‘I know that,’ I said bluntly. I met his eyes. ‘For a long time now, nothing I’ve done has pleased you. Or Burrich. Or anyone. I can’t seem to make a good decision lately.’

‘I’d concur with that,’ Chade agreed relentlessly.

And it was back, the ember of my anger billowing into flame. ‘Perhaps because I’ve never been given the chance to make my own decisions. Perhaps because I’ve been everyone’s “boy” too long. Burrich’s stable-boy, your apprentice assassin, Verity’s pet, Patience’s page. When did I get to be mine, for me?’ I asked the question fiercely.

‘When did you not?’ Chade demanded just as heatedly. ‘That’s all you’ve done since you came back from the Mountains. You went to Verity to say you’d had enough of being an assassin just when quiet work was needed. Patience tried to warn you clear of Molly, but you had your way there as well. It made her a target. You pulled Patience into plots that exposed her to danger. You bonded to the wolf, despite all Burrich said to you. You questioned my every decision about King Shrewd’s health. And your next to last stupid act at Buckkeep was to volunteer to be part of an uprising against the crown. You brought us as close to a civil war as we’ve been in a hundred years.’

‘And my last stupid act?’ I asked with bitter curiosity.

‘Killing Justin and Serene.’ He spoke a flat accusation.

‘They’d just drained my king, Chade,’ I pointed out icily. ‘Killed him in my arms as it were. What was I to do?’

He stood up and somehow managed to tower over me as he had used to. ‘With all your years of training from me, all my schooling in quiet work, you went racing about in the keep with a drawn knife, cutting the throat of one, and stabbing the other to death in the Great Hall before all the assembled nobles … My fine apprentice assassin! That was the only way you could think of to accomplish it?’

‘I was angry!’ I roared at him.

‘Exactly!’ he roared back. ‘You were angry. So you destroyed our power base at Buckkeep! You had the confidence of the Coastal Dukes, and you chose to show yourself to them as a madman! Shattered their last bit of faith in the Farseer line.’

‘A few moments ago, you rebuked me for having the confidence of those dukes.’

‘No. I rebuked you for putting yourself before them. You should never have let them offer you the rule of Buckkeep. Had you been doing your tasks properly, such a thought would never have occurred to them. Over and over and over again, you forget your place. You are not a prince, you are an assassin. You are not the player, you are the game-piece. And when you make your own moves, you set every other strategy awry and endanger every piece on the board!’

Not being able to think of a reply is not the same thing as accepting another’s words. I glowered at him. He did not back down but simply continued to stand, looking down at me. Under the scrutiny of Chade’s green stare the strength of my anger deserted me abruptly, leaving only bitterness. My secret undercurrent of fear welled once more to the surface. My resolve bled from me. I couldn’t do this. I did not have the strength to defy them both. After a time, I heard myself saying sullenly, ‘All right. Very well. You and Burrich are right, as always. I promise I shall no longer think, I shall simply obey. What do you want me to do?’

‘No.’ Succinct.

‘No what?’

He shook his head slowly. ‘What has come most clear to me tonight is that I must not base anything on you. You’ll get no assignment from me, nor will you be privy to my plans any longer. Those days are over.’ I could not grasp the finality in his voice. He turned aside from me, his eyes going afar. When he spoke again, it was not as my master, but as Chade. He looked at the wall as he spoke. ‘I love you, boy. I don’t withdraw that from you. But you’re dangerous. And what we must attempt is dangerous enough without you going berserk in the middle of it.’

‘What do you attempt?’ I asked, despite myself.

His eyes met mine as he slowly shook his head. In the keeping of that secret, he sundered our ties. I felt suddenly adrift. I watched in a daze as he took up his pack and cloak.

‘It’s dark out,’ I pointed out. ‘And Buckkeep is a far, rough walk, even in daylight. At least stay the night, Chade.’

‘I can’t. You’d but pick at this quarrel like a scab until you got it bleeding afresh. Enough hard words have already been said. Best I leave now.’

And he did.

