“And more risk to yourself. Chade has told me that Piebalds threatened you, right at our doorstep in Buckkeep Town.”

I discovered that I hadn’t wanted her to know that. “It is a thing best handled by me. Perhaps I can tease them out into the open.”

“Well. Perhaps. But I am ashamed that you face such things seemingly alone. In truth, I hate that such bigotry still exists in the Six Duchies, and that our nobles turn a blind eye to it. I have done what I could for my Witted folk, but progress has been slow. When the Piebald postings first began to appear, they angered me. Chade urged me not to act in the heat of that anger. Now, I wonder if it would not have been wise to let my wrath be known. My second reaction was that I wished to let my Witted folk know that my justice was available to them. I wanted to send out a summons, inviting the leaders of the Witted to come to me, that together we might hammer out a shield for them against the cruelty of these Piebalds.” She shook her head.

“Again Chade intervened, telling me that the Witted had no recognized leaders, and that they would not trust the Farseers enough to come to such a meeting. We had no go-between that they would trust, and no sureties that we could offer them that this was not a plan to lure them in and destroy them. He persuaded me to abandon the idea.” Her words seemed to come more reluctantly as she added, “Chade is a good councilor, wise in politics and the ways of power. Yet I sometimes feel that he would steer us solely on the basis of what makes the Six Duchies most stable, with less care given for justice for all my people.” Her fair brow wrinkled as she added, “He says that the greater the stability of the country, the more chance for justice to prosper. Perhaps he is right. But often and often, I have longed for the way you and I used to discuss these things. There too I have missed you, FitzChivalry. I dislike that I cannot have you at my side when I wish it, but must send for you in secret. I wish that I could invite you to join Peottre and me for our game today, for I would value your opinion of him. He is a most intriguing man.”

“Your game with Peottre today?”

“I shared some talk with him last evening. In the course of discussing the chance that Dutiful and Elliania would be truly happy, other talk of ‘chance’ came up. And from there, we moved to games of chance. Do you recall a Mountain game played with cards and rune chips?”

I dredged through my memory. “I think you spoke of it to me once. And yes, I recall reading a scroll about it, when I was recovering from Regal’s first attempt on me.”

“There are cards or tablets, either painted on heavy paper or carved on thin slabs of wood. They have emblems from our old tales, such as Old Weaver Man and Hunter in Hiding. The rune chips have runes on them, for Stone, Water, and Pasture.”

“Yes. I’m sure I’ve heard of it.”

“Well, Peottre wants me to teach him to play it. He was very interested when I spoke of it. He says that in the Out Islands they have a game played with rune cubes, where they are shaken and tumbled out. Then the players set out their markers onto a cloth or board that is painted with minor godlings, such as Wind and Smoke and Tree. It sounds as if it might be a similar game, does it not?”

“Perhaps,” I conceded. But her face had brightened at the prospect of teaching Peottre this new game in a way that was out of proportion to the pleasure I expected her to take in it. Did my queen find this bluff Outislander warrior attractive? “You must tell me more of this game later. I would like to hear if the runes on the dice are similar to the runes on your rune chips.”

“That would be intriguing, wouldn’t it? If the runes resembled one another? Especially as some of the runes from my game were similar to the runes on the Skill pillars.”

“Ah.” My queen was still capable of putting me off balance. She had always seemed able to think along several lines at once, bringing oddly disparate facts together to make a pattern others had missed. This had been how she had rediscovered the lost map to the kingdom of the Elderlings. I suddenly felt as if she had given me too much to think over.

I stood to excuse myself, bowed, and then wished I had words to thank her. An instant later it seemed a strange impulse, to thank someone for mourning someone you had loved. I made a fumbling effort, but she stopped me, coming to take both my hands in hers. “And perhaps only you understood what I felt at Verity’s loss. To see him transformed, to know he would triumph, and yet still to mourn selfishly that I would never again see him as the man he had been. This is not the first tragedy we have shared, FitzChivalry. We both have walked alone through much of our lives.”