than what my mind knew.

  It was late when I washed out my brushes and set them aside. I had two that pleased, and a third that I liked, though it was soft and muzzy, more like a dream of a puppy than a real puppy. More like what I sensed than what I saw, I thought to my­self.

  But when I stood out­side Lady Pa­tience’s door, I looked down at the pa­pers in my hand and sud­denly saw my­self as a tod­dler present­ing crushed and wil­ted dan­deli­ons to his mother. What fit­ting pas­time was this for a youth? If I were truly Fed­wren’s ap­pren­tice, then ex­er­cises of this sort would be ap­pro­pri­ate, for a good scriber must il­lus­trate and il­lu­min­ate as well as scribe. But the door opened and there I was, my fin­gers smudged still with paint and the pages damp in my hand.