LITMIR.BIZ

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wouldn’t solve anything. I longed for his warm little world of straw and siblings and milk and mother. At that moment, I could imagine no better one.

      Then Burrich and I went up to eat. He took me into the soldiers’ mess, where manners were whatever you had and no one demanded talk. It was comforting to be casually ignored, to have food passed over my head with no one being solicitous of me. Burrich saw that I ate, though, and then afterwards we sat outside beside the kitchen’s back door and drank. I’d had ale and beer and wine before, but I had never drunk in the purposeful way that Burrich now showed me. When Cook dared to come out and scold him for giving strong spirits to a mere boy, he gave her one of his quiet stares that reminded me of the first night I had met him, when he’d faced down a whole room of soldiers over Chivalry’s good name. And she left.

      He walked me up to my room, dragged my tunic off over my head as I stood unsteadily beside my bed, and then casually tumbled me into the bed and tossed a blanket over me. ‘Now you’ll sleep,’ he informed me in a thick voice. ‘And tomorrow we’ll do the same again. And again. Until one day you get up and find out that whatever it was didn’t kill you after all.’

      He blew out my candle and left. My head reeled and my body ached from the day’s work. But still I didn’t sleep. What I found myself doing was crying. The drink had loosened whatever knot held my control, and I wept. Not quietly. I sobbed, and hiccuped and then wailed with my jaw shaking. My throat closed up, my nose ran, and I cried so hard I felt I couldn’t breathe. I think I cried every tear I had never shed since the day my grandfather forced my mother to abandon me. ‘Mere!’ I heard myself call out, and suddenly there were arms around me, holding me tight.

      Chade held me and rocked me as if I were a much younger child. Even in the darkness I knew those bony arms and the herb-and-dust smell of him. Disbelieving, I clung to him and cried until I was hoarse, and my mouth so dry no sound would come at all. ‘You were right,’ he said into my hair, quietly, calmingly. ‘You were right. I was asking you to do something wrong, and you were right to refuse it. You won’t be tested that way again. Not by me.’ And when I was finally still, he left me for a time, and then brought back to me a drink, lukewarm and almost tasteless, but not water. He held the mug to my mouth and I drank it down without questions. Then I lay back so suddenly sleepy that I don’t even remember Chade leaving my room.

      I awoke near dawn and reported to Burrich after a hearty breakfast. I was quick at my chores and attentive to my charges and could not at all understand why he had awakened so headachey and grumpy. He muttered something once about ‘his father’s head for spirits’, and then dismissed me early, telling me to take my whistling elsewhere.

      Three days later, King Shrewd summoned me in the dawn. He was already dressed, and there was a tray and food for more than one person set out on it. As soon as I arrived, he sent away his man and told me to sit. I took a chair at the small table in his room, and without asking me if I were hungry, he served me food with his own hand and then sat down across from me to eat. The gesture was not lost on me, but even so I could not bring myself to eat much. He spoke only of the food, and said nothing of bargains or loyalty or keeping one’s word. When he saw I had finished eating, he pushed his own plate away. He shifted uncomfortably.

      ‘It was my idea,’ he said suddenly, almost harshly. ‘Not his. He never approved of it. I insisted. When you’re older, you’ll understand. I can take no chances, not on anyone. But I promised him that you’d know this right from me. It was all my own idea, never his. And I will never ask him to try your mettle in such a way again. On that you have a king’s word.’

      He made a motion that dismissed me. And I rose, but as I did so, I took from his tray a little silver knife, all engraved, that he had been using to cut fruit with. I looked him in the eyes as I did so, and quite openly slipped it up my sleeve. King Shrewd’s eyes widened, but he said not a word.

      Two nights later, when Chade summoned me, our lessons resumed as if there had never been a pause. He talked, I listened, I played his stone game and never made an error. He gave me an assignment, and we made small jokes together. He showed me how Slink the weasel would dance for a sausage. All was well between us again. But before I left his chambers that night, I walked to his hearth. Without a word, I placed the knife on the centre of his mantel-shelf. Actually, I drove it, blade first, into the wood of the shelf. Then I left without speaking of it or meeting his eyes. In fact, we never spoke of it.

      I believe that the knife is still there.

       SIX

       Chivalry’s Shadow

      There are two traditions about the custom of giving royal offspring names suggestive of virtues or abilities. The one that is most commonly held is that somehow these names are binding; that when such a name is attached to a child who will be trained in the Skill, somehow the Skill melds the name to the child, and the child cannot help but grow up to practise the virtue ascribed to him or her by name. This first tradition is most doggedly believed by those same ones most prone to doff their caps in the presence of minor nobility.

      A more ancient tradition attributes such names to accident, at least initially. It is said that King Taker and King Ruler, the first two of the Outislanders to rule what would become the Six Duchies, had no such names at all. Rather that their names in their own foreign tongue were very similar to the sounds of such words in the duchies’ tongue, and thus came to be known by their homonyms rather than by their true names. But for the purposes of royalty, it is better to have the common folk believe that a boy given a noble name must grow to have a noble nature.

      ‘Boy!’

      I lifted my head. Of the half-dozen or so other lads lounging about before the fire, no one else even flinched. The girls took even less notice as I moved up to take my place at the opposite side of the low table where Master Fedwren knelt. He had mastered some trick of inflection that let all know when Boy meant ‘boy’ and when it meant ‘the bastard’.

      I tucked my knees under the low table and sat on my feet, then presented Fedwren with my sheet of pith-paper. As he ran his eyes down my careful columns of letters, I let my attention wander.

      Winter had harvested us and stored us here in the Great Hall. Outside, a sea storm lashed the walls of the keep while breakers pounded the cliffs with a force that occasionally sent a tremor through the stone floor beneath us. The heavy overcast had stolen even the few hours of watery daylight that winter had left us. It seemed to me that a darkness lay over us like a fog, both outside and within. The dimness penetrated my eyes, so that I felt sleepy without feeling tired. For a brief moment, I let my senses expand, and felt the winter sluggishness of the hounds where they dozed and twitched in the corners. Not even there could I find a thought or image to interest me.

      Fires burned in all three of the big hearths, and different groups had gathered before each. At one, fletchers busied themselves with their work, lest tomorrow be a clear enough day to allow for a hunt. I longed to be there, for Sherf’s mellow voice was rising and falling in the telling of some tale, broken frequently with appreciative laughter from her listeners. At the end hearth, children’s voices piped along in the chorus of a song. I recognized it as the Shepherd’s Song, a counting tune. A few watchful mothers tapped toes as they tatted at their lacemaking while Jerdon’s withered old fingers on the harp strings kept the young voices almost in tune.

      Here, at our hearth, children old enough to sit still and learn letters, did. Fedwren saw to that. His sharp blue eyes missed nothing. ‘Here,’ he said to me, pointing. ‘You’ve forgotten to cross their tails. Remember how I showed you? Justice, open your eyes and get back to your penwork. Doze off again and I’ll let you bring us another log for the fire. Charity, you can help him if you smirk again. Other than that,’ and his attention was suddenly back on my work again, ‘your lettering is much improved, not only on these Duchian characters, but on the Outislander runes as well. Though those can’t really be properly brushed onto such poor paper. The surface is too porous, and takes

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