‘Ah, well. To me, always, perhaps. It is one of the advantages of age, I can call anyone almost anything I please, and no one dares challenge me. Ah, you have the wolf still, I see. Nighteyes, was it? Up in years a bit now; I don’t recall that white on your muzzle. Come here now, there’s a good fellow. Fitz, would you mind seeing to my horse? I’ve been all morning in the saddle, and spent last night at a perfectly wretched inn. I’m a bit stiff, you know. And just bring in my saddlebags, would you? There’s a good lad.’
He stooped to scratch the wolf’s ears, his back to me, confident I would obey him. And I grinned and did. The black mare he’d ridden was a fine animal, amiable and willing. There is always a pleasure to caring for a creature of that quality. I watered her well, gave her some of the chickens’ grain and turned her into the pony’s empty paddock. The saddlebags that I carried back to the house were heavy and one sloshed promisingly.
I entered to find Chade in my study, sitting at my writing desk, poring over my papers as if they were his own. ‘Ah, there you are. Thank you, Fitz. This, now, this is the stone game, isn’t it? The one Kettle taught you, to help you focus your mind away from the Skill-road? Fascinating. I’d like to have this one when you are finished with it.’
‘If you wish,’ I said quietly. I knew a moment’s unease. He tossed out words and names I had buried and left undisturbed. Kettle. The Skill-road. I pushed them back into the past. ‘It’s not Fitz any more,’ I said pleasantly. ‘It’s Tom Badgerlock.’
‘Oh?’
I touched the streak of white in my hair from my scar. ‘For this. People remember the name. I tell them I was born with the white streak, and so my parents named me.’
‘I see,’ he said noncommittally. ‘Well, it makes sense, and it’s sensible.’ He leaned back in my wooden chair. It creaked. ‘There’s brandy in those bags, if you’ve cups for us. And some of old Sara’s ginger cakes … I doubt you’d expect me to remember how fond you were of those. Probably a bit squashed, but it’s the taste that matters with those.’ The wolf had already sat up. He came to place his nose on the edge of the table. It pointed directly at the bags.
‘So. Sara is still cook at Buckkeep?’ I asked as I looked for two presentable cups. Chipped crockery didn’t bother me, but I was suddenly reluctant to set it out for Chade.
Chade left the study and came to my kitchen table. ‘Oh, not really. Her old feet bother her if she stands too long. She has a big cushioned chair, set up on a platform in the corner of the kitchen. She supervises from there. She cooks the things she enjoys cooking, the fancy pastries, the spiced cakes, and the sweets. There’s a young man named Duff does most of the daily cooking now.’ He was unpacking the saddlebags as he spoke. He set out two bottles marked as Sandsedge brandy. I could not remember the last time I’d tasted that. The ginger cakes, a bit squashed as foretold, emerged, spilling crumbs from the linen he’d wrapped them in. The wolf sniffed deeply, then began salivating. ‘His favourites, too, I see,’ Chade observed dryly, and tossed him one. The wolf caught it neatly and carried it off to devour on the hearthrug.
The saddlebags gave up their other treasures quickly. A sheaf of fine paper, pots of blue, red and green inks. A fat ginger root, just starting to sprout, ready to be potted for the summer. Some packets of spices. A rare luxury for me, a round ripe cheese. And in a little wooden chest, other items, hauntingly strange in their familiarity. Small things I had thought long lost to me. A ring that had belonged to Prince Rurisk of the Mountain Kingdom. The arrowhead that had pierced the Prince’s chest and nearly been the death of him. A small carved box, made by my hands years ago, to contain my poisons. I opened it. It was empty. I put the lid back on the box and set it down on the table. I looked at him. He was not just one old man come to visit me. He brought all of my past trailing along behind him as an embroidered train follows a woman into a hall. When I let him into my door, I had let in my old world with him.
‘Why?’ I asked quietly. ‘Why, after all these years, have you sought me out?’
‘Oh, well.’ Chade drew a chair up to the table and sat down with a sigh. He unstoppered the brandy and poured for both of us. ‘A dozen reasons. I saw your boy with Starling. And I knew at once who he was. Not that he looks like you, any more than Nettle looks like Burrich. But he has your mannerisms, your way of holding back and looking at a thing, with his head cocked just so before he decides whether he’ll be drawn in. He put me so much in mind of you at that age that …’
‘You’ve seen Nettle,’ I cut in quietly. It was not a question.
‘Of course,’ he replied as quietly. ‘Would you like to know about her?’
I did not trust my tongue to answer. All my old cautions warned me against evincing too great an interest in her. Yet I felt a prickle of foreknowledge that Nettle, my daughter whom I had never seen except in visions, was the reason Chade had come here. I looked at my cup and weighed the merits of brandy for breakfast. Then I thought again of Nettle, the bastard I had unwillingly abandoned before her birth. I drank. I had forgotten how smooth Sandsedge brandy was. Its warmth spread through me as rapidly as youthful lust.
Chade was merciful, in that he did not force me to voice my interest. ‘She looks much like you, in a skinny, female way,’ he said, then smiled to see me bristle. ‘But, strange to tell, she resembles Burrich even more. She has more of his mannerisms and habits of speech than any of his five sons.’
‘Five!’ I exclaimed in astonishment.
Chade grinned. ‘Five boys, and all as respectful and deferential to their father as any man could wish. Not at all like Nettle. She has mastered that black look of Burrich’s and gives it right back to him when he scowls at her. Which is seldom. I won’t say she’s his favourite, but I think she wins more of his favour by standing up to him than all the boys do with their earnest respect. She has Burrich’s impatience, and his keen sense of right and wrong. And all your stubbornness, but perhaps she learned that from Burrich as well.’
‘You saw Burrich then?’ He had raised me, and now he raised my daughter as his own. He’d taken to wife the woman I’d seemingly abandoned. They both thought me dead. Their lives had gone on without me. To hear of them mingled pain with fondness. I chased the taste of it away with Sandsedge brandy.
‘It would have been impossible to see Nettle, save that I saw Burrich also. He watches over her like, well, like her father. He’s well. His limp has not improved with the years. But he is seldom afoot, so it seems to bother him little. It is horses with him, always horses, as it always was.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You do know that the Queen and I saw to it that both Ruddy and Sooty’s colt were given over to him? Well, he’s founded his livelihood on those two stud horses. The mare you unsaddled, Ember, I got her from him. He trains as well as breeds horses now. He will never be a wealthy man, for the moment he has a coin to spare, it goes for another horse or to buy more pasturage. But when I asked him how he did, he told me, “well enough.”’