“Thank Eda! Lant, where are they, where are Shun and Bee? What happened to the stables?”
The growing consternation on his face made me want to strike him. “The stables burned down on Winterfest eve. I suppose someone was careless with a lamp. Shunanbee? What is that?”
I was gasping for air now. “Lady Shun. My daughter, Lady Bee, my little girl. Where are they? Did they perish in the fire?”
“Holder Badgerlock, calm yourself. I do not know the ladies you speak of. Surely your stepdaughter is Lady Nettle, the Skillmistress at Buckkeep Castle?”
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He sat up slowly and painfully, his blankets falling back to reveal heavy bandaging around his chest. It startled me. “What happened to you?” I demanded.
His eyes flew wide and for a moment his pupils became so large I felt I looked into blackness inside his head. Then he rubbed his face with both hands and when he looked at me again, a sickened and awkward smile spread over his face. “So embarrassing to admit this. I drank too much on Winterfest eve. I was found after the fire. Somehow I took a stab wound. Possibly from a hayfork or a tool of some kind during the fire? It seems to have missed anything vital, but given the injuries I was already recovering from, it has made me an invalid again. I must apologize to Lady Nettle that I have been quite unable to function as an instructor for the children since then. ”
I staggered to a chair and sat down. The room whirled round me. Lant regarded me with deep concern. I could not stand his stupefied sympathy. I wanted to pound his face to a bloody ruin with my fists. I closed my eyes and reached out to the king’s Skill-coterie.
I have been in howling storms in which a shout is reduced to a whisper, moved across the sea’s featureless face in a gray fog that does not yield to human eyes. That was what I found. My Skill was quenched, damped like wet firewood that will not catch regardless of the flame put to it. I focused, I strained my Skill to a needle-point, then flung it wide to the sky. Nothing. I was trapped in my body. I could not reach for help. I wondered suddenly how I could be sure I was not in a dream of a dragon’s making. Could I be sure I was not trapped inside the Skill-pillar and this all some insane illusion of my own making? What test could I give myself?
“Where is Revel?” I demanded of FitzVigilant. Again he stared at me blankly. “I told Dixon to bring you and Revel, and meet me in my private study. Oh. ” Perhaps it was unreasonable to expect him to find me here in Lant’s room. I rose. “Get up, Lant. I need you with me. ”
Something flickered in his eyes. I thought he would whine and protest that he was hurt and it was the middle of the night. Instead I think I glimpsed, finally, the man that Nettle and Riddle had claimed him to be. “Give me a moment,” he said quietly. “And I will be with you. In your private study?”
“The estate study,” I amended.
I left him there, rising slowly and stiffly from his bed. My boots rang in the halls as I strode back to the study. Time after time, I saw the marks that suggested there had been armed invaders in my home. A long score down the paneling as if an edged weapon had been parried aside and dragged there. A broken wall sconce.
The double doors to the estate study had been battered open. Inside the room, a tray with a steaming pot of tea and sliced meat, bread, and cheese awaited me. There were slashes in the hangings that covered the doors to the garden, and something dark had stained the carpet. The wolf in me woke. I took a deep snuff of the room. Old blood. That was blood, on the floor of my study. The wolf within me crouched low and every sense I possessed suddenly flared. There was danger here still. Be still, be silent and watchful.
Dixon, Revel’s assistant, arrived, bearing a tray with brandy on it. “It’s so pleasant to have you home again, sir, even on such short notice. I went to your private study, but when you were not there, I brought your food here. ” His words said one thing, his tone quite another. He was a short, stout man, dressed impeccably, even at this late hour. He smiled at me.
Contained. Time to be contained. Everything I felt was compressed into a cold stone box. I needed answers. “Thank you. Put it on the table and sit down, Dixon. ”
I waited until he had tentatively settled on a chair. He looked around and gave a tiny sigh of disapproval. The put-upon servant summoned late by the unworthy master. I watched him with every fiber of my being as I asked him, “Where is Steward Revel tonight?”
