“Is there nowhere else we can put him? No place especially secure?” Regal was demanding. There was a muttered reply, and Regal said, “No, you are right. We do not want to raise a great outcry right now. Tomorrow is soon enough. Not that I think he will live that long.”

A door was opened and I was flung headlong to an earthen floor barely cushioned by straw. I breathed dust and chaff. I could not cough. Regal gestured with his torch. “Go to the Princess,” he instructed Sevrens. “Tell her I will be there shortly. See if there is anything we can do to make the Prince more comfortable. You, Rowd, summon August from his chambers. We will need his Skill so that King Shrewd may know how he has succored a scorpion. I will need his approval before the bastard dies. If he lives long enough to be condemned. Go on, now. Go.”

And they left, the Chyurda lighting their way for them. Regal remained, looking down on me. He waited until their footfalls were distant before he kicked me savagely in the ribs. I cried out wordlessly, for my mouth and throat were numb. “It seems to me we have been here before, have we not? You wallowing in straw, and me looking down on you, wondering what misfortune had brought you into my life? Odd, how so many things end as they begin.

“And so much of justice is a circle, also. Consider how you fall to poison and treachery. Just as my mother did. Ah, you start. Did you think I did not know? I knew. I know much you do not think I know. Everything from the stench of Lady Thyme to how you lost your Skill when Burrich would no longer let you tap his strength. He was swift enough to abandon you when he saw it might otherwise cost him his life.”

A tremor shook me. Regal threw back his head and laughed. Then he gave a sigh and turned. “A pity I cannot stay and watch. But I have a princess to console. Poor thing, pledged to a man she already hates.”

Either Regal left then, or I did. I am not clear. It was as if the sky opened up and I flowed out into it. “Being open,” Verity told me, “is simply not being closed.” Then I dreamed, I think, of the Fool. And of Verity, sleeping with his arms wrapped around his head, as if to keep his thoughts in. And of Galen’s voice, echoing in a dark, cold chamber. “Tomorrow is better. When he Skills now, he scarce has any sense of the room he sits in. We do not have enough bond for me to do this from a distance. A touch will be required.”

There was a squeaking in the dark, a disagreeable mouse of a mind that I did not know. “Do it now,” it insisted.

“Do not be foolish,” Galen rebuked it. “Shall we lose it all now, for the sake of haste? Tomorrow is soon enough. Let me worry about that part. You must tidy things there. Rowd and Sevrens know too much. And the stablemaster has annoyed us too long.”

“You leave me standing in a bloodbath,” the mouse squeaked angrily.

“Wade through it to a throne,” Galen suggested.

“And Cob is dead. Who will see to my horses on the way home?”

“Leave the stablemaster, then,” Galen said in disgust. And then, considering: “I will do him myself, when you get home. I shall not mind. But the others were better done quickly. Perhaps the bastard poisoned other wine, in your quarters. A pity your servants got into it.”

“I suppose. You must find me a new valet.”

“We will have your wife do that for you. You should be with her now. She has just lost her brother. You must be horrified at what has come to pass. Try to blame the bastard rather than Verity. But not too convincingly. And tomorrow, when you are as bereaved as she, well, we shall see what mutual sympathy leads to.”

“She is big as a cow and pale as a fish.”

“But with the mountain lands, you will have a defensible inland kingdom. You know the Coastal Duchies will not stand for you, and Farrow and Tilth cannot stand alone between the mountains and the Coastal Duchies. Besides, she need not live longer than her first child’s birth.”

“FitzChivalry Farseer,” Verity said in his sleep. King Shrewd and Chade played at dice bones together. Patience stirred in her sleep. “Chivalry?” she asked softly. “Is that you?”

“No,” I said. “It’s no one. No one at all.”

She nodded and slept on.

When my eyes focused again, it was dark and I was alone. My jaws trembled, and my chin and shirtfront were wet with my own saliva. The numbness seemed less. I wondered if that meant the poison wouldn’t kill me. I doubted that it mattered; I would have small chance to speak in my own behalf. My hands had gone numb. At least they didn’t hurt anymore. I was horribly thirsty. I wondered if Rurisk was dead yet. He had taken a lot more of the wine than I had. And Chade had said it was quick.