LITMIR.BIZ

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recall the spitting wet days of winter’s end as I learned the route from my stall to the kitchen. I was free to come and go there as I pleased. Sometimes there was a cook in attendance, setting meat onto the hearth-hooks or pummelling bread dough or breaching a cask of drink. More often, there was not, and I helped myself to whatever had been left out on the table, and shared generously with the pup that swiftly became my constant companion. Men came and went, eating and drinking, and regarding me with a speculative curiosity that I came to accept as normal. The men had a sameness about them, with their rough wool cloaks and leggings, their hard bodies and easy movements, and the crest of a leaping buck that each bore over his heart. My presence made some of them uncomfortable. I grew accustomed to the mutter of voices that began whenever I left the kitchen.

      Burrich was a constant in those days, giving me the same care he gave to Chivalry’s beasts; I was fed, watered, groomed and exercised, said exercise usually coming in the form of trotting at his heels as he performed his other duties. But those memories are blurry and details, such as those of washing or changing garments, have probably faded with a six-year-old’s calm assumptions of such things as normal. Certainly I remember the hound pup, Nosy. His coat was red and slick and short, and bristly in a way that prickled me through my clothes when we shared the horse blanket at night. His eyes were green as copper ore, his nose the colour of cooked liver, and the insides of his mouth and tongue were mottled pink and black. When we were not eating in the kitchen, we wrestled in the courtyard or in the straw of the box-stall. Such was my world for however long it was I was there. Not too long, I think, for I do not recall the weather changing. All my memories of that time are of raw days and blustery wind, and snow and ice that partially melted each day but were restored by night’s freezes.

      One other memory I have of that time, but it is not sharp-edged. Rather it is warm and softly tinted, like a rich old tapestry seen in a dim room. I recall being roused from sleep by the pup’s wriggling and the yellow light of a lantern being held over me. Two men bent over me, but Burrich stood stiffly behind them and I was not afraid.

      ‘Now you’ve wakened him,’ warned the one, and he was Prince Verity, the man from the warmly-lit chamber of my first evening.

      ‘So? He’ll go back to sleep as soon as we leave. Damn him, he has his father’s eyes as well. I swear, I’d have known his blood no matter where I saw him. There’ll be no denying it to any that see him. But have neither you nor Burrich the sense of a flea? Bastard or not, you don’t stable a child among beasts. Was there no where else you could put him?’

      The man who spoke was like Verity around the jaw and eyes, but there the resemblance ended. This man was younger by far. His cheeks were beardless, and his scented and smoothed hair was finer and brown. His cheeks and forehead had been stung to redness by the night’s chill, but it was a new thing, not Verity’s weathered ruddiness. And Verity dressed as his men dressed, in practical woollens of sturdy weave and subdued colours. Only the crest on his breast showed brighter, in gold and silver thread. But the younger man with him gleamed in scarlets and primrose, and his cloak drooped with twice the width of cloth needed to cover a man. The doublet that showed beneath it was a rich cream, and laden with lace. The scarf at his throat was secured with a leaping stag done in gold, its single eye a winking green gem. And the careful turn of his words were like a twisted chain of gold compared to the simple links of Verity’s speech.

      ‘Regal, I had given it no thought. What do I know of children? I turned him over to Burrich. He is Chivalry’s man, and as such he’s cared for …’

      ‘I meant no disrespect to the blood, sir,’ Burrich said in honest confusion. ‘I am Chivalry’s man, and I saw to the boy as I thought best. I could make him up a pallet in the guardroom, but he seems small to be in the company of such men, with their comings and goings at all hours, their fights and drinking and noise.’ The tone of his words made his own distaste for their company obvious. ‘Bedded here, he has quiet, and the pup has taken to him. And with my Vixen to watch over him at night, no one could do him harm without her teeth taking a toll. My lords, I know little of children myself, and it seemed to me …’

      ‘It’s fine, Burrich, it’s fine,’ Verity said quietly, cutting him off. ‘If it had to be thought about, I should have done the thinking. I left it to you, and I don’t find fault with it. It’s better than a lot of children have in this village, Eda knows. For here, for now, it’s fine.’

      ‘It will have to be different when he comes back to Buckkeep.’ Regal did not sound pleased.

      ‘Then our father wishes him to return with us to Buckkeep?’ The question came from Verity.

      ‘Our father does. My mother does not.’

      ‘Oh.’ Verity’s tone indicated he had no interest in further discussing that. But Regal frowned and continued.

      ‘My mother the Queen is not at all pleased about any of this. She has counselled the King long, but in vain. Mother and I were for putting the boy … aside. It is only good sense. We scarcely need more confusion in the line of succession.’

      ‘I see no confusion in it now, Regal,’ Verity spoke evenly. ‘Chivalry, me, and then you. Then our cousin August. This bastard would be a far fifth.’

      ‘I am well aware that you precede me; you need not flaunt it at me at every opportunity,’ Regal said coldly. He glared down at me. ‘I still think it would be better not to have him about. What if Chivalry never does get a legal heir on Patience? What if he chooses to recognize this … boy? It could be very divisive to the nobles. Why should we tempt trouble? So say my mother and I. But our father the King is not a hasty man, as well we know. Shrewd is as Shrewd does, as the common folk say. He forbade any settling of the matter. “Regal,” he said, in that way he has. “Don’t do what you can’t undo, until you’ve considered what you can’t do once you’ve done it.” Then he laughed.’ Regal himself gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘I weary so of his humour.’

      ‘Oh,’ said Verity again, and I lay still and wondered if he were trying to sort out the King’s words, or refraining from replying to his brother’s complaint.

      ‘You discern his real reason, of course,’ Regal informed him.

      ‘Which is?’

      ‘He still favours Chivalry.’ Regal sounded disgusted. ‘Despite everything. Despite his foolish marriage and his eccentric wife. Despite this mess. And now he thinks this will sway the people, make them warmer toward him. Prove he’s a man, that Chivalry can father a child. Or maybe prove he’s a human, and can make mistakes like the rest of them.’ Regal’s tone betrayed that he agreed with none of this.

      ‘And this will make the people like him more, support his future kingship more? That he fathered a child on some wild woman before he married his queen?’ Verity sounded confused by the logic.

      I heard the sourness in Regal’s voice. ‘So the King seems to think. Does he care nothing for the disgrace? But I suspect Chivalry will feel differently about using his bastard in such a way. Especially as it regards dear Patience. But the King has ordered that the bastard be brought to Buckkeep when you return.’ Regal looked down on me as if ill satisfied.

      Verity looked briefly troubled, but nodded. A shadow lay over Burrich’s features that the yellow lamplight could not lift.

      ‘Has my master no say in this?’ Burrich ventured to protest. ‘It seems to me that if he wants to settle a portion on the family of the boy’s mother, and set him aside, then, why surely for the sake of my Lady Patience’s sensibilities, he should be allowed that discretion …’

      Prince Regal broke in with a snort of disdain. ‘The time for discretion was before he rolled the wench. The Lady Patience is not the first woman to have to face her husband’s bastard. Everyone here knows of his existence; Verity’s clumsiness saw to that. There’s no point to trying to hide him. And as far as a royal bastard is concerned, none of us can afford to have such sensibilities, Burrich. To leave such a boy in a place like this is like leaving a weapon hovering over the King’s throat. Surely even a houndsman can see that. And even if you can’t, your master

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