Fool’s Assassin

LADY CELESTIA’S GUIDE TO MANNERS

I found Revel already busy with the workmen. He was outside the door of the rooms that were to be Shun’s, berating them for the mud they had tracked in. I waited until he had finished, and then mentioned to him that perhaps Lady Shun would want a different color of room. Could the Yellow Suite be painted to accommodate her?

He looked at me as if I were daft. “But then the rainbow would be out of order.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“By Lady Patience’s decree, years ago, the seven suites were painted to reflect the order of colors in the rainbow. Thus it begins with red, then orange. Yellow is followed by green, then blue, and …”

“And purple. Is the Purple Suite in good repair?”

The crease between his eyes deepened. “As good a repair as I’ve been able to keep it in, given the budget you’ve allotted me.” He looked down on me, struggling to hide his disapproval over how little consideration I’d given to the estate over the years.

I made a hasty decision. “Send for Lady Shun. Let her select the room with the color that best suits her. And prepare the Green Suite as well. No. Wait. You are right, Revel. Bring me a list of what must be done for each of the suites in the main house in order to meet your approval. Let us begin, as we should have years ago, to make them right, one after another. Oh, and there will be another guest coming to stay with us, arriving in ten days or less. FitzVigilant is to be tutor to Lady Bee. And perhaps to some of the other estate children.”

That last came to me in a flash. King Shrewd had always insisted that every child at Buckkeep be afforded at least a chance for letters and numbers. Not all parents chose to take advantage of that, and many a child begged his way out of it, but every youngster at Buckkeep Castle was offered a chance to learn. It was time I stepped up to that legacy as well.

Revel breathed in deep through his nose. For a man with such a merry name, he looked very dour as he said, “Then the schoolroom must also be put to rights, sir? And the adjoining chambers for the scribe?”

Schoolroom. I recalled abruptly that Withywoods had one. My early education had happened at one of the lesser hearths in the Great Hall at Buckkeep. And Molly’s boys had come to me with a good foundation in reading and reckoning from Burrich, and had mainly been educated by me and by the other folk at Withywoods. They’d learned from the arborist, the orchard man, the shepherd … I’d never demanded they master another language, and their knowledge of Six Duchies history and geography had mostly been passed to them during long conversations in the evenings or minstrel songs at holidays. Had I been lax in educating Burrich’s sons? Neither Molly nor either of the boys had ever asked that I supply more than that. Guilt squeezed me.

“Sir?” Revel’s query jolted me back to the present. I stared at him, wondering what we had been discussing.

At my questioning look, he repeated, “The schoolroom, Holder Badgerlock. It was Lady Patience’s doing. Many years ago, when she still hoped that she would have babes of her own that would grow up here. There is a schoolroom. A room especially for teaching children.” He spoke the last two words as if I might not be familiar with such a concept.

Of course. And, “Of course, then, Revel. Freshen the schoolroom and the scribe’s chambers, and make a list for me of any more serious repairs they might need. Oh. And a list of the children, please, who might wish to learn their letters and reckoning.”

Revel’s eyes held a martyr’s determination to excel as he asked, “And is there anything else, sir?”

I conceded. “That’s as much as I can think of right now. If anything more occurs to you, please bring it to my attention.”

“As it should be, sir,” he agreed, and I could almost hear his thought: As it should have been done all along.

That evening, when the workmen were gone and Bee once more asleep in Molly’s sewing room, I Skilled to my elder daughter. I was getting ready for bed, Nettle greeted my questing touch.

I didn’t realize it was so late, I apologized. I wished to apprise you of my latest round of renovations to Withywoods. I deem them necessary, as does Revel, but I fear it will eat into the reserves I had set aside from the income.