I sat and watched the fire burn low alone. I had gone too far with both of them, much farther than I had ever intended. I had wanted to part ways with them; instead I’d poisoned every memory of me they’d ever had. It was done. There’d be no mending this. I got up and began to gather my things. It took a very short time. I knotted them into a bundle made with my winter cloak. I wondered if I acted out of childish pique or sudden decisiveness. I wondered if there was a difference. I sat for a time before the hearth, clutching my bundle. I wanted Burrich to come back, so he would see I was sorry, would know I was sorry as I left. I forced myself to look carefully at that. Then I undid my bundle and put my blanket before the hearth and stretched out on it. Ever since Burrich had dragged me back from death, he had slept between me and the door. Perhaps it had been to keep me in. Some nights it had felt as if he were all that stood between me and the dark. Now he was not there. Despite the walls of the hut, I felt I curled alone on the bare, wild face of the world.

You always have me.

I know. And you have me. I tried, but could not put any real feeling in the words. I had poured out every emotion in me, and now I was empty. And so tired. With so much still to do.

The Grey One has words with Heart of the Pack. Shall I listen?

No. Their words belong to them. I felt jealous that they were together while I was alone. Yet I also took comfort in it. Perhaps Burrich could talk Chade into coming back until morning. Perhaps Chade could leech some of the poison I’d sprayed at Burrich. I stared into the fire. I did not think highly of myself.

There is a dead spot in the night, that coldest, blackest time when the world has forgotten evening and dawn is not yet a promise. A time when it is far too early to arise, but so late that going to bed makes small sense. That was when Burrich came in. I was not asleep, but I did not stir. He was not fooled.

‘Chade’s gone,’ he said quietly. I heard him right the fallen chair. He sat on it and began taking his boots off. I felt no hostility from him, no animosity. It was as if my angry words had never been spoken. Or as if he’d been pushed past anger and hurt into numbness.

‘It’s too dark for him to be walking,’ I said to the flames. I spoke carefully, fearing to break the spell of calm.

‘I know. But he had a small lantern with him. He said he feared more to stay, feared he could not keep his resolve with you. To let you go.’

What I had been snarling for earlier now seemed like an abandonment. The fear surged up in me, undercutting my resolve. I sat up abruptly, panicky. I took a long shuddering breath. ‘Burrich. What I said to you earlier, I was angry, I was …’

‘Right on target.’ The sound he made might have been a laugh, if not so freighted with bitterness.

‘Only in the way that people who know one another best know how to hurt one another best,’ I pleaded.

‘No. It is so. Perhaps this dog does need a master.’ The mockery in his voice as he spoke of himself was more poisonous than any venom I had spewed. I could not speak. He sat up, let his boots drop to the floor. He glanced at me. ‘I did not set out to make you just like me, Fitz. That is not a thing I would wish on any man. I wished you to be like your father. But sometimes it seemed to me that no matter what I did, you persisted in patterning your life after mine.’ He stared into the embers for a time. At last he began to speak again, softly, to the fire. He sounded as if he were telling an old tale to a sleepy child.

‘I was born in the Chalced States. A little coast town, a fishing and shipping port. Lees. My mother did washing to support my grandmother and me. My father was dead before I was born, taken by the sea. My grandmother looked after me, but she was very old, and often ill.’ I heard more than saw his bitter smile. ‘A lifetime of being a slave does not leave a woman with sound health. She loved me, and did her best with me. But I was not a boy who would play in the cottage at quiet games. And there was no one at home strong enough to oppose my will.

‘So I bonded, very young, to the only strong male in my world who was interested in me. A street cur. Mangy. Scarred. His only value was survival, his only loyalty to me. As my loyalty was to him. His world, his way was all I knew. Taking what you wanted, when you wanted it, and not worrying past getting it. I am sure you know what I mean. The neighbours thought I was a mute. My mother thought I was a half-wit. My grandmother, I am sure, had her suspicions. She tried to drive the dog away, but like you, I had a will of my own in those matters. I suppose I was about eight when he ran between a horse and its cart and was kicked to death. He was stealing a slab of bacon at the time.’ He got up from his chair, and went to his blankets.

Burrich had taken Nosy away from me when I was less than that age. I had believed him dead. But Burrich had experienced the actual, violent death of his bond companion. It was little different from dying oneself. ‘What did you do?’ I asked quietly.

