12

Suspicions

The use of the Skill is addictive. All students of this magic are warned of this from the very beginning. There is a fascination to this power that draws the user in, tempting him to use it more and more often. As the user’s expertise and power increase, so does the lure of the Skill. The fascination of the Skill eclipses other interests and relationships. Yet it is a difficult attraction to describe to anyone who has not experienced the Skill itself. A rising covey of pheasant on a crisp autumn morning, or catching the wind’s benefit perfectly in a boat’s sails, or the first mouthful of hot savory stew after a cold and hungry day; these are all sensations that hover for only a moment. The Skill sustains that sensation, for as long as the strength of the user lasts.

It was very late when the others came back to our campsite. My master Damon was drunk and leaning companionably on Creece, who was drunk and irritable and reeked of smoke. They dragged their blankets off the cart and rolled up in them. No one offered to relieve me in my watch. I sighed, doubting that I’d get any sleep until the next night.

Dawn came as early as it always does, and the caravan master was merciless in insisting that we rise and get ready for the road. I suppose she was wise. If she’d allowed them to sleep as long as they wanted, the earlier risers would have gone back to town, and she’d have had to spend the day rounding them up. But it made for a miserable morning. Only the teamsters and the minstrel Starling seemed to have known when to stop drinking. We cooked and shared porridge while the others compared headaches and complaints.

I’ve noticed that drinking together, especially to excess, forms a bond between folk. So when the master decided his head ached too badly for him to drive the cart, he allotted that task to Creece. Damon slept in the cart as it jostled along while Creece drowsed over the reins as the pony followed the other wagons. They’d tied the bellwether to the tail of the cart, and the flock followed. Somewhat. To me fell the task of trotting behind in the dust, keeping the flock as well bunched as I could. The sky was blue but the day remained chill, with rising winds that stirred and carried the dust we raised. The night had been sleepless for me, and my head soon pounded with pain.

Madge called a brief halt at noon. Most of the caravan folk had recovered enough by then that they wished to eat. I drank from the water casks on Madge’s wagon, then wet my kerchief and sopped some of the dust from my face. I was trying to rinse grit from my eyes when Starling came up beside me. I stepped aside, thinking she wanted water. Instead, she spoke softly.

“I’d keep my kerchief on, were I you.”

I wrung it out and retied it about my head. “I do. It does nothing to keep the dust from my eyes, though.”

Starling looked at me levelly. “It’s not your eyes you should worry about. It’s that white shock of hair. You should black it with grease and ash tonight, if you get a private moment. It might make it a bit less noticeable.”

I looked questioningly at her, trying to keep my expression bland.

She smiled at me archly. “King Regal’s guards had been through that water town just a few days before we arrived. They told the folk there that the King believed that the Pocked Man would be crossing Farrow. And you with him.” She paused, expecting me to say something. When I just looked at her, her grin widened. “Or perhaps it’s some other fellow with a broken nose, scar down his face, white streak in his hair, and …” She gestured toward my arm. “… a fresh sword-slash up his forearm.”

I found my tongue and a measure of my wits. I pushed back my sleeve, offered my arm for her inspection. “A sword-slash? This is just a scratch I got off a nail head in a tavern door. On my way out, a bit unwillingly. Take a look for yourself. It’s almost healed now, anyway.”

She leaned over and looked at my arm obligingly. “Oh. I see. Well. My mistake. Still,” and she met my eyes again, “I’d keep your kerchief on anyway. To prevent anyone else from making the same mistake.” She paused, then canted her head at me. “I’m a minstrel, you see. I’d rather witness history than make it. Or change it. But I doubt all the others in this caravan feel that way.”

I watched mutely as she strolled away, whistling. Then I drank again, being careful not to take too much, and went back to my sheep.

Creece was on his feet and helping, somewhat, for the rest of the afternoon. Even so, it seemed a longer, wearier day than I’d had in a time. There was nothing complicated about my task to make it so. The problem, I decided, was that I’d begun thinking again. I let my despair over Molly and our child drag me down. I’d let my guard down, I hadn’t been fearful enough on my own behalf. Now it occurred to me that if Regal’s Guard managed to find me, they’d kill me. Then I’d never see Molly or our daughter. Somehow that seemed worse than the threat to my life.

At the evening meal that night, I sat back farther from the fire than usual, even though it meant wrapping myself in my cloak against the cold. My silence was taken as normal. The rest of them talked, much more than usual, about the last evening in town. I gathered the beer had been good, the wine poor, while the resident minstrel had had small goodwill toward Starling for performing for his captive audience. The members of our caravan seemed to take it as a personal victory that Starling’s songs had been well received by the villagers. “You sang well, even if all you knew was those Buck ballads,” Creece even conceded magnanimously. Starling nodded to that dubious praise.

As she did every evening, Starling unwrapped her harp after the meal. Master Dell was giving his troupe a rare night off from their constant rehearsing, by which I gathered he had been pleased with his performers save Tassin. Tassin had not even a glance for me that evening, but instead perched by one of the teamsters, smiling up at his every word. I noticed that her injury was little more than a scratch on her face with some bruising around it. It would heal well.

Creece went off to stand night watch over our flock. I stretched out on my cloak just beyond reach of the firelight, thinking to drowse off immediately. I expected the others would soon be off to bed as well. The hum of their conversation was lulling, as was the lazy strumming of Starling’s fingers on her harp strings. Gradually the strumming changed to a rhythmic plucking, and her voice lifted in song.

I was floating at the edge of sleep when the words “Antler Island Tower” jolted me awake. My eyes flew open as I realized she was singing about the battle there last summer, the Rurisk’s first real engagement with the Red Ship Raiders. I recalled both too much and very little about that battle. As Verity had observed more than once, despite all Hod’s weapons instruction, I tended to revert to brawling in any sort of a fight. So I’d carried an axe into that battle and used it with a savagery I’d never expected of myself. Afterward, it had been said that I’d killed the chief of the raiding party we’d cornered. I’d never known if that was true or not.

