“A pink sugar cake.” I watched him search his mind. I don’t think he even recalled that I had promised him one. I tried to remember what else he had asked for. A scarf like Rowdy’s. A red one. Raisins. My mind raced. It was like one of Chade’s old games for me. What else? A knife. And a peacock feather. And pennies for sweets, or the sweets themselves. I’d have to get them all before tomorrow.
“Yes. A pink sugar cake. Not a burned one. I know you like them.” I prayed there would be such a thing in the kitchens.
“Yes!” His little eyes lit with an expression I’d never seen on his face before. Joyful anticipation. “Yes. I’ll wait. You’ll bring it soon.”
“Well, not very soon. Not very fast. But today. You will wait for me there, and not go anywhere else?”
He had frowned when I said “not fast,” but he nodded grudgingly.
“That’s good, Thick. You’re a very good student. You go there now, and wait for me.”
As soon as the mantel door swung shut behind him, Dutiful opened his mouth to speak. I made a hand motion to silence him. I waited until I was sure that even Thick’s plodding pace would have carried him far out of hearing. Then I sank down onto a chair.
“Laudwine,” Dutiful said in a shocked whisper.
I nodded. I wasn’t ready to speak yet. Laudwine had called me “bastard.” A bastard or the Bastard? I wondered.
“What shall we do?”
I lifted my eyes and looked at my prince. His dark eyes were large in his paled face. Chade’s walls and spies had failed us. I suddenly felt that I alone stood between him and the Piebalds. Perhaps I always had. I was selfishly glad that Laurel was gone, out of Laudwine’s reach. At least I didn’t have to worry about her. “You must do nothing. Nothing!” I emphasized the word as he opened his mouth to protest it. “You must not do anything out of the ordinary, anything that would let anyone know that we suspect a plot. Today must be like any other day. But you must stay within the walls of Buckkeep.”
He was silent for a breath. Then, “I promised Civil Bresinga that I’d go out riding with him. Just he and I. We were going to slip off on our own, to hunt with his cat this afternoon. He came to my room, very late last night, to ask me.” He drew a breath and I watched him look at Civil’s invitation in a different light. His voice was lower as he said, “He seemed agitated. And he looked as if he had been weeping. When I asked him if he were feeling well, he assured me that the problem he had was one of his own making, and nothing a friend could help with. I assumed it had to do with a girl.”
I absorbed that information and then asked, “His cat is here?”
The Prince nodded shamefacedly. “He pays an old woman for the use of a shed, at the edge of the woods down near the river landing. She feeds the cat, but lets it come and go as it wishes. And Civil visits with her as often as he can.” He took a breath and admitted, “I’ve been there with him before. Once. Late at night.”
I bit back everything I wanted to say. It was no time for angry rebukes. Most of my anger was for myself. I’d failed there, too. “Well. You’re not going today. You’re developing a boil on your butt. That’s why you can’t go with him. Tell him why when you excuse yourself from it.”
“I don’t want . . . I won’t say that. That’s embarrassing. I’ll say I have a headache. Tom, I don’t think Civil is a traitor. I don’t think he’d betray me.”
“You will say that, and exactly that, because it is embarrassing. A headache sounds like a ploy. A boil on your ass doesn’t.” I took a breath, and hedged around what I suspected. “Maybe Civil isn’t a traitor to you. But it could be that someone else is using him to get you out and away from Buckkeep’s walls. Or it could be that someone has threatened him, saying, oh, saying that they’ll expose his mother as Witted if he doesn’t deliver you. So. Whether or not you trust Civil is not the question. Buy me time. Go make your excuses. And take care to walk gingerly, and avoid anything that you would avoid if you really had a boil.”
He scowled but he nodded. It gave me a small measure of relief. But then he added, “It’s not going to be easy to beg off. He said he needed to ask a special favor of me today.”
“What was it?”
“I’m not sure. Something to do with his cat, I think.”
“All the more reason to avoid being out with him.” I tried to think of all the possible ramifications. Another thought intruded. “Has Civil brought you any other animals? Has he tried to offer you a Wit-partner?”
