'Did you need me?' I asked her.
She dropped a grave curtsy. '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 practicing 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 an instant I just looked at her. The blue of the robe picked up the blue of her eyes. The late-fall 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 very near on the brink of ruin, and every penny must be watched. Bearn must look out for Bearn's own, he told me. And when I asked if Bearn's own were not Six Duchies folk, he told me that Bearn 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 practice 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, denies 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 fondly at Rosemary at her feet.
'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 pouch. I knew she would not begrudge them.
CHAPTER 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.
