‘A feather?’

It took her a long time to decide to answer. ‘Someone I care about is bonded to a goose.’

For an instant, my heart was still. Then it started again with a jolt. ‘So they show you that they can reach inside the walls of the keep,’ I said quietly. She nodded as the boy replenished our mugs from a heavy pitcher. I gave him his coin and he turned away. Laurel picked her mug up immediately, and a small of ale slopped over the brim and onto her hand. She was slightly drunk.

‘Did they ask anything of you? Or simply show that they could reach you where you live?’

‘They asked quite clearly.’

‘How?’

‘A little scroll, left amongst the grooming gear for my horse. All in the stables know that I insisted on caring for Whitecap myself. It simply said that if I knew what was wise, I should leave your black horse and Lord Golden’s Malta in the far paddock at night.’

Cold seemed to spread out from my belly and fill the rest of my body, ‘You didn’t do it?’

‘Of course not. Instead, I assigned a groom that I trust to watch over them both last night.’

‘So this is recent?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Her head wobbled slightly as she nodded.

‘And you told the Queen?’

‘No. I told no one.’

‘But why not? How can we protect you if we don’t know you are threatened.’

She was silent for a time. Then she said, ‘I didn’t want them to think that they could use me against the Queen. I wanted it to be that if they pulled me down, they pulled only me down. I should protect myself, Tom, not hide behind the Queen’s skirts and let my fears spread to her.’

Brave. And foolish. I kept the thoughts to myself. ‘And what happened?’

‘To them? Nothing. But Whitecap was dead in her stall the next morning.’

For a moment, I couldn’t speak. Whitecap was Laurel’s horse, a willing and responsive creature that had been her pride. When I kept silent, she glared at me. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’ She lowered her voice to an ugly, taunting whisper. ‘”She’s not Witted. the horse was no more to her than a horse, just a thing she rode.” But that’s not true. I raised Whitecap from a foal, and she was my friend as well as my beast. We didn’t have to share a mind to share a heart.’

‘I didn’t think anything of the kind,’ I said very quietly. ‘I’ve numbered many animals as my friends, without sharing the special bond of the Wit with them. Anyone who had seen you with Whitecap knew that the horse worshipped you.’ I shook my head. ‘I feel sick that you protected our horses, and paid for it with your own.’

I don’t know if she even heard me. She was staring at the scarred tabletop as she spoke. ‘She… she died slowly. They gave her something, somehow, that lodged in her throat and choked her as it swelled. I think… no, I know. It was their ultimate mockery, that I came from an Old Blood family but did not have the magic in me. If I had, I would have known that she was in trouble. I would have come to her and saved her. When I found her, she was down, her muzzle and chest all soaked in saliva and blood… She died slowly, Tom, and I wasn’t even there to ease it for her or say goodbye.’

Shock that a Witted person could do so cruel a thing froze me like an icy wave. It was evil past my imagining. I felt tainted that people who shared my magic could stoop to such wickedness. It gave substance to all the evil things said of the Witted.

She took a sudden gasping breath and turned to me blindly. Her face was panicky with a pain she did not want to admit. I lifted my arm and she put her face against my chest as I folded her in my embrace. ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered by her ear. ‘I’m so sorry, Laurel.’ She didn’t weep, but only took long, shuddering breaths as I held her. She was past weeping, and nearly past fear. I thought to myself that if the Piebalds succeeded in pushing her to fury, they might face a stronger foe than they had intended to create. If they didn’t kill her first. I shifted in my chair. Habit had made me place my back to the wall. Now I deliberately sought a full view of the tavern and any who might have followed her here.

It was then that I saw Jinna. She had probably come to the tavern to look for me after speaking with her niece. She stood by the door she had just entered. For a fraction of an instant, our gazes met. She stared, stricken, at the woman I embraced. My eyes pleaded with her, hut her face went cold. Then her gaze skated past me as if she had neither seen nor recognized me. She turned and departed, her stiff back speaking volumes to me.

Frustration squeezed my heart. I was doing nothing wrong, and yet Jinna’s posture as she left the tavern told me how affronted she was. Nor could I leave Laurel sitting alone and inebriated to hurry after Jinna and explain to her, even if I had felt inclined to do so. So I sat stewing in my discomfort while Laurel took several more deep breaths and recovered herself. She sat up abruptly, almost pushing me away. I released her from my embrace. She rubbed her eyes and then picked up her mug and drained it off. I had scarcely touched mine.

‘This is stupid of me,’ Laurel suddenly announced. ‘I came here because I’d heard a rumour that Witted ones congregated here. I came hoping someone would approach me so I could kill him. I’d probably just be killed. I don’t know how to fight that way.’

I saw a disturbing thing in her eyes then. They had gone calculating and cold as she considered just how she did know how to fight. ‘You should leave the fighting to those who—‘

‘They should have left my horse alone,’ she broke in blackly, and I knew she would not hear anything else I said on that topic.

‘Let’s go home,’ I offered.

She gave me a weary nod and we left the tavern. The cold streets were lit only by what lamplight leaked from the windows. As we left the houses behind and began the long walk up the dark road to the keep, I asked her unwillingly, ‘What will you do? Will you leave Buckkeep?’

‘And go where? Take this home to my family? I think not.’ She drew a breath and sighed it out, steaming, in the cold night. ‘Yet I think you are right. I cannot stay here. What will they do next? What is worse than killing my horse?’

We both knew several answers to that. The rest of the way, we walked in silence. Yet she was neither angry nor taciturn. I could sense her eyes straining through the uncertain moonlight, and her head turned to every small sound. My vigilance matched hers. I broke the silence once, to ask, ‘Is it true, that Witted go to the Stuck Pig?’

She gave a shrug. ‘So it is said of that tavern. Folk say it of many dives. “Fit for the Witted.” Surely you’ve heard that phrase before.’

I hadn’t, but I filed the information away. Perhaps in that slander lurked a germ of truth. Was there a haven in Buckkeep Town where the Witted congregated? Who would know? What might I learn there?

Just past the gates of Buckkeep Castle, I saw her ‘apprentice’ hastening to meet us. He wore a worried expression. At the sight of me, it changed to a snarl. Laurel sighed and took her hand from my arm. She walked unsteadily towards him and he all but swooped her up. Despite whatever her soft words were, he glared at me suspiciously before escorting her to her chambers. Before I sought my own room for the night, I made a quick and quiet tour of the stables. Myblack greeted me with her usual warm show of indifference. I could scarcely blame the horse; I had not had much time for her lately. In truth, she was to me ‘just a horse’. I rode her when Lord Golden rode Malta, but other than that, I trusted her care to the stablehands. It suddenly seemed a callous way to treat her, but I knew that I had no time to give her more. I wondered what the Piebalds had intended. If our horses had been left in the far paddock, would they have been stolen? Or worse?

Wit-sense straining, I strolled past every stall and scrutinized every drowsy stablehand there. I saw no one whom I recognized, and Laudwine was not lurking beneath the stairs or outside the door. Nonetheless, I did not feel at ease until I was in Chade’s upper chambers that night. He was not there, but I left him a full written account.