The old man had become more closemouthed of late, even with me. I had the uncomfortable feeling that Chade kept a secret from me. Secrets in themselves were nothing new. The old assassin was stuffed full of secrets. I simply could not be rid of the feeling that this secret somehow touched on me directly. I could not ask him outright, but I watched him. His worktable showed signs of heavy use when I was not about. Even stranger, all messes associated with that work had been cleaned meticulously away whenever he summoned me. This was bizarre. For years I had tidied after him and his “cooking.” Now for him to straighten up after himself seemed either a sharp rebuke to me or a concealment of whatever he had been doing.
Unable to resist, I watched him whenever I could. I learned nothing of his secret, but saw much that I had previously missed. Chade was getting old. The stiffness cold weather brought to his joints no longer yielded to the cozy evenings before his hearth. He was Shrewd’s elder half brother, bastard as I was, and despite his stiffness, he still seemed the younger of the two. But he held scrolls farther from his nose when he read now and avoided reaching for anything over his head. To watch these changes in him was as painful as to know he kept a secret from me.
Twenty-three days after Verity left, I came back from a dawn hunt with Nighteyes to find the Keep abuzz. The feeling was that of a stirred ant nest, but with none of their purposefulness. I went straight to Cook Sara and asked her what had happened. The kitchen of any keep is the heart of the rumor mill, second only to the guardroom. At Buckkeep, the kitchen gossip was usually more accurate.