“So Chivalry might yet become King?” The question sent a queer thrill to me. Instantly I was imagining his triumphant return to Buckkeep, our eventual meeting, and . . . What then?
Chade seemed to be reading my face. “No, boy. Not likely at all. Even if the folk all wanted him to, I doubt that he’d go against what he set upon himself, or against the King’s wishes. But it would cause mumblings and grumblings, and those could lead to riots and skirmishes, oh, and a generally bad climate for a bastard to be running around free in. You’d have to be settled one way or another. Either as a corpse, or as the King’s tool.”
“The King’s tool. I see.” An oppression settled over me. My brief glimpse of blue skies arching over yellow roads and me traveling down them astride Sooty suddenly vanished. I thought of the hounds in their kennels instead, or of the hawk, hooded and strapped, that rode on the King’s wrist and was loosed only to do the King’s will.
“It doesn’t have to be that bad,” Chade said quietly. “Most prisons are of our own making. A man makes his own freedom, too.”
“I’m never going to get to go anywhere, am I?” Despite the newness of the idea, traveling suddenly seemed immensely important to me.
“I wouldn’t say that.” Chade was rummaging about for something to use as a stopper on the dish full of seeds. He finally contented himself with putting a saucer atop it. “You’ll get to go many places. Quietly, and when the family interests require you to go there. But that’s not all that different for any prince of the blood. Do you think Chivalry got to choose where he would go to work his diplomacy? Do you think Verity likes being sent off to view towns raided by Outislanders, to hear the complaints of folks who insist that if only they’d been better fortified or better manned, none of this would have happened? A true prince has very little freedom when it comes to where he will go or how he will spend his time. Chivalry has probably more of both now than he ever had before.”
“Except that he can’t come back to Buckkeep?” The flash of insight made me freeze, my hands full of shards.
“Except he can’t come back to Buckkeep. It doesn’t do to stir folks up with visits from a former king-in-waiting. Better he faded quietly away.”
I tossed the shards into the hearth. “At least he gets to go somewhere,” I muttered. “I can’t even go to town. . . .”
“And it’s that important to you? To go down to a grubby, greasy little port like Buckkeep Town?”
“There are other people there. . . .” I hesitated. Not even Chade knew of my town friends. I plunged ahead. “They call me Newboy. And they don’t think “the bastard’ every time they look at me.” I had never put it into words before, but suddenly the attraction of town was quite clear to me.
“Ah,” said Chade, and his shoulders moved as if he sighed, but he was silent. And a moment later he was telling me how one could sicken a man just by feeding him rhubarb and spinach at the same sitting, sicken him even to death if the portions were sufficient, and never set a bit of poison on the table at all. I asked him how to keep others at the same table from also being sickened, and our discussion wandered from there. Only later did it seem to me that his words regarding Chivalry had been almost prophetic.
It was two days later when I was surprised to be told that Fedwren had requested my services for a day or so. I was surprised even more when he gave me a list of supplies he required from town, and enough silver to buy them, with two extra coppers for myself. I held my breath, expecting that Burrich or one of my other masters would forbid it, but instead I was told to hurry on my way. I went out of the gates with a basket on my arm and my brain giddy with sudden freedom. I counted up the months since I had last been able to slip away from Buckkeep and was shocked to find it had been a year or better. I immediately planned to renew my old familiarity with the town. No one had told me when I had to return, and I was confident I could snatch an hour or two to myself and no one the wiser.
The variety of the items on Fedwren’s list took me all over the town. I had no idea what use a scribe had for dried seamaid’s hair, or for a peck of forester’s nuts. Perhaps he used them to make his colored inks, I decided, and when I could not find them in the regular shops, I took myself down to the harbor bazaar, where anyone with a blanket and something to sell could declare himself a merchant. The seaweed I found swiftly enough there, and learned it was a common ingredient in chowder. The nuts took longer, for those were something that would have come from inland rather than from the sea, and there were fewer traders who dealt in such things.