‘Of a certainty, not!’ Queen Kettricken declared. ‘And whatever else may come of these meetings, I will count it a benefit that I have added such a clear-minded fellow to my household men.’
His careful pondering of the situation and his suggestions had taken all the morning. When it was time for the noon meal, Web declared that he would eat with his new friends in the guardroom and then introduce them to his bird. Before Chade could suggest that would not be wise, the Queen announced that indeed she and Chade and her Six Duchies councillors would join him there, for she too wished see his Risk.
How I longed to be present for that, not just to witness it, but also to see the reaction of the guards when they found themselves honoured with the Queen at their table. It could not damage Web’s standing with him that he had brought about such a thing. And I did not doubt that more would come to meet his bird if the Queen herself did not fear his Wit-beast.
But I was trapped in my watching-place, being Chade’s eyes when he was not in the room. I saw the Old Bloods unmask after their food had been brought in. As before, Boyo and Silvereye spoke loudly of injustices done and the need for retribution, but theirs were not the only voices raised. Some spoke of Web’s performance with amazement. I heard at least one woman say to another that, having met Kettricken, she would not mind entrusting a son to her to be her page, for she had heard that all children in the Keep were given a chance to learn both numbers and writing. And a young man, clearly a minstrel from his voice, wondered aloud what it would be like to sing the Old Blood songs at the Queen’s own hearth, and if such a thing would not truly be the best way to teach the unWitted that his people were neither fearsome nor monstrous.
A crack had been opened. Tomorrow’s possibilities were gaining strength, growing in the light of Web’s optimism. I wondered if they could grow enough to cast their shadows over the weeds of yesterday’s wrongs.
The afternoon, however, was a disappointment, long and tedious. When the Queen and her councillors returned with Web, Boyo rose to claim his turn to speak. Forewarned about him by Chade and myself, Kettricken listened calmly as he detailed first all the generalized wrongs the Farseers had ever done to the Old Bloods, and then the specifics of his case. There, at least, my queen was able to muffle him. Firmly but courteously, she told him that now was not the time for her to settle personal wrongs. If lands and wealth had been unjustly taken from his family, then that was a matter to be settled before her on a judging day rather than at this time. Chade would help him to make an appropriate appointment, and would also tell him what documentation he would need. Most of it would likely relate to the need for him to define a clear line of succession from his dispossessed ancestor to himself, including a minstrel that could attest to his being of the line of the eldest child of an eldest child for the intervening generations.
Very neatly she made it seem that he was putting his own interests ahead of the others at the meeting, as indeed he was. She did not refuse to find justice for him, but relegated his seeking of it to the path which any Six Duchies citizen would have to follow. She reminded them all that this convocation was intended to allow all to join their thoughts as to how unjust persecution of the Old Bloods might be ended.
Silvereye stirred a muck more difficult to settle. She spoke of those who had murdered her family. As she spoke, her voice rose in anger and hatred and pain, and I saw those emotions echoed in many faces around her. Web looked sick and sorrowful, and my Queen’s face grew very still. Chade’s features were graven in stone. But anger most often begets anger, and the faces of Queen Kettricken’s Six Duchies representatives became set in surly expressions. The vengeance and punishment she demanded were far too steep for anyone to consider granting.
It was as if she set a jump that no negotiator could clear and then declared that she could be satisfied with nothing less. This, she declared, was the only way to end persecution of the Old Blood. Make it a crime so hideously punished that none would consider committing it again. Further, search out and eliminate all who had ever committed or tolerated such treatment of Old Bloods. Out of her personal sorrow Silvereye expanded her grievance to include all Witted executed in the last century. She demanded both punishment and restitution, with the punishment to mirror exactly what had befallen their victims. Kettricken had the wisdom to allow her to keep speaking until she had run out of words. Surely I could not have been the only one to hear the edge of madness in her demands. And yet if grief powered that madness, then who was I to criticize it?
By the time Silvereye had finished, there were many other Old Bloods anxious to take up the tally of all that had been lost to the persecution. Names were called out of folk who deserved death, and the anger in the room swirled like a gathering storm. But my queen held up a hand and asked them quietly, ‘Then where should it end?’
‘When every last one has been punished!’ Silvereye declared passionately. ‘Let the gallows sway with their weight, and the smoke of their burning blacken the skies all summer. Let me hear their families wail aloud in a sorrow like the sorrows that we have been forced to conceal, lest others know us for Old Bloods. Let the punishment be apportioned exactly. For every father killed, let a father die. For every mother, a mother. For every child, a child.’
The Queen sighed. ‘And when those who have suffered your vengeance come seeking from me a vengeance of their own? How then could I turn them aside? You propose that if a man has killed the children of an Old Blood family, then the children of his family should die alongside him. But what of the cousins of those children and the grandparents? Should not they then come before me and ask of me what you now demand? Would not they be just as right in saying that innocents had died in mad persecution? No. This cannot be. You ask what I cannot give you, and well you know it.’
I saw hatred and fury leap into Silvereye’s gaze. ‘So I knew it would be,’ she declared bitterly. ‘Empty promises are what you offer us.’
‘I offer you the same justice that anyone in the Six Duchies may seek, the Queen said wearily. ‘Come before me on a judging day, with witnesses to the wrongs done to you. If murder has been done, then the murderer will be punished. But not his children. There is no justice in what you seek, only revenge.’
‘You offer us nothing!’ Silvereye declared. ‘Well you know that we do not dare come before you seeking justice. Too many would stand between us and Buckkeep Castle, anxious to silence us with death.’ She paused. Queen Kettricken remained still in the face of her wrath, and Silvereye made the mistake of pressing what she thought was her advantage. ‘Or has that always been your intention, Farseer Queen?’ Silvereye swept the gathering with a righteous glance. ‘Does she lure us out into the open with empty promises so that she can do away with all of us?’
A brief silence followed her words. Then Kettricken spoke quietly. ‘You throw words that you do not yourself believe. Your intention is to wound. Yet, if your accusations had any basis in fact, I would not be wounded by them, but would rather feel justified in hating Old Bloods.’
‘Then you admit that you hate Old Bloods?’ Silvereye demanded with satisfaction.
‘That is not what I said!’ Kettricken responded both in horror and anger.
Tempers were rising, and not just among the Old Bloods. Kettricken’s Six Duchies councillors looked both insulted and uneasy at the brewing storm in the room. I do not know what would have become of the negotiation if fate had not intervened in the person of Sally, the cow-woman. She stood abruptly, saying, ‘I must go to the stables. It is Wisenose’s time, and she wishes me to be there.’