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"My lords," I said hesitantly, "I know little of children myself, and it seemed to me –"
Prince Verity interrupted me. "It's fine, Burrich, it's fine." Then he and Prince Regal set to talking, and I didn't even try to follow their conversation. It wasn't mine to listen to, and mayhap they hadn't even remembered I was there. To them I was no more than the horse that carried them, or the hound that ran at their feet.
And the boy was to them a weapon, like the swords they carried. Or rather, he was like a sword held at their necks, or so the younger Prince made him out to be when he ordered me to bring the boy to Buckkeep. Oh, he said it was the King's neck that was threatened, but I could hear the whine in his throat. If he'd a tail it would have been bristling, and his ears under his smooth brown hair were doubtless flat against his head.
Nay, I should not say that of Prince Regal, for he is a man – a prince – and not a hound, and he'd have my head if he knew I'd thought of him in any other way, Though if he were a hound, it might be that I'd understand him better. I suppose I could say that about Chivalry's young by-blow, too.
Though with the boy, it turned out that I understood him all too well.
It was some months later, in Buckkeep Town, that I learned just how deep this understanding lay. I was in the tanner's shop when I heard a commotion in the street. "You little thieves, you come back here! You, give me that back! You and your dog!"
The first words could have been addressed to anyone. But the last sentence, with its particular emphasis, made my heart sink. I stepped out of the tanner's shop and into the street.
It was a dance worthy of any noble ballroom. Four dancers – three urchins and one hound, weaving a pattern, crossing this way and that. Fitz darted one way and his pup the other, a string of sausages flying back and forth between them, as the other two dirty children shouted rude encouragements and held out their hands in case one or the other should falter.
I felt a chill up my spine and in my stomach. Hadn't I done that myself, before I was scolded and whipped and told never to do that again?
Fitz barreled up the street and ran straight into my outstretched arms.
I paid the angry butcher and hauled my boy home. No doubt his fears multiplied as I left him by the hearth and went to my own room, but I could not face him, just then. I needed the strength of the bottle.
As a child I'd had my pup, like Fitz had his Nosy. Lily, she was called, for her pale fur, and she'd been the smallest and like to have been drowned had I not begged her for my own. I buried my face in her flank and swore I'd care for her, and I did.
It wasn't the Wit that made me love my pup, or that gentled the herd when I went to move them to pasture. It was only that the animals knew me, and liked me best of all the family. But my father whipped me anyway. Told me of the men who became like beasts, of the horrible fate that would come to me if I failed to remember that I was a man and not a dog.
I was not even a man, I wanted to protest, though I kept my mouth shut. I was only a boy, and I could not see what I had done wrong to love my Lily. She was prettier than my sister – or at least she was to a boy of six – and she smelled better, too, and she did what I told her and never took the biggest piece of bread from the plate when I was hungry. But when a boy I knew was beaten and driven from my village for having done the unspeakable – they said he'd had a bird he had become bonded to, who dove to snatch food from others' plates at his command – my father took me hard by the arm and made me watch his shame.
I would not let that happen to Chivalry's son. His was the blood of kings. I would not let his unknown mother's beast-wit taint it.
As I left my room and headed to where he and his dog lay quivering on his pallet by the hearth, I felt a sudden tug at my mind, at my heart. I put it aside, as I had always put it aside. I was a man, not a beast. And so FitzChivalry would be.