Chade sighed. “I think he uses them as I would use carrier pigeons. He has sent them out to the towers, and he uses them to convey warnings to his soldiers, and to receive from them sightings of ships. But the task of defending the coast he trusts to no one else. Others, he tells me, would be too inexperienced; they might betray themselves to those they Skilled. I do not understand. But I know he cannot continue much longer. I pray for the end of summer, for winter storms to blow the Red-Ships home. Would there was someone to spell him at this work. I fear it will consume him.”
I took that as a rebuke for my failure and subsided into a sulky silence. I drifted around his chambers, finding them both familiar and strange after my months of absence. The apparatus for his herbal work was, as always, cluttered about. Slink was very much in evidence, with his smelly bits of bones in corners. As always, there was an assortment of tablets and scrolls by various chairs. This crop seemed to deal mostly with Elderlings. I wandered about, intrigued by the colored illustrations. One tablet, older and more elaborate than the rest, depicted an Elderling as a sort of gilded bird with a manlike head crowned with quillish hair. I began to piece out the words. It was in Piche, an ancient native tongue of Chalced, the southernmost Duchy. Many of the painted symbols had faded or flaked away from the old wood, and I had never been fluent in Piche. Chade came to stand at my elbow.
“You know,” he said gently, “it was not easy for me, but I kept my word. Galen demanded complete control of his students. He expressly stipulated that no one might contact you or interfere in any way with your discipline and instruction. And, as I told you, in the Queen’s Garden, I am blind and without influence.”
“I knew that,” I muttered.
“Yet I did not disagree with Burrich’s actions. Only my word to my king kept me from contacting you.” He paused cautiously. “It has been a difficult time, I know. I wish I could have helped you. And you should not feel too badly that you …”
“Failed.” I filled in the word while he searched for a gentler one. I sighed, and suddenly admitted my pain. “Let’s leave it, Chade. I can’t change it.”
“I know.” Then, even more carefully: “But perhaps we can use what you learned of the Skill. If you can help me understand it, perhaps I can devise better ways to spare Verity. For so many years the knowledge has been kept too secret … there is scarcely a mention of it in the old scrolls, save to say that such and such a battle was turned by the King’s Skill upon his soldiers, or such and such an enemy was confounded by the King’s Skill. Yet there is nothing of how it is done, or-”
Despair closed its grip on me again. “Leave it. It is not for bastards to know. I think I’ve proved that.”
A silence fell between us. At last Chade sighed heavily. “Well. That’s as may be. I’ve been looking into Forging as well, over these last few months. But all I’ve learned of it is what it is not, and what does not work to change it. The only cure I’ve found for it is the oldest one known to work on anything.”
I rolled and fastened the scroll I had been looking at, feeling I knew what was coming. I was not mistaken.
“The King has charged me with an assignment for you.”
That summer, over three months, I killed seventeen times for the King. Had I not already killed, out of my own volition and defense, it might have been harder.
The assignments might have seemed simple. Me, a horse, and panniers of poisoned bread. I rode roads where travelers had reported being attacked, and when the Forged ones attacked me, I fled, leaving a trail of spilled loaves. Perhaps if I had been an ordinary man-at-arms, I would have been less frightened. But all my life I had been accustomed to relying on my Wit to let me know when others were about. To me, it was tantamount to having to work without using my eyes. And I swiftly found out that not all Forged ones had been cobblers and weavers. The second little clan of them that I poisoned had several soldiers among them. I was fortunate that most of them were squabbling over loaves when I was dragged from my horse. I took a deep cut from a knife, and to this day I bear the scar on my left shoulder. They were strong and competent, and seemed to fight as a unit, perhaps because that was how they had been drilled, back when they were fully human. I would have died, except that I cried out to them that it was foolish to struggle with me while the others were eating all the bread. They dropped me, I struggled to my horse, and escaped.