‘I’m a good horseman, sir. I’m a bit rusty now. My father refused to let me be around his horses for the last year. But I’m a good horseman, as well.’
‘That’s good to know, Swift.’ I knew what he had hoped. I watched his face, and saw the light in it dim at my neutral response. I had reacted almost reflexively. A boy of his age shouldn’t be considering bonding with an animal. Yet as he lowered his head in disappointment, I felt my old loneliness echo down the years. So, too, had Burrich done all he could to protect me from bonding with a beast. Knowing the wisdom of it now didn’t still the memory of my thrumming isolation. I cleared my throat and tried to keep my voice smoothly assured when I spoke. ‘Very well, then, Swift. Report to me here tomorrow. Oh, and wear your old clothes tomorrow. We’ll be getting dirty and sweaty.’
He looked stricken.
‘Well? What is it, lad?’
‘I … sir, I can’t. I, that is, I don’t have my old clothes any more. Only the two sets the Queen gave me.’
‘What happened to them?’
‘I … I burned them, sir.’ He suddenly sounded defiant. He met my eyes, jaw jutting.
I thought of asking him why. I didn’t need to. It was obvious from his stance. He had made a show for himself of destroying all things that bound him to his past. I wondered if I should make him admit that aloud, then decided that nothing would be gained by it. Surely such a waste of useful garments was something that should shame him. I wondered how bitterly his differences with his father had run. Suddenly the day seemed a little less brightly blue. I shrugged, dismissing the matter. ‘Wear what you have, then,’ I said abruptly, and hoped I did not sound too harsh.
He stood there, staring at me, and I realized that I hadn’t dismissed him. ‘You can go now, Swift. I will see you tomorrow.’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you, Master Badgerlock.’ He bowed, jerkily correct, and then hesitated again. ‘Sir? May I ask you a last question?’
‘Certainly.’
He looked all around us, almost suspiciously. ‘Why do we meet up here?’
‘It’s quiet. It’s pleasant. When I was your age, I hated to be kept indoors on a spring day.’
That brought a hesitant smile to his face. ‘So do I, sir. Nor do I like to be kept so isolated from animals. That is my magic calling me, I suppose.’
I wished he had let it rest. ‘Perhaps it is. And perhaps you should think well before you answer it.’ This time I intended that he hear the rebuke in my voice.
He flinched, then looked indignant. ‘The Queen said that my magic was not to make a difference to anyone. That no one can treat me poorly because of it.’
‘That’s true. But neither will people treat you well because of it. I counsel you to keep your magic a private matter, Swift. Do not parade it before people until you know them. If you wish to know how to best handle your Wit, I suggest you spend time with Web the Witted, when he tells his tales before the hearth in the evenings.’
He was scowling before I was finished. I dismissed him curtly and he went. I thought I had read him well enough. His possession of the Wit had been the battle line drawn between him and his father. He had successfully defied Burrich and fled to Buckkeep, determined to live openly as a Witted one in Queen Kettricken’s tolerant court. But if the boy thought that being Witted was all he needed to earn his place, well, I’d soon clear that cobweb from his mind. I’d not try to deprive him of his magic. But his flaunting of it, as one might shake a rag at a terrier to see what reaction he would win, distressed me. Sooner or later, he’d encounter a young noble happy to challenge him over the despised beast-magic. The tolerance was a mandated thing, grudgingly given by many who still adhered to the old distaste for our gift. Swift’s attitude made me doubly determined that he should not discover I was Witted. Bad enough that he cockily flaunted his own magic; I wouldn’t have him betraying mine.
I gazed out once more over the wide spectacle of sea and sky. It was an exhilarating view, at once breathtaking and yet reassuringly familiar. And then I forced myself to stare down, over the low wall that stood between me and a plummet to my sure death below. Once, battered both physically and mentally by Galen the Skillmaster, I had tried to make that plunge from this very parapet. It had been Burrich’s hand that had drawn me back. He had carried me down to his own rooms, treated my injuries, and then avenged them upon the Skillmaster. I still owed him for that. Perhaps teaching his son and keeping him safe at court would be the only repayment I could ever offer him. I fixed that thought in my heart to prop up my sagging enthusiasm for the task and left the tower top. I had another meeting to hasten to, and the sun told me that I was already nearly late for it.
Chade had let it be known that he was now instructing the young prince in his heritage Skill-magic. I was both grateful and chagrined at this turn of events. The announcement meant that Prince Dutiful and Chade no longer had to meet secretly for that purpose. That the Prince took his half-wit servant with him to those lessons was regarded as a sort of eccentricity. No one in the court would have guessed that Thick was the Prince’s fellow student, and far stronger in the Farseer’s ancestral magic than any currently living Farseer. The chagrin came from the fact that I, the true Skill-instructor, was the only one who still had to conceal his comings and goings from those meetings. Tom Badgerlock was who I was now, and that humble guardsman had no business knowing anything of the Farseer’s magic.
So it was that I descended the steps from the Queen’s Garden, and then hastened through the keep. From the servants’ areas there were six possible entry points to the hidden spy labyrinth that meandered through the entrails of Buckkeep Castle. I took care that every day I used a different entry from the day before. Today I selected the one near the cook’s larder. I waited until there was no one in the corridor before I entered the storeroom. I pushed my way through three racks of dangling sausages before dragging the panel open and stepping through into now familiar darkness.