In Starling’s song, it certainly was. My heart nearly stood still when I heard her sing of “Chivalry’s son, with eyes of flame, who carried his blood if not his name.” The song went on with a dozen improbable embellishments of blows I’d dealt and warriors I’d felled. It was strangely humiliating to hear those deeds sung of as noble and now almost legendary. I knew there were many fighters who dreamed of having songs sung of their exploits. I found the experience uncomfortable. I didn’t recall the sun striking flames from my axehead or that I fought as bravely as the buck on my crest. Instead I recalled the clinging smell of blood and treading on a man’s entrails, a man who squirmed and moaned still. All the ale in Buckkeep that night had not been enough to bring me any sort of peace.

When the song was finally done, one of the teamsters snorted. “So, that’s the one ye daren’t sing in the tavern last night, eh, Starling?”

Starling gave a deprecating laugh. “Somehow I doubted it would be enjoyed. Songs about Chivalry’s Bastard would not have been popular enough to earn me a penny there.”

“It’s an odd song,” observed Dell. “Here’s the King offering gold for his head, and the Guard telling all, beware, the Bastard has the Wit and used it to trick death. But your song makes him out to be some sort of hero.”

“Well, it’s a Buck song, and he was well thought of in Buck, at least for a time,” Starling explained.

“But not anymore, I’d wager. Save that any man would think well of a hundred gold coins if one could turn him over to the King’s Guard,” one of the teamsters observed.

“Like as not,” Starling agreed easily. “Though there’s still some in Buck who would tell you that not all his tale has been told, and the Bastard was not so black as he’s been tarred of late.”

“I still don’t understand it. I thought he was executed for using the Wit to kill King Shrewd,” complained Madge.

“So some say,” Starling replied. “Truth of it was, he died in his cell before he could be executed and was buried instead of burned. And the tale goes,” and here Starling’s voice dropped to a near whisper, “that when spring came, not a leaf of greenery would grow on his grave. And an old wise woman, hearing this, knew that meant his Wit magic still slept in his bones and might be claimed by any bold enough to pull a tooth from his mouth. And so she went, by full moonlight, and took a manservant with a spade with her. She put him to digging up the grave. But he hadn’t turned but a shovelful of earth before he found splintered wood from the Bastard’s coffin.”

Starling paused theatrically. There wasn’t a sound save the crackling of the fire.

“The box was empty, of course. And those who saw it said that the coffin had been splintered out from inside, not stove in. And one man told it to me that caught in the splintered edge of the coffin lid were the coarse gray hairs of a wolf’s coat.”

A moment longer the silence held. Then, “Not truly?” Madge asked Starling.

Her fingers ran lightly over her harp strings. “So I heard it told in Buck. But I also heard the Lady Patience, she that buried him, say it was all nonsense, that his body had been cold and stiff when she washed it and wrapped it in a grave cloth. And of the Pocked Man, that King Regal so fears, she declared he is no more than an old adviser of King Shrewd’s, some old recluse with a scarred face, come out of his hermitage to keep alive a belief that Verity still lives and lend heart to those who must go on battling the Red Ships. So. I suppose you can choose to believe whichever you wish.”

Melody, one of the puppeteers, gave a mock shiver. “Brrr. So. Sing us something merry now, to go to sleep on. I’ve no wish to hear more of your ghost tales before I seek my blankets tonight.”

So Starling willingly swept into a love ballad, an old one with a lilting refrain that Madge and Melody joined in singing. I lay in the darkness, pondering all I’d heard. I was uncomfortably aware that Starling had stirred it up intending for me to hear it. I wondered if she thought she was doing me a favor, or if she simply wished to see if any of the others had suspicions of me. One hundred gold coins for my head. That was enough to make a duke greedy, let alone a strolling minstrel. Despite my weariness, it was a long time before I dozed off that night.

The next day’s drive was almost comforting in its monotony. I paced along behind my sheep, and tried not to think. It was not as easy to do as previously. It seemed that whenever I blanked my mind to my worries, I heard Verity’s Come to me echoing inside my head. When we made camp that night, it was on the banks of a giant sinkhole with water at its center. The talk about the fire was desultory. I think we were all more than a little weary of our trudging pace and longed to see the shores of Blue Lake. I wished simply to go to sleep, but I had first watch over the flock.

I climbed slightly up the hillside to where I could sit looking down on my woolly charges. The great bowl of the sinkhole cupped our whole caravan, with the small cook fire near the water showing like a star at the bottom of a well. Whatever wind blew passed us by, leaving us sheltered in a great stillness. It was almost peaceful.

Tassin probably thought she was being stealthy. I watched her come silently, her cloak pulled well up over her hair and about her face. She circled widely as if to pass by me. I did not follow her with my eyes, but listened to her as she went above me on the hillside and then came back down behind me. I caught her scent even in the still air and felt an involuntary anticipation. I wondered if I’d have the strength of will to refuse her a second time. Mistake it might be, but my body was all in favor of making it. When I judged her about a dozen steps away, I turned to look at her. She startled back from my gaze.

“Tassin,” I greeted her quietly, and then turned to look back at my sheep. After a moment, she came down the slope to stand a few steps away from me. I turned slightly and looked up at her without speaking. She pushed her hood back from her face and confronted me, challenge in her eyes and stance.

“You’re him, aren’t you?” she demanded breathlessly. There was a very slight edge of fear in her voice.

It was not what I’d expected her to say. I didn’t have to pretend surprise. “I’m him? I’m Tom the shepherd if that’s the him you mean.”

“No, you’re him, that Wit-Bastard the King’s Guard is seeking. Drew the teamster told me what they were saying in town, after Starling told that tale last night.”

“Drew told you I was a Wit-Bastard?” I spoke carefully, as if baffled by her tumbling words. A terrible cold fear was welling up inside me.

“No.” A trace of anger mixed with her fear. “Drew told me what the King’s Guard said of him. A broken nose and a scar on the cheek and a white streak in his hair. And I saw your hair that night. You’ve a white streak in it.”

“Any man who’s been hit on the head can have a white streak in his hair. It’s an old scar.” I tilted my head and looked at her critically. “I’d say your face is healing well.”

“You’re him, aren’t you?” She sounded even angrier that I’d tried to change the subject.

“Of course not. Look. He’s got a sword-slash on his arm, hasn’t he? Look at this.” I bared my right arm for her inspection. The knife-slash I’d given myself was down the back of my left forearm. I was gambling that she’d know a slash taken defending myself should have been on my sword arm.

She scarcely glanced at my arm. “Do you have any coin?” she asked me suddenly.