I heard him making up his bed and lying down on it. ‘I learned to talk,’ he said after a bit. ‘My grandmother forced me to survive Slash’s death. In a sense, I transferred my bond to her. Not that I forgot Slash’s lessons. I became a thief, a fairly good one. I made my mother and grandmother’s life a bit better with my new trade, though they never suspected what I did. About a hand of years later, the blood plague went through Chalced. It was the first time I’d ever seen it. They both died, and I was alone. So I went for a soldier.’

I listened in amazement. All the years I had known him as a taciturn man. Drink had never loosened his tongue, but only made him more silent. Now the words were spilling out of him, washing away my years of wondering and suspecting. Why he suddenly spoke so openly, I did not know. His voice was the only sound in the firelit room.

‘I first fought for some petty land chief in Chalced. Jecto. Not knowing or caring why we fought, if there was any right or wrong to it.’ He snorted softly. ‘As I told you, a living is not a life. But I did well enough at it. I earned a reputation for viciousness. No one expects a boy to fight with a beast’s ferocity and guile. It was my only key to survival amongst the kind of men I soldiered with then. But one day we lost a campaign. I spent several months, no, almost a year, learning my grandmother’s hatred of slavers. When I escaped, I did what she had always dreamed of doing. I went to the Six Duchies, where there are no slaves, nor slavers. Grizzle was Duke of Shoaks then. I soldiered for him for a bit. Somehow I ended up taking care of my troop’s horses. I liked it well enough. Grizzle’s troops were gentlemen compared with the dregs that soldiered for Jecto, but I still preferred the company of horses to them.

‘When the Sandsedge war was done, Duke Grizzle took me home to his own stables. I bonded with a young stallion there. Neko. I had the care of him, but he was not mine. Grizzle rode him to hunt. Sometimes, they used him for stud. But Grizzle was not a gentle man. Sometimes he put Neko to fight other stallions, as some men fight dogs or cocks for amusement. A mare in season, and the better stallion to have her. And I … I was bonded to him. His life was mine as much as my own was. And so I grew to be a man. Or at least, to have the shape of one.’ Burrich was silent a moment. He did not need to explain further to me. After a time, he sighed and went on.

‘Duke Grizzle sold Neko and six mares, and I went with them. Up the coast, to Rippon.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Some kind of horse plague went through that man’s stables. Neko died, just a day after he started to sicken. I was able to save two of his mares. Keeping them alive kept me from killing myself. But afterwards, I lost all spirit. I was good for nothing, save drinking. Besides, there were scarcely enough animals left in that stable to warrant calling it such. So I was let go. Eventually, to become a soldier again, this time for a young prince named Chivalry. He’d come to Rippon to settle a boundary dispute between the Shoaks and Rippon Duchies. I don’t know why his sergeant took me on. These were crack troops, his personal guard. I had run out of money and been painfully sober for three days. I didn’t meet their standards as a man, let alone as a soldier. In the first month I was with Chivalry, I was up before him for discipline twice. For fighting. Like a dog, or a stallion, I thought it was the only way to establish position with the others.

‘The first time I was hauled before the Prince, bloody and struggling still, I was shocked to see we were of an age. Almost all his troops were older than I; I had expected to confront a middle-aged man. I stood there before him and I met his eyes. And something like recognition passed between us. As if we each saw … what we might have been in different circumstances. It did not make him go easy on me. I lost my pay and earned extra duties. Everyone expected Chivalry to discharge me the second time. I stood before him, ready to hate him, and he just looked at me. He cocked his head as a dog will when it hears something far off. He docked my pay and gave me more duties. But he kept me. Everyone had told me I’d be discharged. Now they all expected me to desert. I can’t say why I didn’t. Why soldier for no pay and extra duties?’

Burrich cleared his throat again. I heard him shoulder deeper into his bed. For a time he was silent. He went on again at last, almost unwillingly. ‘The third time they dragged me in, it was for brawling in a tavern. The City Guard hauled me before him, still bloody, still drunk, still wanting to fight. By then my fellow guards wanted nothing more to do with me. My sergeant was disgusted, I’d made no friends among the common soldiers. So the City Guard had me in custody. And they told Chivalry I’d knocked two men out and held off five others with a stave until the Guard came to tip the odds their way.

