I ar­rived just in time to see Molly leav­ing with Jade. Their heads were close to­gether, and she leaned to­ward him as they spoke in soft voices. Out­side the door of the chand­lery, he stooped to look into her face. She lif­ted her eyes to his. When the man reached a hes­it­ant hand to gently touch her cheek, Molly was sud­denly a wo­man, one I did not know. The two years’ age dif­fer­ence between us was a vast gulf I could never hope to bridge. I stepped around the corner be­fore she could see me, and turned aside, my face down. They passed me as if I were a tree or a stone. Her head leaned on his shoulder, and they walked slowly. It took forever for them to be out of sight.

  That night I got drunker than I had ever been, and awoke the next day in some bushes halfway up the keep road.

  EIGHT­EEN

  As­sas­sin­a­tions

  Chade Fall­star, a per­sonal ad­viser to King Shrewd, made an ex­tens­ive study of For­ging dur­ing the period just pre­ced­ing the Red Ship wars. From his tab­lets, we have the fol­low­ing: ‘Netta, the daugh­ter of the fish­er­man Gill and the farmer Ryda, was taken alive from her vil­lage Good­wa­ter on the sev­en­teenth day after Spring­fest. She was Forged by the Red Ship Raid­ers and re­turned to her vil­lage three days later. Her father was killed in the same raid, and her mother, hav­ing five younger chil­dren, was little able to deal with Netta. She was, at the time of her For­ging, four­teen sum­mers old. She came into my pos­ses­sion some six months after her For­ging.

  ‘When first brought to me, she was dirty, ragged and greatly weakened ow­ing to star­va­tion and ex­pos­ure. At my dir­ec­tion, she was washed, clothed and housed in cham­bers con­veni­ent to my own. I pro­ceeded with her as I might have done with a wild an­imal. Each day I brought her food with my own hands, and stayed by her while she ate. I saw to it that her cham­bers were kept warm, her bed­ding clean, and that she was provided with the amen­it­ies a wo­man might ex­pect; wa­ter for wash­ing, brushes and combs, and all that is oth­er­wise need­ful. In ad­di­tion, I saw to it that she was fur­nished with sun­dry sup­plies for nee­dle­work, for I had dis­covered that prior to For­ging, she had had a great fond­ness for do­ing such fancy­work, and had cre­ated sev­eral art­ful pieces. My in­ten­tion in all this was to see if, un­der gentle cir­cum­stances, a Forged one might not re­turn to a semb­lance of the per­son she had formerly been.

  ‘Even a wild an­imal might have be­come a little tamer un­der these cir­cum­stances. But to all things Netta re­acted with in­dif­fer­ence. She had lost not only the habits of a wo­man, but even the good sense of an an­imal. She would eat to sa­ti­ation, with her hands, and then let fall to the floor whatever was ex­cess, to be trod­den un­der­foot. She did not wash, nor care for her­self in any way. Even most an­im­als soil only one area of their dens, but Netta was like a mouse that lets her drop­pings fall every­where, with no care for bed­ding.

  ‘She was able to speak, in a sens­ible way, if she chose to or wanted some item badly enough. When she spoke by her own choice, it was usu­ally to ac­cuse me of steal­ing from her, or to ut­ter threats against me if I did not im­me­di­ately give her some item she wanted. Her ha­bitual at­ti­tude to­ward me was sus­pi­cious and hate­ful. She ig­nored my at­tempts at nor­mal con­ver­sa­tion, but by with­hold­ing food from her, I was able to eli­cit an­swers in ex­change for food. She had clear memory of her fam­ily, but had no in­terest in what had be­come of them. Rather, she answered those ques­tions as if an­swer­ing ques­tions about yes­ter­day’s weather. Of her For­ging time, she said only that they had been held in the belly of a ship, and that there had been little food and only enough wa­ter to go around. She had been fed noth­ing un­usual that she re­called, nor had she been touched in any way that she re­membered. Thus she could fur­nish to me no clue as to the mech­an­ism of For­ging it­self. This was a great dis­ap­point­ment to me, for I had hoped that by learn­ing how a thing was done, a man could dis­cover how to undo it.

  ‘I en­deav­oured to bring hu­man be­ha­viour back to her by reas­on­ing with her, but to no avail. She ap­peared to un­der­stand my words, but would not act on them. Even when given two loaves of bread, and warned that she must save one for the mor­row or go hungry, she would let her second loaf fall to the floor, tread upon it, and on the mor­row eat her own dropped leav­ings care­less of what dirt clung to them. She evinced no in­terest in her nee­dle­work or in any other pas­time, not even the bright toys of a child. If not eat­ing or sleep­ing, she was con­tent merely to sit or lie, her mind as idle as her body. Offered sweets or pastries, she would in­dulge un­til she vomited, and then eat more.

