When we entered the guardroom, all talk died for a moment. My heart sank at the hostile glances we received, and sank still more when I saw Blade Havershawk at the end of the table nearest the hearth. I averted my face as I observed, ‘Our queen’s guest would like a slice off the joint, fellows, and a mug of ale.’ I made this heavy-handed reminder of the hospitality we owed in the hopes it would warm the room. It didn’t.

‘Rather we was sharing it with our prince,’ someone said portentously.

‘As would I,’ Web agreed heartily. ‘For I scarce got the chance to say two words to him before he rode off with my comrades. But as he dines with them tonight and listens to their tales, so I would break bread with you and hear the stories of Buckkeep Castle.’

‘Don’t know as we feed Witted at the table round here,’ someone observed snidely.

I took breath, knowing I must make some reply and find some way to get Web out of the room uninjured, but Blade spoke before me. ‘Once we did,’ he said slowly. ‘And he was one of our own and we loved him well, until we were stupid enough to let Regal take him from us.’

‘Oh, not that old tale!’ someone groaned, and another chimed in with, ‘Even after he killed our king, Blade Havershawk? Did you love him well then?’

‘FitzChivalry didn’t kill King Shrewd, you young knot-head. I was there and I know what happened. I don’t care what a drove of snake-tongued minstrels have sung since. Fitz didn’t kill the King he loved. He did kill those Skill-users, and I warrant it was as he claimed. They killed Shrewd.’

‘Aye. That’s how I always heard the tale, too,’ Web sounded enthused. As I watched in horror, he squeezed past men who pointedly did not step out of his way until he reached Blade’s side. ‘Is there room beside you on that bench, old warrior?’ he asked amiably. ‘For I would hear it told again, from the lips of a man who was there.’

There followed for me the longest evening I’d ever spent in the guardroom. Web was full of curiosity, and stopped Blade a hundred times in his telling of that fateful night to pose piercing questions that soon had the men around the table asking questions of their own. Had the torches truly burned blue and the Pocked Man been seen on that night when Regal claimed the throne was rightfully his? And the Queen had fled that night of blood, had she not? And when she returned to Buckkeep, had she shed no light on those events?

Full strange it was to hear that debate, and know that speculation still raged after all the years. The Queen had always asserted FitzChivalry had murdered in justified rage the true killers of the King, but no proof had ever been offered that was so. Still, the men agreed, their queen was no fool, nor had she reason to lie on that topic. As if one Mountain bred as she was would ever lie! And from there they clambered on to the hoary tale of how I had clawed my way out of the grave, leaving an empty coffin behind, The empty coffin at least had been shown, though no man could say if my body had been spirited away or if I had truly transformed into a wolf and escaped it. The gathered guards were sceptical of Web’s claim that no Witted one could transform in that way. From there, the talk went to his own beast, a gull of some sort. Again, he extended the invitation that any who wished might meet his bird on the morrow. A few shook their heads in superstitious fear, but others were plainly intrigued and said they would come.

‘Fer what’s a birdie agonna do t’you?’ one drunkenly demanded of a less courageous fellow. ‘Shittapon you, praps? You oughta be ‘customed to that, Reddy. That woman of yers does it oft enough.’

And that made for a brief and very cramped fistfight at that end of the table. When the combatants had been ejected by their fellows into the chilly night, Web declared that he’d had all the ale and stories he could hold for one evening, but he’d be pleased to join them again tomorrow, if he were welcome. To my dismay, Blade and several others heartily decided he was welcome, Witted or not, yes, and his bird, too.

‘Well, my Risk’s not one for coming within walls, nor for flight by dark. But I’ll see you get a chance to meet her tomorrow, if you’ve a mind.’

As we parted from them and crossed the castle to the east apartments, it gradually came to me that Web had probably done more to further the cause of the Witted tonight than all the talk of the earlier day had. Perhaps he truly was a gift to us.

I reported on Web to Chade, of course, and in turn he reported to the Queen. And thus at the next day’s meeting, in front of the Six Duchies representatives, she made certain that Web had the first opportunity to speak. I crouched behind the wall, my eye to the crack and listened to him. She introduced him to the delegates before he spoke, saying that he represented the oldest of the Old Blood lines, and that she desired that he be treated with all courtesy. Yet when she yielded her audience to him, he assured them all that he was only a humble fisherman who happened to be descended of parents far wiser than he would ever be. Then, with an abruptness that left me gasping, he introduced his proposals for ending the unjust persecution of the Witted. He spoke as much to the Witted as he did to our queen as he suggested that perhaps her best method to begin to bring the two groups together would be to admit some Witted into her own household.

As he spoke, he sounded more like a Jhaampe wise-man settling a dispute than a spokesman for the Old Blood. My queen’s eyes shone as she listened to him. I caught not just Chade, but at least two of the Six Duchies men, nodding thoughtfully at what he proposed. Step by step, he revealed the reasoning behind his suggestion. He attributed much of the unjust persecution to fear, and much of the fear to ignorance. The ignorance he blamed on the Witted’s need to remain hidden for their own safety. Where better to begin an end to ignorance than in the Queen’s own household? Let an Old Blood woman with birding-skills assist in the mews, and a Witted dog-boy come to help her Huntswoman. Let her have a Witted page or maid, for no other reason than to let folk discover that they were no different from unWitted pages and maids. Let other nobles see that these folk did no harm to her household or to others, but rather prospered them. The Queen would, of course, commit to their protection from persecution until others had been won firmly to the cause. The Old Blood thus placed would take oath to initiate no strife.

Then, with a smoothness which left me gasping, he offered his own services to the Queen. This he did as courteously and correctly as any court-trained noble’s son, so that I wondered uneasily if he had truly come of a fishing family. Down on one knee he sank before her, and begged to be allowed to remain at Buckkeep when the others departed. Let him live in the keep, and both learn and teach. Carefully keeping the secret of the Prince’s Wit when speaking before her Six Duchies councillors, he nonetheless offered himself as ‘a rough tutor, admittedly but one who would love to educate the Prince in how our folk live and in our customs, that he might know this group of his subjects more thoroughly’.

Chade objected. ‘But if you do not return to your folk as we promised, will not some say we kept you hostage against your will?’ I suspected my old mentor did not desire an Old Blood man counselling the Prince.

Web chuckled at his concern. ‘All in the room have witnessed that I offer myself. If after they leave me here, you choose to chop and burn me, well, then let it be said that it was due to my own wooden-headedness, that I trusted wrong. But I do not think that will be so. Will it, my lady?’