The Tawny Man Series Books 2 and 3. Robin Hobb

boy seemed very aware of the other apprentices watching us talk, and spoke his words to me as if he were displaying to them his anger with his master. He was frustrated, too, with his stalled courtship of Svanja. Her father was making it hard for him to see her, and refused to speak with Hap on the streets. I sensed that some of Hap’s anger was for me. He seemed to think I neglected him, yet when it came to finding time to meet with me in the evening, he preferred Svanja’s company. I kept resolving that I would do better with Hap and make amends with Jinna, but somehow the days dribbled past and I could not find the time to accomplish either task.

      Within Buckkeep, the festivities and trade negotiations of the Prince’s betrothal continued. Winterfest came and went, grander than ever I had seen it in the castle. Our Outislander guests enjoyed it tremendously. In the time that followed there were trading discussions every day and aristocratic amusements every night. The puppeteers, minstrels, jugglers and other entertainers of the Six Duchies prospered. The Outislanders became a familiar sight in the halls of Buckkeep Castle. Some formed genuine friendships, both with the nobles staying at the keep and with the merchant-traders from Buckkeep Town. In the town below, our ancient trade with the Outislands began to revive. Trading vessels arrived, and goods were bartered. Messages were exchanged as well, and it was no longer socially unacceptable to admit to a cousin or two in the Outislands. Kettricken’s plans seemed to be prospering.

      The late nights of court gaiety showed me a Buckkeep I had never known. As a servant, I was almost as invisible as I had been when I was a nameless boy. The difference was that as Lord Golden’s man, I attended him on socially lofty occasions when the nobility were gaming, dining and dancing. I saw them in their best clothes and worst behaviour. Drunk with wine or vapid with Smoke, besotted with lust or frantic to recover gaming losses … if ever I had supposed that our lords and ladies were made of finer stuff than the fishers and tailors that crowded the Buckkeep Town taverns, I was disillusioned that winter.

      Women, young and old, single and married, flocked to the Lord Golden’s charms, as well as young men desirous of distinguishing themselves as ‘the Jamaillian lord’s friend’. It amused me somewhat that not even Starling and Lord Fisher were immune to Lord Golden’s social allure. Often they joined him at the gaming table. Twice they even came to Lord Golden’s chambers to sample fine Jamaillian brandies with his other guests. It was difficult for me to maintain my attitude of servitude and uninterest in her presence. Her husband was a physically affectionate man, often drawing her body close to his and boyishly stealing a kiss. Then she would gaily rebuke him for such unseemly public conduct, yet often enough manage to snatch a glance at me as she did so, as if to be sure I had noticed how passionately Lord Fisher still courted his wife. At times, it was all I could do to keep a stoic expression on my face. It was not that my heart or flesh burned for her. The pang that assaulted me at such a time was that she deliberately flaunted her happiness in a way calculated to remind me of how solitary a life I led. In the midst of the fine court with its merriment and elaborate entertainment, I stood, a silent servant, witness only to their pleasures.

      In this way, the long dark of winter dawdled on. The constant whirl of activity took a toll on the young prince as well as myself. One early morning, we both arrived at the tower with absolutely no inclination for studies or tasks of any kind. The Prince had been up late the night before, gaming with Civil and the other young noblemen currently residing at the keep.

      I had had the good sense to seek my own bed at a more reasonable hour, and had succeeded in several hours of deep sleep before Nettle had insinuated herself into my dreams. I was dreaming of catching river fish, sliding my hands into the water and abruptly flipping the lurking fish out onto the bank behind me. It was a good dream, a comforting dream. Unseen but felt, Nighteyes was with me. Then my groping fingers encountered a door handle under the chill water. I plunged my head under to look at it. As I stared at it through water-green light, it opened and pulled me in. Suddenly I stood, wet and dripping, in a small bedroom. I knew I was in the upper chambers of the house by the slanting ceiling. The house was silent around me, and only a guttering candle lighted the room. Wondering how I had arrived here, I turned back to the door. A girl stood there, her back pressed resolutely to the door, her arms spread wide to bar it from me. She wore a cotton nightdress and her dark hair hung in a single long braid over one shoulder. I stared at her in astonishment.

      ‘If you will not let me into your dreams, then I will trap you in mine,’ she observed triumphantly.

      I stood very, very still and held my silence. On some level, I sensed that anything of myself I might give her, word or gesture or look, would only increase her hold on me. I took my gaze from her, for in recognizing her, I was entering into her dream more deeply. Instead, I forced my eyes down, to my own hands. With a curious elation, I realized they were not my own. She had trapped me here as she visualized me, not as I truly was. My fingers were short and stubby. The palms of my hands and the inside surface of my fingers were black and coarse as a wolf’s pads, and rough black hair coated the backs of my hands and my wrists.

      ‘This isn’t me.’ I spoke the words aloud, and they came out as a queer growl. I lifted my hands to my face, found a muzzle there.

      ‘Yes, it is!’ she asserted, but already I was fading, drifting out of the form she had thought would contain me. The trap was the wrong shape to hold me. She leapt towards me and seized me by one wrist, only to find she grasped an empty wolfskin.

      ‘I’ll catch you next time!’ she declared angrily.

      ‘No, Nettle. You won’t.’

      My use of her name froze her. Even as she struggled to mouth the question, how did I know her name, I dissipated from her dream into my own wakefulness. I shifted on my hard bed, and briefly opened my eyes to the now-familiar blackness of my servant’s chamber. ‘No, Nettle. You won’t.’ I spoke the words aloud, reassuring myself that they were true. But I had not slept well the rest of the night.

      And so the two of us, Dutiful and I, faced one another blearily over the table in the Skill-tower the next dawn. It was dawn in name only. The winter sky outside the tower window was black, and the candles on our table reached vainly towards the darkness in the corners of the room. I had kindled a fire in the hearth, but it had not yet taken the edge off the chill. ‘Is there anything so miserable as being sleepy and cold at the same time?’ I asked him rhetorically.

      He sighed, and I had the feeling he had not even heard my question. The one he asked me sent a different sort of chill up my back. ‘Have you ever used the Skill to make someone forget something?’

      ‘I … no. No, I’ve never done anything like that.’ Then, dreading the answer, ‘Why do you ask?’

      He heaved an even deeper sigh. ‘Because if it could be used that way, it could make my life much simpler right now. I fear that I … I said something last night, to someone, never intending that … I didn’t even mean it that way, but she …’ He faltered to a halt, looking miserable.

      ‘Start at the beginning,’ I suggested.

      He took a deep breath, then puffed it out, exasperated with himself. ‘Civil and I were playing Stones and –’

      ‘Stones?’ I interrupted him.

      He sighed again. ‘I made myself a game-cloth and playing pieces. I thought I could get better at it by playing against someone besides you.’

      I strangled back an objection. Was there any reason why he should not introduce his friends to the game? None that I could think of. Yet it disgruntled me.

      ‘I had played a game or two with Civil, which he lost. As he should and did expect to, for no one plays a game well the first few times one is shown it. But he had declared he had had enough of it for now, that it was not the sort of game he relished, and he got up from the table and went over to the hearth to talk to someone else. Well, Lady Vance had been watching us play earlier in the evening, and had said she wanted to learn, but we were in the midst of the game then, so there had been no place for her. But she had been standing by our table, watching us play, and when Civil left, instead of following him as I thought she would, for she had seemed very attentive to him, she sat down in his place. I had been putting the cloth and pieces away,