“I don’t ask it of you. I ask it of my queen. If I agree to become her Skillmaster, then she must agree to let me teach in my own way, whom I choose, in secret. And she must promise to leave my daughter in peace. Forever.”

A terrible expression crossed his face. His eyes lit with the wild hope that I would step into the role of Skillmaster. But the price I had set upon it made him quail. “You would ask a promise of your queen? Do you not think you presume too much?”

I set my jaw. “Perhaps. But perhaps for a long time, the Farseers have presumed too much of me.”

He took in a long breath through his nose. I knew he bottled his anger with his hope. His words were icily formal. “I shall present your proposal to Her Majesty and relay to you her reply.”

“Please,” I replied in a low and courteous voice.

He rose stiffly and without another word to me he departed. I realized in that silence that his anger went deeper than I had supposed. It took me a moment to put my finger on it. I was not as he was, neither as a Farseer nor as an assassin. I was not sure that made me a better man than he was. I longed to let him leave just then, but I knew there were other matters we had to discuss.

“Chade. Before you go, there is something else I must tell you. I think we’ve had a spy in our secret corridors.”

He set his anger aside, almost visibly pulling himself back from it. As he turned, I lifted the bowl to reveal the rat. “The ferret killed this last night. I felt someone grieve for its death. I think this was the Wit-beast of someone within Buckkeep. It could be the same one I encountered on the road the night before the Prince’s betrothal.”

Grimacing with distaste, Chade bent over the rat and poked at it. “Is there any way to know whose?”

I shook my head. “Not absolutely. But this will have greatly distressed someone. I suspect they would need a day or so at least to recover. So, if anyone vanishes from the social whirl of court for a day or so, you might want to pay a call on them, to see what ails them.”

“I’ll make inquiries. You think our spy is a noble, then?”

“That’s the difficult part. It could be a man or a woman, noble or servant or bard. It could be someone who has lived here all his life, or someone who has been here only since the betrothal festivities began.”

“Is there anyone you suspect?”

I frowned for a moment. “We might look most closely at the Bresinga group. But only because we know at least some of them are Witted and sympathetic to others with the Wit.”

“That’s a small group. Civil Bresinga is here, with a manservant, a page, and I think a groom for his horse. I’ll make inquiries about them.”

“It interests me that he remains when so many other nobles have returned to their own holdings. Could we discreetly find out why?”

“He has become a close friend of the Prince. It is in the best interests of his family that he exploits that connection. But I will quietly ask how things are at Galekeep. I have a person there, you know.”

I nodded gravely.

“She has said that the household seems to be declining in the last month or so. Old servants have left, and the new ones seem unmannered and undisciplined. She said there was an incident of some new cook’s assistants who helped themselves to the wine cellar. The cook was quite upset to find them drunk, and even more distressed to discover that the pilferage had been going on for some time. When Lady Bresinga did not send the guilty parties packing, the cook left, and she had been with the household for some years. And it seems there is a change in the guests entertained there. In place of the landed gentry and the lesser nobles who used to guest there, Lady Bresinga has hosted several hunting parties who seemed to my person to be rather unsophisticated, even boorish.”

“What do you think it means?”

“That perhaps Lady Bresinga is forming new alliances. I suspect her new friends are at best Witted, and at worst, Piebalds. Yet it may not be with the Lady’s willing consent. My person there says that Lady Bresinga spends more and more time alone in her own chambers, even when her ‘guests’ are dining.”

“Have we intercepted any letters between her and Civil?”

Chade shook his head. “Not in the last two months. There don’t seem to be any.”

I shook my head. “I find that exceedingly curious. Something is going on there. We should watch young Civil more closely than ever.” I sighed. “This rat is the first evidence of Piebald activity that we’ve had since Laurel’s lynched twig. I had hoped that their restlessness had settled.”