Chapter 37
EVER AFTER
Let the Calling be announced well in advance, for people deserve a warning before the Skill Magic touches them for the first time. A Calling issued with no warning can induce great fear, for some who hold the potential for Skill will not know what it is, and fear that madness or worse has come upon them. So let riders be sent out well ahead of time. But do not tell when the exact day of the Calling will go forth. In the past, much time has been wasted trying to wake the Skill in some who came to Buckkeep, claiming to have heard the Call, when in fact all they wished to do was escape a life as farmers or bakers or rivermen.
Let the strongest coterie in the keep issue the Call, making it as far-reaching as possible. A Calling should be held no more often than every fifteen years.
— TREEKNEE'S “ON THE CALLING OF CANDIDATES”
I tried. But I could not help myself.
One month after Patience had departed, I gave in to an impulse. I sent a large pot of preserved wintergreen berries to Molly. I approached Riddle to act as my messenger. He seemed surprised that I even asked if he were busy, commenting that he had been told several weeks ago to consider himself at my disposal. Chade had undertaken a number of small changes on my behalf since I'd begun to take a more active role in Farseer matters. The pretense that I was an ordinary member of the Prince's Guard was fading, replaced with the unseen acceptance that I served the royal family in more confidential ways. Nominally, I was still Tom Badgerlock but I seldom wore the livery of a guard anymore, and the fox pin rode always on my breast.
Riddle seemed bemused by the errand I gave him but carried the gift and delivered it nonetheless.
“What did she say?” I asked him anxiously when he returned.
He looked at me blankly. “She said nothing to me. I gave it to the lad who came to the door. But I told him it was for his mum. Isn't that what you wanted me to do?”
Page 335
I hesitated, and then said, “Yes. That was exactly right. Yes. ”
The next month, I sent a missive saying that I thought Nettle was doing very well with her studies and becoming more comfortable at court. I told the family that Web had sent a bird to inform us that he and Swift would likely winter with the Duke and Duchess of Bearns. Web seemed well pleased with the boy, and I thought Molly would wish to know they were well and doing fine. My letter spoke only of her children. Along with the missive, I sent two jumping jacks and a carved bear and a sack of horehound candies.
Riddle's report from that delivery was slightly more encouraging. “One of the little fellows said horehound was good, but not as good as peppermint. ”
The next month, a sack of horehound and a sack of peppermint candies, as well as nuts and raisins, accompanied my letter about Nettle. That won me a brief reply from Molly, written on the bottom of my own letter, saying she welcomed news of Nettle but would I kindly stop attempting to make the boys sick with sweets.
My next month's letter duly reported on Nettle and gave news of Swift, who had taken the blotch-fever along with all the other youngsters at Ripplekeep in Bearns, but had recovered well and seemed none the worse for it. The Duchess herself had taken an interest in the lad and was teaching him much about hawks. Personally, I wondered how much, but left that speculation out of my letter. Instead of sweets, I sent two pouches of baked clay marbles, an exceptionally nice hoofpick in a leather sheath, and two wooden practice swords.
Riddle was amused to report that Hearth had clouted Just with one of the swords before he had even got off his horse, and refused to trade with Nimble for the bag of marbles that had been intended for him. I took it as a good sign that Riddle knew the boys by name now, and that they had all come out of the house to greet him.
The note from Molly was less heartening. Just had suffered a considerable lump to the back of his head, for which she blamed me. The boys had also been disappointed at the lack of sweets with the letter, for which she also blamed me. The letters were welcome but I should stop disrupting her family with inappropriate gifts. There was also a note from Chivalry, stiffly thanking me for the hoofpick. He asked if I knew of a source of saff oil, for one of the mares had a stubborn infection in one hoof and he thought he recalled his father using saff oil.
I did not wait a month. I found saff oil immediately, and sent it back to Chivalry, with instructions to wash out all her hooves with vinegar, move her into a different stall, and then apply saff oil to all four hooves, inside and out. I further suggested that he put a good bed of hearth ash down in her old stall and leave it there for three days before sweeping it out and then mopping the stall with vinegar and letting it dry well before stabling any other horses in it. And with the saff oil and letter to Chivalry, I defiantly sent barley-sugar sticks, with the request that he ration them out so that no one suffered from bellyaches.
He returned a note, thanking me for the oil and saying he had forgotten about the vinegar portion of the remedy. He asked if I knew the correct proportions for a certain liniment that Burrich used to make, for his attempt at it had come out too runny. And he assured me that the barley sugar would only be distributed as it was earned. Molly sent a note, but it was clearly marked To Nettle.
“But Steady told me that they had actually all liked the peppermint better,” Riddle informed me as he gave me Chivalry's missive. “Steady seems to me to be the quiet one. You know, the good lad who is often overlooked amongst rowdier boys. ” With a liar's grin, he added, “I was like that myself, as a lad. ”
“Surely you were,” I agreed skeptically.
“Any response?” Riddle asked me, and I told him I needed some time to think about it.
It took me several days of experiments at the worktable to compound correctly the liniment. It made me realize how much I had forgotten. I made several pots of it and sealed them well. Chade paid one of his rare visits to the old workroom we once had shared. He sniffed the air speculatively and asked what I was concocting.