“If I’d had any coin, why would I have stayed in camp when the others went to town? Besides, why would you care?”

“I wouldn’t. But you would. You could use it to buy my silence. Otherwise, I might go to Madge with what I suspect. Or the teamsters.” She lifted her chin defiantly at me.

“Then they could look at my arm, as easily as you’ve done,” I said wearily. I turned away from her to look back over my sheep. “You’re being a silly little girl, Tassin, letting Starling’s ghost tales get you all stirred up. Go back to bed.” I tried to sound disgusted with her.

“You’ve a scratch on your other arm. I saw it. Some might take it for a sword-slash.”

“Probably the same ones that would take you for intelligent,” I said derisively.

“Don’t make mock of me,” she warned me in a voice gone flat with ugliness. “I won’t be made fun of.”

“Then don’t say stupid things. What’s the matter with you, anyway? Is this some sort of revenge? Are you angry because I wouldn’t bed you? I told you, it’s nothing to do with you. You’re pretty to look at, and I don’t doubt there’d be pleasure in touching you. But not for me.”

She spat suddenly on the ground beside me. “As if I’d have let you. I was amusing myself, shepherd. No more than that.” She made a small sound in her throat. “Men. How can you look at yourself and think anyone would want you for your own sake? You stink of sheep, you’re skinny, and your face looks like you’ve lost every fight you’ve ever been in.” She turned on her heel, then seemed to abruptly remember why she’d come. “I won’t tell any of them. Yet. But when we get to Blue Lake, your master must pay you something. See you bring it to me, or I’ll have the whole town seeking you out.”

I sighed. “Whatever amuses you, I’m sure you’ll do. Create all the fuss you wish. When it comes to naught and folk laugh about it, it will probably give Dell one more reason to beat you.”

She turned away from me and went stalking off down the hillside. She lost her footing in the moonlight’s uncertainty and nearly took a tumble. But she recovered herself and then glared back at me, as if daring me to laugh. I had no such inclination. Despite my defiance of her, my stomach was clenched up under my throat. A hundred gold coins. Spread a rumor of it, and that much money was enough to start a riot. After I was dead, they’d probably decide they had the wrong man.

I wondered how well I’d do at crossing the rest of the Farrow plains alone. I could leave right after Creece relieved me on watch. I’d go to the wagon and get my things quietly and sneak away into the night. How much farther could it be to Blue Lake anyway? I was pondering that as I watched yet another figure slip away from the campsite and come up the slope toward me.

Starling came quietly, but not stealthily. She lifted a hand to me in greeting before she sat down companionably at my side. “I hope you didn’t give her any money,” she greeted me affably.

“Umph,” I said, letting her take it however she wished.

“Because you’re at least the third man who’s supposedly got her pregnant on this trip. Your master had the honor of being the first accused. Madge’s son was the second. At least I think he was. I don’t know how many fathers she’s selected for this possible child.”

“I haven’t been with her, so she could scarcely accuse me of that,” I said defensively.

“Oh? Then you’re probably the only man in the caravan who hasn’t.”

That jolted me a bit. Then I thought about it and wondered if I would ever reach a place in which I ceased finding out how stupid I could be. “So you think she’s with child and is looking for a man to buy her out of her apprenticeship?”

Starling snorted. “I doubt she’s with child at all. She wasn’t asking to be married, only for coin to buy herbs to shake the child loose. I think Madge’s boy might have actually given her some. No. I don’t think she wants a husband, just some money. So she looks for ways that allow her a bit of a tumble, and a man who might pay her for it afterward.” She shifted, tossed aside an offending stone. “So. If you haven’t got her pregnant, what have you done to her?”

“I told you. Nothing.”

“Ah. That explains why she speaks so ill of you then. But only in the last day or so, so I supposed you ‘nothinged’ her the night the rest of us went to town.”

“Starling,” I began warningly, and she raised a placating hand.

“I shan’t say a word about whatever you didn’t do to her. Not another word. That’s not what I came up here to speak to you about anyway.”

She paused, and when I refused to ask the question, she did. “What do you plan to do after we get to Blue Lake?”

I glanced at her. “Collect my pay. Have a beer and a decent meal, a hot bath and a clean bed for one night at least. Why? What do you plan?”

“I thought I might go on to the Mountains.” She gave me a sideways glance.

“To seek your songworthy event there?” I tried to keep my question casual.

“Songs are more likely to be found clinging to a man than bound to a place,” she suggested. “I thought you might be going to the Mountains as well. We could travel together.”

“You’ve still that idiotic notion that I’m the Bastard,” I accused her flatly.

She grinned. “The Bastard. The Witted one. Yes.”

“You’re wrong,” I said flatly. “And even if you were right, why follow him to the Mountains? I’d take the chance for a bigger profit, and sell him to the King’s Guard. With a hundred gold pieces, who’d need to make songs?”

Starling made a small sound of disgust. “You’ve more experience of the King’s Guard than I have, I’m sure. But even I’ve enough to know that a minstrel who tried to claim that reward would probably be found floating in the river a few days later. While some guardsmen became suddenly very wealthy. No. I’ve told you. I’m not after gold, Bastard. I’m after a song.”

“Don’t call me that,” I warned her sharply. She shrugged and turned away. After a moment she twitched as if I’d poked her and then turned back to me with a grin widening across her face.

“Ah. I believe I’ve worked it out. That’s how Tassin was squeezing you, isn’t it? Asking for money to still her tongue.”

I made no reply.

“You’re smart to refuse her. Give her any and she’ll think she’s right. If she truly believed you were the Bastard, she’d be holding her secret to sell to the King’s Guard. Because she’s had no experience of them, and would believe she might actually get to keep the gold.” Starling stood, stretching leisurely. “Well. I’m back to bed while I may. But keep my offer in mind. I doubt you’ll find a better one.” She swirled her cloak about herself theatrically, then bowed to me as if I were the King. I watched her stroll away from me down the hill, surefooted as a goat even in the moonlight. She reminded me briefly of Molly.

I considered slipping away from the camp and going on to Blue Lake on my own. I decided that if I did, Tassin and Starling would only become certain that they had guessed correctly. Starling might try to follow and find me. Tassin would try to find a way to collect the reward. I wanted neither of those things. Better to stick it out and plod along as Tom the shepherd.

