“Stop whining,” Burrich said gruffly. “Stop complaining and stop pitying yourself. If Hands looked like you do, you’d do the same for him.” Almost unwillingly he added, “Things change, because time. passes. Hands hasn’t stopped being your friend. But you are not the same boy who left Buckkeep at harvest time. That Fitz was an errand boy for Verity, and had been my stable boy, but wasn’t much more than that. A royal bastard, yes, but that seemed of small importance to any save me. But up at Jhaampe in the Mountain Kingdom, you showed yourself more than that. It doesn’t matter if your face is pale, or if you can barely walk after a day in the saddle. You move as Chivalry’s son should. That is what shows in your bearing, and what those guards responded to. And Hands.” He took a breath and paused to shoulder the heavy kitchen door open. “And I, Eda help us all,” he added in a mutter.
But then, as if to belie his own words, he steered me into the watch room off the kitchen and-unceremoniously dumped me at one of the long benches beside the scarred wooden table. The watch room smelled incredibly good. Here was where any soldier, no matter how muddy or snowy or drunk, could come and find comfort. Cook always kept a kettle of stew simmering over the fire here, and bread and cheese waited on the table, as well as a slab of yellow summer butter from the deep larder. Burrich served us up bowls of hot stew thick with barley and mugs of cold ale to go with the bread and butter and cheese.
For a moment I just looked at it, too weary to lift a spoon. But the smell tempted me to one mouthful and that was all it took. Midway through, I paused to shoulder out of my quilted smock and break off another slab of bread. I looked up from my second bowl of stew to find Burrich watching me with amusement. “Better?” he asked.