“As soon as they leave to visit you, I intend to knock on the door and create a diversion. I will deal with any guard they have left.”

“But if you are drawing off the guard, how can you hope to accomplish anything?”

“I have a … another who will be assisting me.” I hoped. I cursed again that Chade had never let me establish some way of reaching him in situations such as this. “Trust me,” he had always told me. “I watch, I listen where I should. I summon you when it is safe to do so. A secret is only a secret as long as only one man knows it.” I would not confide to anyone that I had already divulged my plans to my fireplace, in the hopes Chade was somehow listening. I hoped that in the brief time I would be able to buy, Chade would find a way to the King, to bring him respite from his pain, that he might withstand Regal’s badgering.

“It amounts to torture,” Kettricken said quietly, as if able to read my thoughts. “To abandon an old man like that to his pain.” She looked at me directly. “You do not trust your queen enough to tell me who your assistant is?”

“It is not my secret to share, but my king’s,” I told her gently. “Soon, I believe, it will have to be revealed to you. Until then—”

“Go,” she dismissed me. She shifted uncomfortably on her couch. “As bruised as I am, at least I shall not have to feign misery. Only tolerance of a man who would seek to kill his unborn kin and torment his aged father.”

“I go,” I said quickly, sensing her rage building and not desiring to feed it. All must be convincing for this masquerade. She must not reveal that she now knew her fall had not been any clumsiness of her own. I went out, brushing past Lacey, who was carrying a tray with a teapot. Patience was on her heels. There would not be tea in that pot. As I went past the Queen’s ladies in her antechamber, I took care to look concerned. Their reactions to the Queen’s request that King Shrewd’s personal healer be sent for would be genuine enough. I hoped it would be enough to draw Regal out of his lair.

I slipped into Patience’s rooms and left the door just barely ajar. I waited. As I waited I thought of an old man, the herbs fading from his body and his pain reawakening in him. I had visited that pain. Given that, and a man relentlessly questioning me, how long could I remain silent and vague? Days seemed to pass. Finally there was a flurry of skirts and pattering footsteps down the hall, and a frenzied knocking at King Shrewd’s door. I did not need to hear words, it was all in the tone, the frightened pleading of the women with someone at the door, then Regal’s angry questions, turning suddenly to feigned concern. I heard him call Wallace from whatever corner he had been banished to, heard the excitement in his voice as he ordered the man to attend the Queen immediately, she was suffering a miscarriage.

The ladies clattered past my door again. I stood still, holding my breath. That trot, that mutter, that would be Wallace, laden no doubt with all sorts of remedies. I waited, taking slow quiet breaths, trying to be patient, waited until I was sure my ploy had failed. Then I heard the more deliberate strides of Regal, and then the running strides of a man overtaking him. “That’s good wine, you idiot, don’t jostle it,” Regal rebuked him, and then they were out of my hearing. I waited again. Long after I was sure he had been admitted to the Queen’s apartments, I forced myself to wait for another hundred count. And then I eased out of the door and went to the King’s.

I tapped. I did not knock loudly, but my tapping was insistent and unending. After a moment or two a voice demanded to know who was there.

“FitzChivalry,” I said boldly. “I demand to see the King.”

A silence. Then: “No one is to be admitted.”

“By whose order?”

“Prince Regal.”

“I bear a token from the King, one on which he gave me his word that I would always be admitted to see him whenever I so wished.”

“Prince Regal said specifically that you were not to be admitted.”

“But that was before …” And I let my voice drop lower as I muttered a few meaningless syllables.

“What did you say?”

I muttered again.

“Speak up.”

“This is not for all the Keep to hear!” I retorted indignantly. “This is no time to spread a panic.”

That did it. The door opened a tiny crack. “What is it?” the man hissed.

I leaned in close to the door, looked up and down the corridor. I peered past him through the crack. “Are you alone?” I asked suspiciously.