‘Chivalry dismissed the Guards, with a purse to pay for damages to the tavern-keeper. He sat behind his table, some half-finished writing before him, and looked me up and down. Then he stood up without a word and pushed his table back to a corner of the room. He took off his shirt and picked up a pike from the corner. I thought he intended to beat me to death. Instead, he threw me another pike. And he said, “All right, show me how you held off five men.” And lit into me.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I was tired, and half drunk. But I wouldn’t quit. Finally, he got in a lucky one. Laid me out cold.

‘When I woke up, the dog had a master again. Of a different sort. I know you’ve heard people say Chivalry was cold and stiff and correct to a fault. He wasn’t. He was what he believed a man should be. More than that. It was what he believed a man should want to be. He took a thieving, unkempt scoundrel and …’ He faltered, sighed suddenly. ‘He had me up before dawn the next day. Weapons practice till neither of us could stand. I’d never had any formal training at it before. They’d just handed me a pike and sent me out to fight. He drilled me, and taught me sword. He’d never liked the axe, but I did. So he taught me what he knew of it, and arranged for me to learn it from a man who knew its strategies. Then the rest of the day, he’d have me at his heels. Like a dog, as you say. I don’t know why. Maybe he was lonely for someone his own age. Maybe he missed Verity. Maybe … I don’t know.

‘He taught me numbers first, then reading. He put me in charge of his horse. Then his hounds and hawk. Then in general charge of the pack beasts and wagon animals. But it wasn’t just work he taught me. Cleanliness. Honesty. He put a value on what my mother and grandmother had tried to instil in me so long ago. He showed them to me as a man’s values, not just manners for inside a woman’s house. He taught me to be a man, not a beast in a man’s shape. He made me see it was more than rules, it was a way of being. A life, rather than a living.’

He stopped talking. I heard him get up. He went to the table and picked up the bottle of elderberry wine that Chade had left. I watched him as he turned it several times in his hands. Then he set it down. He sat down on one of the chairs and stared into the fire.

‘Chade said I should leave you tomorrow,’ he said quietly. He looked down at me. ‘I think he’s right.’

I sat up and looked up at him. The dwindling light of the fire made a shadowy landscape of his face. I could not read his eyes.

‘Chade says you have been my boy too long. Chade’s boy, Verity’s boy, even Patience’s boy. That we kept you a boy and looked after you too much. He believes that when a man’s decisions came to you, you made them as a boy. Impulsively. Intending to be right, intending to be good. But intentions are not good enough.’

‘Sending me out to kill people was keeping me a boy?’ I asked incredulously.

‘Did you listen to me at all? I killed people as a boy. It didn’t make me a man. Nor you.’

‘So what am I to do?’ I asked sarcastically. ‘Go looking for a prince to educate me?’

‘There. You see? A boy’s reply. You don’t understand, so you get angry. And venomous. You ask me that question but you already know you won’t like my answer.’

‘Which is?’

‘It might be to tell you that you could do worse than to go looking for a prince. But I’m not going to tell you what to do. Chade has advised me not to. And I think he is right. But not because I think you make your decisions as a boy would. No more than I did at your age. I think you decide as an animal would. Always in the now, with never a thought for tomorrow, or what you recall from yesterday. I know you know what I’m speaking of. You stopped living as a wolf because I forced you to. Now I must leave you alone, for you to find out if you want to live as a wolf or a man.’

He met my gaze. There was too much understanding in his eyes. It frightened me to think that he might actually know what I was facing. I denied that possibility, pushed it aside entirely. I turned a shoulder to him, almost hoping my anger would come back. But Burrich sat silently.

Finally I looked up at him. He was staring into the fire. It took me a long time to swallow my pride and ask, ‘So, what are you going to do?’

‘I told you. I’m leaving tomorrow.’

Harder still to ask the next question. ‘Where will you go?’

He cleared his throat and looked uncomfortable. ‘I’ve a friend. She’s alone. She could use a man’s strength about her place. Her roof needs mending, and there’s planting to do. I’ll go there, for a time.’