“Bribes,” I answered him honestly.
“Ah,” he said, and when he asked no more, I knew that Riddle was still reporting to him, as well. “Made a few changes up here, I see,” he added, looking about the room.
“Mostly with a broom and some water. I'd give a great deal to have a window. ”
He gave me an odd look. “The room next to this one is always left empty. It used to belong to Lady Thyme. I understand there are rumors she haunts it still. Strange odors, you know, and sounds in the night. ” He grinned to himself. “She was a useful old hag. I bricked up the connecting door years and years ago. It used to be behind that wall hanging. You could probably knock through the wall if you went about it quietly. ”
Page 336
“Knock through the wall quietly?”
“It might be a bit difficult. ”
“A bit. I may try it. I'll let you know. ”
“Or you could move Nettle out of your old room down below and have the use of it. ”
I shook my head. “I still hope there may come a time when she would want to use that passage to come up and talk with me of an evening. ”
“But not much progress there yet. ”
“No. I'm afraid not. ”
“Ah, she's as hardheaded as you were. Don't trust her near the mantel with a fruit knife. ”
I looked at the one that still stood there, driven in as deep as my boyish anger could sink it. “I'll remember that. ”
“Remember too that you forgave me. Eventually. ”
I tried to send off the liniment by Riddle with a sack of peppermint drops, some spice tea, and a small marionette of a deer. “That won't do,” he told me. “At least put in some tops, so there's something for each of them. ” And so it was done. He suggested pennywhistles as well, quite innocently, but I pointed out I was trying to win my way in, not provoke Molly to murder me. He grinned, nodded and rode off, and stayed away a
n extra two days because of a snowstorm.
He brought back letters, one for me and one for Nettle, and the news that he'd eaten with the family and spent the night in the stables after a half-dozen games of Stones with Steady each evening. “I spoke you well, when Chivalry asked after you. Said you spent your nights at your scroll work and were fair to turn into a scribe if you didn't watch yourself. So then Hearth asked, ‘What, is he fat, then?' for I gather the scribe at their town is quite a portly man. So I said, no, quite the opposite, that I thought you'd lost flesh and grown quieter of late. And that you spent more time alone than was healthy for any man. ”
I tilted my head at him. “Could you have made me sound any more pathetic?”
He mimicked the tip of my head. “Is there any of it not true?”
The note was from Chivalry, thanking me for the liniment and recipe.
I don't know what was in Molly's note to Nettle. The next morning, she lingered after the Skill-lesson. Dutiful called to ask if she was coming, for he and Elliania and Civil and Sydel intended to go riding, if she'd care to come. She told him to go ahead and she would catch up easily, for it didn't take her forever to primp her hair before riding out.
She turned back to catch me smiling, and said, “I speak him formal when others are about. It's only here that I talk to him like that. ”
“He likes it. He was elated when he first discovered he had a cousin. He said it was nice to know a girl who spoke her mind to him. ”
That stopped her cold, and I regretted the remark, for I thought I had put her off whatever it was she was about to say. But she met my eyes and, lifting her chin, set her fists to her hips. “Oh. And should I speak my mind to you?”
I wasn't sure. “You could,” I suggested.
“My mother writes that she is well, and that my little brothers quite enjoy Riddle's visits. She wonders if you are afraid of my brothers, that you don't come yourself. ”
I slouched back in my chair and looked down at the tabletop. “I'm more likely to be afraid of her. Time was, she had quite a temper. ” I picked at my thumbnail.
“Time was, I understand you were excellent at provoking it. ”
“I suppose that is true. So. Do you think she would welcome a visit from me?”
She stood quite a time, not answering. Then she asked, “And are you afraid of my temper, as well?”
“A bit,” I admitted. “Why do you ask?”
She walked to Verity's window and stared out over the sea as he used to. In that pose, she looked as much a Farseer as I did. She ran her hands back through her hair distractedly. Truly, she could have given a bit more care to “primping. ” Her shortened hair stood up like the hair on an angry cat's back. “Once, I thought we were going to be friends. Then I discovered that you were my father. From that moment on, you haven't much tried even to speak to me. ”
“I thought you didn't want me to. ”
“Perhaps I wanted to see how hard you'd try. ” She turned back to look at me accusingly. “You didn't try, at all. ”
I sat a long time in silence. She turned and started toward the door.
I stood up. “You know, Nettle, I was raised by a man among men. Sometimes, I think that is the greatest disadvantage a man can have when it comes to dealing with women. ”
Page 337
She turned and looked back at me. I spoke from the heart. “I don't know what to do. I want you to at least know me as a person. Burrich was your father and he did well at it. Perhaps it's too late for me to have that place in your life. Nor can I find a place in your mother's life for me. I love her still, just as much as I did when she left me. I thought then that, when all my tasks were done, I would find her and somehow we would be happy together. And here we are, sixteen years later, and I still haven't managed to find my way back to her. ”
She stood, her hand on the door, looking uncomfortable. Then she said, “Perhaps you are telling these things to the wrong woman. ” And she slipped quietly out of it, letting it close behind her.
