I suddenly ran dry of words. Perhaps, like Prince Dutiful, I was surprised by my own thoughts. Truth can well out of a man like blood from a wound, and it can be just as disconcerting to look at.

‘Tell me about my father.’

Perhaps for him the request logically followed what I had said, but it jolted me. I walked a line here. I felt I owed him whatever I could give him of Verity. Yet how could I tell him stories of his father without revealing my own identity? I had firmly resolved that he would know nothing of my true bloodlines. Now was not the time to reveal to him that I was FitzChivalry Farseer, the Witted Bastard, nor that my body had fathered his. To explain that Verity’s spirit, by strength of his Skill-magic, had occupied my flesh for those hours was far too complicated an explanation for the boy. In truth, I could barely accept it myself.

So, much as Chade once had with me, I hedged, asking him, ‘What would you know of him?’

‘Anything. Everything.’ He cleared his throat. ‘No one has spoken to me much of him. Chade sometimes tells me stories of what he was like as a boy. I’ve read the official accounts of his reign, which become amazingly vague after he leaves on his quest. I’ve heard minstrels sing of him, but in those songs he is a legend, and none of them seem to agree on exactly how he saved the Six Duchies. When I ask about that, or what it was like to know him, everyone falls silent. As if they do not know. Or as if there were a shameful secret that everyone knows but me.’

‘There is no shameful secret of any kind attached to your father. He was a good and honourable man. I cannot believe that you know so little of him. Not even your mother has told you of him?’ I asked incredulously.

He took a breath and slowed his horse to a walk. Myblack tugged at her bit but I held her pace to match the Prince’s mount. ‘My mother speaks of her king. Occasionally, of her husband. When she does talk of him, I know that she still grieves for him. It makes me reluctant to pester her with questions. But I want to know about my father. Who he was as a person. As a man among men.’

‘Ah.’ Again, it rang in me, the similarities we shared. I had hungered for the same truths about my own father. All I had ever heard of was Chivalry the Abdicator, the King-in-Waiting who had been tumbled from his throne before he ever truly occupied it. He had been a brilliant tactician, a skilled negotiator. He had given it up to quiet the scandal of my existence. Not only had the noble prince sired a bastard, he had got me on a nameless Mountain woman. It only made his childless marriage the more stinging to an heirless kingdom. That was what I knew of my father. Not what foods he liked, or whether he laughed easily. I knew none of the things a son would know if he had grown up seeing his father daily.

‘Tom.’ Dutiful prodded me.

‘I was thinking,’ I replied honestly. I tried to think what I would like to know about my own father. Even as I pondered this, I scanned the hillside around us. We were following a game-path through a brushy meadow. I examined the trees that marked the beginning of the foothills, but saw and felt no sign of humans there. ‘Verity. Well. He was a big man, near as tall as I am, but bull-chested with wide shoulders. In battle harness, he looked as much soldier as prince, and sometimes I think he would have preferred that more active life. Not that he loved battle, but because he was a man who liked to be outdoors, moving and doing things. He loved to hunt. He had a wolfhound named Leon that shadowed him from room to room, and-’

‘Was he Witted, then?’ the Prince asked eagerly

‘No!’ The question shocked me. ‘He simply had a great fondness for his dog. And- ’

‘Then why am I Witted? They say it runs in families.’

I gave a half-hearted shrug. To me, it seemed the lad’s mind leapt from topic to topic as a flea hops from dog to dog. I tried to follow it. ‘I suppose the Wit is like the Skill. That is supposed to be the Farseer magic, yet a child born in a fisherman’s cot may suddenly show the potential for it. No one knows why a child is born with or without magic.’

‘Civil Bresinga says the Wit winds through the Farseer line. He says that perhaps the Piebald Prince got his Wit as much from his royal mother as his baseborn father. He says that sometimes it runs weak in two family lines, but when they cross, the magic shows itself. Like one kitten with a crooked tail when the rest of the litter is sound.’

‘When did Civil say these things to you?’ I demanded sharply.

The Prince gave me an odd look bur answered. ‘Early this morning, when he arrived from Galekeep.’

‘In public?’ I was horrified. I noticed that Lord Golden had edged his horse closer to us.

‘No, of course not! It was very early this morning, before I had breakfasted. He came to the door of my bedchamber himself, urgently begging audience with me.’

‘And you just let him in?’

Dutiful stared at me in silence for a moment. Then he said stiffly, ‘He has been a friend to me. He gave me my cat, Tom. You know what she meant to me.’

‘I know how that gift was intended, as do you! Civil Bresinga may be a dangerous traitor, my prince, one who has already conspired with the Piebalds to snatch you away from your throne and eventually from your own flesh. You must learn more caution!’

The Prince had gone pink about the ears at my rebuke. Yet he still managed to keep his voice level. ‘He says he is not. And that they didn’t. Conspire, that is. Do you think he would have come to me to explain if he had? He and his mother did not know about… the cat. They were not even aware I was Witted when they gave her to me. Oh, my little cat.’ His voice suddenly faltered on his last words, and I knew how all his thoughts had diverted to the loss of his Wit-partner.

The chill grief of his loss blew through his words. It stirred my own loss of Nighteyes to a sharper ache. I felt as if I were probing a wound as I asked relentlessly, ‘Then why did they do it? It must have seemed a strange request. Someone comes to them and gives them a hunting cat and says, “Here, give this to the Prince”. And they’ve never said who gave it.’ He took a breath, then stopped. ‘Civil spoke to me in confidence. I don’t know if I should break that trust.’

‘Did you promise not to tell?’ I demanded, dreading the answer. I needed to know what Civil had told him, but I would not ask him to break his promise.

An incredulous look came over Dutiful’s face. ‘Tom Badgerlock. A noble does not ask his prince to “promise not to tell”. It would not be appropriate to our station.’

‘And this conversation is,’ the Fool observed wryly. His comment made the Prince laugh, easily dispersing a building tension between us that I had not been aware of until the Fool disarmed it. Strange, suddenly to recognize his gift for doing that, after all the years I had known him.

‘I see your point,’ the Prince conceded easily, and now the conversation included all of us as we rode three abreast. For a short time, the steady clopping of the horses’ hooves and the whispering of the cool wind were the only sounds. Dutiful took a breath. ‘He did not ask me to promise. But… Civil humbled himself to me. He knelt at my feet to offer his apology. And I think any man who does that has a right to expect it will be kept from the public gossip.’

‘It would not become public gossip through me, my prince. Nor through the Fool. I promise. Please tell me what passed between you.’

‘The fool?’ Dutiful turned a delighted grin on Lord Golden.

Lord Golden snorted contemptuously. ‘An old joke between old friends. One that is becoming far too worn to be humorous any more, Tom Badgerlock,’ he added warningly to me. I ducked my head to his rebuke, but smirked also, hoping the Prince would accept the hasty explanation. Inside my chest, my heart sank down to the pit of my belly as I castigated myself for my carelessness. Did some part of me long to reveal myself to the Prince? I felt an old familiar twist in my gut. Guilt. Secrets withheld from ones who trusted me. Had not I once promised myself never to do that again? But what choice did I have? I guarded my own secret even as Lord Golden worked at prying the Prince’s secret loose from him.