I spent a lot of time standing at the window looking out over the meadow. There was nothing to see there. But Burrich did not stop me or make me go back to my chores as he once would have. One day, as I looked over the rich grass, I asked Burrich, "What are we going to do when the shepherds get here? Where will we go to live then?"

"Think about it." He had pegged a rabbit hide to the floor and was scraping it clean of flesh and fat. "They won't be coming. There are no flocks to bring up to summer pasture. Most of the good stock went inland with Regal. He plundered Buckkeep of everything he could cart or drive off. I'm willing to bet that any sheep he left in Buckkeep turned into mutton over the winter."

"Probably," I agreed. And then something pressed into my mind, something more terrible than all the things I knew and did not want to remember. It was all the things I did not know, all the questions that had been left unanswered. I went out to walk on the meadow. I went past the meadow, to the edge of the stream, and then down it, to the boggy part where the cattails grew. I gathered the green cattail spikes to cook with the porridge. Once more, I knew all the names of the plants. I did not want to, but I knew which ones would kill a man, and how to prepare them. All the old knowledge was there, waiting to reclaim me whether I would or no.

When I came back in with the spikes, he was cooking the grain. I set them on the table and got a pot of water from the barrel. As I rinsed them off and picked them over, I finally asked, "What happened? That night?"

He turned very slowly to look at me, as if I were game that might be spooked off by sudden movement. "That night?"

"The night King Shrewd and Kettricken were to escape. Why didn't you have the scrub horses and the litter waiting?"

"Oh. That night." He sighed out as if recalling old pain. He spoke very slowly and calmly, as if fearing to startle me. "They were watching us, Fitz.