Perhaps the greatest comfort of the Wit bond is never having to explain. I did not need to recount the last day’s events to him, did not have to find words to describe how it felt to watch Molly walk away from me. Nor did he ask questions or make sympathetic talk. The human events would have made small sense to him. He acted on the strength of what I felt, not why. He simply came to me and sat beside me on the dirty floor. I could put an arm around him and lean my face against his ruff and sit.

Such packs men make, he observed to me after a while. How can you hunt together when you cannot all run in the same direction?

I made no reply to this. I knew no answer and he did not expect one.

He leaned down to nibble an itch on his foreleg. Then he sat up, shook himself all over, and asked, What will you do for a mate now?

Not all wolves take mates.

The leader always does. How else would the pack multiply?

My leader has a mate, and she is with child. Perhaps wolves have it aright, and men should pay attention. Perhaps only the leader should mate. That was the decision that Heart of the Pack made long ago. That he could not have both a mate, and a leader he followed with all of his heart.

That one is more wolf than he cares to admit. To anyone. A pause. Gingerbread?

I gave it to him. He gobbled it greedily while I watched.

I’ve missed your dreams at night.

They are not my dreams. They are my life. You are welcome to them, so long as Heart of the Pack does not get angry with us. Life shared is better. A pause. You would rather have shared the female’s life.

It is my weakness to want too much.

He blinked his deep eyes. You love too many. My life is much simpler.

He loved only me.

That is true. The only real difficulty I have is knowing that you will never trust that is so.

I sighed heavily. Nighteyes sneezed suddenly, then shook himself all over. I mislike this mouse dust. But before I go, use your so clever hands to scratch inside my ears. It is hard for me to do well without leaving welts.

And so I scratched his ears, and under his throat and the back of his neck, until he fell over on his side like a puppy.

“Hound,” I told him affectionately.

For that insult, you pay! He flipped himself up onto his feet, bit me hard through my sleeve, and then darted out the door and was gone. I pulled back my sleeve to survey the deep white dents in my flesh that were not quite bleeding. Wolf humor.

The brief winter day had ended. I went back to the Keep and forced myself to go through the kitchens, to allow Cook to tell me all the gossip. She stuffed me full of plum cake and mutton as she told me of the Queen’s possible miscarriage, and then how the men had chopped through the outer door of the King’s room after his guard had suddenly perished of apoplexy. “And the second door, too, all the time Prince Regal worriting and urging them on, for fear something had befallen the King himself. But when they got through, despite all that chopping, the King was sleeping like a babe, sir. And so deep a sleep they could not rouse him at all, to tell him why they’d chopped his doors away.”

“Amazing,” I agreed, and she went on to the lesser gossip of the Keep. I found that centered these days mostly on who was and was not included in the flight to Tradeford. Cook was to go, for the sake of her gooseberry tarts and bundle cakes. She did not know who was to take over the cooking here, but no doubt it would be one of the guards. Regal had told her she might take all her best pots, for which she was grateful, but what she would really miss was the west hearth, for she had never cooked on a better, for the draft being just right and the meat hooks at all the right heights. I listened to her, and tried to think only of her words, to be fully intrigued by the small details of what she considered important in her life. The Queen’s guard, I found, was to stay at Buckkeep, as would those few who still wore the colors of King Shrewd’s personal guard. Since they had lost the privilege of his rooms, they had become a dispirited lot. But Regal insisted it was necessary those groups stay, to maintain a royal presence in Buckkeep. Rosemary would go, and her mother, but that was hardly surprising, seeing as who they served. Fedwren would not, nor Mellow. Now, there was a voice she would miss, but she’d probably get used to that inland warbling after a while.

She never thought to ask me if I was going.

As I climbed the stairs to my room I tried to visualize Buckkeep as it would be. The High Table would be empty at every meal, the food served would be the simple campaign food the military cooks were most familiar with. For as long as the food supplies lasted. I expected we would eat a lot of wild game and seaweed before spring. I worried more for Patience and Lacey than I did for myself. Rough quarters and coarse food did not bother me, but it was not what they were used to. At least there would be Mellow still to sing, if his melancholy nature did not overtake him at his abandonment. And Fedwren. With few children to teach, perhaps he and Patience could finally study out their paper making. So putting a brave face on it all, I tried to find a future for us.