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 better 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.”
“A moment.” Her words dizzied me. I could imagine it too well.
“I shall finish it swiftly. They died, slowly. But the next night, more of Doplin’s songbirds were slain, and an old huntsman said it was a weasel, not a fox, for a weasel but drinks the blood whereas a fox would have taken the birds to pieces. I think it was the injustice of her death as much as the cruelty of it that roused the Witted against him. The next day, Doplin’s own dog snapped at him. Doplin had both his dog and his dogboy put down. He claimed that when he walked through his stables, every one of his horses went wild-eyed at his passage, laying back ears and kicking their stall walls. He had two stableboys hanged over water and burned. He claimed flies began to flock to his kitchen so that he found them dead daily in his food, and that…” shook my head at her. “That is the wildness of a man’s uneasy conscience, not the work of any Witted ones I have ever known.”
She shrugged. “In any case, the folk cried out to the Queen for justice when over a dozen of his lesser servants had been tortured or killed. And she sent Chade.”
I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms on my chest. So. The old assassin was still the bearer of the Farseer justice. I wondered who had accompanied him to do the quiet work. “What happened?” asked, as if I did not know. “Chade made a simple solution to it all. By the Queen’s order, he forbade Doplin to keep horse, hawk, or hound, or beast or bird of any kind in his manor. He cannot ride, hawk, or hunt in any form. Chade even forbade him and all who live in his keep the eating of any flesh or fish for a year.”
“That will make for a dreary holding.”
“It is said among the minstrels that no one guests with Doplin anymore unless they must, that his servants are few and surly, and that he has lost his stature with the other nobles since his hospitality has become such a threadbare welcome. And Chade forced him to pay blood-gold, not only to the families of the slain servants, but to the family of the fox-girl.”
“Did they take it?”
“The servants’ families did. It was only fair. The fox-girl’s family was gone, dead or fled, no one could or would say. Chade demanded that the blood money for her be given to the Queen’s counting-man, to be held for the family.” She shrugged. “That should have settled it. But from that time to now, the incidents have multiplied. Not just the scourings for Witted ones, but the revenge the Witted wreak in turn on their tormentors.”
I frowned. “I don’t see why any of that would provoke further uprisings among the Witted. It seems to me Doplin was justly punished.”
“And some say more severely than he deserved, but Chade was unrelenting. Nor did he stop with that. Shortly after that, all six Dukes received scrolls from Queen Kettricken, saying that to be Witted was no crime, save that a Witted one used it for evil ends. She told the Dukes they must forbid their nobles and lords to execute Witted ones, save that their crimes had been proven against them as surely as any ordinary man’s crimes. The edict did not sit well, as you can imagine. Where it is not ignored, proof of a man’s guilt is always ample after his death. Instead of calming feelings, the Queen’s declaration seemed to wake all the old feelings against the Witted ones.