“Oh really?” I gathered her closer to me, grinning foolishly.

“Um.” She smiled back up at me. The smile faded slowly. “As it is,” she said quietly, “there are other herbs I take. To be sure that I do not conceive.”

I had all but forgotten Patience scolding me that day. “Some herbs like that, I’ve heard, can make a woman ill, if she takes them for long.”

“I know what I’m doing,” she said flatly. “Besides, what is the alternative?” she added with less heart.

“Disaster,” I conceded.

She nodded her head against me. “Fitz. If I had said yes tonight. If I were pregnant … what would you have done?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”

“Think about it now,” she begged me.

I spoke slowly. “I suppose I’d … get a place for you, somehow, somewhere.” (I’d go to Chade, I’d go to Burrich, and I’d beg for help. Inwardly I blanched to think of it.) “A safe place. Away from Buckkeep. Upriver, maybe. I’d come to see you when I could. Somehow, I’d take care of you.”

“You’d set me aside is what you’re saying. Me, and our … my child.”

“No! I’d keep you safe, put you where no one would point shame at you or mock you for having a child alone. And when I could, I’d come to you and our child.”

“Have you ever considered that you could come with us? That we could leave Buckkeep, you and I, and go upriver now?”

“I can’t leave Buckkeep. I’ve explained that to you every way I know how.”

“I know you have. I’ve tried to understand it. But I don’t see why.”

“The work I do for the King is such that—”

“Stop doing it. Let someone else do it. Go away with me, to a life of our own.”

“I can’t. It’s not that simple. I wouldn’t be allowed to just leave like that.” Somehow, we had come uncoupled. Now she folded her arms across her chest.

“Verity’s gone. Almost no one believes he’s coming back. King Shrewd grows more feeble each day, and Regal prepares himself to inherit. If half of Regal’s feelings for you are what you say they are, why on earth would you wish to stay here with him as king? Why would he want to keep you here? Fitz, can’t you see that it’s all tumbling apart? The Near Islands and Ferry are just the beginning. The Raiders won’t stop there.”

“All the more reason for me to stay here. To work and, if need be, fight for our people.”

“One man can’t stop them,” Molly pointed out. “Not even a man as stubborn as you. Why not take all that stubbornness and fight for us instead? Why don’t we run away, up the river and inland, away from the Raiders, to a life of our own? Why should we have to give up everything for a hopeless cause?”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing from her. If I had said it, it would have been treason. But she said it as if it were the commonest sense. As if she and I and a child that didn’t exist yet were more important than the King and the Six Duchies combined. I said as much.

“Well,” she asked me, looking at me levelly. “It’s true. To me. If you were my husband and I had our child, that’s how important it would be to me. More important than the whole rest of the world.”

And what was I to say to that? I reached for the truth, knowing it wouldn’t satisfy her. “You would be that important to me. You are that important to me. But it’s also why I have to stay here. Because something that important isn’t something you run away and hide with. It’s something that you stand and defend.”

“Defend?” Her voice went up a notch. “When will you learn we aren’t strong enough to defend ourselves? I know. I’ve stood between Raiders and children of my own blood, and just barely survived. When you’ve done that, talk to me about defending!”

I was silent. Not just that her words cut me. They did, and deeply. But she brought back to me a memory of holding a child, studying the blood that had trickled down her cooling arm. I couldn’t abide the thought of ever doing it again. But it could not be fled. “There is no running away, Molly. We either stand and fight here, or are slaughtered when the fighting overtakes us.”

“Really?” she asked me coldly. “It isn’t just your putting your loyalty to a King ahead of what we have?” I could not meet her eyes. She snorted. “You’re just like Burrich. You don’t even know how much you’re like him!”