‘It’s quite clear,’ said the Tilth man. He reached for the scroll. ‘Shall I read it to you?’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ I told him, as Hands re-rolled the scroll. ‘What’s writ­ten there is as plain as what’s not. Prince Regal has signed it. But Cliff is not his horse. He, and the mares and geld­ing, are Buck­keep horses. Only the King may sell them.’

  ‘King-in-Wait­ing Ver­ity is away. Prince Regal acts in his stead now.’

  I put a re­strain­ing hand on Hands’ shoulder. ‘King-in-Wait­ing Ver­ity is in­deed away. But King Shrewd is not. Nor is Queen-in-Wait­ing Kettricken. One of those must sign to sell a horse from Buck­keep stable.’

  Lance snatched his scroll back, ex­amined the sig­na­ture for him­self. ‘Well, Prince Regal’s mark should be good enough for you, with Ver­ity away. After all, all know the old King is not in his right mind most of the time. And Kettricken is, well … not of the fam­ily. Really. So, with Ver­ity gone, Regal is …’

  ‘Prince.’ I spoke the word crisply. ‘To say less of him would be treason. As would be to say he were King. Or Queen. When he is not.’

  I let the im­plied threat settle into his mind. I would not dir­ectly ac­cuse him of treason, for then he would have to die for it. Not even a pom­pous ass like Lance de­served to die just for par­rot­ing what his mas­ter had no doubt spoken aloud. I watched his eyes grow wide.

  ‘I meant noth­ing …’

  ‘And no harm is done,’ I filled in. ‘As long as you re­mem­ber one can­not buy a horse from a man who doesn’t own it. And these are Buck­keep horses, owned by the King.’

  ‘Of course.’ Lance dithered. ‘Per­haps this is the wrong pa­per. I am sure there is a mis­take of some kind. I will go back to my mas­ter.’

  ‘A wise choice.’ Hands spoke softly be­side me, tak­ing au­thor­ity back.

  ‘Well, come along, then,’ Lance snapped at his boy and gave the lad a shove. The boy glowered at us as he trailed off after his mas­ter. I scarcely blamed him. Lance was the sort who must vent his ill tem­per some­where.

  ‘Will they be back, do you think?’ Hands asked me quietly.

  ‘Either that, or Regal must give Ram his coin back.’

  We si­lently con­sidered the like­li­hood of that.

  ‘So. What must I do when they come back?’

  ‘If it’s only Regal’s mark, noth­ing. If the King or Queen-in-Wait­ing’s mark is upon it, then you must give him the horses.’

  ‘One of those mares is preg­nant!’ Hands pro­tested. ‘Burrich has big plans for the foal. What will he say to me if he comes back and those horses are gone?’

  ‘We have al­ways had to re­mem­ber that these horses be­long to the King. He will not fault you for obey­ing a proper com­mand.’

  ‘I don’t like this.’ He looked up at me with anxious eyes. ‘I don’t think this would be hap­pen­ing if Burrich were still here.’

  ‘I think it would, Hands. Don’t take any blame to your­self. I doubt that this is the worst that we’ll see be­fore the winter is over. But, send me word if they do come back.’

  He nod­ded gravely and I left him, my visit to the stables soured. I did not want to walk down the rows of stalls and won­der how many horses would still re­main by the end of winter.

  I walked slowly across the court­yard and then in­side and up the stairs to my room. I paused on the land­ing. Ver­ity? Noth­ing. I could sense his pres­ence in­side my­self, he could con­vey his will to me and some­times even his thoughts. But still, whenever I tried to reach out to him, there was noth­ing. It frus­trated me. If only I had been able to Skill re­li­ably, none of this would be hap­pen­ing. I paused to care­fully curse Ga­len and all he had done to me. I had had the Skill, and he had burnt it out of me, and left me with but this half-formed un­pre­dict­able form of it.

  But what about Se­rene? Or Justin, or any of the oth­ers of the co­terie? Why was not Ver­ity us­ing them to keep in touch with what was hap­pen­ing, and to let his will be known?

  A creep­ing dread filled me. The mes­sen­ger birds from Bearns. The sig­nal lights, the Skilled ones in the towers. All the lines of com­mu­nic­a­tions within the king­dom and with the King seemed not to be work­ing very well. They were what stitched the Six Duch­ies into one and made of us a king­dom rather than an al­li­ance of dukes. Now, in these troubled times, more than ever we needed them. Why were they fail­ing?

