“I am, too,” he admitted as he took the mug from me. “And it's harder than I thought it would be.”

“Is it? Then why do it?”

“To help Nettle be angry with you.”

“Ah.” I did not let myself dwell on that, but only commented, “She probably made it sound like a very good idea.”

“Ya,” he drawled sadly.

I nodded slowly. “But she's all right, isn't she? She's not hurt or in danger?”

“She's angry. 'Cause she had to leave her home. Because of the dragon. So that was scary for me, and I told her she could come here, because we're going to cut a dragon's head off. But she said, don't worry; my papa will kill the dragon for me. So, she's safe.”

My head swam. It was definite then. The message bird had reached Buckkeep, and the Queen had acted swiftly to take Nettle into shelter. And someone, Kettricken or Burrich, had told her that she was my daughter. Why they had done it now or how they had phrased the words suddenly did not matter. Nettle knew. And she was angry with me, but had still found a way to send me a message through Thick, that told me that she knew who I was, and that I had believed I had done what I did to protect her. All the things I felt seemed to conflict with one another. I wondered if she knew all of what I was, or only that there was another man who had fathered her, and by his bloodline exposed her to danger. Had anyone explained the Skill to her? Did she know I was Witted? I had wanted to tell her myself that I was her father, if I had ever decided that she must know. Would it have been easier for her, or harder? I did not know. There was so much I did not know, and so much that she did not know about me.

Then another aspect of it washed over me like a wave. If Nettle was in Buckkeep, and if she would open her mind to our Skilling, we could communicate with the Queen and tell her all that was going on. A strange little thrill washed through me. Prince Dutiful had a working coterie now.

I came out of my reverie when Thick handed the mug back to me. It was empty. “Are you a little warmer now?” I asked him.

“A little,” he admitted.

“So am I,” I told him, but it had nothing to do with how cold the night was. There are moments that leave a man's heart pumping so strong and free that no chill can touch him. I felt alive and completed, vindicated in all I had done. Thick huddled back into his bed, my blanket still clutched around his shoulders. I didn't mind. I spoke cautiously. “If Nettle comes to your dreams tonight, will you tell her—” That I love her. No. It was far too soon to say such words, and when I spoke them, she should hear them first from me. Now they would be empty utterances from a shadow father she had never met. No. “Will you tell her to let the Queen know we are all well, and safely arrived at the island?” Deliberately I kept the message a general one. I had no assurance that the dragon Tintaglia could not listen in on what passed between Thick and Nettle.

“Nettle doesn't like the Queen. She is too nice, with lots of pretty skirts for Nettle and pretty smells and shiny things. She isn't Nettle's mother! But she makes her stay close and only lets her out with a guard. Nettle hates that. And she's had enough of lessons, thank you very much!”

Despite my worries, I smiled. I did not like to think that Nettle would clash with Kettricken, but in retrospect I saw it as inevitable. It was the way Nettle's words came out in Thick's voice. And it was a relief that too many skirts and lessons were Nettle's greatest threat right now. I felt almost fatuously happy despite all the ways it would complicate my life.

Thick was going to sleep but I wished to think awhile longer. I went out to the dying fire, closing the tent flap behind me. I scraped the leftover porridge from the kettle and ate it. As last man to eat, it fell to me to clean the pot for tomorrow. I scrubbed it out with sand and seawater and never once felt the cold water or the rough sand. My thoughts were elsewhere. Would Kettricken have put her in my old room? Did my daughter now wear the jewels and garb of a princess? I poured what was left of the tea into my cup and dumped out the dregs from the pot. But when I went to sweeten my brew, I could not find the pot of honey in the dark. So I drank it as it was, thick and bitter and delicious with the change that had visited my life that night.

Chapter 14

THE BLACK MAN

Just as a Skill coterie may use its talents to influence the waking mind of others and persuade their target that certain things are true, so a Skill dreamer uses his Skill upon his own sleeping mind to create a world which is, to him, as real as our waking one. The Skill dreamer in a sense turns the Skill against his own thoughts. Whereas most of us have no control over what we dream at night, the Skill dreamer is more likely never to have experienced random dreams and may even have difficulty in perceiving what one would be like or that other people dream in such a fashion.