first been getting to know one another. She had deemed them too precious a thing even to wear, but she had shown them to me and told me some day my bride might wear them. Long ago. I turned my head aside and struggled to control my face.
‘Where have you been sleeping this past year … Cob, that you know none of this?’ Honey demanded sarcastically.
‘I have been away,’ I said quietly. I turned back to the table and managed to meet her eyes. I hoped my face showed nothing.
She cocked her head and smiled at me. ‘Where?’ she countered brightly.
I did not like her much at all. ‘I’ve been living by myself, in the forest,’ I said at last.
‘Why?’ She smiled at me as she pressed me. I was certain she knew how uncomfortable she was making me.
‘Obviously, because I wished to,’ I said. I sounded so much like Burrich when I said it, I almost looked over my shoulder for him.
She made a small mouth at me, totally unrepentant, but Harper Josh set his mug down on the table a bit firmly. He said nothing, and the look he gave her from his blind eyes was no more than a flicker, but she subsided abruptly. She folded her hands at the edge of the table like a rebuked child, and for a moment I thought her quashed, until she looked up at me from under her lashes. Her eyes met mine directly, and the little smile she shot me was defiant. I looked away from her, totally mystified as to why she wished to peck at me like this. I glanced at Piper, only to find her face bright red with suppressed laughter. I looked down at my hands on the table, hating the blush that suddenly flooded my face.
In an effort to start the conversation again, I asked, ‘Are there any other new tidings from Buckkeep?’
Harper Josh gave a short bark of laughter. ‘Not much new misery to tell. The tales are all the same, with only the names of the villages and towns different. Oh, but there is one small bit, a rich one. Word is now that King Regal will hang the Pocked Man himself.’
I had been swallowing a sip of ale. I choked abruptly and demanded, ‘What?’
‘It’s a stupid joke,’ Honey declared. ‘King Regal has had it cried about that he will give gold coin reward to any who can turn over to him a certain man, much scarred with the pox, or silver coin to any man who can give information as to where he may be found.’
‘A pox-scarred man? Is that all the description?’ I asked carefully.
‘He is said to be skinny, and grey-haired, and to sometimes disguise himself as a woman.’ Josh chuckled merrily, never guessing how his words turned my bowels to ice. ‘And his crime is high treason. Rumour says the King blames him for the disappearance of Queen-in-Waiting Kettricken and her unborn child. Some say he is just a cracked old man who claims to have been an adviser to Shrewd, and as such he has written to the Dukes of the Coastal Duchies, bidding them be brave, that Verity shall return and his child inherit the Farseer throne. But rumour also says, with as much wit, that King Regal hopes to hang the Pocked Man and thus end all bad luck in the Six Duchies.’ He chuckled again, and I plastered a sick smile on my face and nodded like a simpleton.
Chade, I thought to myself. Somehow Regal had picked up Chade’s trail. If he knew he was pock-scarred, what else might he know? He had obviously connected him to his masquerade as Lady Thyme. I wondered where Chade was now, and if he was all right. I wished with sudden desperation that I knew what his plans had been, what plot he had excluded me from. With a sudden sinking of heart, my perception of my actions flopped over. Had I driven Chade away from me, to protect him from my plans, or had I abandoned him just when he needed his apprentice?
‘Are you still there, Cob? I see your shadow still, but your place at the table’s gone very quiet.’
‘Oh, I’m here, Harper Josh!’ I tried to put some life into my words. ‘Just mulling over all you’ve told me, that’s all.’
‘Wondering what pocked old man he could sell to King Regal, by the look on his face,’ Honey put in tartly. I suddenly perceived that she saw her constant belittlement and stings as a sort of flirtation. I quickly decided I had had enough companionship and talk for an evening. I was too much out of practice at dealing with folk. I would leave now. Better they thought me odd and rude than that I stayed longer and made them curious.
‘Well, I thank you for your songs, and your conversation,’ I said as gracefully as I could. I fingered out a copper to leave under my mug for the boy. ‘And I had best take myself back to the road.’
‘But it’s full dark outside!’ Piper objected in surprise. She set down her mug and glanced at Honey, who looked shocked.
‘And cool, my lady,’ I observed blithely. ‘I prefer the night for walking. The moon’s close to full, which should be light enough on a road as wide as the river road.’
‘Have you no fear of the Forged ones?’ Harper Josh asked in consternation.
Now it was my turn to be surprised. ‘This far inland?’
‘You have been living in a tree,’ Honey exclaimed. ‘All the roads have been plagued with them. Some travellers hire guards, archers and swordsmen. Others, such as we, travel in groups when we can, and only by day.’
‘Cannot the patrols at least keep them from the roads?’ I asked in astonishment.
‘The patrols?’ Honey sniffed disdainfully. ‘Most of us would as soon meet Forged ones as a pack of Farrow men with pikes. The Forged ones do not bother them, and so they do not bother the Forged ones.’
‘What, then, do they patrol for?’ I asked angrily.
‘Smugglers, mainly.’ Josh spoke before Honey could. ‘Or so they would have you believe. Many an honest traveller do they stop to search his belongings and take whatever they fancy, calling it contraband, or claiming it was reported stolen in the last town. Methinks Lord Bright does not pay them as well as they think they deserve, so they take whatever pay they are able.’
‘And Prince … King Regal, he does nothing?’ How the title and the question choked me.
‘Well, perhaps if you go so far as Tradeford, you might complain to him yourself,’ Honey told me sarcastically. ‘I am sure he would listen to you, as he has not the dozens of messengers who have gone before.’ She paused, and looked thoughtful. ‘Though I have heard that if any Forged ones do make it far enough inland to be a bother, he has ways of dealing with them.’
I felt sickened and wretched. It had always been a matter of pride to King Shrewd that there was little danger of highwaymen in Buck, so long as one kept to the main roads. Now, to hear that those who should guard the king’s roads were little more than highwaymen themselves was like a small blade twisted in me. Not enough that Regal had claimed the throne to himself, and then deserted Buckkeep. He did not keep up even the pretence of ruling wisely. I wondered numbly if he were capable of punishing all Buck for the lacklustre way he had been welcomed to the throne. Foolish wonder; I knew he was. ‘Well, Forged ones or Farrow men, I still must be on my way, I fear,’ I told them. I drank off the last of my mug and set it down.
‘Why not wait at least until the morning, lad, and then travel with us?’ Josh suddenly offered. ‘The days are not too hot for walking, for there’s always a breeze off the river. And four are safer than three, these days.’
‘I thank you kindly for the offer,’ I began, but
