Fool’s Quest

“Not anymore,” I told him, and was taken aback by the warm confirmation I received from the mare. My rider.

“She likes you,” Per told me from the next stall. He was brushing Priss. He’d let one of the other boys take Speckle but Priss he was doing himself.

I didn’t ask him how he knew. “What are you doing here?”

“She’s muddy, sir. We were crossing an iced-over stream and she broke through and got her legs muddy. So I’m grooming her.”

Technically, a truthful answer. This boy. I admired him grudgingly. “Perseverance. Why did you come to Buckkeep?”

He straightened to look over the stall wall at me. If he was not genuinely surprised at my question, he was very good at dissembling. “Sir, I am sworn to you. Where else should I be? I knew you would want your horse, and I did not trust those . . . guardsmen to bring her. And I knew that you would need Priss. When we go after those bastards and take Bee back, she will want to ride her own horse home. Your pardon, sir. Lady Bee, I meant to say. Lady Bee.” He caught his lower lip between his teeth and bit down on it hard.

I had intended to rebuke him and send him home. But when a youngster speaks as a man it’s not right to reply to him as a child. A stable girl had just arrived with a bucket of water. I turned to her. “Your name?”

“Patience, sir.”

That jolted me for an instant. “Well, Patience, when Per is finished, would you show him where to get some hot food and where the steams are. Find him a bed in the . . .”

“I’d rather stay near the horses, sir. If no one minds.”

I understood that, too. “Help him find some bedding, then. You can sleep in one of the empty stalls, if that’s what you wish.”

“Thank you, sir. It is.”

“Should I make him a poultice for that cheek? I know one that can draw the swelling down by morning.” Patience looked very pleased to be put in charge of Perseverance.

“Do you? Well, then, you should do that also, and I’ll be pleased to see how well it works by the morning.” I started to leave and then remembered the pride of a boy. I turned back. “Perseverance. You are to stay well away from any of the Rousters. Am I understood?”

He looked down. “Sir,” he acknowledged me unhappily.

“They will be dealt with. But not by you.”

“They’re a bad lot,” Patience said quietly.

“Stay clear,” I warned them both, and left the stables.

Chapter Twenty-One Vindeliar