The thought made my blood cold. I didn't want to tell him that was exactly what I had tried to protect Nettle from. I did give him one truth. “It had never occurred to me to look at it from your point of view. It had never occurred to me that it would have an effect on you at all.”
“Well, it has. And it does.” He suddenly shifted his focus to Chade. “And you too have been negligent beyond all tolerance. This girl is the heir to the Farseer throne, after me. That should be documented and witnessed; it should have been done before I left port! If anything befalls me, if I die trying to chop up this frozen dragon, there will be chaos as all try to suggest who should be—”
“It has been done, my prince. Many years ago. And the documents kept safe. In that, I have not been negligent.” Chade seemed incensed that Dutiful could even think such a thing.
“It would have been nice to know that. Can either of you explain to me why it was so important to keep this information from me?” He glared from Chade to me, but his stare settled on me as he observed, “It seems to me that you have gone about for a lot of your life, making decisions for other people, doing what you thought was best without consulting them about what they wanted at all. And you aren't always right!”
I kept my temper. “That's the trouble with making a decision. You never know if it's right until after you've done it. But it is what adults are supposed to do. Make decisions. And then live with them.”
He was silent for a time. Then he said, after a moment, “And if I made an adult decision to tell Nettle who she is? To right at least that much of the wrong we have done her?”
I took a breath. “I'm asking you not to do that. It isn't something that should just be dropped on her, all of a piece.”
He was quiet for a longer time and then asked wryly, “Have I any other secret relatives who will come popping into my life when I least expect it?”
“None that I know of,” I replied seriously. Then, more formally, “My prince, please. Let me be the one to tell her, if she must be told.”
“It's certainly a task you deserve,” he observed, and Chade, who had been solemn for a few moments, smiled again. Dutiful seemed almost wistful as he added, “She seems strong in the Skill. Think how it could be, if she were here now. We'd have her to rely on, and perhaps Thick could have stayed safely at home.”
“Actually, she works well with Thick. She's excellent at calming him and has gained a lot of his trust. She is the one who disarmed his nightmares for us on our voyage to Zylig. But in reply to what you said, no, my prince. Thick is too strong and too volatile to be left on his own anywhere now. And that is a thing that we must eventually deal with. The more we teach him, the more dangerous he becomes.”
“I think the best remedy for Thick's willfulness is to take him home and put him back in his familiar life. I expect that he'll regain a more even temperament then. Unfortunately, I have to find and kill a dragon before we can do that.”
I was relieved to leave the topic of Nettle, and yet there was one more chink in the wall to close. “My prince. Swift knows nothing of all this, of Nettle's being my daughter and only half-sister to him. I'd like to keep it that way.”
“Ah, yes. Of course, when you decided to keep this a secret, you never wondered how it might affect other children that might come along.”
“You are right. I didn't,” I admitted stiffly.
“Well, I'll keep silent. For now. But you might want to consider how you would feel if you were only now discovering who your parents were.” He cocked his head at me. “Think about it. What if it was suddenly revealed to you that you weren't Chivalry's son but Verity's? Or Regal's? Or Chade's? How much gratitude would you feel toward those who had known all along and ‘protected' you from the truth?”
The cold chasm of doubt yawned briefly before me, even as I rejected such wild ideas. Yes, Chade was capable of such deception, but my logic denied the possibility. Still, Dutiful had succeeded in his goal. He had stirred in me the anger I would have felt at being deceived for so long. “I'd probably hate them,” I admitted. I met his eyes squarely as I added, “And that is yet another reason why I don't wish Nettle to know.”
The Prince pursed his lips and then nodded briefly. It wasn't a promise to keep my secret, but more an acknowledgment of the complexities of revealing it. That was as much as he was going to give me. I hoped he'd leave the subject now, but with a slight scowl, he asked suddenly, “And why is Queen I-Doubt-It-Very-Much consorting with the Bingtown dragon? Is she in league with Tintaglia?”
