“We have always had to remember that these horses belong to the King. He will not fault you for obeying a proper command.”

“I don’t like this.” He looked up at me with anxious eyes. “I don’t think this would be happening if Burrich were still here.”

“I think it would, Hands. Don’t take any blame to yourself. I doubt that this is the worst that we’ll see before the winter is over. But, send me word if they do come back.”

He nodded gravely and I left him, my visit to the stables soured. I did not want to walk down the rows of stalls and wonder how many horses would still remain by the end of winter.

I walked slowly across the courtyard and then inside and up the stairs to my room. I paused on the landing. Verity? Nothing. I could sense his presence inside myself, he could convey his will to me and sometimes even his thoughts. But still, whenever I tried to reach out to him, there was nothing. It frustrated me. If only I had been able to Skill reliably, none of this would be happening. I paused to carefully curse Galen and all he had done to me. I had had the Skill, and he had burned it out of me, and left me with but this unpredictable form of it.

But what about Serene? Or Justin, or any of the others of the coterie? Why was not Verity using them to keep in touch with what was happening, and to let his will be known?

A creeping dread filled me. The messenger birds from Bearns. The signal lights, the Skilled ones in the towers. All the lines of communications within the kingdom and with the King seemed not to be working very well. They were what stitched the Six Duchies into one and made of us a kingdom rather than an alliance of Dukes. Now, in these troubled times, more than ever we needed them. Why were they failing?

I saved the question to ask Chade, and prayed that he would summon me soon. He called me less often than he had once, and I felt I was not as privy to his councils as I once had been. Well, and had not I excluded him from much of my life as well? Perhaps what I felt was only a reflection of all the secrets I kept from him. Perhaps it was the natural distance that grew between assassins.

I arrived at the door of my room just as Rosemary had given up knocking.

“Did you need me?” I asked her.

She dropped a grave curtsy. “Our lady, the Queen-in-Waiting Kettricken, wishes you to attend her at your earliest convenience.”

“That’s right now, isn’t it?” I tried to get a smile out of her.

“No.” She frowned up at me. “I said ‘at your earliest convenience, sir.’ Isn’t that right?”

“Absolutely. Who has you practicing your manners so assiduously?”

She heaved a great sigh. “Fedwren.”

“Fedwren is back from his summer travels already?”

“He’s been back for two weeks, sir!”

“Well, see how little I know! I shall be sure to tell him of how well you spoke when next I see him.”

“Thank you, sir.” Forgetting her careful decorum, she was skipping by the time she reached the top of the stairs, and I heard her light footsteps go cascading down them like a tumble of pebbles. A likely child. I doubted not that Fedwren was grooming her to be a messenger. It was one of his duties as scribe. I went into my room briefly to put on a fresh shirt, and then took myself down to Kettricken’s chambers. I knocked on the door and Rosemary opened it.

“It is now my earliest convenience,” I told her, and this time was rewarded with a dimpled smile.

“Enter, sir. I shall tell my mistress you are here,” she informed me. She gestured me to a chair and vanished into the inner chamber. From within, I could hear a quiet muttering of ladies’ voices. Through the open door I glimpsed them at their needlework and chatter. Queen Kettricken tilted her head to Rosemary, and then excused herself to come to me.

In a moment Kettricken stood before me. For an instant I just looked at her. The blue of the robe picked up the blue of her eyes. The late-fall light finding its way through the whorled glass of the windows glinted off the gold of her hair. I stared, I realized, and lowered my eyes. I rose immediately and bowed. She didn’t wait for me to straighten up. “Have you been recently to visit the King?” she asked me without preamble.

“Not in the last few days, my lady queen.”

“Then I suggest you do so this evening. I am concerned for him.”

“As you wish, my queen.” I waited. Surely that was not what she had called me here to say.

After a moment she sighed. “Fitz. I am alone here as I have never been before. Cannot you call me Kettricken and treat me as a person for a bit?”