‘She?’ I dared to ask, raising an eyebrow.

His voice was flat. ‘Nothing like that. A friend. You would probably say that I’ve found someone else to look after. Perhaps I have. Perhaps it’s time to give that where it is truly needed.’

I looked into the fire, now. ‘Burrich. I truly needed you. You brought me back from the edge, back to being a man.’

He snorted. ‘If I’d done right by you in the first place, you’d never have gone to the edge.’

‘No. I’d have gone to my grave instead.’

‘Would you? Regal would have had no charges of Wit magic to bring against you.’

‘He’d have found some excuse to kill me. Or just opportunity. He doesn’t really need an excuse to do what he wants.’

‘Perhaps. Perhaps not.’

We sat watching the fire die. I reached up to my ear, fumbled with the catch on the earring. ‘I want to give this back to you.’

‘I would prefer that you kept it. Wore it.’ It was almost a request. It felt odd.

‘I don’t deserve whatever it is that this earring symbolizes to you. I haven’t earned it, I have no right to it.’

‘What it symbolizes to me is not something that is earned. It’s something I gave to you, deserved or not. Whether or not you wear that, you still take it with you.’

I left the earring dangling from my ear. A tiny silver net with a blue gem trapped inside it. Once Burrich had given it to my father. Patience, all unknowing of its significance, had passed it on to me. I did not know if he wanted me to wear it for the same reason he had given it to my father. I sensed there was more about it, but he had not told me and I would not ask. Still, I waited, expecting a question from him. But he only rose and went back to his blankets. I heard him lie down.

I wished he had asked me the question. It hurt that he hadn’t. I answered it anyway. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do,’ I said into the darkened room. ‘All my life, I’ve always had tasks to do, masters to answer to. Now that I don’t … it’s a strange feeling.’

I thought for a time that he wasn’t going to reply at all. Then he said abruptly, ‘I’ve known that feeling.’

I looked up at the darkened ceiling. ‘I’ve thought of Molly. Often. Do you know where she went?’

‘Yes.’

When he said no more than that, I knew better than to ask. ‘I know the wisest course is to let her go. She believes me dead. I hope that whoever she went to takes better care of her than I did. I hope he loves her as she deserves.’

There was a rustling of Burrich’s blankets. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked guardedly.

It was harder to say than I had thought it would be. ‘She told me when she left me that day that there was someone else. Someone that she cared for as I cared for my king, someone she put ahead of everything and everyone else in her life.’ My throat closed up suddenly. I took a breath, willing the knot in my throat away. ‘Patience was right,’ I said.

‘Yes, she was,’ Burrich agreed.

‘I can blame it on no one save myself. Once I knew Molly was safe, I should have let her go her own way. She deserves a man who can give her all his time, all his devotion …’

‘Yes, she does,’ Burrich agreed relentlessly. ‘A shame you didn’t realize that before you had been with her.’

It is quite one thing to admit a fault to yourself. It is another thing entirely to have a friend not only agree with you, but point out the full depth of the fault. I didn’t deny it, or demand how he knew of it. If Molly had told him, I didn’t want to know what else she had said. If he had deduced it on his own, I didn’t want to know I had been that obvious. I felt a surge of something, a fierceness that made me want to snarl at him. I bit down on my tongue and forced myself to consider what I felt. Guilt and shame that it had ended in pain for her, and made her doubt her worth. And a certainty that no matter how wrong it had been, it had also been right. When I was sure of my voice, I said quietly, ‘I will never regret loving her. Only that I could not make her my wife in all eyes as she was in my heart.’

He said nothing to that. But after a time, that separating silence became deafening. I could not sleep for it. Finally I spoke. ‘So. Tomorrow we go our own ways, I suppose.’

‘I suppose so,’ Burrich said. After a time, he added, ‘Good luck.’ He actually sounded as if he meant it. As if he realized how much luck I would need.

I closed my eyes. I was so tired now. So tired. Tired of hurting people I loved. But it was done now. Tomorrow Burrich would leave and I would be free. Free to follow my heart’s desire, with no intervention from anyone.

Free to go to Tradeford and kill Regal.