I lifted my eyes to the night sky. Clear and cold it arched above me. The dead of the night had a nasty chill to it of late. By the time I got to the Mountains, winter would be more than just a threat. If only I hadn’t wasted those early months of summer being a wolf, I’d be in the Mountains by now. But that was another useless thought. The stars were close and bright tonight. It made the world seem a smaller place to have the sky so close. I felt suddenly that if I just opened up and reached for Verity, I would find him there, right at my fingertips. Loneliness swelled so suddenly inside me that I felt it would tear its way out of me. Molly and Burrich were no farther away than the closing of my eyes. I could go to them, could trade the hunger of not knowing for the pain of being unable to touch. The Skill walls, clutched so closely every waking moment since I had left Tradeford, now felt suffocating rather than shielding. I bowed my head to my drawn-up knees and hugged myself against the chill emptiness of the night.

After a time, the hunger passed. I lifted my head and looked out over the peaceful sheep, the cart and wagons, the motionless camp. A glance at the moon told me my watch was well over. Creece was never good about rousing himself to take his turn. So I stood and stretched and went down the hill to poke him from his warm blankets.

The next two days passed uneventfully, save that the weather grew colder and windier. On the evening of the third, just as we had settled for the night and I had taken up my first watch of the evening, I saw a dust cloud on the horizon. I thought little of it at first. We were on one of the more traveled caravan routes, and had stopped at a watering place. A wagon full of a tinker family had already been there. I assumed that whoever was raising the dust would also be seeking a water-place to rest for the night. So I sat and watched the dust get closer as the evening darkened. Slowly the dust resolved into figures on horseback, riding in an orderly formation. The closer they came, the more certain I became. King’s Guards. The light was too weak for me to see the gold and brown of Regal’s colors, but I knew.

It was all I could do to keep myself from leaping up and fleeing. Cold logic told me that if they were seeking me specifically, it would only take them a few minutes to ride me down. This vast plain offered me no near hiding places. And if they were not seeking me, to flee would only attract their attention, and make both Tassin and Starling certain in their suspicions. So I gritted my teeth and remained where I was, sitting with my stick across my knees watching the sheep. The riders bypassed me and the sheep and went directly to the water. I counted as they went past. Six of them. I recognized one of the horses, a buckskin colt Burrich had said would be a good courser someday. Seeing him reminded me too vividly of how Regal had plundered Buckkeep of every valuable thing before he left it to fend for itself. A tiny spark of anger ignited in me, one that somehow made it easier to sit and bide my time.

After a while, I decided that they were just on their way as we were, and had stopped only to water and rest for the night. Then Creece came lumbering out to find me. “You’re wanted in the camp,” he told me with ill-conceived irritability. Creece always liked to sleep as soon as he’d eaten. I asked him what had changed our schedule as he settled down in my place.

“King’s Guards,” he huffed angrily. “Pushing everybody about, demanding to see every member of our caravan. They searched all the wagons, too.”

“What are they looking for?” I asked idly.

“Damned if I know. Didn’t care to get a fist in the face for asking, either. But you suit yourself about finding out.”

I took my staff with me as I walked back into the camp. My shortsword still hung at my side. I thought of concealing it, then decided against it. Anyone might carry a sword, and if I needed to draw it, I didn’t want to be wrestling with my trousers.

The camp was like a stirred hornet’s nest. Madge and her folk looked both apprehensive and angry. The guardsmen were currently harassing the tinker. One guardswoman kicked over a stack of tin pots with a fine clatter and then shouted something about searching anything she pleased, any way she pleased. The tinker stood by his wagon, his arms crossed on his chest. He looked as if he’d already been knocked down once. Two guardsmen had his wife and youngsters backed up against the tail of the wagon. The wife had a trickle of blood coming from her nose. She still looked ready to fight. I drifted into camp as silent as smoke and took a place beside Damon as if I’d always been there. Neither of us spoke.

The leader of the guards turned away from his confrontation with the tinker, and a shiver went up my back. I knew him. It was Bolt, favored by Regal for his skill with his fists. I’d last seen him in the dungeon. He was the one who had broken my nose. I felt the beating of my heart pick up speed and heard my pulse in my ears. Darkness threatened the edges of my vision. I fought to breathe quietly. He paced to the center of the camp and cast a disdainful eye over us. “This is everyone?” he demanded more than queried.

We all bobbed nods. He cast his gaze over us and I looked down to avoid it. I forced my hands to be still, to stay away from both knife and sword. I tried not to let my tension show in my stance.

“As sorry a lot of vagabonds as I’ve ever seen.” His tone dismissed our importance. “Caravan master! We’ve been riding all day. Have your boy see to our horses. We’ll want food prepared, and more fuel gathered for the fire. And warm us some water for washing.” He ran his glance over us again. “I want no trouble. The men we were looking for aren’t here, and that’s all we required to know. Just do as we ask, and there won’t be any problems. You can go about your normal business.”

There were a few mutters of agreement, but mostly silence greeted this. He snorted his disdain for us, then turned to his riders and spoke quietly to them. Whatever orders he was giving did not seem to sit well with them, but the two that had cornered the tinker woman came to heel at his words. They took over the fire Madge had built earlier, forcing the folk of our caravan to move off from it. Madge spoke quietly to her help, sending two off to care for the guards’ horses, and another to fetch water and set it to warm. She herself strode heavily past our cart toward her own wagon and the food stores.

An uneasy semblance of order returned to the camp. Starling kindled a second, smaller fire. The puppeteer’s troupe, the minstrel, and the teamsters resettled next to it. The horse owner and her husband went quietly off to bed. “Well, seems to have settled down,” Damon observed to me, but I noticed that he still twisted his hands nervously. “I’m off to bed. You and Creece settle out the watches between you.”

I started to go back to my sheep. Then I paused and looked back around the camp. The guards were silhouettes around the fire now, lounging and talking, while a single one of them stood slightly back of the group keeping a general watch. He was looking toward the other fire. I followed his gaze. I could not decide if Tassin was looking back at him, or simply staring off at the other guards about their fire. Either way, I suspected I knew what was on her mind.

I turned aside and went to the back of Madge’s wagon. She was scooping out beans and peas from sacks and measuring them into a soup kettle. I touched her lightly on the arm, and she jumped.

