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my head with no one being solicitous of me. Burrich saw that I ate, though, and then afterward 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 himself, 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 I still
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.
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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 headachy 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 sat down across from me to eat himself. 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 center 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.
CHAPTER 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 practice 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
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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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]