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Again. Fitz.
She frowned at my soft words. I drew myself up straighter and spoke louder. Fitz is what Burrich calls
me.
She flinched slightly. He would. Calls a bitch a bitch, and a bastard a bastard, does Burrich. Well ... I
suppose I see his reasons. Fitz you are, and Fitz you'll be called by me as well. Now. I shall show you
why the pole you selected was too long for you, and too thick. And then you shall select another.
And she did, and I did, and she took me slowly through an exercise that seemed infinitely complex then,
but by the end of the week was no more difficult than braiding my horse's mane. We finished just as the
rest of her students came trooping in. There were four of them, all within a year or two of my age, but all
more experienced than I. It made for an awkwardness, as there were now an odd number of students,
and no one particularly wanted the new one as a sparring partner.
Somehow I survived the day, though the memory of how fades into a blessedly vague haze. I remember
how sore I was when she finally dismissed us; how the others raced up the path and back to the keep
while I trailed dismally behind them, berating myself for ever coming to the King's attention. It was a long
climb to the keep, and the hall was crowded and noisy. I was too weary to eat much. Stew and bread, I
think, were all I had, and I had left the table and was limping toward the door, thinking only of the
warmth and quiet of the stables, when Brant again accosted me.
Your chamber is ready, was all he said.
I shot a desperate look at Burrich, but he was engaged in conversation with the man next to him. He
didn't notice my plea at all. So once more I found myself following Brant, this time up a wide flight of
stone steps, into a part of the keep I had never explored.
We paused on a landing and he took up a candelabra from a table there and kindled its tapers. Royal
family lives down this wing, he casually informed me. The King has a bedroom big as the stable at the
end of this hallway. I nodded, blindly believing all he told me, though I later found that an errand boy such
as Brant would never have penetrated the royal wing. That would be for more important lackeys. Up
another flight he took me and again paused. Visitors get rooms here, he said, gesturing with the light, so
that the wind of his motion set the flames to streaming. Important ones, that is.
And up another flight we went, the steps perceptibly narrowing from the first two. At the next landing we
paused again, and I looked with dread up an even narrower and steeper flight of steps. But Brant did not
take me that way. Instead we went down this new wing, three doors down, and then he slid a latch on a
plank door and shouldered it open. It swung heavily and not smoothly. Room hasn't been used in a while,
he observed cheerily. But now it's yours and you're welcome to it. And with that he set the candelabra
down on a chest, plucked one candle from it, and left. He pulled the heavy door closed behind him as he
went, leaving me in the semidarkness of a large and unfamiliar room.
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Somehow I refrained from running after him or opening the door. Instead, I took up the candelabra and
lit the wall sconces. Two other sets of candles set the shadows writhing back into the corners. There was
a fireplace with a pitiful effort at a fire in it. I poked it up a bit, more for light than for heat, and set to
exploring my new quarters.
It was a simple square room with a single window. Stone walls, of the same stone as that under my feet,
were softened only by a tapestry hung on one wall. I held my candle high to study it, but could not
illuminate much. I could make out a gleaming and winged creature of some sort, and a kingly personage
in supplication before it. I was later informed it was King Wisdom being befriended by the Elderling. At
the time it seemed menacing to me. I turned aside from it.
Someone had made a perfunctory effort at freshening the room. There was a scattering of clean reeds
and herbs on the floor, and the feather bed had a fat, freshly shaken look to it. The two blankets on it
were good wool. The bed curtains had been pulled back and the chest and bench that were the other
furnishings had been dusted. To my inexperienced eyes, it was a rich room indeed. A real bed, with
coverings and hangings about it, and a bench with a cushion to it, and a chest to put things in were more
furniture than I could recall having to myself before. That they were for my exclusive use made them
larger somehow. There was also the fireplace, that I boldly added another piece of wood to, and the
window, with an oak seat before it, shuttered now against the night air, but probably looking out over the
sea.
The chest was a simple one, cornered with brass fittings. The outside of it was dark, but when I opened
it, the interior was light-colored and fragrant. Inside the chest I found my limited wardrobe, brought up
from the stables. Two nightshirts had been added to it, and a woolen blanket was rolled up in the corner
of the chest. That was all. I took out a nightshirt and closed the chest.
I set the nightshirt down on the bed and then clambered up myself. It was early to be thinking of sleep,
but my body ached and there seemed nothing else for me to do. Down in the stable room, by now
Burrich would be sitting and drinking and mending harness or whatever. There would be a fire in the
hearth, and the muffled sounds of horses as they shifted in their stalls below. The room would smell of
leather and oil and Burrich himself, not dank stone and dust. I pulled the nightshirt over my head and
nudged my clothes to the foot of the bed. I nestled into the feather bed; it was cool and my skin stood up
in goose bumps. Slowly my body heat warmed it and I began to relax. It had been a full and strenuous
day. Every muscle I possessed seemed to be both aching and tired. I knew I should rise once more, to
put the candles out, but I could not summon the energy. Nor the willpower to blow them out and let a
deeper darkness flood the chamber. So I drowsed, halflidded eyes watching the struggling flames of the
small hearth fire. I idly wished for something else, for any situation that was neither this forsaken chamber
nor the tenseness of Burrich's room. For a restfulness that perhaps I had once known somewhere else
but could no longer recall. And so I drowsed into oblivion.
CHAPTER FOUR
Apprenticeship
A STORY IS TOLD OF King Victor, he who conquered the inland territories that became eventually
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