“Beg pardon. Could you use some help with that?”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “Why would I?”

I glanced down at my feet and chose my lie carefully. “I didn’t care for how they looked at the tinker woman, ma’am.”

“I know how to handle myself among rough men, shepherd. I couldn’t be a caravan master if I didn’t.” She measured salt into the kettle, then a handful of seasonings.

I nodded my head and said nothing. It was too obviously true for me to protest. But I did not leave, either, and after a few moments, she handed me a bucket and told me to fetch her some clean water. I obeyed her willingly, and when I brought it back, I stood holding it until she took it from me. I watched her fill the soup kettle and stood at her elbow until she told me with some asperity to get out from under her feet. I apologized and backed away, upsetting her water bucket as I did so. So I took it and fetched her more fresh water in it.

After that, I went and got a blanket from Damon’s cart, and rolled up in it for a few hours. I lay under the cart as if sleeping and watched, not the guardsmen, but Starling and Tassin. I noticed she did not take out her harp that night, as if she did not wish to call any attention to herself either. That somewhat reassured me about her. It would have been easy enough for her to visit their fire with her harp, to ingratiate herself with a few songs, and then offer to sell me. Instead she seemed as intent on watching Tassin as I was. Tassin rose once to leave on some excuse. I did not hear what Starling said quietly, but Tassin glared at her and Master Dell angrily ordered her back to her place. Certainly Dell wanted nothing to do with the guards in any way. But even after they had all gone off to bed, I could not relax. When it came time to relieve Creece on watch, I went reluctantly, not at all sure that Tassin would not choose the small hours of night in which to seek out the guards.

I found Creece sound asleep, and had to wake him to send him back to the cart. I sat down, my blanket around my shoulders, and thought of the six men down below, now sleeping around their fire. I had cause for true hatred of only one of them. I recalled Bolt to myself as he had been then, smirking as he drew on his leather gloves to beat me, sulking when Regal reprimanded him for breaking my nose lest it make me less presentable if the dukes wished to see me. I recalled the disdainful way he had performed his task for Regal, hammering easily past my token defense as I strove to keep Will and his Skill out of my mind.

Bolt hadn’t even known me. He’d run his eyes over me and dismissed me, not even recognizing his own handiwork. I sat thinking for a bit about that. I supposed I had changed that much. Not just the scars he’d given me. Not just the beard and the workman’s garb and the dirt of the road on me and my gauntness. FitzChivalry wouldn’t have lowered his eyes before his gaze, would not have stood silent and let the tinkerfolk fend for themselves. FitzChivalry would not, perhaps, have poisoned all six guards for the sake of killing one. I wondered if I had grown wiser or wearier. Both, perhaps. It did not make me proud.

The Wit-sense gives me an awareness of other living things, all other living things, around me. I am seldom startled by anyone. So they did not take me by surprise. The dawn had just begun to blanch the blackness from the sky when Bolt and his guards came for me. I sat still, first feeling and then hearing their stealthy approach. Bolt had roused all five of his soldiers for the task.

With a sinking dismay, I wondered what had gone wrong with my poison. Had it lost its potency from being carried about so long? Been rendered useless by the cooking with the soup? I swear that for a moment my uppermost thought was that Chade would not have made this error. But I had no time to think about it. I glanced about at the gently undulating, near-featureless plain. Scrub brush and a few rocks. Not even a gully or a mound for cover.

I could have run, and perhaps lost them for a time in the darkness. But in the end, that game was theirs. I’d have to come back for water eventually. If they did not track me down on the flat land by daylight on horseback, they could simply sit by the waterhole and wait me out. Besides, to flee was to admit I was FitzChivalry. Tom the shepherd would not run.

And so I looked up, startled and anxious when they came for me, but not, I hoped, betraying the heart-pounding fear I felt. I came to my feet, and when one seized me by an arm, I did not struggle but only looked up at him incredulously. Another guard came up from the other side, to take both my knife and my sword. “Come down to the fire,” she told me gruffly. “Captain wants a look at you.”

I went quietly, almost limply, and when they had reassembled at the campfire to present me to Bolt, I looked fearfully from one face to another, being careful not to single out Bolt. I was not sure I could look at him full face at close range and betray nothing. Bolt stood up, kicked at the fire to stir up the flames, and then came to inspect me. I caught a glimpse of Tassin’s pale face and hair peeking at me around the end of the puppeteer’s wagon. For a time Bolt just stood looking at me. After a time, he pursed his mouth and gave his guards a disgusted look. With a small shake of his head, he let them know I wasn’t what he’d wanted. I dared to take a deeper breath.

“What’s your name?” Bolt suddenly demanded of me sharply.

I squinted at him across the fire. “Tom, sir. Tom the shepherd. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Haven’t you? Then you’re the only man in the world who hasn’t. You sound like a Buckman, Tom. Take off your kerchief.”

“I am, sir. From Buck, sir. But times are hard there.” I hastily dragged my kerchief off, then stood clutching and wringing it. I hadn’t taken Starling’s advice about staining my hair. That wouldn’t have done any good during a close inspection. Instead, I had used my looking glass and plucked out a good portion of the white hairs. Not all of them, but what I had now appeared more as a scattering of gray hair above my brow rather than a white streak. Bolt came around the fire to have a closer look at it. I flinched when he gripped me by the hair and tilted my head back to stare down into my face. He was as big and muscled as I remembered him. Every evil memory I had of him suddenly flooded my mind. I swear I even recalled the smell of him. The wretched sickness of fear filled me.

I offered him no resistance as he glared down at me. Nor did I meet his eyes, but rather shot frightened looks at him and then glanced away as if beseeching help. I noticed that Madge had come from somewhere and was standing, arms crossed on her chest, regarding us.

“Got a scar on your cheek, don’t you, man?” Bolt demanded of me.

“Yes, sir, I do. Got it when I was a boy, fell out of a tree and a branch cut me.…”

“You break your nose then, too?”

“No, sir, no, that was a tavern brawl, that was, about a year ago.…”

“Take off your shirt!” he demanded.

I fumbled at the neck of it, then dragged it off over my head. I had thought he would look at my forearms and was prepared with my nail story for that. Instead he leaned over to look at a place between my shoulder and my neck, where a Forged one had bitten a chunk out of me in a long-ago fight. My bowels turned to water. He looked at the gnarled scar there, then suddenly threw his head back and laughed.

