“Let’s go home,” I offered.
She gave me a weary nod, and we left the tavern. The cold streets were lit only by what lamplight leaked from the windows. As we left the houses behind and began the long walk up the dark road to the keep, I asked her unwillingly, “What will you do? Will you leave Buckkeep?”
“And go where? Take this home to my family? I think not.” She drew a breath and sighed it out, steaming, in the cold night. “Yet I think you are right. I cannot stay here. What will they do next? What is worse than killing my horse?”
We both knew several answers to that. The rest of the way, we walked in silence. Yet she was neither angry nor taciturn. I could sense her eyes straining through the uncertain moonlight, and her head turned to every small sound. My vigilance matched hers. I broke the silence once, to ask, “Is it true, that Witted go to the Stuck Pig?”
She gave a shrug. “So it is said of that tavern. Folk say it of many dives. ‘Fit for the Witted.’ Surely you’ve heard that phrase before.”
I hadn’t, but I filed the information away. Perhaps in that slander lurked a germ of truth. Was there a tavern in Buckkeep Town where the Witted congregated? Who would know? What might I learn there?
Just past the gates of Buckkeep Castle, I saw her “apprentice” hastening to meet us. He wore a worried expression. At the sight of me, it changed to a snarl. Laurel sighed and took her hand from my arm. She walked unsteadily toward him and he all but swooped her up. Despite whatever her soft words were, he glared at me suspiciously before escorting her toward her chambers. Before I sought my own room for the night, I made a quick and quiet tour of the stables. Myblack greeted me with her usual warm show of indifference. I could scarcely blame the horse; I had not had much time for her lately. In truth, she was to me “just a horse.” I rode her when Lord Golden rode Malta, but other than that, I trusted her care to the stable hands. It suddenly seemed a callous way to treat her, but I knew that I had no time to give her more. I wondered what the Piebalds had intended. If our horses had been left in the far paddock, would they have been stolen? Or worse?
Wit sense straining, I strolled past every stall and scrutinized every drowsy stable boy and hand there. I saw no one that I recognized, and Laudwine was not lurking beneath the stairs or outside the door. Nonetheless, I did not feel at ease until I was in Chade’s upper chambers that night. He was not there, but I left him a full written account.