  I saved the ques­tion to ask Chade, and prayed that he would sum­mon me soon. He called me less of­ten than he had once, and I felt I was not as privy to his coun­cils as I once had been. Well, and had not I ex­cluded him from much of my life as well? Per­haps what I felt was only a re­flec­tion of all the secrets I kept from him. Per­haps it was the nat­ural dis­tance that grew between as­sas­sins.

  I ar­rived at the door of my room just as Rose­mary had given up knock­ing.

  ‘Did you need me?’ I asked her.

  She dropped a grave curt­sey. ‘Our lady, the Queen-in-Wait­ing Kettricken, wishes you to at­tend her at your earli­est con­veni­ence.’

  ‘That’s right now, isn’t it?’ I tried to get a smile out of her.

  ‘No.’ She frowned up at me. ‘I said “at your earli­est con­veni­ence”, sir. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘Ab­so­lutely. Who has you prac­tising your man­ners so as­sidu­ously?’

  She heaved a great sigh. ‘Fed­wren.’

  ‘Fed­wren is back from his sum­mer travels already?’

  ‘He’s been back for two weeks, sir!’

  ‘Well, see how little I know! I shall be sure to tell him of how well you spoke when next I see him.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ For­get­ting her care­ful de­corum, she was skip­ping by the time she reached the top of the stairs, and I heard her light foot­steps go cas­cad­ing down them like a tumble of pebbles. A likely child. I doubted not that Fed­wren was groom­ing her to be a mes­sen­ger. It was one of his du­ties as Scribe. I went into my room briefly to put on a fresh shirt, and then took my­self down to Kettricken’s cham­bers. I knocked on the door and Rose­mary opened it.

  ‘It is now my earli­est con­veni­ence,’ I told her, and this time was re­war­ded with a dimpled smile.

  ‘Enter, sir. I shall tell my mis­tress you are here,’ she in­formed me. She ges­tured me to a chair and van­ished into the in­ner cham­ber. From within, I could hear a quiet mut­ter­ing of ladies’ voices. Through the open door I glimpsed them at their nee­dle­work and chat­ter. Queen Kettricken tilted her head to Rose­mary, and then ex­cused her­self to come to me.

  In a mo­ment Kettricken stood be­fore me. For a mo­ment I just looked at her. The blue of the robe picked up the blue of her eyes. The late au­tumn light find­ing its way through the whorled glass of the win­dows glin­ted off the gold of her hair. I stared, I real­ized, and lowered my eyes. I rose im­me­di­ately and bowed. She didn’t wait for me to straighten up. ‘Have you been re­cently to visit the King?’ she asked me without pre­amble.

  ‘Not in the last few days, my lady queen.’

  ‘Then I sug­gest you do so this even­ing. I am con­cerned for him.’

  ‘As you wish, my queen.’ I waited. Surely that was not what she had called me here to say.

  After a mo­ment she sighed. ‘Fitz. I am alone here as I have never been be­fore. Can­not you call me Kettricken and treat me as a per­son for a bit?’

  The sud­den change in tone took me off bal­ance. ‘Cer­tainly,’ I replied, but my voice was too formal. Danger, Nighteyes whispered.

  Danger? How?

  This is not your mate. This is the leader’s mate.

  It was like find­ing an aching tooth with your tongue. The know­ledge jarred through me. There was a danger here, one to guard against. This was my queen, but I was not Ver­ity and she was not my love, no mat­ter how my heart set to beat­ing at the sight of her.

  But she was my friend. She had proven that in the Moun­tain King­dom. I owed her the com­fort that friends owe one an­other.

  ‘I went to see the King,’ she told me. She ges­tured me to sit and took a chair of her own across the hearth from me. Rose­mary fetched her little stool to sit at Kettricken’s feet. Des­pite our be­ing alone in the room, the Queen lowered her voice and leaned to­ward me as she spoke. ‘I asked him dir­ectly why I had not been summoned when the rider came in. He seemed puzzled by my ques­tion. But be­fore he could even be­gin an an­swer, Regal came in. He had come in haste, I could tell. As if someone had run to tell him I was there, and he had im­me­di­ately dropped everything to come.’

  I nod­ded gravely.

  ‘He made it im­possible for me to speak to the King. In­stead, he in­sisted on ex­plain­ing it all to me. He claimed that the rider had been brought dir­ectly to the King’s cham­ber, and that he had en­countered the mes­sen­ger as he came to visit his father. He had sent the boy to rest while he talked with the King. And that to­gether they had de­cided that noth­ing could be done now. Then Shrewd had sent him to an­nounce that to the boy and the gathered nobles, and to ex­plain to them the state of the treas­ury. Ac­cord­ing to Regal, we are on the brink of ruin, and every penny must be watched. Bearns must look out for Bearns’ own, he told me. And when I asked if Bearns’ own were not Six Duch­ies folk, he told me that Bearns had al­ways stood more or less on its own. It was not ra­tional, he said, to ex­pect that Buck could guard a coast so far to the north of us, and so long. Fitz, did you know that the Near Is­lands had already been ceded to the Raid­ers?’