  ‘I treated her with sun­dry elixirs and herbal teas. I fas­ted her, I steamed her, I purged her body. Hot and cold dous­ings had no ef­fect other than to make her angry. I caused her to sleep a full day and a night, to no change. I so charged her with elf­bark that she could not sleep for two nights, but this only made her ir­rit­able. I spoiled her with kind­nesses for a time, but as when I treated her with the harshest re­stric­tions, it made no dif­fer­ence in how she re­garded me. If hungry, she would make cour­tes­ies and smile pleas­antly when com­manded to, but as soon as food was fur­nished, all fur­ther com­mands and re­quests were ig­nored.

  ‘She was vi­ciously jeal­ous of ter­rit­ory and pos­ses­sions. More than once she at­temp­ted to at­tack me, for no more reason than that I had ven­tured too close to food she was eat­ing, and once be­cause she sud­denly de­cided she wished to have a ring I was wear­ing. She reg­u­larly killed the mice her un­tidi­ness at­trac­ted, snatch­ing them up with amaz­ing swift­ness and dash­ing them against the wall. A cat that once ven­tured into her cham­bers met with a sim­ilar fate.

  ‘She seemed to have little sense of the time that had passed since her For­ging. She could give good ac­count of her earlier life, if com­manded when hungry, but of the days since her For­ging, all was as one long “yes­ter­day” to her.

  ‘From Netta, I could not learn if some­thing had been ad­ded to her or taken away to Forge her. I did not know if it was a thing con­sumed or smelled or heard or seen. I did not know if it was even the work of a man’s hand and art, or the work of a sea-de­mon such as some Far­landers claim to have power upon. From a long and weary ex­per­i­ment, I learned noth­ing.

  ‘To Netta I gave a triple sleep­ing-draught one even­ing with her wa­ter. I had her body bathed, her hair groomed, and sent her back to her vil­lage to be de­cently bur­ied. At least one fam­ily could put finis to a tale of For­ging. Most oth­ers must won­der, for months and years, what has be­come of the one they once held dear. Most are bet­ter off not know­ing.’

  There were, at that time, over one thou­sand souls known to have been Forged.

  Burrich had meant what he said. He had noth­ing more to do with me. I was no longer wel­come down at the stables and ken­nels. Cob es­pe­cially took sav­age pleas­ure in this. Al­though he was of­ten gone with Regal, when he was about the stables he would of­ten step to block my entry. ‘Al­low me to bring you your horse, Mas­ter,’ he would say ob­sequiously. ‘The sta­ble­mas­ter prefers that grooms handle an­im­als within the stables.’ And so I must stand, like some in­com­pet­ent lord­ling, while Sooty was saddled and brought for me. Cob him­self mucked out her stall, brought her feed and groomed her, and it ate at me like acid to see how quickly she wel­comed him back. She was only a horse, I told my­self, and not to be blamed. But it was one more aban­don­ment.

  I had too much time, sud­denly. Morn­ings had al­ways been spent work­ing for Burrich. Now they were mine. Hod was busy train­ing green men for de­fence. I was wel­come to drill with them, but it was all les­sons I had learned long ago. Fed­wren was gone for the sum­mer, as he was every sum­mer. I could not think of a way to apo­lo­gize to Pa­tience, and I did not even think about Molly. Even my for­ays to the tav­erns in Buck­keep had be­come sol­it­ary ones. Kerry had ap­pren­ticed to a pup­pet­eer, and Dirk gone for a sailor. I was idle and alone.

  It was a sum­mer of misery, and not just for me. While I was lonely and bit­ter and out-grow­ing all my clothes, while I snapped and snarled at any fool­ish enough to speak to me, and drank my­self in­sens­ible sev­eral times a week, I was still aware of how the Six Duch­ies were racked. The Red Ship Raid­ers, bolder than ever be­fore, har­ried our coast­line. This sum­mer, in ad­di­tion to threats, they fi­nally began to make de­mands. Grain, cattle, the right to take whatever they wished from our sea­ports, the right to beach their boats and live off our lands and people for the sum­mer, their choice of our folk for slaves … each de­mand was more in­tol­er­able than the last, and the only things more in­tol­er­able than the de­mands were the For­gings that fol­lowed each re­fusal by the King.