I got what I had feared. That wash of confusion across his face, his dilated pupils, and then a shamed laugh as he said, “Sir, I don’t know of whom you speak. I am steward for Withywoods. Or have I displeased you so that this is how you tell me I am replaced?”
“Not at all. Revel was steward before you, of course. Do you recall him now?”
The confusion again and a flickering of fear on his features. Then his face smoothed. “I’m sorry, sir, I do not. I think … perhaps he had left before I was hired?”
“Lady Shun spoke highly of you. ”
Confusion crawled toward panic. “Sir, I don’t know—”
“And little Lady Bee. ” I pressed blindly on, not knowing what I was seeking, but willing to crack the man like a nutshell to get at the knowledge I needed.
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“Bee …”
“Who set fire to the stables?”
He made a sound without words.
“Who attacked the manor? Did they take Lady Bee and Lady Shun? Kill them? What happened?”
The man’s head bobbed and his chest heaved. His lips puffed in and out with his audible breathing. He rocked back and forth in his chair, his mouth working wordlessly. Froth began to gather at the corner of his mouth.
“Holder Badgerlock! Sir! Please!” A shrill young voice full of anxiety. Out in the corridor, another outraged voice shouted, “You, boy, come back here! Don’t you dare go in there!”
I turned my head away just as Dixon collapsed to the floor. He twitched and shuddered. A fit. I’d had many in my lifetime. My conscience squirmed but I kicked it aside and left him jerking as I turned to see who had interrupted me.
It was Tallerman’s son. The stable boy with the unlikely name. His face was white and strained, and he carried one arm curled protectively against his chest. He darted toward me as the study door was snatched wide open by an outraged Bulen. Lant’s manservant had obviously dressed hurriedly, for his shirt was half-buttoned. “Your pardon, Holder Badgerlock. This boy is ill and half-mad, and this is how he repays our care of him! Young sir, come with me immediately, or risk being turned out in the morning. ”
“Holder Badgerlock! Say you know me! Please, say you know me!” The boy’s voice had gone shrill and broken as Bulen advanced on him. He leaned away from Bulen’s grasping hand as he made his plea.
“Of course I know you. You’re Tallerman’s son, from the stables. ” I turned to Bulen and spoke severely. “And it is not your place to turn out any of my people, Bulen!”
Bulen halted where he stood. He had not been long employed at Withywoods. I had assigned him to be Lant’s manservant. He was still learning his duties. And his place. He looked at me uncertainly as he protested, “Sir, the boy is a beggar, found injured and taken in. He insisted on speaking with Scribe FitzVigilant when we found him, and the scribe summoned a healer and has allowed him to stay in the classroom during his recovery. But he speaks wild and fearsome and …”
“Leave, Bulen. Take Dixon with you and put him in his bed. I’ll deal with the boy. Perseverance. That’s it, that’s your name, isn’t it?”
“Oh, thank the gods, you know me, I’m not mad! I’m not a beggar! Sir, sir, they came and they killed and burned, and I tried to get away with her, I got her on a horse and we rode, but they shot me and I fell. And I didn’t know any more until they were leaving and they went past me in a sleigh drawn by white horses and I saw Bee, all wrapped in white furs, in the sleigh. They took her, sir, and they left the stables afire, and no one here b
ut me even tried to put out the flames. Some of the horses got out and some were stolen, I think, and some burned in their stalls. With my pa and grandpa’s bodies, sir! I saw them dead there! And my own ma does not know me and says she never had such a son as me! Oh, sir, they took Bee, they took her and no one knows me. No one!”
“I know you,” I said in a trembling voice. “I know you, boy. Oh, my Bee! Was she hurt? Who were they? Where did they go?”
