A shiver ran over me, standing up every hair on my body. I set the teacup aside and came slowly to my feet. “Chivalry's sword?”
“Yes.” I had not thought his grin could grow wider, but it did.
I stared at it. Yes. Even without his words, I would have known it. This blade was the elder brother to the one Verity had carried. It resembled the other sword, but this one was slightly more ornate and longer, designed for a man taller than Verity. There was a stylized buck on the cross-guard. It was, I suddenly knew, a sword made for a prince who would be king. I knew I could never bear it. I longed for it all the same. “Where did you get it?” I asked breathlessly.
“Patience had it, of course. She'd left it at Withywoods when she came to Buckkeep. Then, when she was ‘sorting the clutter,' as she put it, after the end of the Red Ship War, when she was moving her household to Tradeford, she came across it. In a closet. ‘Just as well I never took it to Buckkeep,' she told me when she gave it to me. ‘Regal would have taken it and sold it. Or kept it for himself.' ”
It was so like Patience that I had to smile. A king's sword, amongst her “clutter.”
“Take it!” Dutiful commanded me eagerly, and I had to. I had to feel, at least once, how my hand would fit where my father's had rested. As I took it from him, it felt near weightless. It perched in my hand like a bird. The moment I relieved Dutiful of it, he stepped to the table and took up Verity's sword. I heard his exclamation of satisfaction, and grinned as he gripped it two-handed and swept it through the air. These blades were proper swords, as fit to shear through flesh as skewer some vulnerable point. For a time, we were both like boys as we moved the blades in a variety of ways, from the small shifts of the hand and wrist that would block and divert an opponent's thrust to a reckless overhand slash by Dutiful that stopped just short of the scrolls on the tabletop.
Chivalry's blade fit me. There was satisfaction in that, even as I realized how woefully unworthy my skills were to a weapon such as this. I was little more than competent with a sword. I wondered how the abdicated king would have felt to know that his only son was defter with an axe than with a sword, and more inclined to use poison than either of those. It was a disheartening line of thought, but before I could give in to that blight, Dutiful was at my side, comparing his blade to mine.
“Chivalry's is longer!”