LITMIR.BIZ

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stock would yield me others. My mind was busy with this planning as I started down the stairs.

      Serene was coming up the stairs. When I saw her, I halted where I was. The sight of her made me quail as Regal had not. It was an old reflex. Of all Galen’s coterie, she was now the strongest. August had retired from the field, gone far inland to live in orchard country and be a gentleman there. His Skill had been entirely blasted out of him during the final encounter that marked the end of Galen. Serene was now the key Skill-user of the coterie. In summers, she remained at Buckkeep, and all the other members of the coterie, scattered to towers and keeps up and down our long coast, channelled all their reports to the King through her. During winter, the entire coterie came to Buckkeep to renew their bonds and fellowship. In the absence of a Skillmaster, she had assumed much of Galen’s status at Buckkeep. She had also assumed, with great enthusiasm, Galen’s passionate hatred of me. She reminded me too vividly of past abuses, and inspired in me a dread that would not yield to logic. I had avoided her since my return but now her gaze pinned me.

      The staircase was more than sufficiently wide to allow two people to pass, unless one person deliberately planted herself in the middle of a step. Even looking up at me, I felt she had the advantage. Her bearing had changed since we had been Galen’s students together. Her whole physical appearance reflected her new position. Her midnight blue robe was richly embroidered. Her long midnight hair was bound back intricately with burnished wire strung with ivory ornaments. Silver graced her throat and ringed her fingers. But her femininity was gone. She had adopted Galen’s ascetic values, for her face was thinned to bone, her hands to claws. As he had, she burned with self-righteousness. It was the first time she had accosted me directly since Galen’s death. I halted above her, with no idea of what she wanted from me.

      ‘Bastard,’ she said flatly. It was a naming, not a greeting. I wondered if that word would ever lose its sting with me.

      ‘Serene,’ I said, as tonelessly as I could manage.

      ‘You did not die in the mountains.’

      ‘No. I did not.’

      Still she stood there, blocking my way. Very quietly she said, ‘I know what you did. I know what you are.’

      Inside, I was quivering like a rabbit. I told myself it was probably taking every bit of Skill strength she had to impose this fear on me. I told myself that it was not my true emotion, but only what her Skill suggested I should feel. I forced words from my throat.

      ‘I, too, know what I am. I am a King’s Man.’

      ‘You are no kind of a man at all,’ she asserted calmly. She smiled up at me. ‘Some day everyone will know that.’

      Fear feels remarkably like fear, regardless of the source. I stood, making no response. Eventually, she stepped aside to allow me to pass. I made a small victory of that, though in retrospect there was little else she could have done. I went to ready things for my trip to Bearns, suddenly glad to leave the keep for a few days.

      I have no good memories of that errand. I met Virago, for she was herself a guest at Ripplekeep while I was there doing my scribe tasks. She was as Shrewd had described her, a handsome woman, well-muscled, who moved lithe as a little hunting cat. She wore the vitality of her health like a glamour. All eyes followed her when she was in a room. Her chastity challenged every male who followed her. Even I felt myself drawn to her, and agonized about my task.

      Our very first evening at table together, she was seated across from me. Duke Brawndy had made me very welcome indeed, even to having his cook prepare a certain spicy meat dish I was fond of. His libraries were at my disposal, as were the services of his lesser scribe. His youngest daughter had even extended her shy companionship to me. I was discussing my scroll errand with Celerity, who surprised me with her soft-spoken intelligence. Midway through the meal, Virago remarked quite clearly to her dining companion that at one time bastards were drowned at birth. The old ways of El demanded it, she said. I could have ignored the remark, had she not leaned across the table to smilingly ask me, ‘Have you never heard of that custom, Bastard?’

      I looked up to Duke Brawndy’s seat at the head of the table, but he was engaged in a lively discussion with his eldest daughter. He didn’t even glance my way. ‘I believe it is as old as the custom of one guest’s courtesy to another at their host’s table,’ I replied. I tried to keep my eyes and voice steady. Bait. Brawndy had seated me across the table from her as bait. Never before had I been so blatantly used. I steeled myself to it, tried to set personal feelings aside. At least I was ready.

      ‘Some would say it was a sign of the degeneracy of the Farseer line, that your father came unchaste to his wedding bed. I, of course, would not speak against my king’s family. But tell me. How did your mother’s people accept her whoredom?’

      I smiled pleasantly. I suddenly had fewer qualms about my task. ‘I do not recall much of my mother or her kin,’ I offered conversationally. ‘But I imagine they believed as I do: better to be a whore, or the child of a whore, than a traitor to one’s king.’

      I lifted my wine glass and turned my eyes back to Celerity. Her dark blue eyes widened and she gasped as Virago’s belt knife plunged into Brawndy’s table but inches from my elbow. I had expected it and did not flinch. Instead, I turned to meet her eyes. Virago stood in her table place, eyes blazing and nostrils flared. Her heightened colour enflamed her beauty.

      I spoke mildly. ‘Tell me. You teach the old ways, do you not? Do you not then hold to the one that forbids the shedding of blood in a house in which you are a guest?’

      ‘Are you not unbloodied?’ she asked by way of reply.

      ‘As are you. I would not shame my duke’s table, by letting it be said that he had allowed guests to kill one another over his bread. Or do you care as little for your courtesy to your duke as you do your loyalty to your king?’

      ‘I have sworn no loyalty to your soft Farseer king,’ she hissed.

      Folk shifted, some uncomfortably, some for a better vantage. So some had come to witness her challenge me, at Brawndy’s table. All of this had been as carefully planned as any battle campaign. Would she know how well I had planned also? Did she suspect the tiny package in my cuff? I spoke boldly, pitching my voice to carry. ‘I have heard of you. I think that those you tempt to follow you into treachery would be wiser to go to Buckkeep. King-in-Waiting Verity has issued a call for those skilled in arms to come and man his new warships and bear those arms against the Outislanders, who are enemy to us all. That, I think, would be a better measure of a warrior’s skill. Is not that more honourable a pursuit than to turn against leaders one has sworn to, or to waste bull’s blood down a cliff-side by moonlight, when the same meat might go to feed our kin despoiled by Red Ships?’

      I spoke passionately, and my voice grew in volume as she stared at how much I knew. I found myself caught up in my own words, for I believed them. I leaned across the table, over Virago’s plate and cup, to thrust my face close to hers as I asked, ‘Tell me, brave one. Have you ever lifted arms against one who was not your own countryman? Against a Red Ship crew? I thought not. Far easier to insult a host’s hospitality, or maim a neighbour’s son than to kill one who came to kill our own.’

      Words were not Virago’s best weapon. Enraged, she spat at me.

      I leaned back, calmly, to wipe my face clean. ‘Perhaps you would care to challenge me, in a more appropriate time and place. Perhaps a week hence, on the cliffs where you so boldly slew the cow’s husband? Perhaps I, a scribe, might present you more of a challenge than your bovine warrior did?’

      Duke Brawndy suddenly deigned to notice the disturbance. ‘FitzChivalry! Virago!’ he rebuked us. But our gazes remained locked, my hands planted to either side of her place setting as I leaned to confront her.

      I think the man beside her might have challenged me also, had not Duke Brawndy then slammed his salt bowl against the table, near shattering it, and reminded us forcefully that this was his table and his hall and he’d have no blood shed in it. He, at least, was capable of honouring both King Shrewd and the old ways at once, and suggested we attempt to do the same.

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