The Prince had swayed as they put the last stones on the cat, covering her death snarl. I set a hand to his shoulder to steady him, but he shrugged away my touch as if I were tainted. I did not blame him. She had commanded me to kill her, had done all she could to force me to the act, and yet I did not expect him to forgive me for having obeyed her. As soon as the cat was interred, the Old Blood healer had brought the Prince a draught. ‘Your share of her death,’ she said as she offered it to him, and he had quaffed it down before either Lord Golden or I could interfere. Then the healer gestured to me that I should take him back into the cave. There, he lay down where his cat had died, and his mourning broke loose anew.
I don’t know what she gave him in that drink, but the boy’s heartbroken sobs wound slowly down into the hoarse breathing of sodden sleep. There was nothing of rest in the limp way he sprawled beside me. ‘A little death,’ she had confided to me, thoroughly frightening me. ‘I give him a little death of his own, a time of emptiness. He died, you know, when the cat was killed. He needs this empty time to be dead. Do not try to cheat him of it.’
Indeed, it plunged him into a sleep but one step shy of death. She settled him on a pallet, arranging his body as if it were a corpse. As she did so, she muttered scathingly, ‘Such bruises on his neck and back. How could they beat a mere boy like that?’
I was too shamed to admit I had given him those marks. I held my silence and she covered him well, shaking her head over him. Then she turned and brusquely motioned me to her side for her services. ‘The wolf, too. I’ve time for you, now that the boy’s hurts are tended. His hurt was far more grievous than anything that bleeds.’
With warm water she washed our wounds and salved them with a greasy unguent. Nighteyes was passive to her touch. He held himself so tightly against the pain I could scarcely feel him there. As she worked on the scratches on my chest and belly, she muttered sternly to me. I gave Jinna’s charm the credit that she deigned to speak to a renegade like me at all.
But the healer’s only comment on it was that my necklace had probably saved my life. ‘The cat meant to kill you, and no mistake about that,’ she observed. ‘But it was no will nor fault of her own, I’m sure. And not the boy’s fault either. Look at him. He is a child still, far too young to bond,’ she lectured me severely, as if it were my fault. ‘He is unschooled in our ways, and look how it has hurt him. I will not tell you lies. He is like to die of this, or take a melancholy madness that will plague him to the end of his days.’ She tightened the bandage around my belly with a tug. ‘Someone should teach him Old Blood ways. Proper ways of dealing with his magic.’ She glared at me, but I did not reply. I only pulled what was left of my shirt back over my head. As she turned away from me, I heard her snort of contempt.
Nighteyes wearily lifted his head and set it on my knee. Salve and clotted blood smeared me. He looked at the sleeping boy. Are you going to teach him?
I doubt he’d wish to learn anything from me. I killed his cat.
Who will, then?
I left that question hanging. I stretched out in the darkness beside the wolf. We lay between the Farseer heir and the outside world.
Not far from us, in the central part of the shelter, Deerkin sat in council with Lord Golden. Laurel sat between them. The healer had joined them, and there were two other elders present in the circle closest to the fire. I regarded them through my lashes. In the rest of the cave, the other Old Blood folk appeared casually engaged in the ordinary evening chores of a campsite. Several lounged on their blanket rolls behind Deerkin. They seemed content to let the young man speak for them, but I sensed that perhaps they were the true holders of power in the group. One was smoking a long-stemmed pipe. Another, a bearded fellow, was working a careful edge onto his sheath knife. The whetting of the blade was a monotonous undertone to the conversation. For all their casual postures, I sensed how keenly they listened to what went on. Deerkin might speak for them, but I sensed they would listen to be sure his words were what they wished said.
It was not to Tom Badgerlock that these Old Blood riders explained themselves, but to Lord Golden. What was Tom Badgerlock but a renegade to his kind, a lackey of the crown? He was worse by far than Laurel, for all knew that though she had been born to an Old Blood family, the talent was dead in her. It was expected of her that she must make her way in the world however she might, forever half-dead to all the life that blossomed and buzzed and burned about her. No shame to her that she was a huntswoman to the Queen. I even sensed an odd pride in the Old Bloods, that one so impaired had risen so far. I had chosen my treason, however, and all the Witted folk walked a wide swathe around me. One brought meat on spits and propped it over the fire. The smell was vaguely tantalizing.
Food? I asked Nighteyes.
Too tired to eat, he declined, and I agreed with him. But for me there was the added reluctance of asking food of folk who ostracized us. So we rested, ignored in the outer circle of darkness. I refused to feel hurt that the Fool had spoken so little to me. Lord Golden could not be concerned with a servant’s injuries, any more than Tom Badgerlock should fret about his master’s bruises. We had our roles to play still. So I feigned sleep, but from beneath lowered lashes I watched them, and listened to their talk.
The talk was general at first, and I gathered my facts in bits and by assumption. Deerkin was telling Laurel some news of an uncle they had in common. It was old news, of sons grown and wed. So. Estranged cousins, separated for years. It made sense. She had admitted she had family in this area, and as much as told me they were Witted. The rest came out in an explanation to Lord Golden. Deerkin and Arno had ridden with Laudwine’s Piebalds for only a summer. They had both been sickened and angry over how the Old Blood folk were treated. When Laudwine’s sister had died, he had devoted himself to his people’s cause and risen as a leader. He had nothing save himself to lose, and change, he had told them, demanded sacrifice. It was time the Old Blood took the peace that was rightfully theirs. He made them feel strong and daring, these Old Blood sons and daughters rising up boldly to take what their parents feared to reach for. They would change the world. Time once more to live as a united folk in Old Blood communities, time to let their children openly acknowledge their magic. Time for change. ‘He made it sound so logical. And so noble. Yes, we would have to take extreme measures, but the end we sought was no more than what we were rightfully entitled to. Simple peace and acceptance. That was all. Is that so much for any man to ask?’