Patience hesitated. “I do recall it. Very well.” She was quiet for a moment, then brightened. “I will draw it out for you, and explain it. Then you could go to the Queen.”

I met her eyes. “I think you should go to her. I think it would please her very much.”

“Fitz, I have never been good with people.” Her voice faltered. “I am sure she would find me odd. Boring. I could not—” Her voice stuttered to a halt.

“Queen Kettricken is very alone,” I said quietly. “There are ladies around her, but I do not think she has real friends. Once, you were queen-in-waiting. Cannot you recall what it was like?”

“Very different for her than it was for me, I should think.”

“Probably,” I agreed. I turned to go. “For one thing, you had an attentive and loving husband.” Behind me Patience made a small shocked sound. “And I do not think Prince Regal was as … clever then as he is now. And you had Lacey to support you. Yes, Lady Patience. I am sure it is very different for her. Much harder.”

“FitzChivalry!”

I paused at the door. “Yes, my lady?”

“Turn about when I speak to you!”

I turned slowly and she actually stamped the floor at me. “This ill becomes you. You seek to shame me! Think you that I do not do my duty? That I do not know my duty?”

“My lady?”

“I shall go to her, tomorrow. And she will think me odd and awkward and flighty. She will be bored with me and wish I had never come. And then you shall apologize to me for making me do it.”

“I am sure you know best, my lady.”

“Take your courtier’s manners and go. Insufferable boy.” She stamped her foot again, then whirled and fled back into her bedchamber. Lacey held the door for me as I left. Her lips were folded in a flat line, her demeanor subdued.

“Well?” I asked her as I left, knowing she had words left to say to me.

“I was thinking that you are very like your father,” Lacey observed tartly. “Except not quite as stubborn. He did not give up as easily as you have.” She shut the door firmly behind me.

I looked at the closed door for a while, then headed back to my room. I knew I had to change the dressing on my neck wound. I climbed the flight of stairs, my arm throbbing at every step. I halted on the landing. For a time I watched the candles burning in their holders. I climbed the next flight of stairs.

I knocked steadily for several minutes. A yellow candlelight had been coming out the crack under her door, but as I knocked, it suddenly winked out. I took out my knife and experimented, loudly, with the latch on her door. She’d changed it. There seemed to be a bar as well, a heavier one than the tip of my blade would lift. I gave it up and left.

Down is always easier than up. In fact, it can be too much easier, when one arm is already injured. I looked down at the waves breaking like white lace on the rocks far away. Nighteyes had been right. The moon had managed to come out for a bit. The rope slipped a bit through my gloved hand and I grunted as my injured arm had to take my weight. Only a little more, I promised myself. I let myself down another two steps.

The ledge of Molly’s window was narrower than I had hoped it would be. I kept the rope in a wrap around my arm as I perched there. My knife blade slipped easily into the crack between the shutters; they were very poorly fitted. The upper catch had yielded and I was working on the lower one when I heard her voice from inside.

“If you come in, I shall scream. The guards will come.”

“Then you’d best put on tea for them,” I replied grimly, and went back to wriggling at the lower catch.

In a moment Molly snatched the shutters open. She stood framed in the window, the dancing light of the fire on the hearth illuminating her from behind. She was in her nightdress, but she hadn’t braided her hair back yet. It was loose and gleaming from brushing. She had thrown a shawl over her shoulders.

“Go away,” she told me fiercely. “Get out of here.”

“I can’t,” I panted. “I haven’t the strength to climb back up, and the rope isn’t long enough to reach to the base of the wall.”

“You can’t come in,” she repeated stubbornly.

“Very well.” I seated myself on the windowsill, one leg inside the room, the other dangling out the window. Wind gusted past me, stirring her night robe and fanning the flames of the fire. I said nothing. After a moment she began to shiver.

“What do you want?” she demanded angrily.

“You. I wanted to tell you that tomorrow I am going to the King to ask permission to marry you.” The words came out of my mouth with no planning. I was suddenly giddily aware that I could say and do anything. Anything at all.