Fool's Quest - Страница 74

Her eyes met mine and she waited. It took a time for my memory to travel back that many years. “Captain Foxglove?” I managed to guess.

The smile on her face warmed and her eyes gleamed. “I wondered if you’d know me, after all these years. We’re a long way from Neat Bay in distance and time. But I’ve made a bet, and a large one, that a Farseer doesn’t forget who had his back.”

I immediately extended a hand and we clasped wrists. Her grip was almost as firm as it had once been, and I was immensely glad she wasn’t there to kill me.

“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.

Foxglove herded two youngsters toward me, a hand on each of their shoulders. Neither could have been over twenty, and the girl visibly straightened herself to try to be taller. “They are cousins, but as alike as two kits from the same litter. This is Sharp and here is Ready. They’re already wearing your badge. Will you take their oaths now?”

“Does King Dutiful know of all this?” I spoke the words aloud as I Skilled them tightly to Dutiful. Thought is fast. He witnessed my dilemma instantly and I felt his amusement at it.

“If he doesn’t, he should,” Foxglove responded tartly, and mugs thumped the table in agreement. “I don’t recall your asking permission before the white fox badge marked a guard troop.”

“Oh, that was you and Whistle, not I!” I rejoined, and she laughed.

“Perhaps. But I recall it differently.” Then her face grew sober. “Ah, Whistle. She went too fast, didn’t she?” She cleared her throat. “My infants, draw your knives and present them to Fitz … to Prince FitzChivalry. We’ll do this the old way.”

Old it was, so old I did not know it, but she walked us through it, and five others followed. She nicked the back of my left hand, and as the tip of her knife moved my blood onto the outstretched palm of the boy, she told him, “The blood of the Farseers rests in your hands, for you to protect. You hold his life in your hands, now and whenever you draw blade in his name. Do not dishonor it, nor put your life ahead of his.”

There was more and I became aware of first Dutiful and then Nettle joining me as the guards wearing my badge came to me one at a time. They swore their blades to me and took my blood into their hands and I tried to breathe and keep some measure of royal poise as I did so. As the last one rose, taking back from me his sworn blade, I felt a breath of Skill from Nettle. That was beautiful.

I’ll wager Fitz is weeping like a maiden. This from Dutiful, wryly, but I could feel that he was as moved as Nettle had been.

Or weeping like a man who is finally welcomed home, Nettle responded tartly.

What do I do with them now? I was a bit dazed.

Quarter them. Clothe them. Pay them. Make sure they keep discipline and practice daily. Isn’t being royal fun? You’re going to need staff, Fitz. The people who do all the things that need doing.

I don’t have time for this! I have to go after Bee!

With them at your heels, Fitz. You’ll need them. But most of them look as green as grass. Do you want me to choose one of my captains and send him to you?

I think I’ve a better idea. I hope.

My silence during my conversation with Dutiful had been taken for gravitas. I turned my gaze on Foxglove. “Captain Foxglove, I’d like your blade now.”

She stared at me. “I’m an old woman, Fitz. I left the guard many years ago, after our king drove the Red Ships from our shores. I liked peace. I wed, I had children, and I saw them every day. Now I’m old. I’ve a bad elbow, and my knees are stiff, and my eyesight is not what it was.”

“But your mind is. You can refuse me if you wish. I imagine you’ve a home and a husband and …”

“Red Ross is gone for many a year now.” She stood very still. I watched memories flicker through her eyes. Then she spoke in a whisper as she drew a humble hip-knife from her belt. “If you still wish to have my blade, I’ll swear it to you, Fitz.”

“I do. I’ll need someone to keep these puppies in order.”

And so I opened the small wound on my hand afresh, and put my blood into the palm of one who had already held the lives of Farseers in her hands. I would not allow her to go down on her knees to me, but took her promise from her standing. “Face-to-face, as we once stood back-to-back,” I told her. She smiled and every guardsman in the room cheered her.

“And my orders, sir?” she asked.

“To do what you think best. You know far better than I how to captain them. Quarter them, clothe them, see they don’t break discipline, and take them to the practice yards. And pay them when their pay is due.” I tried not to betray that I had no idea where those funds would be coming from.