I had to wince. I could recall how I had been treated.

“I tried to ignore her. But Chade would not let it rest. Nor in truth could I.”

“She was a danger to you. A half-trained assassin, taught by Regal to hate you. She could not simply be left to wander about as she pleased.”

She was silent for a moment. Then, “Now you sound like Chade. No. She was worse than that. She was a neglected child in my home, a little girl blamed by me for becoming what she was taught to be. A daily rebuke to me for my own neglect of her and my hardness of heart. If I had been all to her that a lady should be to her page, Regal could not have taken her heart from me.”

“Unless he had it before she ever came to you.”

“And even then, I should have known it. If I had not been so focused on my own life and problems.”

“She was your page, not your daughter!”

“You forget, I was raised in the Mountains, to be Sacrifice to my people, Fitz. Not a queen, such as you expect. I demand more of myself.”

I stepped to the side of that argument. “So it was your decision to keep her.”

“Chade said I must either keep her or be rid of her entirely. I was filled with horror at his words. Kill a child for doing what she had been taught? And then his words made me see all of it clearly. It would have been kinder to kill her outright than to torture and neglect her as I had been doing. So. That night I went to her chamber. Alone. She was terrified of me, and her room was cold and near bare, the bedding gone unwashed I don’t know how long. She had outgrown her nightgown; it was torn at the shoulders and far too short for her. She curled up on the bed as far from me as she could get and just stared at me. Then I asked her which she would prefer, to be fostered out to Lady Patience or to be my page again.”

“And she chose to be your page.”

“And she burst into tears and threw herself to the floor and clung to my skirts and said she had thought I didn’t like her anymore. She sobbed so hard that before I could calm her, the hair was plastered flat to her skull with sweat and she was shaking all over. Fitz, I was so ashamed to have been so cruel to a child, not by what I had done, but simply by ignoring her. Only Chade and I ever knew that we suspected her of trying to harm me. But my simple shunning of the child had given the lesser folk of the keep permission to be cruel and callous to her. Her little slippers were all gone to tatters . . .” Her voice trailed off, and despite myself, I felt a stab of pity for Rosemary. Kettricken took a deep breath and resumed her tale. “She begged to be allowed to serve me again, Fitz. She was not even seven years old when she did Regal’s bidding. She never hated me, or understood what she did. To her, I am sure it was a game, to listen in secret and repeat all that she heard.”

I tried to be pragmatic and hard. “And greasing the steps so you would fall?”

“Would she be told the why of it? Or simply told to put the grease on the steps after I had gone up to the roof garden? To a child, it might have been framed as a prank.”

“Did you ask her?”

A pause. “Some things are best left alone. Even if she knew the intent was to make me fall, I do not think she realized the full import of it. I think perhaps that I was two people to her, the woman that Regal wanted to bring down, and Kettricken whom she served every day. The one who should be blamed for her conduct is dead. And since I took her back to my side, she has never been anything but a loyal and diligent subject to me.” She sighed and stared past me at a wall as she spoke. “The past must be left in the past, Fitz. Especially this is true for those who rule. I must wed my son to a daughter of an Outislander. I must promote trade and alliance with the folk who doomed my king to death. Shall I quibble about taking a little spy under my wing and turning her into a lady of my court?”

I took a deep breath myself. If in fifteen years she had not regretted her decision, no words of mine would change it now. Nor should they, perhaps. “Well. I suppose I should have expected it. You did not quibble to take an assassin as your advisor when you came to court.”

“As my first friend here,” she corrected me gravely. She furrowed her forehead. When first I had met her, she had not had those lines on her brow and between her eyes, but now use had set them. “I am not happy with this charade we must keep. I would have you at my side to advise me, and to teach my son. I would have you honored as my friend as well as a Farseer.”

“It cannot be,” I told her firmly. “And this is better. I am more use to you in this role, and less risk to you and my prince.”