“No. Chade and I put them back. We judged it the most sensible thing to do. Fewer questions, you know.”
He nodded, but continued to stare at me. “You look both better and worse than you did. You shouldn’t be drinking all that wine before you’ve eaten.”
“The food’s cold.”
“Well, it’s simple enough to heat it.” He spoke with impatience for my stupidity. I thought he would put Thick to the task. Instead, he took up the pot himself, gave it a stir, and covered it again. As if well practiced at such things, he attached it to the hook and swung it over the fire again. He tore the small loaf of bread in half, and set it on a plate near the flames to warm. “Do you want water for tea? It would do you more good than all that wine you’re slogging down.”
I set my empty glass down on the table but did not fill it again. “You amaze me sometimes. The things you know, for a prince, are surprising.”
“Well, you know how my mother is. Servant of the people. When I was younger, she wished me educated in the way her people educate their Sacrifice, that is, that I should know how to do the most common tasks as well as any peasant boy would. When she had a hard time teaching me all she wished me to know at Buckkeep, she decided to foster me out, away from servants who leapt to my every desire. She wished to send me to the Mountains for a time, but Chade urged her to keep me in the Six Duchies. That left her only one choice, she decided. And so when I was eight, she sent me to Lady Patience, to page for her for a year and a half. Needless to say, I was not treated like a coddled princeling there. For the first two months, she kept forgetting my name. Yet Lady Patience taught me a wonderful array of things.”
“You didn’t learn cooking skills from Lady Patience,” I observed before I could guard my tongue.
“Ah, but I did,” he replied with a grin. “It was by necessity. She would want something heated, late at night in her room, and if left to herself, she burned it and filled the apartments with smoke. I learned a great deal from her, actually, but you are right. Cooking was not her strongest talent. Lacey taught me how to warm a meal at a hearth. And other things, as well. I can crochet better than half the ladies of the court.”
“Can you?” I asked in a voice of neutrally friendly interest. His back was to me as he stirred the pot. It suddenly smelled good. My small lapse had passed unnoticed.
“Yes, I can. I’ll teach you someday, if you like.” He fished the soup back from the flames, stirred it again, and brought it back to the table with the bread. As he set it before me as if he were my page, he observed, “Lacey said that you never learned as a boy. That you were too impatient to sit still that long.”
I had taken up my spoon. I set it down again. He went back to the hearth and checked the teakettle. “Not quite hot enough yet,” he said, and then added, “Lacey always told me that the steam should stand out a full handspan from the spout if the tea is to be brewed well. But I’m sure she said as much to you. Both Lady Patience and Lacey told many tales about you. I’d heard little about you here at Buckkeep. You were mentioned as often with a curse here as with regrets. But when I got there, it was as if they couldn’t help themselves, even though it often made Patience break down and weep. That’s the one thing I don’t understand about all this. She thinks you are dead and she mourns you. Every single day. How can you let her do that? Your own mother.”
“Lady Patience is not my mother,” I said weakly.
“She says she is. Was,” he corrected himself sourly. “She was always telling me what I actually wanted to eat or do or wear. And if I protested that my true preference was different, she would declare, ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I know what you want. I know about boys! I had a son of my own, once.’ She meant you,” he added heavily in case the inference had escaped me.
I sat there, silent. I told myself that I was not a well man yet, that the cold painful days in the prison and the Skill-healing and the remaking of my scars, and yes, even the Fool’s rejection of my overtures of peace had weakened and drained me. Thus I trembled and my throat closed and I could not think what to do when a secret so well and truly kept was suddenly spoken aloud. A terrible darkness engulfed me, worse than anything elfbark had ever produced. Tears welled in my eyes. Perhaps, I thought, if I do not blink, they will not spill. Perhaps if I sat very still long enough, somehow my eyes would reabsorb the tears.
The kettle began to puff clouds of steam and Dutiful got up to tend to it. I hastily blotted my eyes on my sleeve. He brought the grumbling kettle to the table and poured hot water over the herbs in the teapot. As he carried it back to the fire, he spoke over his shoulder. Something in his subdued voice told me that my stillness had not deceived him. I think he sensed how close he had come to breaking me and it distressed him. “My mother told me,” he said, almost defensively. “She and Chade were both frantic over your being hurt and in prison. They were angry at one another and could not agree on anything. I was in the room when they had an argument. She told him that she was simply going to go down there and take you out of there. He said she must not, that it would only put you and me into greater danger. So then she said she was going to tell me who was dying for me down there; he tried to forbid that. She said it was time I knew what it was to be Sacrifice for one’s people. Then they sent me out of the room while they argued about it.” He set the kettle back by the hearth and came back to sit at the table with me. I didn’t meet his eyes.
