"Not my favorite song," I said quietly.

"Understandably. However, Slek sang it well, to much applause, more than his voice truly merits. He has that quaver at the end of his notes that some find endearing, but in truth is the sign of a voice with poor control…" She suddenly realized she was wandering from her topic. "Feelings run high against the Witted these days. The Witted ones have been restless of late, and one hears wild tales. I have heard that in one village where a Witted man was hanged and burned, all the sheep died four days later. Just dropped in the fields. Folk said it was his family's revenge. But when they went for vengeance against his kin, they found them long gone. There was a scroll left tacked to the door of their house. All it said was, 'You deserved it. There have been other incidents as well."

I met her eyes. "So Hap told me," I admitted.

She nodded curtly. She rose from the table and stepped clear of it. A minstrel to the bone, she had a story to tell, and demanded a stage for it. "Well. After Slek sang The Piebald Prince, another minstrel came forward. He was very young, and perhaps that was why he was so foolish. He doffed his cap to Queen Kettricken, and then said he would follow The Piebald Prince' with another song, of more recent vintage. When he said he had heard it first in a hamlet of Witted folk, muttering ran through the crowd. All have heard rumors of such places, but never have I heard someone claim to have been to one. When the mutter died, he launched into a song had never heard before. The tune was derivative, but the words were new to me, as raw as his voice." She cocked her head at me and regarded me specu-latively. "This song was of Chivalry's Bastard. It touched on all he had done before his Witted taint was revealed. He even stole a phrase or two from my song 'Antler Island Tower, if you can believe the gall of that! Then, this song went on that this 'Farseer's son with Old Blood blessed, of royal blood and wild, the best' had not died in the Pretender's dungeon. According to this song, the Bastard had lived, and been true to his father's family. The minstrel sang that when King Verity went off to seek the Elderlings, the Bastard rose from his grave to rally to his rightful King's aid. The minstrel sang a stirring scene of how the Bastard called Verity back through the gates of death, to show him a garden of stone dragons that could be wakened to the Six Duchies' cause. That, at least, had the ring of truth to it. It made me sit up and wonder, even if his voice was growing hoarse by then." She paused, waiting for me to speak, but I had no words. She shrugged, then observed caustically, "If you wanted a song made of those days, you might have thought of me first. I was there, you know. In fact, it was why I was there. And I am a far better minstrel than that boy was." There was a quiver of jealous outrage in her voice.

"I had nothing to do with that song, as I'm sure you must realize. I wish no one had ever heard it."

"Well, you've little enough to worry about there." She said the words with deep satisfaction. "I'd never heard it before that day, nor since. It was not well made, the tune did not fit the theme, the words were ragged, the

"Starling."

"Oh, very well. He gave the song the traditional heroic c-av, ending. That if ever the Farseer erown demanded it, the true-hearted Witted Bastard would return to aid the king-: dom. At the end of the song, some of the Springfest crowd yelled insults at him and someone said he was likely Witted himself and fit for burning. Queen Kettricken commanded them to silence, but at the end of the evening, she gave him: no purse as she did the other minstrels."

I kept silent, passing no judgment on that. When I did not rise to her bait, Starling added, "Because he had vanished when it came time for her to reward those who had pleased her. She called his name first, but no one knew where he had gone. His name was unfamiliar to me. Tagsson."

Son of Tag, grandson of Reaver, I could have told her. And both Reaver and Tag had been very able members of Verity's Buckkeep guard. My mind reached back through the years to find Tag's face as he knelt before Verity in the Stone Garden before the gates of death. Yes, so I supposed it had looked to him, Verity stepping out from the stark black Skill-pillar and into the uncertain circle of the fire-light. Tag had recognized his King, despite all hardship had done to Verity. He had proclaimed his loyalty to him, and Verity had sent him on his way, bidding him return to Buckkeep and tell all there that the rightful King would return. In thinking back on it, I was almost certain that Verity had arrived at Buckkeep before the soldier did. Dragons a-wing are a deal faster than a man on foot.

I had not known Tag had recognized me as well. Who could ever have foreseen he would pass on that tale, let alone that he would have a minstrel for a son?

"I see that you know him," Starling said quietly.

I glanced at her to find her eyes reading my face greedily. I sighed. "I know no Tagsson. I'm afraid my mind wandered back to something you said earlier. The Witted have grown restless. Why?"

She lifted an eyebrow at me. "I thought you would bet- ter know than I."

"I lead a solitary life, Starling, as well you know. I'm in a poor position to hear tidings of any kind, save what you bring me." It was my turn to study her. "And this was information you never shared with me."

She looked away from me and I wondered: had she decided to keep it from me? Had Chade bade her not speak of it to me? Or had it been crowded from her mind by her stories of nobles she had played for, and acclaim she had received? "It isn't a pretty tale. I suppose it began a year and a half ago… perhaps two. It seemed to me then that I began to hear more often of Witted ones being found out and punished. Or killed. You know how people are, Fitz. For a time after the Red Ship War, I am sure they had their glut of killing and blood. But when the enemy is finally driven far from your shore, and your houses are restored and your fields begin to yield and your flocks to increase, why, then it becomes time to find fault with your neighbors again. I think Regal wakened a lust for blood sport in the Six Duchies, with his King's Circle and justice by combat. I wonder if we shall ever be truly free of that legacy."

She had touched an old nightmare. The King's Circle at Tradeford, the caged beasts and the smell of Old Blood, trial by battle… the memory washed through me, leaving sickness in its wake.

"Two years ago… yes," Starling continued. She moved restlessly about the room as she considered it. "That was when the old hatred of Witted folk flared up again. The Queen spoke out against it, for your sake I imagine. She is a beloved queen, and she has wrought many changes during her rule, but in this, tradition runs too deep. The folk in the village think, Well, what can she know of our ways, Mountain-bred as she is? So although Queen Kettricken did not countenance it, the hounding of the Witted went on as it always has. Then, in Trenury in Farrow, about a year and a half ago, there was a horrifying incident. As the story came to Buckkeep, a Witted girl had a fox as her beast, and she cared not where it hunted so long as the blood ran every night."

I interrupted her. "A pet fox?"

"Not exactly common. It was even more suspect that the girl who had this fox was neither of noble blood nor wealthy. What business had a farmer's child with such a beast? The rumors spread. The poultry flocks of the village folk near Trenury suffered the most, but the final blow was when something got into Lord Doplin's aviary and made dinner of his songbirds and imported Rain Wilds fowl. He sent his huntsmen after the girl and fox said to be at the root of it, and they were run down, not gently, and brought before Lord Doplin. She swore it was none of her fox's doing, she swore she was not Witted, but when the hot irons were put to the fox, it is said that she screamed as loudly as the beast did. Then, to close the circle of his proof, Doplin had the nails drawn from the girl's fingers and toes, and the fox likewise shrieked with her."