'Dinner!' announced the Fool enthusiastically.
It took Lacey a moment to realize the state we were in. It took her less than that to be furious. 'While we gamble our lives and reputations, you get drunk!' She rounded on Burrich. 'In twenty years, you have not learned that it solves nothing! '
Burrich flinched not at all. 'Some things cannot be solved,' he pointed out philosophically. 'Drink makes those things much more tolerable.' He came to his feet easily, stood rock steady before her. Years of drinking seemed to have taught him the knack of handling it well. 'What did you need?
Lacey bit her lip a moment. She decided to follow where he had pointed the conversation. 'I need that disposed of. And I need an ointment for bruises.'
'Does no one around here ever use the healer?' the Fool asked of no one in particular. Lacey ignored him.
'That is what I supposedly came here for, so I had best return with it, in case someone asks to see it. My real mission is to find the Fitz, and ask him if he knows there are guards chopping down King Shrewd's door with axes.'
I nodded gravely. I wasn't going to attempt Burrich's graceful stance. The Fool leaped to his feet instead, crying, 'What?' He rounded on me. 'I thought you said you had succeeded! What success is this?'
'The best I could manage on very short notice,' I retorted. 'It will either be all right, or it won't. We've done all we can just now. Besides, think on it. That's a good stout oaken door. It will take them a while to get through it. And when they do, I fancy they will find the inner door to the King's bedchamber is likewise bolted and barred.'
'How did you manage that?' Burrich asked quietly.
'I didn't,' I said brusquely. I looked at the Fool. 'I have said enough, for now. It is time to have a bit of trust.' I turned to Lacey. 'How are the Queen and Patience? How went our masquerade?'
'Well enough. The Queen is sore bruised from her fall, and for myself, I am not all that sure that the babe is out of danger of being lost. A miscarriage from a fall does not always happen immediately. But let us not borrow trouble. Wallace was concerned but ineffectual. For a man who claims to be a healer, he knows remarkably little of the true lore of herbs. As for the Prince…' Lacey snorted, but said no more.
'Does no one beside myself think there is a danger to letting a rumor of a miscarriage circulate?' the Fool asked airily.
'I had no time to devise anything else,' I retorted. 'In a day or so, the Queen will deny the rumor, saying that all seems to be well with the child.'
'So. For the moment we are as secured as we may be,' Burrich observed. 'But what comes next? Are we to see the King and Queen Kettricken carried off to Tradeford?'
'Trust. I ask for one day of trust,' I said carefully. I hoped it would be enough. 'And now we must disperse and go about our lives as normally as we can.'
'A stablemaster with no horses and a Fool with no king,' the Fool observed. 'Burrich and I can continue to drink. I believe that is a normal life under these circumstances. As for you, Fitz, I have no idea what title you give yourself these days, let alone what you normally do all day. Hence—'
'No one is going to sit about and drink,' Lacey intoned ominously. 'Put the bottle aside and keep your wits sharp. And disperse, as Fitz here said. Enough has been said and done in this room to put us all swinging from a tree for treason. Save you, of course, FitzChivalry. It would have to be poison for you. Those of the royal blood are not allowed to swing.'
Her words had a chilling effect. Burrich picked up the cork and restoppered the bottle. Lacey left first, a pot of Burrich's ointment in her basket. The Fool followed her a short time later. When I left Burrich, he had finished cleaning the fowl and was plucking the last stubborn feathers from it. The man wasted nothing.
I went out and wandered about a bit. I watched behind me for shadows. Kettricken would be resting, and I did not think I could withstand Patience's nattering, or her insights just then. If the Fool was in his chamber, it was because he did not want company. And if he was elsewhere, I had no idea where that might be. The whole of Buckkeep was as plagued with Inlanders as a sick dog with fleas. I strolled through the kitchen, purloining gingerbread. Then I wandered about disconsolately, trying not to think, trying to appear without purpose as I headed back to the hut where once I had hidden Nighteyes. The hut was empty now, as cold within as without. It had been some time since Nighteyes had laired here. He preferred the forested hills behind Buckkeep. But I did not wait long before his shadow crossed the threshold of the open door.
Perhaps the greatest comfort of the Wit bond is never having to explain. I did not need to recount the last day's events to him, did not have to find words to describe how it felt to watch Molly walk away from me. Nor did he ask questions or make sympathetic talk. The human events would have made small sense to him. He acted on the strength of what I felt, not why. He simply came to me and sat beside me on the dirty floor. I could put an arm around him and lean my face against his ruff and sit.
Such packs men make, he observed to me after a while. How can you hunt together when you cannot all run in the same direction?
I made no reply to this. I knew no answer and he did not expect one.
He leaned down to nibble an itch on his foreleg. Then he sat up, shook himself all over, and asked, What will you do for a mate now?
Not all wolves take mates.
The leader always does. How else would the pack multiply?
My leader has a mate, and she is with child. Perhaps wolves have it aright, and men should pay attention. Perhaps only the leader should mate. That was the decision that Heart of the Pack made long ago. That he could not have both a mate, and a leader he followed with all of his heart.
That one is more wolf than he cares to admit. To anyone. A pause. Gingerbread?
I gave it to him. He gobbled it greedily while I watched.
I've missed your dreams at night.
They are not my dreams. They are my life. You are welcome to them, so long as Heart of the Pack does not get angry with us. Life shared is better. A pause. You would rather have shared the female's life.
It is my weakness to want too much.
He blinked his deep eyes. You love too many. My life is much simpler.
He loved only me.
That is true. The only real difficulty I have is knowing that you will never trust that is so.
I sighed heavily. Nighteyes sneezed suddenly, then shook himself all over. I mislike this mouse dust. But before I go, use your so clever hands to scratch inside my ears. It is hard for me to do well without leaving welts.
And so I scratched his ears, and under his throat and the back of his neck, until he fell over on his side like a puppy.
'Hound,' I told him affectionately.
For that insult, you pay! He flipped himself up onto his feet, bit me hard through my sleeve, and then darted out the door and was gone. I pulled back my sleeve to survey the deep white dents in my flesh that were not quite bleeding. Wolf humor.
The brief winter day had ended. I went back to the Keep and forced myself to go through the kitchens, to allow Cook to tell me all the gossip. She stuffed me full of plum cake and mutton as she told me of the Queen's possible miscarriage, and then how the men had chopped through the outer door of the King's room after his guard had suddenly perished of apoplexy. 'And the second door, too, all the time Prince Regal worrying and urging them on, for fear something had befallen the King himself. But when they got through, despite all that chopping, the King was sleeping like a babe, sir. And so deep a sleep they could not rouse him at all, to tell him why they'd chopped his doors away.'
'Amazing,' I agreed, and she went on to the lesser gossip of the Keep. I found that centered these days mostly on who was and was not included in the flight to Tradeford. Cook was to go, for the sake of her gooseberry tarts and bundle cakes. She did not know who was to take over the cooking here, but no doubt it would be one of the guards. Regal had told her she might take all her best pots, for which she was grateful, but what she would really miss was the west hearth, for she had never cooked on a better, for the draft being just right and the meat hooks at all the right heights. I listened to her, and tried to think only of her words, to be fully intrigued by the