“Damn. I didn’t think it was you, Bastard. I was sure it wasn’t. But that’s the mark I remember seeing, the first time I drove you into the floor.” He looked at the men standing around us, surprise and delight still on his face. “It’s him! We’ve got him. The King’s got his Skill-wizards spread from the Mountains to the coast looking for him, and he falls like fruit into our hands.” He licked his lips as he ran his eyes over me gloatingly. I sensed a strange hunger in him, one he almost feared. He seized me suddenly by the throat and hauled me up on my toes. He brought his face close to mine as he hissed, “Understand me. Verde was a friend. It’s not a hundred gold pieces for you alive that keeps me from killing you here. It’s only my faith that my king can come up with more interesting ways for you to die than I can improvise here. You’re mine again, Bastard, in the circle. Or as much of you as my king leaves for me anyway.”

He shoved me violently away from him into the fire. I stumbled through it and was immediately seized by two men on the other side. I looked from one to the other wildly. “It’s a mistake!” I cried out. “A terrible mistake!”

“Shackle him,” Bolt ordered them hoarsely.

Madge stepped suddenly forward. “You’re certain of this man?” she asked him directly.

He met her eyes, captain to captain. “I am. It’s the Wit-Bastard.”

A look of total disgust crossed Madge’s face. “Then take him and welcome to him.” She turned on her heel and walked away.

My guards had been watching the conversation between Madge and their captain rather than paying attention to the trembling man between them. I chanced it all, breaking toward the fire as I snapped my arms free of their careless grips. I shouldered a startled Bolt aside and fled like a rabbit. I wove through the camp, past the tinker’s wagon, and saw only wide-open country before me. Dawn had grayed the plain to a featureless rumpled blanket. No cover, no destination. I just ran.

I had expected men on foot after me, or men on horses. I hadn’t expected a man with a sling. The first rock hit me on the flat of my left shoulder, numbing my arm. I kept running. I thought at first I’d taken an arrow. Then the bolt of lightning hit me.

When I woke up, my wrists were chained. My left shoulder ached horribly, but not as badly as the lump on my head. I managed to wiggle up to a sitting position. No one paid much attention to me. A shackle on each of my ankles was hooked to the length of chain that ran up and through a loop forged onto the chain that shackled my wrists together. A second, much shorter chain between my ankles was not even enough to let me take a full step. If I’d been able to stand.

I said nothing, did nothing. Shackled, I had no chance against six armed men. I didn’t want to give them any excuse to brutalize me. Still, it took every bit of my will to sit quietly and consider my situation. The sheer weight of the chain was daunting, as was the chill of the iron biting into my flesh in the cold night air. I sat, head bowed, looking at my feet. Bolt noticed I was awake. He came to stand looking down at me. I kept my eyes on my own feet.

“Say something, damn you!” Bolt ordered me suddenly.

“You’ve got the wrong man, sir,” I said timidly. I knew there would be no convincing him of that, but perhaps I could shake his men’s belief.

Bolt laughed. He went and sat back down by the fire. Then he lay back on his elbows. “If I have, it’s just too damn bad for you. But I know I don’t. Look at me, Bastard. How was it you didn’t stay dead?”

I shot him a fearful glance. “I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

It was the wrong response. He was tigerish in his speed, coming up from his reclining position to fly across the fire at me. I scrabbled to my feet but there was no escaping him. He seized me by my chains, drew me up, and slapped me stingingly. Then, “Look at me,” he ordered.

I brought my eyes back to his face.

“How was it you didn’t die, Bastard?”

“It wasn’t me. You’ve got the wrong man.”

I got the back of his hand the second time.

Chade had once told me that, under torture, it is easier to resist questioning if you focus your mind on what you will say, rather than what you must not. I knew it was stupid and useless to tell Bolt I was not FitzChivalry. He knew I was. But having adopted that course, I stuck to it. The fifth time he hit me, one of his men spoke out behind me.

“With all respect, sir?”

Bolt flashed a furious look at the man. “What is it?”

The man wet his lips. “The captive was to be alive, sir. For the gold to be paid.”

Bolt turned his eyes back to me. It was unnerving to see the hunger in him, a craving such as Verity had for the Skill. This man liked to give pain. Liked to kill slowly. It only made him hate me all the more that he could not. “I know that,” he said brusquely to the man. I saw his fist coming, but there was no way to avoid it.

When I came awake, it was full morning. There was pain. For a time, that was all I really knew. Pain, bad pain in one shoulder, and down my ribs on the same side. He’d probably kicked me, I decided. I didn’t want to move any part of my face. Why, I wondered, is pain always worse when you’re cold? I felt curiously detached from my situation. I listened for a time, with no desire at all to open my eyes. The caravan was getting ready to move on. I could hear Master Dell yelling at Tassin, who was crying that it was her money by right, that if he’d only help her get it, he could have his apprentice fee back and full welcome to it. He ordered her to get in the wagon. Instead I heard her footsteps crunching across the dry earth as she hurried over to me. But it was Bolt she spoke to in a whining voice. “I was right. You didn’t believe me, but I was right. I found him for you. If it weren’t for me, you’d have ridden off after looking right at him. That gold is mine, by right. But I’ll give you half and be more than happy. That’s better than fair for you, you know it is.”

“I’d get in that wagon, were I you,” Bolt answered her coldly. “Otherwise, once it leaves and we leave, you’re left with nothing but a long walk.”

She had the sense not to argue with him, but she muttered dirty names to herself all the way back to the wagon. I heard Dell tell her she was nothing but trouble and he’d be well rid of her at Blue Lake.

“Get him on his feet, Joff,” Bolt ordered someone.

They dashed water on me, and I got one eye open. I watched a guard pick up the slack of my chain and jerk on it. That woke a host of lesser pains. “Get up!” she ordered me. I managed to nod. One of my teeth was loose. I could only see out of one eye. I started to lift my hands to my face to see how bad it was, but a tug on my chain prevented me. “Does he ride or walk?” the one holding my chain asked Bolt as I staggered upright.

“I’d love to drag him, but it would slow us down too much. He rides. You double with Arno and put him on your horse. Tie him in the saddle and keep a tight grip on your horse’s lead. He’s playing dumb now, but he’s mean and he’s tricky. I don’t know if he can do all the Wit things they say he can, but I don’t want to find out. So keep a good grip on that lead rope. Where’s Arno, anyway?”