A few days later, Riddle found me at the guards' table eating breakfast. He slid onto the bench opposite me. “Nettle has given me a letter to deliver to her mother and brothers. She said to take it whenever I made my next journey for you. ” He reached across the table and took a hunk of bread from my plate. He bit into it and asked with his mouth full, “Will that be soon?”
I thought about it. “Tomorrow morning,” I suggested.
He nodded. “I thought it might be about then. ”
I rode Myblack down to the market in Buckkeep Town, chaffering with her all the way. She had had half a year with a stable boy whose idea of exercising her was to take her out and let her run as much as she wanted and then bring her back. She was willful and rude, tugging at her bit and ignoring the rein. I was ashamed of myself for neglecting her. I visited the winter market and rode home with sugared ginger and two arm lengths of red lace. I put them in a basket with a purloined bottle of dandelion wine. I sat all night with a piece of good paper in front of me and managed to find three sentences. “I remember you in red skirts. You climbed up the beach cliffs in front of me, and I saw your bare, sandy ankles. I thought my heart would leap out of my chest. ” I wondered if she would even remember that long-ago picnic when I had not even dared to kiss her. I sealed the note with a blotch of wax. Four times I unsealed it, trying to think of better words. Eventually, I entrusted it to Riddle as it was, and walked about for the next four days wishing I hadn't.
On the fourth night, I worked the lever that opened the door in Nettle's bedchamber. I did not go in and summon her, as Chade had me. Instead, I went halfway down those steep steps and left a candle burning there. Then I went back up and waited.
The wait seemed to last forever. I do not know which wakened her at last, the light or the draft, but I finally heard her hesitant tread on the stair. I had built up the fire well in the comfortable end of the room.
She peered round the corner of the concealed door, saw me, but still came in cautious as a cat. She walked slowly past the worktable with the stained scrolls stretched out on it, and more slowly past the work hearth with its racks of tongs and measures and stained pans. She came at last to the chairs by the fireside. She had on a nightgown and a woven shawl across her shoulders. She was shivering.
“Sit down,” I invited her, and she did, slowly. “This is where I work,” I told her. The kettle was just on the boil and I asked her, “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“In the middle of the night?”
“I do a lot of my work in the middle of the night. ”
“Most people sleep then. ”
“I am not like most people. ”
“That's so. ” She stood up and studied the items on the mantel above the hearth. There was a carving of the wolf that the Fool had done, and next to it, the memory stone with a similar image turned face out. She touched the handle of the fruit knife embedded there and gave me a puzzled glance. Then she reached up and set her hand to the hilt of Chivalry's sword.
“You can take it down if you like. It was your grandfather's. Be careful. It's heavy. ”
She took her hand away. “Tell me about him. ”
“I can't. ”
“Is it another secret, then?”
“No. I can't tell you because I never knew him. He gave me to Burrich when I was five or six. I never saw him, that I can recall. I believe he looked in on me with the Skill from time to time, through Verity's eyes. But I knew nothing of that, then. ”
“It sounds like you and me,” she said slowly.
“Yes, it does,” I admitted. “Except that I have a chance to know you now. If we are both bold enough to take it. ”
“I'm here,” she pointed out, settling deeper into the chair. And then she fell silent and I could not think of anything to say. Then she pointed at the Fool's carving. “Is that your wolf? Nighteyes?”
Page 338
br />
“Yes. ”
She smiled. “He looks exactly like I thought you would. Tell me more about him. ”
And so I did.
Riddle returned three days later, complaining of bad roads and the cold. A storm had followed him home. I scarcely heard him. I took the little roll of bark paper he offered me and carried it carefully up to my lair before I opened it. At first glance, it looked like a drawing. Then I realized it was a hastily sketched map. There were only a few words on the bottom of the page. “Nettle said you were having a hard time finding your way back to me. Perhaps this will help. ”
A deep wet snow was falling outside Buckkeep Castle. The clouds were heavy; I did not expect it would stop soon. I went to my workroom and stuffed a change of clothing into a saddlebag. I Skilled to Chade, I'll be gone for a while.
Very well. We can finish working on that scroll translation tonight.
You misunderstand me. I'll be gone several days at least. I'm going to Molly.
He hesitated and I could feel how badly he wanted to object. There was too much going on for me to leave. There were translations, the refinement of his powder that I'd been helping him with, and the Calling to arrange. The scrolls cautioned that the people of the kingdom had to be prepared for the Calling, lest parents or friends think those who heard voices in their heads were going mad. Yet it also cautioned that the exact day of the Calling be kept secret, to prevent charlatans from wasting the time of the Skillmaster.
Irritably I pushed such considerations aside. I waited.
Go then. And good luck. Have you told Nettle?
Now it was my turn to hesitate. I've told only you. Do you think I should tell her?
The things you ask my advice on! Never the ones I hope you'll ask me about, always the ones that . . . never mind. Yes. Tell her. Only because not telling her might seem deceptive.
So I reached out to my daughter and said, Nettle. I've had a note from Molly. I'm going to go visit her. And then the obvious occurred to me. Do you want to go along?
It's storming outside, with worse to come by the look of it. When are you leaving?