I bought myself a beer and studied the population of the common room. Two men and a woman at a corner table seemed positioned to watch the Huntswoman. But just as I wondered if they had ill intentions, the obvious couple of the group rose, bid the lone man farewell, and sauntered out without a backward glance. The remaining man gestured a tavern maid to his table. To my glance, it appeared he was trying to purchase something warmer than beer from her. His loutish behaviour calmed my reservations.
I crossed the crowded common room. Laurel seemed startled as I set my mug down, then looked away miserably as I took a seat on the bench beside her. I spoke quietly.
‘Not the sort of place where one would expect the Queen’s Huntswoman to drink.’ I glanced about the grubby tavern pointedly, and then asked, ‘And where is your apprentice tonight?’ I’d had a glimpse or two of Chade’s man. The sheer muscle of him would have daunted any ambusher. I thought less of his intellect, especially at this moment. ‘Doesn’t it seem a bit unwise for you to visit Buckkeep Town without him?’
‘Unwise? Where, then, is your keeper? The danger to you is greater than the threat to me,’ she rebuked me bitterly. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but from tears or drink, I could not tell.
I kept my voice low. ‘Perhaps I am more accustomed to this sort of danger.’
‘Well. That might be true. I know little enough of you to know what you are accustomed to. But as for me, I have no intention of becoming accustomed to it. Or limiting the choices in my life by walking in constant fear.’ Laurel looked tired, and there were lines at the sides of her mouth and the corners of her eyes that I did not recall. She had been walking in constant fear despite her brave dismissal of it.
‘Have there been any further threats?’ I asked her quietly.
She smiled, a showing of teeth. ‘Why? Isn’t one enough for you?’
‘What’s happened?’
She shook her head at me and drank the rest of her ale. I signalled to the tavern boy to bring us more. After a moment, she said, ‘The first was nothing that anyone else would have recognized as a threat. Just a sprig of laurel tied to the latch of my horse’s stall. Hung by a little noose of twine.’ Almost unwillingly, she added, ‘There was a feather as well. Cut in four pieces and scorched.’
‘A feather?’
It took her a long time to decide to answer. ‘Someone I care about is bonded to a goose.’
For an instant, my heart was still. Then it started again with a jolt. ‘So they show you that they can reach inside the walls of the keep,’ I said quietly. She nodded as the boy replenished our mugs from a heavy pitcher. I gave him his coin and he turned away. Laurel picked her mug up immediately, and a small wave of ale slopped over the brim and onto her hand. She was slightly drunk.
‘Did they ask anything of you? Or simply show that they could reach you where you live?’
‘They asked quite clearly.’
‘How?’
‘A little scroll, left amongst the grooming gear for my horse. All in the stables know that I insisted on caring for Whitecap myself. It simply said that if I knew what was wise, I should leave your black horse and Lord Golden’s Malta in the far paddock at night.’
Cold seemed to spread out from my belly and fill the rest of my body. ‘You didn’t do it?’
‘Of course not. Instead, I assigned a groom that I trust to watch over them both last night.’
‘So this is recent?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Her head wobbled slightly as she nodded.
‘And you told the Queen?’
‘No. I told no one.’
‘But why not? How can we protect you if we don’t know you are threatened?’
She was silent for a time. Then she said, ‘I didn’t want them to think that they could use me against the Queen. I wanted it to be that if they pulled me down, they pulled only me down. I should protect myself, Tom, not hide behind the Queen’s skirts and let my fears spread to her.’
Brave. And foolish. I kept the thoughts to myself. ‘And what happened?’
‘To them? Nothing. But Whitecap was dead in her stall the next morning.’
For a moment, I couldn’t speak. Whitecap was Laurel’s horse, a willing and responsive creature that had been her pride. When I kept silent, she glared at me. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’ She lowered her voice to an ugly, taunting whisper. “She’s not Witted. The horse was no more to her than a horse, just a thing she rode.” But that’s not true. I raised Whitecap from a foal, and she was my friend as well as my beast. We didn’t have to share a mind to share a heart.’
‘I didn’t think anything of the kind,’ I said very quietly. ‘I’ve numbered many animals as my friends, without sharing the special bond of the Wit with them. Anyone who had seen you with Whitecap knew that the horse worshipped you.’ I shook my head. ‘I feel sick that you protected our horses, and paid for it with your own.’
I don’t know if she even heard me. She was staring at the scarred tabletop as she spoke. ‘She … she died slowly. They gave her something, somehow, that lodged in her throat and choked her as it swelled. I think … no, I know. It was their ultimate mockery, that I came from an Old Blood family but did not have the magic in me. If I had, I would have known that she was in trouble. I would have come to her and saved her. When I found her, she was down, her muzzle and chest all soaked in saliva and blood … She died slowly, Tom, and I wasn’t even there to ease it for her or say goodbye.’
Shock that a Witted person could do so cruel a thing froze me like an icy wave. It was evil past my imagining. I felt tainted that people who shared my magic could stoop to such wickedness. It gave substance to all the evil things said of the Witted.
She took a sudden gasping breath and turned to me blindly. Her face was panicky with a pain she did not want to admit. I lifted my arm and she put her face against my chest as I folded her in my embrace. ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered by her ear. ‘I’m so sorry, Laurel.’ She didn’t weep, but only took long, shuddering breaths as I held her. She was past weeping, and nearly past fear. I thought to myself that if the Piebalds succeeded in pushing her to fury, they might face a stronger foe than they had intended to create. If they didn’t kill her first. I shifted in my chair. Habit had made me place my back to the wall. Now I deliberately sought a full view of the tavern and any who might have followed her here.
It was then that I saw Jinna. She had probably come to the tavern to look for me after speaking with her niece. She stood by the door she had just entered. For a fraction of an instant, our gazes met. She stared, stricken, at the woman I embraced. My eyes pleaded with her, but her face went cold. Then her gaze skated past me as if she had neither seen nor recognized me. She turned and departed, her stiff back speaking volumes to me.
Frustration squeezed my heart. I was doing nothing wrong, and yet Jinna’s posture as she left the tavern told me how affronted she was. Nor could I leave Laurel sitting alone and inebriated to hurry after Jinna and explain to her, even if I had felt inclined to do so. So I sat stewing in my discomfort while Laurel took several more deep breaths and recovered herself. She sat up abruptly, almost pushing me away. I released her from my embrace. She rubbed her eyes and then picked up her mug and drained it off. I had scarcely touched mine.
‘This is stupid of me,’ Laurel suddenly announced. ‘I came here because I’d heard a rumour that Witted ones congregated here. I came hoping someone would approach me so I could kill him. I’d probably just be killed. I don’t know how to