“Off in the scrub, sir. His guts ain’t too well today. He was up and down all night, dumping his sack.”

“Get him.” Bolt’s tone made it plain that he wasn’t interested in the man’s problems. My guard hurried off, leaving me swaying on my feet. I lifted my hands to my face. I had only seen the one blow coming, but plainly there had been others. Endure, I told myself sternly. Live, and see what chances are offered you. I dropped my hands to find Bolt watching me.

“Water?” I asked in a slurry voice.

I didn’t really expect any, but he turned to one of his other guards and made a small motion. A few moments later the fellow brought me a bucket of water and two dry biscuits. I drank and splashed my face. The biscuits were hard and my mouth was very sore, but I tried to get down what I could of them. I doubted I’d get much more in the day to come. I noticed then that my pouch was gone. I supposed Bolt had taken it while I was unconscious. My heart sank at the thought of Burrich’s earring gone. As I gnawed gingerly at my biscuit, I wondered what he had thought of the powders in my pouch.

Bolt had us mounted and riding out before the caravan left. I caught one glimpse of Starling’s face, but could not read her expression. Creece and my master carefully avoided even looking at me for fear of catching my taint. It was as if they had never known me at all.

They’d put me on a sturdy mare. My wrists were strapped tightly to the saddle pommel, making it impossible to ride comfortably or well even if I hadn’t felt like a bag of broken bones. They hadn’t taken the shackles off, only removed the short chain between my ankles. The longer chain to my wrists was looped up over the saddle. There was no way to avoid the chain’s chafing. I had no idea what had become of my shirt, but I sorely missed it. The horse and motion would warm me somewhat, but not in any comfortable way. When a very pale-faced Arno was mounted behind his fellow guard, we set off, back toward Tradeford. My poison, I reflected ruefully, had done no more than give one man slack bowels. Such an assassin I was.

Come to me.

Would that I could, I told myself wearily as I was led off in the wrong direction. Would that I could. Every step the mare took rubbed my pains together. I wondered if my shoulder were broken or dislocated. I wondered at the strange sense of removal I felt from everything. And I wondered if I should hope to get to Tradeford alive, or try to get them to kill me before then. I could imagine no way of talking my way out of the chains, let alone fleeing in this flat land. I lowered my throbbing head and watched my hands as we rode. I shivered with the cold and the wind. I groped toward the mare’s mind, but only succeeded in making her aware of my pain. She had no interest in jerking her head free and galloping away with me. She didn’t much like the way I smelled of sheep, either.

The second time we halted for Arno to empty his guts, Bolt rode back and reined in beside me. “Bastard!”

I turned my head slowly to look at him.

“How did you do it? I saw your body, and you were dead. I know a dead man when I see one. So how are you walking around again?”

My mouth wouldn’t let me form words even if I’d had any. After a moment, he snorted at my silence. “Well, don’t count on it happening again. This time I’m cutting you up personally. I’ve got a dog at home. Eats anything. Figure he’ll get rid of your liver and heart for me. What do you think of that, Bastard?”

I felt sorry for the dog, but I said nothing. When Arno staggered back to his horse, Joff helped him mount. Bolt spurred his horse back to the head of our column. We rode on.

The morning was not even half gone when Arno had his friend halt for the third time. He slipped down from the horse’s back and staggered a few steps away to vomit. He doubled up, holding his aching guts as he did so, and then suddenly fell forward on his face in the dirt. One of the other guards laughed aloud, but when Arno only rolled over, groaning, Bolt ordered Joff to see what ailed him. We all watched as Joff dismounted and took water to Arno. Arno could not take the proffered water bottle and when Joff put it to his mouth the water just ran over his chin. He turned his head aside from it slowly and closed his eyes. After a moment, Joff looked up, her eyes wide with disbelief.

“He’s dead, sir.” Joff’s voice went a bit shrill on the words.

They scraped out a shallow grave for him and heaped rocks over the top. Two more guards had vomited before the burial was completed. Bad water was the consensus, though I caught Bolt looking at me with narrowed eyes. They hadn’t bothered to take me off my horse. I hunched over my belly as if it pained me and kept my eyes down. It was no difficulty at all to look sick.

Bolt got his men remounted and we pushed on. By noon it was apparent that no one was well. One boy was swaying in his saddle as we rode. Bolt halted us for a brief rest but it turned into a longer one. No sooner would one man finish retching than another would begin. Bolt finally ordered them tersely back to their saddles despite their groaning complaints. We went on but at a gentler pace. I could smell the sour reek of sweat and puke on the woman who led my mare.

As we were going up a gentle rise, Joff fell from her saddle into the dust. I gave my mare a sharp nudge with my heels, but she only sidled sideways and put her ears back, too well trained to gallop off with her reins dangling down from her bit. Bolt halted his troop, and every man immediately dismounted, some to puke, others to simply sink down in misery beside the horses. “Make camp,” Bolt ordered, despite the early hour. Then he walked aside a little way, to crouch and retch dryly for a time. Joff didn’t get up.

It was Bolt who walked back to me and cut my wrists loose from my saddle pommel. He gave a tug at my chain and I all but fell down on top of him. I staggered away a few steps, then sank down, my hands over my belly. He came to hunker down beside me. He grabbed the back of my neck, gripped it tightly. But I could feel his strength was not what it had been. “What do you think, Bastard?” he asked me in a hoarse growl. He was very close to me and his breath and body stank of sickness. “Was it bad water? Or something else?”

I made gagging sounds and leaned toward him as if to puke. He moved wearily away from me. Only two of his guards had managed to unsaddle their mounts. The others were collapsed miserably in the dirt. Bolt moved among them, cursing them uselessly but feelingly. One of the stronger guards finally began to gather the makings for a fire, while another crabbed down the line of horses, doing little more than uncinching saddles and dragging them from the horses’ backs. Bolt came to fasten the hobble chain between my ankles.