  Com­mon folk were abandon­ing the sea­port and wa­ter­front towns. One could not blame them, but it left our coast­line even more vul­ner­able. More sol­diers were hired, and more, and so the levies were raised to pay them, and folk grumbled un­der the bur­den of the taxes and their fear of the Red Ship Raid­ers. Even stranger were the Outis­landers who came to our shore in their fam­ily ships, their raid­ing ves­sels left be­hind, to beg asylum of our people, and to tell wild tales of chaos and tyranny in the Out Is­lands where the Red Ships now ruled com­pletely. They were a mixed bless­ing, per­haps. They were cheaply hired as sol­diers, though few really trus­ted them. But at least their tales of the Out Is­lands un­der Red Ship dom­in­a­tion were har­row­ing enough to keep any­one from think­ing of giv­ing in to the Raid­ers’ de­mands.

  About a month after my re­turn, Chade opened his door to me. I was sul­len over his neg­lect of me, and went more slowly up his stairs than ever I had be­fore. But when I got there, he looked up from crush­ing seeds with a pestle with a face full of wear­i­ness. ‘I am glad to see you,’ he said, with noth­ing of glad­ness in his voice.

  ‘That’s why you were so swift to wel­come me back,’ I ob­served sourly.

  He stopped his grind­ing. ‘I’m sorry. I thought per­haps you would need time alone, to re­cover your­self.’ He looked back to his seeds. ‘It has not been an easy winter and spring for me, either. Shall we try to put the time be­hind us, and go on?’

  It was a gentle, reas­on­able sug­ges­tion. I knew it was wise.

  ‘Have I any choice?’ I asked sar­castic­ally.

  Chade fin­ished grind­ing his seed. He scraped it into a finely-woven sieve and put it over a cup to drip. ‘No,’ he said at last, as if he had con­sidered it well. ‘No, you haven’t, and neither have I. In many things, we have no choice.’ He looked at me, his eyes run­ning up and down me, and then poked at his seed again. ‘You,’ he said, ‘will stop drink­ing any­thing but wa­ter or tea for the rest of the sum­mer. Your sweat stinks of wine. And for one so young, your muscles are lax. A winter of Ga­len’s med­it­a­tions has done your body no good at all. See that you ex­er­cise it. Take it upon your­self, as of today, to climb to Ver­ity’s tower four times a day. You will take him food, and the teas I will show you how to pre­pare. You will never show him a sul­len face, but will al­ways be cheer­ful and friendly. Per­haps a while of wait­ing on Ver­ity will con­vince you that I have had reas­ons for my at­ten­tion not be­ing centred on you. That is what you will do each day you are at Buck­keep. There will be some days when you will be ful­filling other as­sign­ments for me.’

  It had not taken many words from Chade to awaken shame in my­self. My per­cep­tion of my life crashed from high tragedy to ju­ven­ile self-pity in a mat­ter of mo­ments. ‘I have been idle,’ I ad­mit­ted.

  ‘You have been stu­pid,’ Chade agreed. ‘You had a month in which to take charge of your own life. You be­haved like … a spoiled brat. I have no won­der that Burrich is dis­gus­ted with you.’

  I had long ago stopped be­ing sur­prised at what Chade knew. But this time, I was sure he did not know the real reason, and I had no de­sire to share it with him.

  ‘Have you dis­covered yet who tried to kill him?’

  ‘I haven’t … tried, really.’

  Now Chade looked dis­gus­ted, and then puzzled. ‘Boy, you are not your­self at all. Six months ago you would have torn the stables apart to know such a secret. Six months ago, given a month’s hol­i­day, you would have filled each day. What troubles you?’

  I looked down, feel­ing the truth of his words. I wanted to tell him everything that had be­fallen me; I wanted not to say a word of it to any­one. ‘I’ll tell you all I do know of the at­tack on Burrich.’ And I did.

  ‘And the one who saw all this,’ he asked when I had fin­ished. ‘Did he know the man who at­tacked Burrich?’

  ‘He didn’t get a good look at him,’ I hedged. Use­less to tell Chade that I knew ex­actly how he smelled, but had only a vague visual im­age.

  Chade was quiet for a mo­ment. ‘Well, as much as you can, keep an ear to the earth. I should like to know who has grown so brave as to try to kill the King’s sta­ble­mas­ter in his own stable.’

  ‘Then you do not think it was just some per­sonal quar­rel of Burrich’s?’ I asked care­fully.

