"Who'd Chivalry get him on?" a man at the other end of the table asked incautiously.

Burrich swung his gaze to the man as he set his mug down. For a moment he didn't speak, and I sensed that silence hovering again. "I'd say it was Prince Chivalry's business who the mother was, and not for kitchen talk," Burrich said mildly.

"Even so, even so," the guard agreed abruptly, and Jason nodded like a courting bird in agreement. Young as I was, I still wondered what kind of man this was who, with one leg bandaged, could quell a room full of rough men with a look or a word.

"Boy don't have a name," Jason volunteered into the silence. "Just goes by 'boy.' "

This statement seemed to put everyone, even Burrich, at a loss for words. The silence lingered as I finished bread and cheese and meat, and washed it down with a swallow or two of beer that Burrich offered me. The other men left the room gradually, in twos and threes, and still he sat there, drinking and looking at me. "Well," he said at long last. "If I know your father, he'll face up to it square and do what's right. But Eda only knows what he'll think is the right thing to do. Probably whatever hurts the most." He watched me silently a moment longer. "Had enough to eat?" he asked at last.

I nodded, and he stood stiffly, to swing me off the table and onto the floor. "Come on, then, Fitz," he said, and moved out of the kitchen and down a different corridor. His stiff leg made his gait ungainly, and perhaps the beer had something to do with it as well. Certainly I had no trouble in keeping up. We came at last to a heavy door, and a guard who nodded us through with a devouring stare at me.

Outside, a chill wind was blowing. All the ice and snow that had softened during the day had gone back to sharpness with the coming of night.