  I shot to my feet. ‘I know that no such thing is true!’ I blur­ted in out­rage.

  ‘Regal claims it is so,’ Kettricken con­tin­ued im­plac­ably. ‘He says that Ver­ity had de­cided be­fore he left that there was no real hope of keep­ing them safe from the Raid­ers. And that is why he called back our ship Con­stance. He says Ver­ity Skilled to Car­rod, the co­terie mem­ber on the ship, to or­der the ship back home for re­pairs.’

  ‘That ship was re­fit­ted just after har­vest. Then she was sent out, to keep the coast between Seal­bay and Gulls, and to be ready should the Near Is­lands call for her. It is what her mas­ter asked for, more time to prac­tise seaman­ship in winter wa­ters. Ver­ity would not leave that stretch of coast un­watched. If the Raid­ers es­tab­lish a strong­hold on the Near Is­lands, we shall never be free of them. They can raid winter and sum­mer alike from there.’

  ‘Regal claims that is what they have done already. He says our only hope now is to treat with them.’ Her blue eyes searched my face.

  I sank down slowly, near stunned. Could any of this be true? How could it have been kept from me? My sense of Ver­ity within me mirrored my con­fu­sion. He knew noth­ing of this either. ‘I do not think the King-in-Wait­ing would ever treat with the Raid­ers. Save with the sharp of his sword.’

  ‘This is not, then, a secret kept from me lest it dis­tress me? Regal im­plied as much, that Ver­ity would keep these things secret from me, as bey­ond my un­der­stand­ing.’ There was a trem­bling in her voice. It went bey­ond her an­ger that the Near Is­lands might have been aban­doned to the Raid­ers, to a more per­sonal pain that her lord might have found her un­worthy of his con­fid­ences. I longed so badly to take her in my arms and com­fort her that I ached in­side.

  ‘My lady,’ I said hoarsely. ‘Take this truth from my lips as surely as it came from Ver­ity’s own. All this is as false as you are true. I shall find the bot­tom of this net of lies and slash it wide open. We shall see what sort of fish falls out.’

  ‘I can trust you to pur­sue this quietly, Fitz?’

  ‘My lady, you are one of the few who knows the ex­tent of my train­ing in quiet un­der­tak­ings.’

  She nod­ded gravely. ‘The King, you un­der­stand, denied none of this. But neither did he seem to fol­low all that Regal said. He was … like a child, listen­ing to his eld­ers con­verse, nod­ding, but un­der­stand­ing little …’ She glanced down at Rose­mary at her feet fondly.

  ‘I shall go to see the King as well. I prom­ise, I shall have an­swers for you, and soon.’

  ‘Be­fore Duke Bearns ar­rives,’ she cau­tioned me. ‘I must have the truth by then. I owe him at least that.’

  ‘We shall have more than just the truth for him, my lady queen,’ I prom­ised her. The em­er­alds weighed heavy still in my pocket. I knew she would not be­grudge them.

  TWENTY

  Mis­haps

  Dur­ing the years of the Red Ship raids, the Six Duch­ies suffered sig­ni­fic­antly from their at­ro­cit­ies. The folk of the Six Duch­ies at that time learned a greater hatred of the Outis­landers than ever they had felt be­fore.

  In their grand­fath­ers’ and fath­ers’ times, Outis­landers had been both traders and pir­ates. Raids were car­ried out by sol­it­ary ships. We had not had a raid­ing ‘war’ such as this since the days of King Wis­dom. Al­though pir­ate at­tacks were not rare oc­cur­rences, they were still far more in­fre­quent than the Outis­land ships that came to our shores to trade. The blood-ties among the noble fam­il­ies to Outis­land kin were openly ac­know­ledged, and many a fam­ily owned to a ‘cousin’ in the Outis­lands.

  But after the sav­age raid­ing that pre­ceded Forge, and the at­ro­cit­ies at Forge, all friendly talk of the Outis­lands ceased. Their ships had al­ways been more wont to visit our shores than our traders to seek out their ice-plagued har­bours and swift-tided chan­nels. Now trade ceased en­tirely. Thus our folk knew noth­ing of their Outis­land kin dur­ing the days when we suffered the Red Ships. Outis­lander be­came syn­onym­ous with Raider, and in our minds, all Outis­land ves­sels had red hulls.

