‘Shut up!’ Laudwine’s voice was hot and heavy, ringing like hammers on red iron. ‘I care how they die! Their deaths belong to me! And my blood vengeance is not for sale. “Our” cause will wait until my cause has been satisfied. I told you what I wanted, Padget. I want to know when they rise and where they eat, when they ride and where they sleep. I want to know when and where I can kill them. That’s what I want to know. Can your half-wit give us that?’ Each word fell like a sledge blow, and they shaped Padget’s anger.

‘Yes. He can. And he’s already given us a lot more than that, if you’d only listen to me. This Lord Chade and what the dummy knows of him, that is important knowledge. But if all you want is revenge, with no thought of what more we can have, well you can have that. If you ask him right. Tell him, dummy. Tell him about the stinking traitor dog who chopped his arm off, and what the old man calls him. Then maybe he’ll realize I’ve done better for the Piebalds while he was healing then he ever did for them when he had two hands.’

And then Thick recalled the sound of a hand striking meaty flesh, and Laudwine’s voice following it, a trifle out of breath at the effort. ‘Remember your place, Padget. Or lose it.’

Thick made a sharp movement, rocking forward, his hands clasped over his head. He made small animal sounds to himself as he rocked briefly, agitated at recalling the witnessed violence. ‘Na, na, na,’ he begged, and for a time I let him be. I held scissors and comb aloft from him and waited for him to calm himself. There was cruelty in what I did, forcing the stubby little man to relive his fear. I had no taste for it, and yet do it I must. So I waited until he quieted and as subtly as I knew, used the Skill to soothe him and take him back again to that room. ‘It’s all right to think about it,’ I suggested. ‘You’re safe now, here. They can’t find you here or hurt you here. You’re safe,’ Through our Skill-link, I felt him scowl. He resisted. I pushed gently, and suddenly his memories flowed again.

Thick took a long breath and sighed it out. I resumed my grooming of him. I think the stroking of the comb and the tickling of the falling hair had half-stupefied him. I doubted that anyone touched him much, and seldom with gentleness. His muscles were loosening like a stroked puppy. He made an affirmative noise.

‘So. After all that. What did you tell him about?’ I kept my voice very soft.

‘Oh, nothing. Only about the old man. How to stack his wood. Not to shake the wine bottles when I bring them to him. To take away the dirty dishes and old food every morning. Not to move his papers, even though he lets you move his papers. That he says I have to do what you say, even though I don’t want to come to you. About you want to talk to me. And they said, “Don’t go! Say you forgot!” About how you talk at night sometimes.’

‘Who talks? Chade and I?’ I drew the comb slowly through his hair and trimmed the hair below it. The damp black points fell to the floor as my heart rose hammering in my throat at his next words.

‘Yeah. That you talk about Skill and Old Blood. That he calls you a different name. Fizshovly. That you don’t like me to know about the girl who cries.’

The sharp fear from his mangled naming of me was swallowed in his mention of the girl. ‘What girl?’ I asked dully, longing for him to say only,’that girl’ or ‘I don’t know.’ My guts were water inside me.

‘She cries and cries,’ Thick said softly.

‘Who does?’ I asked again with a sinking heart.

‘That girl. That Nettle that whimpers at night and won’t stop.’ He cocked his head, making my scissors take too deep a cut. ‘She cries right now.’

That stretched the bowstring of my fear tighter. ‘Does she?’ I asked. Gingerly, I lowered my walls. I opened myself to Nettle, but felt nothing. ‘No. She’s quiet now,’ I observed.

‘She cries to herself. In a different place.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘In the empty place.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I repeated with a growing sense of alarm.

He frowned intently for a moment, then suddenly his face eased. ‘Never mind. She stopped.’

‘Just like that?’ I asked incredulously. I set my scissors and comb down.

‘Yeah.’ His finger casually investigated his nose. ‘I’m going now,’ he announced suddenly. He stood up and glanced around the room. ‘Don’t eat my cake!’ he warned me abruptly.

‘I won’t. Are you sure you won’t stay and eat it?’ A kind of shock had left me immune to all feeling. Had Laudwine untangled my true name from Thick’s maiming of it? He definitely knew my daughter’s name. Danger yawned below us, and I spoke to a half-wit about sugar cakes.

‘If I eat it, then it would be gone.’

‘There might be another.’

‘There might not,’ he pointed out with incontrovertible logic,

‘I’ve an idea.’ I went to one of Chade’s less cluttered shelves and began to move things. ‘We’ll make a spot for you, here. And we’ll put Thick’s things on this shelf. So they’ll always be where you can find them.’

For some reason, this seemed a difficult idea for him to master. I explained it several ways, and then had him put both the sugar cake and the feather on the shelf. Hesitantly, he picked up the bowl that had held the raisins and nuts. Only a handful of the sugared nuts remained. ‘You can put that there, too,’ I told him. ‘And I will try to put more nice things to eat in it.’ So he did, and then stood and admired it for a time.

‘Going to go now’ he abruptly announced again.

‘Thick’ I began carefully. ‘Tomorrow, on washing day. Will a man come to take you to One-arm?’

‘Don’t talk about him.’ He was adamant. Adamant and scared. I could hear the roiling of his Skill-music.

‘Do you want to go, Thick? To see the one-arm man?’

‘I have to go.’

‘No, you don’t. Not any more. Do you want to go?’

This seemed to require a lot of thought. Then, ‘I want the pennies. To buy the sweet.’

‘If you told me where One-arm is, I could go for you. And get the pennies for you, and bring you the sweet.’

He scowled and shook his head. ‘I get my pennies for myself. I like to buy it myself.’ He was suspicious again, edging away from me.

I took a breath and counselled myself to patience. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, for our lessons, then.’

He nodded sombrely and left Chade’s chambers. I went over and picked up his wet trousers from the floor. I hung them on the chair back again. I doubted that anyone would wonder about the robe Thick now wore. It was a style long out-dated for Buckkeep Castle, and servants, especially the lowest level of servants, were often dressed in their master’s cast-offs. I sighed and sat down in the chair and stared into the fire. What was I going to do?

I wished I could make Thick tell me where Laudwine was, or at least who took him to the Piebald leader. I couldn’t force the information out of him without frightening him and shattering the fragile trust we’d built today. I could shadow Thick into Buckkeep Town tomorrow, but I was reluctant to do so; I’d be putting the little man into danger if Laudwine or anyone else recognized me following him. If I followed him and he met with Laudwine, what would I do then? Charge in, betraying myself to Laudwine or allow Laudwine to question the little man again, and gain still more knowledge of us? I considered watching Thick until the Buckkeep man came to take him down to town, then capture the go-between. I suspected I could wring Laudwine’s location out of him, but when he didn’t keep the rendezvous, Laudwine would be alerted. I didn’t want to do anything that might startle that bird into flying before my nets were ready. My last available tactic seemed the simplest: find a ploy to keep Thick from going down to Buckkeep tomorrow. Distract him with toys, or simply busy him where no one could take him away without being noticed. Yet that would not put me one step closer to having a line on Laudwine. And I desperately wanted to have that man in my power.