He halted, suddenly embarrassed, but whether it was because he was speaking of my father to the cause of his abdication, or because he was addressing a puppy and a six-year-old as if they had intelligence, I am not sure. He glanced about, reassessing the situation. ‘Wait here,’ he told us finally. ‘I’ll slip in and bring something out for you. Less chance of me getting stepped on … or caught. Now stay.’ And he reinforced his command with a firm gesture of his hand. I backed up to a wall and crouched down there, out of traffic’s way, and Nosy sat obediently beside me. I watched admiringly as Cob approached the door, and slipped between the clustered folk, eeling smoothly into the kitchens.
With Cob out of sight, the more general populace claimed my attention. Largely the folk that passed us were serving people and cooks, with a scattering of minstrels and merchants and delivery folk. I watched them come and go with a weary curiosity. I had already seen too much that day to find them of great interest. Almost more than food I desired a quiet place away from all this activity. I sat flat on the ground, my back against the sun-warmed wall of the keep, and put my forehead on my knees. Nosy leaned against me.
Nosy’s stick tail beating against the earth roused me. I lifted my face from my knees, to perceive a tall pair of brown boots before me. My eyes travelled up rough leather pants and over a coarse wool shirt to a shaggy, bearded face thatched with pepper-grey hair. The man staring down at me balanced a small keg on one shoulder.
‘You the bastid, hey?’
I had heard the word often enough to know it meant me, without grasping the fullness of its meaning. I nodded slowly. The man’s face brightened with interest.
‘Hey,’ he said loudly, no longer speaking to me but to the folk coming and going. ‘Here’s the bastid. Stiff-as-a-stick Chivalry’s by-blow. Looks a fair bit like him, don’t you say? Who’s your mother, boy?’
To their credit, most of the passing people continued to come and go, with no more than a curious stare at the six-year-old sitting by the wall. But the cask-man’s question was evidently of great interest, for more than a few heads turned, and several tradesmen who had just exited from the kitchen drew nearer to hear the answer.
But I did not have an answer. Mother had been mother, and whatever I had known of her was already fading. So I made no reply, but only stared up at him.
‘Hey. What’s your name then, boy?’ And turning to his audience, he confided, ‘I heard he ain’t got no name. No high-flown royal name to shape him, nor even a cottage name to scold him by. That right, boy? You got a name?’
The group of onlookers was growing. A few showed pity in their eyes, but none interfered. Some of what I was feeling passed to Nosy, who dropped over onto his side and showed his belly in supplication while thumping his tail in that ancient canine signal that always means, ‘I’m only a puppy. I cannot defend myself. Have mercy.’ Had they been dogs they would have sniffed me over and then drawn back. But humans have no such inbred courtesies. So when I didn’t answer, the man drew a step nearer, and repeated, ‘You got a name, boy?’
I stood slowly, and the wall that had been warm against my back a moment ago was now a chill barrier to retreat. At my feet, Nosy squirmed in the dust on his back and let out a pleading whine. ‘No,’ I said softly, and when the man made as if to lean closer to hear my words, ‘NO!’ I shouted, and repelled at him, while crabbing sideways along the wall. I saw him stagger a step backwards, losing his grip on his cask so that it fell to the cobbled path and cracked open. No one in the crowd could have understood what had happened. I certainly didn’t. For the most part, folk laughed to see a grown man cower back from a child. In that moment my reputation for both temper and spirit were made, for before nightfall the tale of the bastard standing up to his tormentor was all over the town. Nosy scrabbled to his feet and fled with me. I had one glimpse of Cob’s face, taut with confusion as he emerged from the kitchen, pies in hands, and saw Nosy and me flee. Had he been Burrich, I probably would have halted and trusted my safety to him. But he was not, and so I ran, letting Nosy take the lead.
We fled through the trooping servants, just one more small boy and his dog racing about in the courtyard, and Nosy took me to what he obviously regarded as the safest place in the world. Far from the kitchen and the inner keep was a hollow Vixen had scraped out under a corner of a rickety outbuilding where sacks of peas and beans were stored. Here Nosy had been whelped, in total defiance of Burrich and here she had managed to keep her pups hidden for almost three days. Burrich himself had found her there. His smell was the first human smell Nosy could recall. It was a tight squeeze to get under the building, but once within, the den was warm and dry and semi-dark. Nosy huddled close to me and I put my arm around him. Hidden there, our hearts soon eased down from their wild thumpings, and from calmness we passed into the deep, dreamless sleep reserved for warm spring afternoons and puppies.
I came awake shivering, hours later. It was full dark and the tenuous warmth of the early spring day had fled. Nosy was awake as soon as I was, and together we scraped and slithered out of the den.
There was a high night sky over Buckkeep, with stars shining bright and cold. The smell of the bay was stronger as if the day-smells of men and horses and cooking were temporary things that had to surrender each night to the ocean’s power. We walked down deserted pathways, through exercise yards and past granaries and the winepress. All was still and silent. As we drew closer to the inner keep, I saw torches still burning, and heard voices still raised in talk. But it all seemed tired somehow, the last vestiges of revelry winding down before dawn came to lighten the skies. Still, we skirted the inner keep by a wide margin, having had enough of people.
I found myself following Nosy back to the stables. As we drew near the heavy doors, I wondered how we would get in. But Nosy’s tail began to wag wildly as we got closer, and then even my poor nose picked up Burrich’s scent in the dark. He rose from the wooden crate he’d been seated on by the door. ‘There you are,’ he said soothingly. ‘Come along then. Come on.’ And he stood and opened the heavy doors for us and led us in.
We followed him through darkness, between rows of stalls, past grooms and handlers put up for the night in the stables, and then past our own horses and dogs and the stable-boys who slept amongst them, and then to a staircase that climbed the wall which separated the stables from the mews. We followed Burrich up its creaking wooden treads, and then he opened another door. Dim yellow light from a guttering candle on a table blinded me temporarily. We followed Burrich into a slant-roofed chamber that smelled of Burrich and leather and the oils and salves and herbs that were part of his trade. He shut the door firmly behind us, and as he came past us to kindle a fresh candle from the nearly spent one on the table, I smelled the sweetness of wine on him.
The light spread, and Burrich seated himself on a wooden chair by the table. He looked different, dressed in fine thin cloth of brown and yellow, with a bit of silver chain across his jerkin. He put his hand out, palm up, on his knee and Nosy went to him immediately. Burrich scratched his hanging ears, and then thumped his ribs affectionately, grimacing at the dust that rose from his coat. ‘You’re a fine pair, the two of you,’ he said, speaking more to the pup than to me. ‘Look at you. Filthy as beggars. I lied to my king today for you. First time ever in my life I’ve done that. Appears as if Chivalry’s fall from grace will take me down as well. Told him you were washed up and sound asleep, exhausted from your journey. He was not pleased he would have to wait to see you, but luckily for us, he had weightier things to handle. Chivalry’s abdication has upset a lot of lords. Some are seeing it as a chance to push for an advantage, and others are disgruntled to be cheated of a king they admired. Shrewd’s trying to calm them all. He’s letting it be noised about that Verity was the one who negotiated with the Chyurda this time. Those as will believe that shouldn’t be allowed to walk about on their own. But they came, to look at Verity anew, and wonder if and when he’d be their next king, and what kind of a king