“I’m sure I will,” I lied. Time to end this conversation. Bee had heard enough.
Riddle’s ability to understand what I didn’t say sometimes made me uncomfortable. He looked at me almost sadly. He spoke more quietly. “Tom. You need a friend. Lant is young, I know, and your first introduction was … poorly considered. Begin again. Give him a chance.”
And so that afternoon I tapped on the door of FitzVigilant’s chambers. Bulen opened the door immediately. I saw Revel’s hand in the improved fit of his livery and tamed hair. I surveyed the tutor’s room unobtrusively, and found him to be a man of tidy habits, but not overly so. The medicinal unguents that Chade had prepared for him were neatly arrayed on the mantel. The smell of arnica oil flavored the room. FitzVigilant himself was seated at a worktable, writing a letter. Two pens were at the ready, and a pot of ink and small blotter. On the other end of the table, a gaming cloth was laid out with a Stones puzzle on it. I wondered who had taught him the game. Then I reined my thoughts sharply and kept my focus on my target.
He came to his feet immediately and bowed, then stood silently, regarding me with trepidation. There is a way that a man stands when he does not wish to appear aggressive but is ready to defend himself. FitzVigilant stood like that, but when coupled with the defeated look on his face he was almost cowering. I felt sick. I recalled what it was to have lost all confidence in my body. This was a man already subdued. I wondered how broken he was, if he would ever recover enough to be any sort of a man-at-arms. I tried to keep pity from my face.
“Scribe FitzVigilant, I am pleased to see you up and about. I came to ask if you were well enough to begin joining us for meals.”
He didn’t meet my eyes as he bobbed his head. “If that would please you, sir, I shall begin doing so.”
“We would enjoy your company. It will give not only Bee but the rest of the household staff an opportunity to know you better.”
He bowed again. “If it would please you, sir—”
“It would,” I interrupted. “But only if you are comfortable also.”
For a time our eyes met, and he was a boy standing naked by a hearth as a trained assassin ripped through his clothes. Yes. A bit of awkwardness to the beginning of our relationship. One we would have to overcome. The silence held, and something changed in him as determination set on his face.
“Yes. I shall be there, Holder Badgerlock.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Lessons
A dream from a winter night when I was six years old.
In a market square, a blind beggar sat in his rags. No one was giving him anything, for he was more frightening than pathetic with his cruelly scarred face and crumpled hands. He took a little puppet out of his ragged clothes; it was made of sticks and string with only an acorn for a head, but he made it dance as if it were alive. A small sullen boy watched from the crowd. Slowly he was drawn forward to watch the puppet’s dance. When he was close, the beggar turned his clouded eyes on the boy. They began to clear, like silt settling to the bottom of a puddle. Suddenly the beggar dropped his puppet.
This dream ends in blood and I am afraid to recall it. Does the boy become the puppet, with strings attached to his hands and feet, his knees and elbows and bobbing head? Or does the beggar seize the boy with hard and bony hands? Perhaps both things happen. It all ends in blood and screaming. It is the dream I hate most of all the dreams I have ever had. It is the end dream for me. Or perhaps the beginning dream. I know that after this event, the world as I know it is never the same.
Dream journal of Bee Farseer
My first dinner with my new tutor was the worst meal of my life. I was dressed in one of my new tunics. It itched. It had not yet been taken in to fit me, so I felt as if I were walking about in a small woolen tent. My new leggings were not yet finished, so my old ones were both too short and baggy about the knees. I felt like some peculiar wading bird, with my legs sticking out the bottom of my ample clothes. I told myself that once I was seated at the table, no one could tell, but my plan to be first there failed.