But the lad had begun to shake as if he had an ague, and when I put my arms around him to steady him, he fell toward me, crying like a much younger child. I gathered him to my chest and held him, my thoughts racing. He spoke against my chest. “They shot me. I felt the arrow go right through me. Through my shoulder,” he sobbed. “I woke up under a cloak. Her cloak. She hid me with it, I think. I kept it. So fine and light. I was trying to save Bee and she saved me. ”
My mind leapt. “A butterfly cloak. ”
“Yes, sir. ”
“Come over by the fire. Sit down. ” I looked around. Bulen still stood in the doorway, eyes wide. Dixon lay on the floor, no longer jerking, but lying half-curled on his side, staring at nothing. “Bulen!” I snapped and the young man jumped. “See to Dixon. Take him to his bed. Then ask Scribe FitzVigilant to give me bandages and some of the salves Lord Chade gave him, if he has any left. Go quickly. ”
“I can fetch the salves for you, if you wish. ” That was Lant, holding on to the door frame with one hand. He looked pale and as his gaze took in Dixon on the floor, he demanded, “What is going on here? Is this boy bothering you with his wild tales?”
“Lant. Just the salves and bandages, please. Let Bulen deal with Dixon. He’s had some sort of fit. ” Then I ignored all of them as I steered the stable lad toward the fire. I hooked a chair with one foot and dragged it close to the hearth. “Sit here, Perseverance. And let me see your injury. ”
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The boy sat down as soddenly as an armful of wet laundry. He hunched there, staring at the fire. I left him and went to the brandy. I poured a jot, tossed it down, then poured another and took it to the boy. “Drink this,” I told him. He didn’t respond. I leaned down to look in his face. He shifted his eyes to meet mine. I put the glass in his hand.
“They said I was a beggar. And crazy. My own ma wouldn’t let me in the door. I was all blood and she sent me up to the manor and wouldn’t take me in. ” His voice rose higher and higher on each word until it ended in a strangled squeak.
I said the only words I had to comfort him. “I know you,” I said. “You are Perseverance, son of Tallerman, grandson of Tallman, and you worked in my stables. You cared for my daughter’s horse and you’ve been teaching her to ride. Drink that. ”
He lifted the glass and smelled it. He took a sip, shuddered, but at a look from me drank the rest in a gulp. He gasped and took three breaths before he could speak. “What happened to them? What’s wrong with them? All of them? I told them Steward Revel was dead and they said, ‘Who’s Revel?’ I said, ‘They took Bee. We have to go after her!’ and they said they didn’t know her. And when I tried to go after her by myself, they accused me of trying to steal her horse. ”
I refilled his glass. “You went after them?” Did he know where they’d taken her?
“I tried, sir. But the snow and the wind erased everything. I had to turn back. I was still bleeding. I’m so sorry, sir. I’m sorry I didn’t bring her back. ”
“Perseverance, I don’t know what happened here, but we will puzzle it out. First you have to think back to the very beginning. I saw you watching us as we left for Oaksbywater. You were about to exercise a horse. Tell me everything from there. Every single thing. As it happened. Each and every thing you remember from that moment on. Go on. Drink the brandy. One gulp and it’s down. There. Oh, it wasn’t that bad, was it? Now. Talk to me. Just talk. ”
I thudded a chair down facing him and sat, our knees almost touching. I focused myself on him, Wit and Skill. I felt almost nothing from him with my Skill-sense. Some folk were like that. But all of us live inside animals and even though I did not know him well, we had both loved Bee. So I did as Burrich had done so often to me, breathing calmness and safety at him, willing that he would smell and sense that I was here to protect him and he was safe. I forced my own body to relax as well, and I slowed my breathing. In a few moments, I saw his shoulders ease. Brandy and the Wit. “Just talk to me,” I suggested again. He nodded slowly.
He was well into describing a day of ordinary stable work when Lant brought the bandages and salves. I motioned the scribe to be silent and sit down. He was grateful to do so. As Perseverance spoke of his routine day and the tears for things lost rolled down his cheeks, I opened his shirt and looked at his shoulder. I doubted the bandage had been changed today. He winced as I peeled it off him. The wound was ugly. The arrow had gone through his shoulder, but not as cleanly as I’d hoped. His injury had been given all the careful attention that I’d expect most healers to devote to a beggar child.
