It became very late and Thick had dozed off long before Prilkop bade us good night. I knew an odd moment of awkwardness when I spread my blankets separately from the Fool’s. There was plenty of bedding here; no need to share anymore. But I had slept beside him for so many nights that I wondered if he would want the comfort of me close by to guard him from his night terrors, but I could not find a way to ask him. Instead, I propped my head on my arm and watched him sleep. His face was slack with exhaustion, yet pain still furrowed his brow. I knew that after all he had been through, he would need time apart from me, time alone with himself to discover once again who he was. Yet, selfishly, I did not want him to grow apart from me again. Not only my love for Molly but my boyish fondness and closeness to the Fool had been rejuvenated, as well. To be the best of friends again, making nothing of one another’s differences, to enjoy the days and face hardships optimistically; he represented all that to me, and I vowed I would not let that carelessly slip from my grip again. He and Molly would round out my life to what it should have been. And Patience, I thought with wonder. I would reclaim her too, and never heed the cost.
Perhaps it was that Thick slept close by me, or perhaps it was that for the first time since I’d ventured into the Pale Woman’s realm, I slept deeply enough to dream my own dreams. In either case, Nettle found me. Or perhaps I found her. I found myself in an evening place. It was a place I almost remembered, yet it had changed so much that I was not certain of it. Banks of flowers glowed luminously in the dimness. Somewhere, a fountain played, a muted splashing. The evening fragrances of blossoms wafted and blended on the night breeze.
Nettle was sitting on a stone bench, alone. She leaned her head against the wall behind her and stared up at the night sky. I winced when I saw her. Her beautiful hair had been shorn down to her scalp. It was the oldest sign of mourning in the Six Duchies, and not often practiced among women. I came and sat on the paving stones in front of her in my wolf guise. She stirred and looked down at me. “You know that my father is dead?”
“Yes. I am sorry.”
Her fingers toyed with a fold of her dark skirt. “Were you there?” she asked at last. “When he died, no. When he took the injury that would kill him, yes.”
A little silence spun out between us. “Why do I feel so awkward asking this, as if it is improper for me to be curious? I know that the Prince thinks it more appropriate to speak all around it and say only that my father was a hero and fought well. But that is not enough for me. I want to know how he died… was hurt. I want… I need to know every detail. Because they dumped his body in the sea and I will never see him again, dead or alive. Do you know how that feels? Just to be told that your father is dead, and that is all?”
“I know exactly how it feels,” I said. “So was it done to me, also.”
“But, eventually, they told you?”
“They told me the lie that they told everyone. No. I was never told how he truly died.”
“I am sorry,” she said, and meant it. She turned her head and looked at me curiously. “You’ve changed, Shadow Wolf. You… ring. You… like a bell when it is struck. What is the word?”
“Resonate,” I suggested, and she nodded.
“I feel you more clearly. Almost as if you were real.”
“I am real.”
“I mean, real, here.”
I wished that I were. “How much of it do you want to know?” I asked her. She lifted her chin. “All. Everything. He was my father.”
“That he was,” I was forced to agree. I steeled myself. It was time. Then another thought came to me and I asked her, “Where are you now? When you are awake?”
She sighed. “As you see. In the Queen’s Garden, at Buckkeep Castle,” she said forlornly. “The Queen allowed me to go home for three days. She apologized to me and to my mother, but said it was as much time as she could spare me now for my mourning. Ever since I learned to dream true, not even my nights have belonged to me. Always I am at the call of the Farseer throne, expected to give my entire life to it.” I phrased it carefully.
“In that, you are your father’s child.”
She blazed up at me suddenly, lighting the garden with her wrath. “He gave his life for them! And what did he get in return? Nothing. Well, some estate, now that he is dead, some Withywoods place I’ve never heard of. What do I care for land and a title? Lady Nettle, they call me now, as if I were a noble’s daughter. And Lady Thornbush they call me, behind my back, simply because I speak my mind in honest words. I care nothing for what they think of me. As soon as I can, I will leave this court and go home. To my real home, the house my father built and its barns and pastures. They can take Withywoods and tear it stone from stone for all I care. I’d rather have my father.”
“So would I. But all the same, you have more right to Withywoods than anyone else. Your father served Prince Chivalry, and that estate was one of his favorites. It is almost as if you are Chivalry’s heir, that you receive it.” And I was sure that was what Patience had intended. She could count the months and years on her fingers, and know that Molly’s child was mine. The old woman had done her best to see something of her grandfather’s lands passed on to Nettle. It warmed my heart that she had done so. I suddenly knew why Patience had waited until after Burrich’s death to see the land go to Nettle. It was because she had respected his claim to Nettle’s paternity and would do nothing to make anyone else question it. Now the lands would appear a thing that Burrich had earned for his family rather than an inheritance passed on to a grandchild. The subtleties of my eccentric stepmother would always delight me.
“I would still rather have my father.” She sniffed, and turned her face from me. She spoke to the darkness, hoarsely. “Are you going to tell me what happened to him?”
“Yes. I am. But I am trying to decide where to begin that tale.” I weighed caution against courage, and then suddenly realized my decision should not rest on my feelings at all. How much should a young woman, alone and in grief, suddenly be confronted with? Now was not the time to change her perception of who she was. She was facing enough changes. Let her grieve unfettered by questions such as my revelations could raise for her. “Your father took his death wound in service to the Farseer monarchy, it is true. But when by sheer will alone he dropped a dragon to his knees, it was not for his prince. It was because the stone dragon had threatened his beloved son.”
She was incredulous. “Swift?”
“Of course. Swift was why he came here. To get his son and take him safely home. He did not think there would be a real dragon to face.”
“There is so much I don’t understand. You call the dragon that they faced a ‘stone dragon.’ What is that?” She deserved to know. And so I told her a hero’s tale, full of the Pale Woman’s dark magic and of a man who had come, half-blind and alone, to face down a dragon for the sake of his wayward son. I told her too of how Swift had stood before the dragon’s charge, and sped the arrow that slew him. And then I spoke of Swift’s loyalty to her father as he lay dying. I even explained the earring that Swift would be wearing when he returned home to them. She wept as I spoke, black tears that vanished as they fell. Her garden faded around us, and the icy glacier wind blew past us and I realized the strength of my telling was such that she saw it, much as I had. Only when my words had faded, did the garden ease back into existence around us. The fragrances were sharper, as if a recent rain had watered them. A moth fluttered by.
“But when will Swift come home?” she demanded anxiously. “It is hard enough for my mother to know her husband is dead. She should not have to worry whether her son will return safely. Why do they linger so long there when their task is done?”