Was a time when I knew peace in your presence. Though, to be truthful with myself, there were as many times when your presence plunged me into deadliest danger. Or pain. Or fear. But the peace is what I remember and long for. Were you here, I would seize you by the shoulders and shake you until your teeth rattled. What is the meaning of this truncated message you have sent me? Did you fear to entrust too much information? Did you suspect how cruelly your messenger would be hunted, or how she would suffer such a tortured death? What need could compel you to knowingly risk her to such a fate? I ask myself that, and the only answer I can find is that if you did not, she would face a worse one? What, I ask myself, could be worse? And then I wonder what sort of danger you yourself are in right now, that you did not bring this message yourself.
All I have are questions, and each one is a torment to me at a time when I am overwhelmed by other concerns. You have set me a mysterious task with few clues. I fear it is an essential one. But just as essential are those already in my hands. The raising of my daughter … shall I again abandon my own child, this time to go in search of yours? Too little information, old friend, and too large a sacrifice.
Unfinished letter from the desk of FitzChivalry Farseer
I stood alone in my room and listened to Shun shrieking out in the hallway. Bitterness rose in me. After all I had gone through tonight with him, all I had done to help him, one cry from her, and my father ran off and left me standing in the semi-dark in soggy clothing. I pushed the lid of the chest up higher and strained to reach the bottom and, by touch, discover something dry and comfortable I would wear to bed. I pushed past winter socks and itchy wool shirts. My fingertips touched something, and then I got hold of it and pulled it up from the bottom of the chest.
It was a warm felted nightrobe. Red. My favorite color. I carried it closer to the fire to look at it. It was new and unworn. I turned the collar inside-out and knew the stitches. My mother had made this. For me. Made it and set it aside, as she had so often done, to be pulled out the moment I outgrew my old one.
I shed my wet garments where I stood and pulled the new nightrobe on over my head. It fit well, save that it was a bit long. I lifted it to walk. It made me feel elegant to have to catch up my skirt when I walked, even if it was only the train of my nightrobe.
The ghost cried out, a long, distant wail that lifted the hair on the back of my head. I stood frozen for an instant. Then it came again, closer and louder. Two things happened in that moment. I knew I should never have left a cat in the spy-maze, and I abruptly deduced that yes, my chamber did have an entrance to the secret corridors. It just wasn’t where I had thought it would be.
I pushed open the door to the maidservant’s room. The firelight barely reached into the room. I went back for a candle. The pale stranger’s bedding was as she had left it, crumpled on the bed. I knew better than to touch it. I edged around it and as I did, my feet tangled in something and I nearly fell. I cried out, in fear of the infected bedding, and the ghost cried in response.
“Just a minute!” I hissed low. “I’m coming. Be quiet and I’ll give you a big piece of fish.”
Water. The cat wanted water. I should have known that. He’d already found and claimed his salt fish reward, and now he was thirsty. “Water, then. And sausage from the pantry. But be quiet until I can get to you. Please.”
A rumbly meow of agreement and warning. If his reward was slow in coming, he was going to sing the stones down around me.
Heart thundering, I looked down at my feet, fearing to see a flood of biting insects climbing my legs. Instead I saw only the hem of my nightrobe and, when I lifted it, my bare feet against the plank floor. Holding my robe high and bringing my candle close, I stooped. I stared. I could feel that my foot was on top of something that was not the floor, but I couldn’t see anything there.