  ‘Per­haps it was. But we will not jump to con­clu­sions. To me, it has the feel of a gam­bit. Someone is build­ing up to some­thing, but has missed their first block. To our ad­vant­age, I hope.’

  ‘Can you tell me why you think so?’

  ‘I could, but I will not. I want to leave your mind free to find its own as­sump­tions, in­de­pend­ent of mine. Now come. I will show you the teas.’

  I was more than a bit hurt that he asked me noth­ing about my time with Ga­len or my test. He seemed to ac­cept my fail­ure as a thing ex­pec­ted. But as he showed me the in­gredi­ents he had chosen for Ver­ity’s teas, I was hor­ri­fied by the strength of the stim­u­lants he was us­ing.

  I had seen little of Ver­ity, though Regal had been in only too much evid­ence. He had spent the last month com­ing and go­ing, al­ways just re­turn­ing, or just leav­ing, and each caval­cade seemed richer and more or­nate than the one be­fore. It seemed to me that he was us­ing the ex­cuse of his brother’s court­ing to feather him­self more brightly than any pea­cock. Com­mon opin­ion was that he must go so, to im­press those with whom he ne­go­ti­ated. For my­self, I saw it as a waste of coin that could have gone on de­fences. When Regal was gone, I felt re­lief, for his ant­ag­on­ism to­ward me had taken a re­cent bound, and he had found sun­dry small ways to ex­press it.

  The brief times when I had seen Ver­ity or the King, they had both looked har­assed and worn. But Ver­ity es­pe­cially had seemed al­most stunned. Im­pass­ive and dis­trac­ted, he had no­ticed me only once, and then smiled wear­ily and said I had grown. That had been the ex­tent of our con­ver­sa­tion. But I had no­ticed that he ate like an in­valid, without ap­pet­ite, es­chew­ing meat and bread as if they were too great an ef­fort to chew and swal­low, in­stead sub­sist­ing on por­ridges and soups.

  ‘He is us­ing the Skill too much. That much Shrewd has told me. But why it should drain him so, why it should burn the very flesh from his bones, he can­not ex­plain to me. So I give him ton­ics and elixirs, and try to get him to rest. But he can­not. He dares not, he says. He tells me that all his ef­forts are ne­ces­sary to de­lude the Red Ship nav­ig­at­ors, to send their ships onto the rocks, to dis­cour­age their cap­tains. And so he rises from bed, and goes to his chair by a win­dow, and there he sits, all the day.’

  ‘And Ga­len’s co­terie? Are they of no use to him?’ I asked the ques­tion al­most jeal­ously, al­most hop­ing to hear they were of no con­sequence.

  Chade sighed. ‘I think he uses them as I would use car­ri­er­pi­geons. He has sent them out to the towers, and he uses them to con­vey warn­ings to his sol­diers, and to re­ceive from them sight­ings of ships. But the task of de­fend­ing the coast he trusts to no one else. Oth­ers, he tells me, would be too in­ex­per­i­enced; they might be­tray them­selves to those they Skilled. I do not un­der­stand. But I know he can­not con­tinue much longer. I pray for the end of sum­mer, for winter storms to blow the Red Ships home. Would there were someone to spell him at this work. I fear it will con­sume him.’

  I took that as a re­buke for my fail­ure and sub­sided into a sulky si­lence. I drif­ted around his cham­bers, find­ing them both fa­mil­iar and strange after my months of ab­sence. The ap­par­atus for his herbal work was, as al­ways, cluttered about. Slink was very much in evid­ence, with his smelly bits of bones in corners. As al­ways, there was an as­sort­ment of tab­lets and scrolls by vari­ous chairs. This crop seemed to deal mostly with Eld­er­lings. I wandered about, in­trigued by the col­oured il­lus­tra­tions. One tab­let, older and more elab­or­ate than the rest, de­pic­ted an Eld­er­ling as a sort of gil­ded bird with a man-like head crowned with quil­lish hair. I began to piece out the words. It was in Piche, an an­cient nat­ive tongue of Chalced, the south­ern­most duchy. Many of the painted sym­bols had faded, or flaked away from the old wood, and I had never been flu­ent in Piche. Chade came to stand at my el­bow.

  ‘You know,’ he said gently. ‘It was not easy for me, but I kept my word. Ga­len de­man­ded com­plete con­trol of his stu­dents. He ex­pressly stip­u­lated that no one might con­tact you or in­ter­fere in any way with your dis­cip­line and in­struc­tion. And, as I told you, in the Queen’s Garden, I am blind and without in­flu­ence.’