She never thought to ask me if I was going.
As I climbed the stairs to my room I tried to visualize Buckkeep as it would be. The High Table would be empty at every meal, the food served would be the simple campaign food the military cooks were most familiar with. For as long as the food supplies lasted. I expected we would eat a lot of wild game and seaweed before spring. I worried more for Patience and Lacey than I did for myself. Rough quarters and coarse food did not bother me, but it was not what they were used to. At least there would be Mellow still to sing, if his melancholy nature did not overtake him at his abandonment. And Fedwren. With few children to teach, perhaps he and Patience could finally study out their paper making. So putting a brave face on it all, I tried to find a future for us.
“Where have you been, Bastard?”
Serene, stepping out suddenly from a doorway. She had expected me to startle. I had known by the Wit someone was there. I did not flinch. “Out.”
“You smell like a dog.”
“At least I have the excuse of having been with dogs. What few are left in the stable.”
It took her an instant to discover the insult in my polite reply.
“You smell like a dog because you are more than half a dog yourself. Beast-magicker.”
I nearly responded with some remark about her mother. Instead, I suddenly and truly recalled her mother. “When we were first learning to scribe, remember how your mother always made you wear a dark smock, for you splattered your ink so?”
She stared at me sullenly, turning the remark every which way in her mind, trying to discover some insult or slight or trick in it.