“Burrich will have my hide off if I leave my animal’s care for someone else.”
“No, he won’t. He wouldn’t leave an animal in the care of someone who can barely stand,” Burrich observed from outside the stall. “Leave Sooty to Hands, boy. He knows his job. Hands, take charge of things here for a bit. When you’ve done with Sooty, check on that one spotted mare at the south end of the stables. I don’t know who owns her or where she came from, but she looks sick. If you find it so, have the boys move her away from the other horses and scrub out the stall with vinegar. I’ll be back in a bit after I see FitzChivalry to his quarters. I’ll bring you food, and we’ll eat in my room. Oh. Tell a boy to start us a fire there. Probably cold as a cave up there.”
Hands nodded, already busy with my horse. Sooty’s nose was in her oats. Burrich took my arm. “Come along,” he said, just as he spoke to a horse. I found myself unwillingly leaning on him as we walked the long row of stalls. At the door he picked up a lantern. The night seemed colder and darker after the warmth of the stables. As we walked up the frozen path to the kitchens, the snow began falling again. My mind went swirling and drifting with the flakes. I wasn’t sure where my feet were. “It’s all changed, forever, now,” I observed to the night. My words whirled away with the snowflakes.
“What has?” Burrich asked cautiously. His tone bespoke his worry that I might be getting feverish again.
“Everything. How you treat me. When you aren’t thinking about it. How Hands treats me. Two years ago he and I were friends. Just two boys working in the stables. He’d never have offered to brush down my horse for me. But tonight, he treated me like some sickly weakling … not even someone he can insult about it. Like I should just expect him to do things like that for me. The men at the gate didn’t even know me. Even you, Burrich. Six months or a year ago, if I took sick, you’d have dragged me up to your loft and dosed me like a hound. And if I’d complained, you’d have had no tolerance for it. Now you walk me up to the kitchen doors and-”