Two more guards died that evening. Bolt himself dragged their bodies to one side, but could not find the strength to do more than that. The fire they had managed to kindle died soon for lack of fuel. The open night on the flat land seemed darker than anything I had ever known and the dry cold a part of the darkness. I heard the groans of the men, and one babbling about his guts, his guts. I heard the restless shifting of the unwatered horses. I thought longingly of water and warmth. Odd pains bothered me. My wrists were chafed raw from the shackles. They hurt less than my shoulder, but in an ever-present way I could not ignore. I guessed the blade-bone in my shoulder was at least fractured.

Bolt came staggering over to where I lay at dawn. His eyes were sunken, his cheeks drawn with his misery. He fell to his knees beside me and gripped my hair. I groaned. “Are you dying, Bastard?” he asked me hoarsely. I moaned again and tried feebly to pull free of him. It seemed to satisfy him. “Good. Good then. Some were saying it was the Wit magic you’d put on us, Bastard. But I think bad water can kill a man, be he Witted or honorable. Still. Let’s be sure of it, this time.”

It was my own knife that he drew out. As he dragged back on my hair to expose my throat, I brought up my shackled hands to crash the chain against his face. At the same time I repelled at him with all the strength of Wit I could muster. He fell back from me. He crawled a few paces away, then fell on his side in the sand. I heard him breathing heavily. After a time, he stopped. I closed my eyes, listening to that silence, feeling the absence of his life like sunlight on my face.

After a time, when the day was stronger, I forced myself to open my eye. It was harder to crawl over to Bolt’s body. All my aches had stiffened and combined to one pain that shrieked whenever I moved. I went over his body carefully. I found Burrich’s earring in his pouch. Odd to think that I stopped right then and put it back in my ear lest I lose it. My poisons were there as well. What wasn’t in his pouch was the key to my shackles. I started to sort my possessions out from his, but the sun was pounding spikes into the back of my head. I simply put his pouch at my belt. Whatever he’d had in there was mine now. Once you’ve poisoned a man, I reflected, you might as well rob him as well. Honor no longer seemed to have much to do with my life.

Whoever had shackled me probably carried the key, I surmised. I crawled to the next body, but found nothing in his pouch save some Smoke herbs. I sat up, and became aware of faltering footsteps crunching over the dry earth toward me. I lifted my eyes, squinted against the sunlight. The boy came slowly toward me, his steps wavering. In one hand he had a waterskin. In the other he held the key where I might see it.

A dozen steps away from me, he halted. “Your life for mine,” he croaked. He was swaying where he stood. I made no response. He tried again. “Water and the key to your bonds. Any horse you want to take. I won’t fight you. Only lift your Wit-curse off me.”

He looked so young and pitiful standing there.

“Please,” he begged me abruptly.

I found myself shaking my head slowly. “It was poison,” I told him. “There’s nothing I can do for you.”

He stared at me, bitterly, incredulous. “Then I have to die? Today?” His words came out as a dry whisper. His dark eyes locked to mine. I found myself nodding.

“Damn you!” He shrieked the words, burning whatever life strength he had left. “Then you die, too. You die right here!” He flung the key from us as far as he could, then staggered off in a feeble run, squawking and flailing at the horses.

The beasts had stood all night unpicketed, had even waited all morning hoping for grain and water. They were well-trained animals. But the smell of sickness and death and this boy’s incomprehensible behavior were too much for them. When he screamed suddenly and then fell facedown almost amongst them, a big gray gelding threw up his head, snorting. I sent calming thoughts toward him, but he had thoughts of his own. He pranced nervously away, then suddenly decided this was a good decision and broke into a canter. The other horses followed his lead. Their hooves were not a thundering on the plain; rather they were the diminishing patter of a rainstorm as it vanishes, taking all hope of life with it.

The boy did not move again, but it was a time before he died. I had to listen to his soft weeping as I searched for the key. I wanted desperately to go look for waterskins instead, but I feared that if I turned away from the area where he had thrown it, I would never be able to decide which unremarkable stretch of sand held my salvation. So I crawled over it on my hands and knees, manacles cutting and chafing at my wrists and ankles, as I peered at the ground with my one good eye. Even after the sound of his weeping became too soft to hear, even after he died, I heard it still inside my mind. Sometimes I still can. Another young life ended senselessly, to no profit, as a result of Regal’s vendetta with me. Or perhaps because of mine with him.

I did eventually find the key, just as I was certain that the setting sun would hide it forever. It was crudely made and turned very stiffly in the locks, but it worked. I opened the shackles, prying them out of my puffy flesh. The one on my left ankle had been so tight that my foot was cold and near numb. After a few minutes, pain flooded back into my foot with life. I didn’t pay much attention. I was too busy seeking for water.

Most of the guards had drained their waterskins just as my poison had drained all fluids from their guts. The one the boy had shown me held only a few mouthfuls. I drank them very slowly, holding the water in my mouth for a long time before swallowing it. In Bolt’s saddlebags I found a flask of brandy. I allowed myself one small mouthful of it, then capped it and set it aside. It was not much more than a day’s walk back to the waterhole. I could make it. I’d have to.

I robbed the dead for what I needed. I went through the saddlebags and bundles on the heaped saddles. When I was finished, I wore a blue shirt that fit me in the shoulders, though it hung almost to my knees. I had dried meat and grain, lentils and peas, my old sword that I decided fit me best, Bolt’s knife, a looking glass, a small kettle, a mug and a spoon. I spread out a sturdy blanket and put these things on it. To them I added a change of clothing that was too large for me, but would be better than nothing. Bolt’s cloak would be long on me, but it was the best made, so I took it. One of the men had carried some linen for bandaging and some salves. I took these, an empty waterskin, and Bolt’s flask of brandy.

I could have gone over the bodies for money and jewelry. I could have burdened myself with a dozen other perhaps-useful possessions. I found I wanted only to replace what I’d had, and to be away from the smell of the bloating bodies. I made the bundle as small and tight as I could, cinching it with leather straps from the horses’ harness. When I lifted it to my good shoulder, it still felt much too heavy.

My brother?

The query seemed tentative, faint with more than distance. With disuse. As if a man spoke in a language he had not used in many years.

I live, Nighteyes. Stay with your pack, and live also.

Do you not need me? I felt his twinge of conscience as he asked this.

I always need you. I need to know you are alive and free.

I sensed his faint assent, but little more than that. After a time I wondered if I had not imagined his touch against my mind. But I felt oddly strengthened as I walked away from the bodies into the deepening night.