Dutiful looked at me as if he could hear my thoughts. I hastily checked my walls. No, I was alone in my mind. He had simply come to know me too well. “Perhaps you would like to speak with each of them and see if any meet the standard to be included in your new guard company?”

“And then he smiled at me.” The irritation I felt with my king was not ameliorated by the smile that bloomed on the Fool’s face.

“He does know you well, to set you to this task. I’ll wager that in that barrel of rotten apples, you’ll find a few sound ones. And that when you give them a final chance, you’ll win their loyalty forever.”

“Not the sort of men I’d want at my back,” I objected. “Nor the sort of troops I want to hand to Foxglove and expect her to manage. I’d like my honor guard to actually be honorable men.”

“What of the ones who taunted Thick and backhanded your stable lad?”

I took breath to speak and then gasped in surprise as an arrow of Skill from Nettle penetrated my walls effortlessly. The Queen’s Garden. Tidings of Bee and Shine. Come now. Do not try to Skill back to me.

Hope flared in my heart. “I am summoned by Nettle to the Queen’s Garden,” I told him and stood. “They may have word of Bee’s whereabouts.” I was shocked to find that the sudden hope cut me as sharply as fear.

“Light! Air!” the crow demanded as I stood.

“I’ll return as soon as I can,” I offered. I ignored the Fool’s disappointed look, and did not even object as Motley hopped from the table and with a single flap of her wings gained my shoulder. In my chamber, I paused only to release the crow from my window before I hastened to find Nettle in the Queen’s Garden.

The Queen’s Garden was no traditional garden, but a tower top. I was panting when I reached it, having run through half of Buckkeep Castle to get there. In summer the pots there overflowed with greenery and fragrant blossoms. Some even held small fruit trees. Simple statuary and isolated benches completed Kettricken’s retreat from the petty annoyances of life at court. But as I emerged onto the tower top, winter greeted me. Snow mounded the planters, and the small trees had been swaddled against winter’s cruelest bite. I had thought to find only Nettle waiting for me. But Kettricken, warmly cloaked against winter’s chill, was present, as well as Dutiful, and Queen Elliania. It took me a moment to recognize Civil Bresinga. The boy had grown to a man. When he saw I recognized him, he bowed to me gravely but kept silent. I had wondered why they had chosen the Queen’s Garden as a meeting place. As Dutiful’s hound rolled a young lynx around in the snow, I understood. The two Wit-companions, obviously well acquainted with each other, suddenly raced off between the planters. I knew a moment of sharp envy.

“We’ve had word,” Dutiful greeted me.

He seemed so solemn that I wondered if bodies had been found. I left formality behind as I demanded of him, “What news?”

“It’s not certain,” Dutiful cautioned me, but Civil did not wait to speak.

“As my king requested, I sent out discreet queries, particularly to those of Old Blood who are bonded to birds of prey. I am sure you understand that even Witted partners pay small attention to things that don’t concern them. But two reports came back to me.

“Yesterday a messenger pigeon brought me a message from Carter Wick, an Old Blood bonded to a raven. The raven had found a company of folk camped in the forest. When she tried to pick over the bones of some rabbits they’d eaten, they threw sticks at her. She said that there were white horses there.”

“Where?”

He held up a cautioning finger. “Today, Rampion, a youngster whose Wit-bird is a merlin, sent word to us. The merlin complained of people ruining her hunting by stopping for the day in a clearing where she can usually take mice. The white horses had trampled the snow, giving the mice much better hiding places when they emerged from their burrows to seek seedheads still sticking up out of the snow.”

“Where?” I demanded again, my temper rising to match my urgency. Finally, finally, I could take some action. Why were all of them just standing about?

“Fitz!” Dutiful spoke sharply, as my king rather than my cousin. “Calm yourself. Wait until you have heard all. The Wit-beasts have given us two possible sightings, a day apart. Both were in Buck. One on this side of Chancy Bridge, and the other approaching the Yellow Hills. It puzzled me greatly, for they were moving slowly.”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from demanding why I had not heard those reports as soon as they had come in. Dutiful was still speaking. “Now, I have reason to suspect that we know where they are bound. They can only be headed for the coast, and there are only three close ports where a ship of any size could dock. If there are forty of them, with horse, they will need a substantial vessel to depart.