Golden Fool (Tawny Man #2)

How I longed to be present for that, not just to witness it, but also to see the reaction of the guards when they found themselves honored with the Queen at their table. It could not damage Web’s standing with them that he had brought such a thing about. And I did not doubt that more would come to meet his bird if the Queen herself did not fear his Wit-beast.

But I was trapped in my watching place, being Chade’s eyes when he was not in the room. I watched the Old Bloods unmask after their food had been brought in. As before, Boyo and Silvereye spoke loudly of injustices done and the need for retribution, but theirs were not the only voices raised. Some spoke of Web’s performance with amazement. I heard at least one woman say to another that, having met Kettricken, she would not mind entrusting a son to her to be her page, for she had heard that all children in the keep were given a chance to learn both figuring and writing. And a young man, clearly a minstrel from his voice, wondered aloud what it would be like to sing the Old Blood songs at the Queen’s own hearth, and if such a thing would not truly be the best way to teach the un-Witted that his people were neither fearsome nor monstrous.

A crack had been opened. Tomorrow’s possibilities were gaining strength, growing in the light of Web’s optimism. I wondered if they could grow enough to cast their shadows over the weeds of yesterday’s wrongs.

The afternoon, however, was a disappointment, long and tedious. When the Queen and her councilors returned with Web, Boyo rose to claim his turn to speak. Forewarned of him by Chade and myself, my queen listened calmly as he detailed first all the generalized wrongs the Farseers had ever done to the Old Bloods, and then the specifics of his case. There, at least, my queen was able to muffle him. Firmly but courteously, she told him that now was not the time for her to settle personal wrongs. If lands and wealth had been unjustly taken from his family, then that was a matter to be settled before her on a judging day rather than at this time. Chade would help him to make an appropriate appointment, and would also tell him what documentation he would need. Most of it would likely relate to the need for him to define a clear line of succession from his dispossessed ancestor to himself, including a minstrel who could attest to his being of the line of the eldest child of an eldest child for the intervening generations.

Very neatly she made it seem that he was putting his own interests ahead of the others at the meeting, as indeed he was. She did not refuse to find justice for him, but relegated his seeking of it to the path that any Six Duchies citizen would have to follow. She reminded them all that this convocation was intended to allow all to join their thoughts as to how unjust persecution of the Old Bloods might be ended.

Silvereye stirred a muck more difficult to settle. She spoke of those who had murdered her family. As she spoke, her voice rose in anger and hatred and pain, and I saw those emotions echoed in many faces around her. Web looked sick and sorrowful, and my queen’s face grew very still. Chade’s features were graven in stone. But anger most often begets anger, and the faces of Queen Kettricken’s Six Duchies representatives became set in surly expressions. The vengeance and punishment she demanded were far too steep for anyone to consider granting.

It was as if she set a jump that no negotiator could clear and then declared that she could be satisfied with nothing less. This, she declared, was the only way to end persecution of the Old Blood. Make it a crime so hideously punished that none would consider committing it again. Further, search out and eliminate all who had ever committed or tolerated such treatment of Old Bloods. From her personal sorrow Silvereye expanded her grievance to include all Witted executed in the last century. She demanded both punishment and restitution, with the punishment to mirror exactly what had befallen their victims. My queen had the wisdom to allow her to keep speaking until she had run out of words. Surely I could not have been the only one to hear the edge of madness in her demands. And yet if grief powered that madness, then who was I to criticize it?

By the time Silvereye had finished, there were not a few other Old Bloods anxious to take up the tally of all that had been lost to the persecution. Names were called out of folk who deserved death, and the anger in the room swirled like a gathering storm. But my queen held up a hand and asked them quietly, “Then where should it end?”

“When every last one has been punished!” Silvereye declared passionately. “Let the gallows sway with their weight, and the smoke of their burning blacken the skies all summer. Let me hear their families wail aloud in a sorrow like the sorrows that we have been forced to conceal, lest others know us for Old Bloods. Let the punishment be apportioned exactly. For every father killed, let a father die. For every mother, a mother. For every child, a child.”