“Where have you been, Bastard?”

Serene, stepping out suddenly from a doorway. She had expected me to startle. I had known by the Wit someone was there. I did not flinch. “Out.”

“You smell like a dog.”

“At least I have the excuse of having been with dogs. What few are left in the stable.”

It took her an instant to discover the insult in my polite reply.

“You smell like a dog because you are more than half a dog yourself. Beast-magicker.”

I nearly responded with some remark about her mother. Instead, I suddenly and truly recalled her mother. “When we were first learning to scribe, remember how your mother always made you wear a dark smock, for you splattered your ink so?”

She stared at me sullenly, turning the remark every which way in her mind, trying to discover some insult or slight or trick in it.

“What of it?” she asked at last, unable to leave it hanging.

“Nothing. I but remembered it. Was a time when I helped you getting the tails right on your letters.”

“That has nothing to do with now!” she declared angrily.

“No, it does not. This is my door. Were you expecting to come in with me?”

She spat, not quite at me, but it landed on the floor at my feet. For some reason, I decided she would not have done it had not she been leaving Buckkeep with Regal. It was no longer her home, and she felt free to soil it before leaving it. It told me much. She never expected to come back here.

Inside my room, I reset every latch and bolt meticulously, then added the heavy bar to the door. I went and checked my window and found it well shuttered still. I looked under my bed. Finally, I sat down in a chair by my hearth to doze until Chade summoned me.

I came out of a light doze to a tapping at my door. “Who is it?” I called.

“Rosemary. The Queen wishes to see you.”

By the time I had undone the latches and catches, the child was gone. She was only a girl, but it still unnerved me to have such a message vocalized through a door. I groomed myself hastily and then hurried down to the Queen’s chambers. I noted in passing the wreckage that had once been the oak door to Shrewd’s room. A bulky guard stood in the gap; an Inlander, not a man I knew.

Queen Kettricken was reclining on a couch near her hearth. Several knots of her ladies gossiped in different corners of the room, but the Queen herself was alone. Her eyes were closed. She looked so utterly worn that I wondered if Rosemary’s message had been an error. But Lady Hopeful ushered me to the Queen’s side and fetched me a low stool to perch upon. She offered me a cup of tea and I accepted. As soon as Lady Hopeful departed to brew it, Kettricken opened her eyes. “What next?” she asked in so low a voice that I had to lean closer to hear it.

I looked askance at her.

“Shrewd sleeps now. He cannot sleep forever. Whatever was given him will wear off, and when it does, we are back to where we were.”

“The King-in-Waiting ceremony approaches. Perhaps the Prince will be busied with that. No doubt there are new clothes to be sewn and tried upon him, and all the other details he glories in. It may keep him from the King.”

“After that?”

Lady Hopeful was back with my cup of tea. I took it with murmured thanks, and as she pulled up a chair beside us, Queen Kettricken smiled weakly and asked if she might have one also. I was almost shamed by how swiftly Lady Hopeful leaped to do her bidding.

“I do not know,” I murmured in reply to her earlier question.

“I do. The King would be safe in my Mountains. He would be honored and protected, and perhaps Jonqui would know of—oh, thank you, Hopeful.” Queen Kettricken took the proffered cup and sipped at it as Lady Hopeful settled herself.

I smiled at Kettricken, and chose my words carefully, trusting her to read my meaning. “But it is so far to the Mountains, my queen, and the weather so hard this time of year. By the time a courier got through to seek your mother’s remedy, it would be nigh on to spring. There are other places that might offer the same cure for your troubles. Bearns or Rippon, perhaps, might offer if we asked. The worthy Dukes of those provinces can deny you nothing, you know.”

“I know,” Kettricken smiled wearily. “But they have such problems of their own just now, I hesitate to ask anything more of them. Besides, the root we call livelong grows only in the Mountains. A determined courier could travel there, I think.” She sipped again at her tea.

“Who to send with such a request; ah, that would be the hardest question,” I pointed out. Surely she could see the difficulties of sending a sick old man off on a journey to the Mountains in winter. He could not go alone. “The man that went would have to be very trustworthy and strong of will.”