Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

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Following introductory commentary from an older scribe about the magics in use in the Six Duchies, “Spilled Blood” begins with Fitz rushing to assist Patience, whom he thinks has fallen again. He finds that it is Molly who is in need, however, and attended by both Nettle and Patience. Fitz assists Molly to their bedchambers and into bed amid her apologies, and after she lapses into sleep, he quietly retreats to his private study to contemplate matters.

Fitz is interrupted by Revel, sent by Riddle, who shakingly reports violence in the home. Fitz dispatches him to guard Molly’s room and stalks into a more public study, where he finds Revel amid signs of violence and upset. Fitz issues orders and begins a search that ends up being fruitless, and he confers with Revel again, getting more details about the messenger whose presence he has missed.

The search of Withywoods continues, Fitz communing through the Skill with Nettle as he proceeds. He confers with Riddle, who joins him in the hunt as he offers some rebuke for Fitz having long set aside his recommendations regarding security. The search takes them outside, where queries to staff yield additional details but nothing of immediate use.

Further search yields sign of further infiltration already departed, and Fitz finds himself swept up in his magics by a careless handling of a cube of memory stone that the Fool had carved for him. The experience confirms for him the fate of the messenger he has missed, and he begins to seethe in anger at the violation. But there is nothing to be done at the moment, and Winterfest continues as if nothing had been amiss, time passing ever onward.

The present chapter is still firmly in the explicatory phase of the novel, the first act in Freytag’s Pyramid familiar to many from high school English classes. To my rereading, it does more to lay out social particulars than the previous chapter–but then, it has the luxury of doing so. The first chapter has to do more to establish the broader milieu; the second chapter can be more local because the more global view already motioned towards affords it a context in which to exist. Or, again, so it seems to me; I readily admit to having preferences in my worldbuilding, as well as approaching this novel from a position of familiarity with it and with the broader literary contexts in which it exists.

(I may well be among the expected primary readership, but I do not know that I am necessarily representative of that readership. I would probably be arrogant to suggest as much, and to a degree excessive even for my often-hubristic self.)

I do, as I consider the present chapter, find myself put in mind of the beginning of the Tawny Man trilogy. Here, as there, Fitz has been living a life away from the intrigues of court, out in the country and away from many of the dangers he had previously faced. Here, as there, the habits of mind to which he was trained in his youth have fallen away, and he moves about his day-to-day existence. There is the pleasant counterpoint that his present life is one that, while perhaps not offering more ease, does offer more comfort; he is part of a community, respected and honored, and he is with the woman he has long loved.

But, here as there, there remains an undercurrent of violence in Fitz; when confronted with the threat posed by the infiltrators, although he is unable to meet it, his mind immediately returns to how to do such things. The statement being made about early training is something that can be teased out, I am sure; perhaps those more current in their scholarship than I could attend to such things.

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