  But one, Chade Fall­star, a per­sonal ad­visor to King Shrewd, took it upon him­self to travel to the Outis­lands in those per­il­ous days. From his journ­als we have this:

  ‘Ke­bal Raw­bread was not even a name known in the Six Duch­ies. It was a name not breathed in the Outis­lands. The in­de­pend­ent folk of the scattered and isol­ated vil­lages of the Outis­lands had never owed al­le­gi­ance to any one king. Nor was Ke­bal Raw­bread thought of as a king there; rather he was a malevol­ent force, like a freez­ing wind that so coats a ship’s rig­ging with ice that in a hour she turns belly-up on the sea.

  ‘The few folk I en­countered that did not fear to talk said Ke­bal had foun­ded his power by sub­du­ing the in­di­vidual pir­ates and raid­ing ships to his con­trol. With those in hand, he turned his ef­forts to “re­cruit­ing” the best nav­ig­at­ors, the most cap­able cap­tains and the most skil­ful fight­ers the scattered vil­lages had to of­fer. Those who re­fused his of­fers saw their fam­il­ies es­cralled, or Forged as we have come to call it. Then they were left alive, to cope with the shattered rem­nants of their lives. Most were forced to put fam­ily mem­bers to death with their own hands; Outis­lander cus­toms are strict re­gard­ing a house­holder’s duty to main­tain or­der amongst fam­ily mem­bers. As word of these in­cid­ents spread, fewer res­isted the of­fers of Ke­bal Raw­bread. Some few fled: their ex­ten­ded fam­il­ies still paid the price of es­cral. Oth­ers chose sui­cide, but again, the fam­il­ies were not spared. Such ex­amples left few dar­ing to defy Raw­bread or his ships.

  ‘Even to speak against him in­vited es­cral. Sparse as was the know­ledge I gained on this visit, it was gained with great dif­fi­culty. Ru­mours I gathered as well, though they were as sparse as black lambs in a white flock. I list them here. A “white ship.” is spoken of, a ship that comes to sep­ar­ate souls. Not to take them, or des­troy them: to sep­ar­ate them. They whis­per, too, of a pale wo­man whom even Ke­bal Raw­bread fears and reveres. Many re­lated the tor­ments of their land to the un­pre­ced­en­ted ad­vances of the “ice whales” or gla­ciers. Al­ways present in the up­per reaches of their nar­row val­leys, they now ad­vanced more swiftly than in the memory of any liv­ing man. They were rap­idly cov­er­ing what little ar­able soil the Outis­lands pos­sessed, and in a way no one could or would ex­plain to me, bring­ing a “change of wa­ter”.’

  I went to see the King that even­ing. It was not without trep­id­a­tion on my part. He would not have for­got­ten our last talk about Celer­ity, any more than I had. I re­minded my­self firmly that this visit was not for my per­sonal reas­ons but for Kettricken and Ver­ity. Then I knocked and Wal­lace grudgingly ad­mit­ted me. The King was sit­ting up in his chair by the hearth. The Fool was at his feet star­ing pens­ively into the fire. King Shrewd looked up as I entered. I presen­ted my­self and he greeted me warmly, then bade me be seated and tell me how my day had gone. At this, I shot the Fool a brief, puzzled glance. He re­turned me a bit­ter smile. I took a stool op­pos­ite the Fool and waited.

  King Shrewd looked down on me be­nignly. ‘Well, lad? Did you have a good day? Tell me about it.’

  ‘I have had a … wor­ri­some day, my king.’

  ‘Have you, now? Well, have a cup of tea. It does won­ders to soothe the nerves. Fool, pour my boy a cup of tea.’

  ‘Will­ingly, my king. I do so at your com­mand even more will­ingly than I do it for your­self.’ With a sur­pris­ing alac­rity, the Fool leaped to his feet. There was a fat clay pot of tea warm­ing in the em­bers at the edges of the fire. From this the Fool poured me a mug and then handed it to me, with the wish, ‘Drink as deeply as our king does, and you shall share his serenity.’

  I took the mug from his hand and lif­ted it to my lips. I in­haled the va­pours, then let the li­quid lap lightly against my tongue. It smelled warm and spicy, and tingled pleas­antly against my tongue. I did not drink, but lowered the cup with a smile. ‘A pleas­ant brew, but is not merry­bud ad­dict­ive?’ I asked the King dir­ectly.