While I was still gaping, he’d delicately asked if Starling and I had any sort of “an arrangement” and when I angrily replied that it was no one else’s business if we did, but we didn’t, he had surprised me by saying that only a foolish man would deliberately provoke a minstrel to anger.

“I didn’t provoke her to anger. All of this is because I’ve refused to have her in my bed since I discovered she was married. I think I have a right to decide with whom I’ll sleep. Don’t you?”

I’d expected him to be shocked at this revelation. Almost, I hoped that it would be enough to embarrass him and make him resolve not to pry into my personal affairs anymore. He only slapped his forehead. “Of course. Well, she should have expected you to shake her out of your sheets once you discovered she was married, but . . . Fitz, do you understand what it means to her? Think.”

Had he not been so intent on teaching me something, I think I would have been offended. Yet his air was so familiar I could not accept his question as anything other than the opening to a lesson. Thus he had often spoken to me when trying to teach me to see all the possible motivations for a man to do something, rather than just the first ones that sprang to mind. “She is ashamed because my finding out she was married and yet still sleeping with me has lowered my opinion of her?”

“No. Think, boy. Did it really lower your opinion of her?”

Reluctantly, I shook my head. “I only felt stupid. Chade, in some way, I was not even surprised. Starling has always allowed herself to do such things. I’ve known that since I first met her. I didn’t expect her to change her minstrel ways. I simply didn’t want to be a party to it.”

He sighed. “Fitz, Fitz. Your biggest blind spot is that you cannot imagine anyone seeing you in a different way from how you see yourself. What are you, who are you, to Starling?”

I shrugged a shoulder. “Fitz. The bastard. Someone she has known for fifteen years.”

A very small smile played across his face. He spoke softly. “No. You are FitzChivalry Farseer. The unacknowledged prince. She’d made a song about you before she’d even met you. Why? Because you’d captured her imagination. The bastard Farseer. Had Chivalry acknowledged you, you’d have had a chance at the throne. Denied and ignored by your father, you were still loyal, still the hero of the battle at Antler Island Tower. You died in ignominy in Regal’s dungeons, and rose as a vengeful ghost to plague Regal through his days as a pretender. She accompanied you on a quest to save your king, and though it did not come out as any of us intended, still there was triumph at the end. And she not only witnessed it, she was a part of it.”

“It seems a fine tale, to hear you tell it that way, with none of the dirt and pain and misfortune.”

“It is a fine tale, even with the dirt and pain and misfortune. A fine and glorious tale, one that would make any minstrel’s reputation for life, did she ever sing it. Yet it is one Starling can never sing. Because it has been forbidden to her. Her great adventure, her wonderful song, locked up as a secret. Still, at least, she knew she was a part of it, and she was a part of the royal bastard’s life. She became his lover, a party to his secrets. I think she expected that when you returned to Buckkeep, someday, you would again be at the center of intrigue and wondrous events. And she expected to be part of that also, to turn heads and bask in that shared glory. The Witted Bastard’s minstrel mistress. If she could not sing the song herself, at least she was guaranteed a place in that tale, if it should ever be told. And don’t doubt that she has composed it somewhere, as a song or a poem. She saw herself as a part of your tale, touched by your wild glory. Then, you took that from her. You not only walked away from her, you returned to Buckkeep as an ignominious servant. You not only are ending your tale on a disappointing note; you are making her of no consequence by doing it. She is a minstrel, Fitz. How did you think she’d react to that? Gracefully?”

I saw her suddenly in a different light. Her cruelty to Hap, her offense at me. “I don’t think of myself like that, Chade.”

“I know you don’t,” he said more gently. “But do you see that she could? And that you crashed her dreams down around her?”

I nodded slowly. “But there’s nothing I can do about it. I won’t take a married woman into my bed. And I can’t come back as FitzChivalry Farseer. I’d still face a noose around my neck if I did.”

“That’s most likely true. I agree that you cannot be known as FitzChivalry again. As to the other . . . well. Let me remind you that Starling knows a great many things. We are all vulnerable to her. I expect you to maintain her goodwill toward us.”