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energies and hungers of youth. Royalty has no leisure to ignore such opportunities, or to let them be created for others.”
    The King continued his stroll past me, extolling on his theme while Regal gave me a baleful look from bloodshot eyes. A flap of his hand indicated that I should disappear myself. I indicated my understanding with a quick nod, but darted first to the table. I stuffed two apples into my jerkin and took up a mostly whole gooseberry tart when the King suddenly rounded and gestured at me. His fool mimed an imitation. I froze where I stood.
    “Look at him,” the old King commanded.
    Regal glared at me, but I dared not move.
    “What will you make of him?”
    Regal looked perplexed. “Him? It’s the Fitz. Chivalry’s bastard. Sneaking and thieving as always.”
    “Fool.” King Shrewd smiled, but his eyes remained flinty. The Fool, thinking himself addressed, smiled sweetly. “Are your ears stopped with wax? Do you hear nothing I say? I asked you, not “what do you make of him?’ but “what will you make of him?’ There he stands, young, strong, and resourceful. His lines are every bit as royal as yours, for all that he was born on the wrong side of the sheets. So what will you make of him? A tool? A weapon? A comrade? An enemy? Or will you leave him lying about, for someone else to take up and use against you?”
    Regal squinted at me, then glanced past me and, finding no one else in the hall, returned his puzzled gaze to me. At my ankle, a pup whined a reminder that earlier we had been sharing. I warned him to hush.
    “The bastard? He’s only a child.”
    The old King sighed. “Today. This morning and now he is a child. When next you turn around he will be a youth, or worse, a man, and then it will be too late for you to make anything of him. But take him now, Regal, and shape him, and a decade hence you will command his loyalty. Instead of a discontented bastard who may be persuaded to become a pretender to the throne, he will be a henchman, united to the family by spirit as well as blood. A bastard, Regal, is a unique thing. Put a signet ring on his hand and send him forth, and you have created a diplomat no foreign ruler will dare to turn away. He may safely be sent where a prince of the blood may not be risked. Imagine the uses for one who is and yet is not of the royal bloodline. Hostage exchanges. Marital alliances. Quiet work. The diplomacy of the knife.”
    Regal’s eyes grew round at the King’s last words. For a pause, we all breathed in silence, regarding one another. When Regal spoke, he sounded as if he had dry bread caught in his throat. “You speak of these things in front of the boy. Of using him, as a tool, a weapon. You think he will not remember your words when he is grown?”
    King Shrewd laughed, and the sound rang against the stone walls of the Great Hall. “Remember them? Of course he will. I count on it. Look at his eyes, Regal. There is intelligence there, and possibly potential Skill. I’d be a fool to lie to him. Stupider still to simply begin his training and education with no explanation. For that would leave his mind fallow for whatever seeds others might plant there. Isn’t it so, boy?”
    He was regarding me steadily and I suddenly realized I was returning his look. For all of his speech our gazes had been locked as we read one another. In the eyes of the man who was my grandfather was honesty, of a rocky, bony sort. There was no comfort in it, but I knew I could always count on it to be there. I nodded slowly.
    “Come here.”
    I walked to him slowly. When I reached him, he got down on one knee, to be eye to eye with me. The Fool knelt solemnly beside us, looking earnestly from face to face. Regal glared down at all of us. At the time I never grasped the irony of the old King genuflecting to his bastard grandson. So I was solemn as he took the tart from my hands and tossed it to the puppies who had trailed after me. He drew a pin from the folds of silk at