Then came a night that sharpened my wariness once more. I had gone down to Buckkeep Town. When I knocked at Jinna’s door, her niece told me that Aunt Jinna had gone out to deliver several charms to a family whose goats had been plagued with mange. Privately, I wondered if charms would have any efficacy against such a thing, but aloud I asked her niece to let Jinna know I had come calling. When I asked after Hap, she made a face of disapproval and said that perhaps I might find him at the Stuck Pig with “that Hartshorn girl.” Her disparagement of my son’s companion stung. As I made my way to the Stuck Pig through the crisp winter night, I pondered what steps I should take. Hap’s passionate courtship of the girl was neither balanced nor appropriate. For those very reasons, I doubted he would listen to me advising him to temper his wooing.

Yet when I entered the Stuck Pig’s drafty common room, I saw no sign of Hap or Svanja. I wondered briefly where they were, but was sharply distracted from that question when I saw Laurel sitting at one of the stained tables. The Queen’s Huntswoman drank alone. I scowled at that, for I well recalled that Chade had assigned a man to guard her. As I watched, the tavern boy came to fill her mug again. The reckless way she lofted it told me it had already been filled several times that night.

I bought myself a beer and studied the population of the common room. Two men and a woman at a corner table seemed positioned to watch the Huntswoman. But just as I wondered if they had ill intentions, the obvious couple of the group rose, bade the lone man farewell, and sauntered out without a backward glance. The remaining man gestured a tavern maid to his table. To my glance, it appeared he was trying to purchase something warmer than beer from her. His loutish behavior calmed my reservations.

I crossed the crowded common room. Laurel started as I set my mug down, then looked away miserably as I took a seat on the bench beside her. I spoke quietly.

“Not the sort of place where one would expect the Queen’s Huntswoman to drink.” I glanced about the grubby tavern pointedly, and then asked, “And where is your apprentice tonight?” I’d had a glimpse or two of Chade’s man. The sheer muscle of him would have daunted any ambusher. I thought less of his intellect, especially at this moment. “Doesn’t it seem a bit unwise for you to visit Buckkeep Town without him?”

“Unwise? Where, then, is your keeper? The danger to you is greater than the threat to me,” she rebuked me bitterly. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but from tears or drink, I could not tell.

I kept my voice low. “Perhaps I am more accustomed to this sort of danger.”

“Well. That might be true. I know little enough of you to know what you are accustomed to. But as for me, I have no intention of becoming accustomed to it. Or limiting the choices in my life by walking in constant fear.” Laurel looked tired, and there were lines at the sides of her mouth and the corners of her eyes that I did not recall. She had been walking in constant fear despite her brave dismissal of it.

“Have there been any further threats?” I asked her quietly.

She smiled, a showing of teeth. “Why? Isn’t one enough for you?”

“What’s happened?”

She shook her head at me and drank the rest of her ale. I signaled to the tavern boy to bring us more. After a moment, she said, “The first was nothing that anyone else would have recognized as a threat. Just a sprig of laurel tied to the latch of my horse’s stall. Hung by a little noose of twine.” Almost unwillingly, she added, “There was a feather as well. Cut in four pieces and scorched.”

“A feather?”

It took her a long time to decide to answer. “Someone I care about is bonded to a goose.”

For an instant, my heart was still. Then it started again with a jolt. “So they show you that they can reach inside the walls of the keep,” I said quietly. She nodded as the boy replenished our mugs from a heavy pitcher. I gave him his coin and he turned away. Laurel picked her mug up immediately, and a small wave of ale slopped over the brim and onto her hand. She was slightly drunk.

“Did they ask anything of you? Or simply show that they could reach you where you live?”

“They asked quite clearly.”

“How?”

“A little scroll, left amongst my grooming gear for my horse. All in the stables know that I insisted on caring for Whitecap myself. It simply said that, if I knew what was wise, I should leave your black horse and Lord Golden’s Malta in the far paddock at night.”

Cold seemed to spread out from my belly and fill the rest of my body. “You didn’t do it.”