I was sitting one evening in the guardroom off the kitchen. I had found a place in the corner where I could lean against the wall and prop my boots up on the opposite bench to discourage company. A mug of ale that had gone warm hours ago sat in front of me. I lacked even the ambition to drink myself into a stupor. I was looking at nothing, attempting not to think, when the bench was jerked out from under my propped feet. I nearly fell from my seat, then recovered to see Burrich seating himself opposite me. “What ails you?” he asked without niceties. He leaned forward and pitched his voice for me alone. “Have you had another seizure?”

I looked back at the table. I spoke as quietly. “A few trembling fits, but no real seizures. They only seem to come on me if I strain myself.”

He nodded gravely, then waited. I looked up to find his dark eyes on me. The concern in them touched something in me. I shook my head, my voice suddenly gone. “It’s Molly,” I said after a moment.

“You haven’t been able to find where she went?”

“No. She’s here, at Buckkeep, working as a maid for Patience. But Patience won’t let me see her. She says …”

Burrich’s eyes had widened at my first words. Now he glanced around us, then tossed his head at the door. I arose and followed him as he led me back to his stables, and then up to his room. I sat down at his table, before his hearth, and he brought out his good Tilth brandy and two cups. Then he set out his leather-mending tools. And his perpetual pile of harness to be mended. He handed me a halter that needed a new strap. For himself, he laid out some fancy work on a saddle skirt. He drew up his own stool and looked at me. “This Molly. I’ve seen her then, in the washer courts with Lacey? Carries her head proud? Red glint to her coat?”

“Her hair,” I corrected him grudgingly.

“Nice wide hips. She’ll bear easily,” he said with approval.

I glared at him. “Thank you,” I said icily.

He shocked me by grinning. “Get angry. I’d rather you were that than self-pitying. So. Tell me.”

And I told him. Probably much more than I would have in the guardroom, for here we were alone, the brandy went warm down my throat, and the familiar sights and smells of his room and work were all around me. Here, if anywhere in my life, I had always been safe. It seemed safe to reveal to him my pain. He did not speak or make any comments. Even after I had talked myself out, he kept his silence. I watched him rub dye into the lines of the buck he had incised in the leather.

“So. What should I do?” I heard myself ask.

He set down his work, drank off his brandy, and then refilled his cup. He looked about his room. “You ask me, of course, because you have noted my rare success at providing myself with a fond wife and many children?”

The bitterness in his voice shocked me, but before I could react to it, he gave a choked laugh. “Forget I said that. Ultimately, the decision was mine, and done a long time ago. FitzChivalry, what do you think you should be doing?”

I stared at him morosely.

“What made things go wrong in the first place?” When I did not reply, he asked me, “Did not you yourself just tell me that you courted her as a boy, when she considered your offer a man’s? She was looking for a man. So don’t go sulking about like a thwarted child. Be a man.” He drank down half his brandy, then refilled both our cups.

“How?” I demanded.

“The same way you’ve shown yourself a man elsewhere. Accept the discipline, live up to the task. So you cannot see her. If I know anything of women, it does not mean she does not see you. Keep that in mind. Look at yourself. Your hair looks like a pony’s winter coat, I’ll wager you’ve worn that shirt a week straight, and you’re thin as a winter foal. I doubt you’ll regain her respect that way. Feed yourself up, groom yourself daily, and in Eda’s name, get some exercise instead of moping about the guardroom. Set yourself some tasks and get onto them.”

I nodded slowly to the advice. I knew he was right. But I could not help protesting, “But all of that will do me no good if Patience will still not permit me to see Molly.”

“In the long run, my boy, it is not about you and Patience. It is about you and Molly.”

“And King Shrewd,” I said wryly.

He glanced up at me quizzically.

“According to Patience, a man cannot be sworn to a King and give his heart fully to a woman as well. ‘You cannot put two saddles on one horse,’ she told me. This from a woman who married a King-in-Waiting, and was content with whatever time he had for her.” I reached to hand Burrich the mended halter.