I set out salves and bandaging and washed the wound front and back with wine. He gritted his teeth when I picked at a scrap of his shirt fabric working out of the wound. I got a grip on it and tugged it out. Blood followed. He looked down at it and went paler. “Keep talking,” I told him, and he recounted how a man had come with a donkey and cart and some abused bull-pups. I nodded, and washed his shoulder again with the wine.
I was pushing salve into the wounds when he told me what I didn’t know, which was how Lant and Lady Shun and Bee had returned late that night. Lant had escorted Shun into the house and left my Bee in the cold and snowy wagon. Lant’s brow wrinkled at the tale, and when the boy told of the house steward coming to carry her inside, Lant stood up and said stiffly, “I don’t know why you are listening to the boy. He’s either mad or malicious beyond explaining. I know nothing of a Lady Shun, nor a child named Bee. Call the house steward and see what Dixon has to say of this wild tale. ”
“Sit down,” I said to Lant through gritted teeth. Something had been done to his mind, and I could forgive him not recalling Bee or Shun, but I could not forgive how he had left my child to the care of a stable boy and a house steward after I had placed her in his care. “Be absolutely silent. And, no, you are not dismissed to your room. Stay until I tell you that you may go. ”
“Do you speak this way to me because I am a bastard? For my blood is just as good as yours and—”
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“I doubt that. I am Prince FitzChivalry, as you well know, son of King-in-Waiting Chivalry Farseer, and now recognized as such by the king. So sit and be silent. ”
Such a dark moment to flaunt my grand new status. He looked at me, uncertain how to react. Then he closed his lips. I took out my belt-knife and began to cut bandaging to the proper size. “You are truly him? The Witted Bastard?” Those words came from Perseverance. The boy’s eyes were wide.
“I am. ”
I did not expect what he next said. A tremulous smile broke on his tearstained face. “He was right. He did know. My grandfather said as much, for he knew your father and said no one could be mistaken who had seen him. My father used to agree with him, but I think it was only so he would stop insisting on it. Sir, I am proud to serve you, as my family has served your family for generations. And here and now, I vow my loyalty to you. And to your daughter, Princess Bee. Forever and ever. ”
“Thank you. ” What else does one say when a boy promises his life and loyalty? I closed my heart to the storm of emotions his words woke in me and spoke soothingly. “Continue telling me what happened, Perseverance. ”
“I mean it, sir. ” A boy’s tender feelings that such an offer might be disdained as childishness rode in his words.
“I know you do. ” I spoke severely. “And right now, I am holding you to it. I need what you are doing now. I need to know every bit of what you know. Keep talking. ”
And so I heard of
how he had gone to his lessons the next day, and my daughter had been there. He spoke of his conversation with Bee and how she had told him what I’d done. She’d been proud of me. Proud. I glanced at Lant as the lad spoke. His face was a mixture of emotions. Did he remember snatches of that day, scrubbed clean of Shun’s presence? But as Perseverance began to tell of the sounds they had heard and how Lant had gone to see what they were, the scribe began shaking his head again. I gave him a look and he stopped.
So I learned that Revel had spent the last moments of his life trying to save the Withywoods children. Truly, I’d never given the man the credit he deserved. And as the tale wound on, I heard of my Bee hiding the children where she had believed they would be safe, only to be deprived of that safety herself. Perseverance told me of the slaughter he’d seen in the stables, slain men sprawled with their throats cut as they did their daily chores, his own father and grandfather among them, and of stepping over bodies to saddle Priss, and the wild ride he and Bee had made in the hope of getting help.
His detailed account of the attack ended with the arrow. He had come to consciousness only in time to see them leaving with Bee. He had returned to the manor, to the stables still on fire and the folk he had known all his life denying that he had ever existed. I stopped him there. He had begun to shake as he spoke of it. “That’s enough. Let it go for now, Perseverance. I know the truth of your words. Now, I want you to think, but not speak, of the people you saw. Think about each one of them, and when you are ready tell me about them, one at a time. ” This, I had been taught by Chade, was the best way to gain information from one who had not been trained to report as I had. A question such as Was he tall? or Was he bearded? could carry the untrained mind to imagining something that had not been there.