I see why. There must be no connection between Chade and a bodyguard who committed a triple murder, no link between the Queen and the man who killed the Old Blood delegates, no bond between the Prince and the assassin who had done his bidding. I saw. I had always seen. Don’t worry about me. The thought was cold.

I could tell Dutiful was trying to control his fear, but it stained his Skilling with dread. His worries whispered past his guard: what if Chade couldn’t think of a tale, what if I died of a septic wound, sweet Eda, he killed them all, men and beast, who is Tom Badgerlock, really, who was he, to kill like that. To shut off his fears I closed my walls to him. I was too weary to Skill anyway, and he’d told me all I needed to know just now. I felt myself separating, not just from Dutiful, but from all of them. I sealed myself up inside my own skin. I was Tom Badgerlock, a servant at Buckkeep, in jail, guilty of murdering three people and killing a fine horse. That was all I was.

The guard came to the window, warned my fellow prisoner back from the door, and then ventured inside with a bucket and a dipper. He set it down by my pallet. I looked at his boots through my lowered eyelashes. ‘He doesn’t look like he’s awake.’

‘Well, he was for a minute there. Didn’t say much, only “water”.’

‘If he wakes up again, you call out. Sergeant wants to talk to him.’

‘To be sure, I will. But hasn’t my wife come yet to pay my fine? You sent a boy to tell her, didn’t you?’

‘I told you we did. Yesterday. If she comes with the coin, you’ll be out.’

‘Any chance of some food here?’

‘You’ve been fed. This isn’t an inn.’

The guard went out, slamming the door behind him. I heard several bolts shot into place. My friend went to the door and watched the guard depart down the hallway. Then he came back to my side. ‘Think you can drink?’

I didn’t answer but I managed to wobble my head up off the straw. He held the brimming ladle near my mouth and I carefully sucked in a mouthful. He was patient, crouching there and holding the ladle steady as I drank. I had to go slow. I’d never realized that the muscles in my back could be involved in sucking water into my mouth and holding my head up. After a time, I let my head sag back down and he took the water away. I lay panting softly. Blackness hovered at the edges of my vision, then gradually receded. ‘Is it night?’

‘It’s always night in these places,’ he answered mournfully, and for a moment I glimpsed the real man, one who had spent far too much time in situations such as this. I wondered how long he’d been Chade’s, then doubted that he knew anything of who employed him this way. He pulled his stool closer and spoke quietly. ‘It’s afternoon. You’ve been in here two days now. When they first brought me in, the healer was working on you. I thought you were awake then. Don’t you remember it?’

‘No.’ Perhaps I could have, if I had tried, but I was suddenly queasily certain I didn’t want to recall that. Two days. My heart sank. If Chade were going to get me out of here swiftly, he would have done so by now. That two days had already passed could indicate that I should expect to be here for a time. A sudden jab of pain broke that chain of thought. I tried to focus my mind again. ‘No one has come to see me, or offered to pay my fine?’

He goggled at me. ‘Fine? Man, you murdered three people. There’s no fine for that.’ Then he abruptly gentled his voice. I was still absorbing that I could die on a gallows when he added, ‘There was a man who came after the healer got done with you. Some high lord, dressed all fancy and foreign. You were unconscious and they wouldn’t let him come in here. He demanded to know what had become of a purse you were carrying for him. The guards said they didn’t know anything about it. He got really angry then, and told them to think well what they were saying, that if his property was not restored to him intact, he would take extreme measures. He said you had a little red purse, embroidered with a bird, a, um, a pheasant on it. He wouldn’t say what was in it, only that it was very valuable and it was his and he wanted it back.’

‘Lord Golden?’ I asked softly.

‘Yes, that was his name.’

I had no idea what the Fool had been talking about. ‘I don’t remember the purse,’ I said. The pain was rising like an engulfing tide. I tried to hold onto my thoughts but could not. I pushed back my fear and discovered that it cloaked my anger. I didn’t deserve this. Why had they left me here? I could die here.

I could feel Dutiful fumbling at the edges of my mind. ‘I’m so tired,’ I said, meaning to Skill it but saying it instead. The pain from my wound was thudding down my leg, making my hip and knee ache. My right arm had no strength in it. I closed my eyes, centered myself and tried to reach out to the Prince. Instead, I plunged into blackness.

The next several days passed for me like images glimpsed by lightning during a thunderstorm. The few memories I have are starkly and strongly etched, yet they are so momentary as to be nearly meaningless. A man I suspect was a healer looked into a basin of my blood and proclaimed it too dark. My cellmate complained bitterly to someone at the door-grate that the stench was enough to choke a goat. I stared at an odd pattern of straw on the floor and listened to Hap scream obscenities at someone. I desperately wanted him to be quiet, lest they decide to hurt him, too. To be conscious was to be afraid. Sick, hurt and afraid. Alone. They’d left me alone here to die, so I would not embarrass them. Sleep brought Nighteyes’ old nightmares of a filthy cage and a keeper who beat him.

The Skill is a magic which demands physical strength, a clear mental focus, and a strong will to perform. I had none of those. Waves of Skill-sendings from Dutiful struck me and washed through me, leaving no clear residue of thought. I knew only that he tried to reach me, and I wished heartily that he would stop. I wanted silence and stillness so I could hide from my pain. Sometimes I was aware of Nettle, too. I doubt that she sensed she had reached me,

In between those glimpses of waking life and nightmare plagued sleep, I lived another life. The rounded hillsides were smooth and white with snow under a grey sky. There were no trees, no bushes, and not even an upthrust of stone. Only the snow, the whispering wind and the ever-twilight. The only break in the smoothness of the snow were Nighteyes’ tracks going on before me. I followed them doggedly. I would find him and I would join him. He could not be that far ahead. Once the wind turned to wolves howling in the distance, and I tried to hurry. That effort only woke me to the cold stink of the prison cell. I had moved and something hot and foul was trickling from my wound. I closed my eyes again and sought for the peace of the snowy hills.

It would be weeks before I pieced together the whole sequence of events. Lord Golden’s missing purse of raw gemstones was found in Laudwine’s cottage. Not that he was known as Laudwine in Buckkeep Town. Starling had been correct. To his neighbours, the one-armed man was known as Keppler. A witness attested that he had seen a man who might have been me pursue someone who might have been Padget into Keppler’s cottage. Obviously, I had been robbed of my master’s purse on my way to taking them to a gem-cutter for him. I had followed the thieves, they had fought me, and I’d killed them all, taking a grievous injury myself. Then I had valiantly killed the rabid horse before it could break free of the shed and injure people in the street. From being an accused triple-murderer, I was suddenly elevated to the status of loyal servant willing to risk his life for his master’s property. As no one came forward to contradict this fabrication, or even to claim the bodies of ‘Keppler’ and Padget, it became the acknowledged truth in Buckkeep Town. The goatherd neighbours soon spoke of how it seemed to them that Keppler had many visitors who came and went at odd hours.