Fool's Quest

“And it’s many a year since anyone called me captain. But you, what have you been up to? That slash looks no more than a week old.”

I touched it self-consciously. “It’s a humiliating tale, of a very foolish encounter with the corner of a stone wall.”

She shook her head at that. “Odd that it looks like a sword-slash. I can see that what I have to tell you would have been better told a month ago. Come with me, please.”

Delayed, I Skilled small and tight to Dutiful and Nettle. Captain Foxglove wishes a word with me.

Who? Dutiful demanded worriedly.

She guarded your mother at the Battle of Neat Bay. Kettricken will recall her, I think.

Oh.

I wondered how much he knew of that tale, and as my recollection of that bloody day trickled through my mind, I strode along beside the old woman. She still had the upright bearing of a guardsman and the long stride of one who can quick-march for miles. But as we walked, she said, “I haven’t been a captain in the guards for many years, my prince. When the Red-Ship War was finally over I married, and we managed to have three children before I was too old to bear. And in their time, they gave Red Ross and me a dozen grandchildren. You?”

“No grandchildren yet,” I said.

“So Lady Nettle’s child will be your first, then?”

“My first grandchild,” I confirmed. The words were strange in my mouth.

We clattered down the stairs side by side and I was strangely glad of the envious looks other servants bestowed on her as we passed them. Time was when friendship with the Bastard had not been something to prize, but she had given it to me. Down we went, to the level of the castle where the real work was done, threading past the laundry folk with their baskets of linens both clean and dirty, past pages balancing trays of food, and a carpenter and his journeyman, and three apprentices off to repair something in the castle. Past the kitchens where once Cook had reigned and made me her favorite despite the political ramifications. And to the arched doorway that led to the guards’ mess, where the clamor of hungry folk eating seldom ceased.

Foxglove flung up a hand to my chest and halted me there. She met my gaze, looking straight into my eyes. Her hair was gray and lines framed her mouth but her dark eyes snapped bright as ever. “You’re a Farseer, and I know a true Farseer remembers his debts. I’m here on behalf of my granddaughter and a grandson. I know you’ll remember the days when a few words from you made me and Whistle and a handful of other good soldiers leave King Verity’s guard to put on the purple and white and the fox badge for our foreign queen. You remember that, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Then ready a smile, sir. Your time has come.”

She gestured for me to precede her. I entered the room, braced with dread and ready for anything. Except for someone to shout, “Hep!” and have every guard at the table suddenly surge to his feet. Benches scraped loudly against the floor as they were pushed back. One mug teetered precariously as the table gave a bounce. Then it settled and silence filled the room of men and women standing tall and formally alert to greet me. I caught my breath.

Many years ago, King-in-Waiting Verity had fashioned a sigil for me. I’d been the only one to wear it. It had been the Farseer buck, but with his head lowered to charge rather than the lofty pose that a king’s son would wear. And across it there had been the red bend that marked me as a bastard even as the buck acknowledged my bloodlines.

Now I faced a room of standing guards, and half a dozen of them wore the slashed buck on their chests. Their jerkins were Buck blue, with a stripe of red down the breast. I stared, speechless.

“Sit down, you idiots. It’s still just the Fitz,” Foxglove announced. Oh, she was enjoying this, and when a few of the youngsters in the room gasped at her temerity, she compounded it by taking my arm and tugging me to a place at one of the long benches at the table. “Push the ale pitcher down this way, and some of the black bread and the white cheese. He may sit at the high table now, but he was raised on guardroom rations.”

And so I sat, and someone poured a mug for me, and I wondered how this could feel so good and so strange and so terrible all at once. My daughter was missing and in danger, and here I sat, grinning foolishly as an old woman explained that it was time I had my own guard, and although her other grandchildren were all members of Kettricken’s guard, her two youngest hadn’t given an oath yet. As the rest of the guards settled at the table, smirking at one another to see a Farseer “prince” sharing their common fare, they could not know that food had seldom tasted better to me. This dark bread and sharp cheese and the ale that foamed over the top of the tankard were the foods that had sustained me through many a dark hour. It was the best feast I could imagine for this peculiarly triumphal moment.