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seemed suffocating rather than snug. What had been familiar and cozy a few nights ago now seemed threadbare and dull. I knew it was just the contrast between Chade’s stories of Buckkeep and my own staid life. But restlessness, once awakened, is a powerful thing.
    I tried to think when I had last slept anywhere other than my own bed. Mine was a settled life. At harvesttime each year, I took to the road for a month, hiring out to work the hayfields or the grain harvest or as an apple picker. The extra coins were welcome. I had used to go into Howsbay twice a year, to trade my inks and dyes for fabric for clothing and pots and things of that ilk. The last two years, I had sent the boy on his fat old pony. My life had settled into routine so deeply that I had not even noticed it.
    So. What do you want to do?
Nighteyes stretched and then yawned in resignation.
    I don’t know,
I admitted to the old wolf.
Something different. How would you feel about wandering the world for a bit?
    For a time, he retreated into that part of his mind that was his alone. Then he asked, somewhat testily,
Would we both be afoot, or do you expect me to keep pace with a horse all day?
    That’s a fair question. If we both went afoot?
    If you must,
he conceded grudgingly.
You’re thinking about that place, back in the Mountains, aren’t you?
    The ancient city? Yes.
    He did not oppose me.
Will we be taking the boy?
    I think we’ll leave Hap here to do for himself for a bit. It might be good for him. And someone has to look after the chickens.
    So I suppose we won’t be leaving until the boy comes back?
    I nodded to that. I wondered if I had taken complete leave of my senses.
    I wondered if we would ever come back at all.

chapter
II
    STARLING
    Starling Birdsong, minstrel to Queen Kettricken, has inspired as many songs as she has written. Legendary as Queen Kettricken’s companion on her quest for Elderling aid during the Red Ship War, she extended her service to the Farseer throne for decades during the rebuilding of the Six Duchies. Gifted with the knack of being at home in any company, she was indispensable to the Queen in the unsettled years that followed the Cleansing of Buck. The minstrel was trusted not only with treaties and settlements between nobles, but with offers of amnesty to robber bands and smuggler families. She herself made songs of many of these missions, but one can be sure that she had other endeavors, carried out in secret for the Farseer reign, and far too sensitive to ever become the subject of verse.
    Starling kept Hap with her for a full two months. My amusement at his extended absence changed first to irritation and then annoyance. The annoyance was mostly with myself. I had not realized how much I had come to depend on the boy’s strong back until I had to bend mine to the tasks I’d delegated to him. But it was not just the boy’s ordinary chores that I undertook during that extra month of his absence. Chade’s visit had awakened something in me. I had no name for it, but it seemed a demon that gnawed at me, showing me every shabby aspect of my small holding. The peace of my isolated home now seemed idle complacency. Had it truly been a year since I had shoved a rock under the sagging porch step and promised myself I’d fix it later? No, it had been closer to a year and a half.
    I put the porch to rights, and then not only shoveled out the chicken house but washed it down with lye-water before gathering fresh reeds to floor it. I fixed the leaking roof on my work shed, and finally cut the hole and put in the greased skin window I’d been promising myself for two years. I gave the cottage a more thorough spring-cleaning than it had had in years. I cut down the cracked ash limb, dropping it neatly through the roof of the freshly cleaned chicken house. I reroofed the chicken house. I was just finishing that task when Nighteyes told me he heard horses. I clambered down, picked up my shirt, and walked around to the front