I was speechless. Kettricken speared me with a blue glance, then looked aside from me again. "She believes the Fool is a woman and that you kept a tryst with her tonight. It chagrins her that you disdain her so completely."

I found my tongue. "My lady queen, I do not disdain Mistress Starling." My outrage had rendered me formal. "In truth, she is the one who has avoided my company and put a distance between us since finding that I am Witted and sustain a bond with the wolf. Respecting her wishes, I have not pressed my friendship upon her. As to what she says of the Fool, surely you must find it as ludicrous as I do."

"Should I?" Kettricken asked me softly. "All I can truthfully say I know of it is that he is not a man like other men."

"I cannot disagree with that," I said quietly. "He is unique among all the people I have ever known."

"Cannot you show some kindness to her, FitzChivalry?" Kettricken burst out suddenly. "I do not ask that you court her, only that you do not let her be rent with jealousy."

I folded my lips, forced my feelings to find courteous answer. "My queen, I will offer her, as I ever have, my friendship. She has given me small sign of late of even wanting that, let alone more. But as to that topic, I do not disdain her nor any other woman. My heart is given already. It is no more right to say that I disdain Starling than it is to say that you disdain me because your heart is filled with my Lord Verity."

Kettricken shot me an oddly startled look. For a moment she seemed flustered. Then she looked down at the map she still gripped. "It is as I feared. I have only made it worse by speaking to you. I am so tired, Fitz. Despair drags at my heart always. To have Starling moody is like sand against raw flesh to me. I but sought to put things right between you. I beg your pardon if I have intruded. But you are a comely youth still, and it will not be the last time you have such cares."

"Comely?" I laughed aloud, both incredulous and bitter. "With this scarred face and battered body? It haunts my nightmares that when next Molly sees me, she shall turn aside from me in horror. Comely." I turned aside from her, my throat suddenly too tight to speak. It was not that I mourned my appearance so much as I dreaded that Molly must look someday on my scars.

"Fitz," Kettricken said quietly. Her voice was suddenly that of a friend, not the Queen. "I speak to you as a woman, to tell you that although you bear scars, you are far from the grotesque you seem to believe yourself. You are, still, a comely youth, in ways that have nothing to do with your face. And were my heart not full with my Lord Verity, I would not disdain you." She reached out a hand and ran cool fingers down the old split down my cheek, as if her touch could erase it. My heart turned over in me, an echo of Verity's embedded passion for her amplified by my gratitude that she would say such a thing to me.

"You well deserve my lord's love," I told her artlessly from a full heart.

"Oh, do not look at me with his eyes," she said dolefully. She rose suddenly, clasping the map to her breast like a shield, and left the tent.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Stone Garden

Dimity Keep, a very small holding on the coast of Buck, fell shortly before Regal crowned himself King of the Six Duchies. A great many villages were destroyed in that dread time, and there has never been a true count made of all the lives that were lost. Small keeps like Dimity were frequent targets for the Red-Ships. Their strategy was to attack simple villages and the smaller holdings to weaken the overall defense line. Lord Bronze, to whom the Keep of Dimity was entrusted, was an old man, but nonetheless he led his men in defending his small castle. Unfortunately, heavy taxation for general coastline protection had drained his resources for some time, and Dimity Keep's defenses were in poor repair. Lord Bronze was among the first to fall. The Red-Ships took the keep almost easily, and reduced it with fire and sword to the rubble-strewn mound that it is today.

Unlike the Skill road, the road we traveled the next day had experienced the full ravages of time. Doubtless once a wide thoroughfare, it had been narrowed by the encroachments of the forest to little more than a track. While to me it seemed almost carefree to march down a road that did not at every moment threaten to steal my mind from me, the others muttered about the hummocks, upthrust roots, fallen branches, and other obstacles we scrambled through all day. I kept my thoughts to myself and enjoyed the thick moss that overlaid the once-cobbled surface, the branchy shade of the bud-leafed trees that overarched the road, and the occasional patter of fleeing animals in the underbrush.

Nighteyes was in his element, racing ahead and then galloping back to us, to trot purposefully along beside Kettricken for a time. Then he would go ranging off again. At one time he came dashing back to the Fool and me, tongue lolling, to announce that tonight we would hunt wild pig, for their sign was plentiful. I relayed this to the Fool.

"I did not lose any wild pigs. Therefore, I shall not hunt for any," he replied loftily. I rather agreed with his sentiments. Burrich's scarred leg had made me more than wary of the great tusked animals.

Rabbits, I suggested to Nighteyes. Let us hunt rabbits.

Rabbits for rabbits, he snorted disdainfully, and dashed off again.

I ignored the insult. The day was just pleasantly cool for hiking and the verdant forest smells were like a homecoming to me. Kettricken led us on, lost in her own thoughts, while Kettle and Starling followed us, caught up in talk. Kettle still tended to walk more slowly, though the old woman seemed to have gained stamina and strength since our journey had begun. But they were a comfortable distance behind us when I quietly asked the Fool, "Why do you allow Starling to believe you are a woman?"

He turned to me, waggled his eyebrows and blew me a kiss. "And am I not, fair princeling?"

"I'm serious," I rebuked him. "She thinks you are a woman and in love with me. She thought that we had a tryst last night."

"And did we not, my shy one?" He leered at me outrageously.

"Fool," I said warningly.

"Ah." He sighed suddenly. "Perhaps the truth is, I fear to show her my proof, lest ever afterward she find all other men a disappointment." He gestured meaningfully at himself.

I looked at him levelly until he grew sober. "What does it matter what she thinks? Let her think whatever is easiest for her to believe."

"Meaning?"

"She needed someone to confide in and, for a time, chose me. Perhaps it was easier for her to do that if she believed I was a woman, also." He sighed again. "That is one thing that in all my years among your folk I have never become accustomed to. The great importance that you attach to what gender one is."

"Well, it is important…" I began.

"Rubbish!" he exclaimed. "Mere plumbing, when all is said and done. Why is it important?"

I stared at him, at a loss for words. It all seemed so obvious to me as to not need saying. After a time, I said, "Could you not simply tell her you are a man and let the issue be laid to rest?"

"That would scarcely lay it to rest, Fitz," he replied judiciously. He clambered over a fallen tree and waited for me to follow. "For then she would need to know why, if I am a man, I do not desire her. It would have to be either a fault in me, or something I perceived as a fault in her. No. I do not think anything needs to be said on that topic. Starling, however, has the minstrel's failing. She thinks that everything in the world, no matter how private, should be a topic for discussion. Or better yet, made into a song. Ah, yes!"

He struck a sudden pose in the middle of the forest trail. His stance was so artfully reminiscent of Starling when she readied herself to sing that I was horrified. I glanced back at her as the Fool launched into sudden, hearty song: