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He will come himself and he will demand answers.
A “white ship.” is spoken of, a ship that comes to separate souls. Not to take them, or destroy them: to separate them. They whisper, too, of a pale woman whom even Kebal Rawbread fears and reveres.
From the corner of my eyes, I had a glimpse of the Fool. There was fear in his colourless eyes, fear as I had never seen there before. And he was looking, not at Regal, but at me. I abruptly realized that I had arisen and was standing over Regal.
For Verity rode within me, and ever I must guard so that what I felt and thought with Molly did not spill over into the link I shared with Verity.
‘Thinking is not always … comforting. It is always good, but not always comforting.
‘What if they don’t want anything, except what they already have? A nation of victims. Towns to raid, villages to torch, people to torture. What if that is their entire aim?’ ‘That’s insane,’ I said slowly. ‘Perhaps. But what if it is so?’ ‘Then nothing will stop them. Except destroying them.’ He nodded slowly. ‘Follow that thought.’
I ran my fingers lightly down the lines of his jaw, and around his eye socket. At least no bone seemed damaged. ‘Who did this to you?’ I asked him.
‘Take your shirt off,’ I told the Fool. ‘Let’s see your chest.’ ‘I’ve seen it, thank you, and I assure you it’s fine.
“We know you are false to the King, that you spy for Verity the Pretender. Send him no more messages, for if you do, we shall know of it.”
‘Fitz, it’s just so hard. Every time I think I have accepted it, I turn a corner and catch myself hoping again. But there’s never going to be anything for us, is there? Never going to be a time that belongs just to us, never going to be a place that is just ours.’
‘You are not a servant to me,’ I said quietly. ‘I never think of you that way.’ ‘Then what am I? I am not a wife,’ she pointed out quietly. ‘In my heart, you are,’ I said miserably. It was a pitiful comfort to offer her. It shamed me that she accepted it, and came to rest her forehead on my shoulder. I held her gently for a few moments, then pulled her into a warmer embrace. As she nestled against me,
Patience loved Burrich first, you idiot. But he wouldn’t have her. He said he loved her, but he couldn’t marry her, even if her father would give consent for her to wed beneath her station. Because he was already sworn, life and sword, to a lord of his own. And he didn’t think he could do justice to both of them.
Burrich’s tale of first meeting Patience. She’d been sitting in an apple tree, and she’d demanded that he take a splinter out of her foot. Scarcely something a woman would ask of her lord’s man. But something a direct young maid might ask of a young man who had caught her eye.
I suddenly remembered Burrich in the stable, looking at Patience’s mount and saying, ‘I trained that horse.’ I wondered if he’d trained Silk knowing she was to go to a woman he’d loved, as a gift from the man she’d marry.
The death of his elder son, Rurisk, had left his daughter Kettricken sole heir to that throne. By their customs, she would become Queen of the Mountains, or ‘Sacrifice’ as that people call it, upon the demise of her father.
‘From your King-in-Waiting Verity and me,’ she said quietly. I barely resisted Verity’s impulse in me to fling himself on his knees at the feet of this woman and declare her far too royal for his insignificant love.
I said the words I knew I must. ‘Thank you, sir.’ He turned to look over his shoulder. I followed his gaze through the blowing rain, to where Celerity gazed at us. Her father gave her a tiny nod, and her smile broke like the sun from behind a cloud. Faith, watching her, said something, and Celerity turned blushing to give her sister a push.
“The man who must brag for himself knows that no one else will.”
And what of our bargain? Have I kept my word to you?’ It was our old litany. Once more I considered the terms he had offered me. He would feed me, clothe me and educate me, and in return he would have my complete loyalty. I smiled at the familiar words, but my throat closed at how the man who said them had wasted away, and what they had come to cost me. ‘Yes, my king. You have,’ I answered softly. ‘Good. Then see you keep your word to me as well.’ He leaned back heavily in his chair. ‘I shall, your majesty,’ I promised, and the Fool’s eyes met mine as he witnessed again that promise.
‘I can manage from here,’ I told the Fool once we were outside the door. He shook his head. ‘You are too vulnerable to be left alone just now,’ he told me quietly, and then linked arms with me, and began some nonsensical discourse.
A disease was eating King Shrewd, gnawing him away from the inside. He drugged himself against the agony, in an effort to have some corner of his mind to himself, a place in which the pain could not come and rob him.
Shield, Verity pleaded. He sounded desperate, weak, and I knew he was trying very hard to hold the tattered pieces of myself together for me. He’s going to kill you with sheer stupidity. He doesn’t even know what he’s doing. Help me! From Verity, nothing. Our link was fading like perfume in the wind as my strength dwindled. WE ARE PACK!
It was more than repelling. I had no word for what Nighteyes did from within Justin’s own mind. It was a hybrid magic, Nighteyes using the Wit through a bridge the Skill had created. He attacked Justin’s body from within Justin’s mind.
I had no energy to question what had happened. I curled myself into a puppy, sheltered beneath him. I knew no one could get through Nighteyes’ defence of me.
My brother. Are you dying? No. But it hurts. Rest. I will stand watch. I cannot explain what happened next. I let go of something, something I had clutched all my life without being aware of gripping it. I sank down into soft warm darkness, into a safe place while a wolf kept watch through my eyes.
The scent of a garden filled his chambers. I took the image of the old man putting the lid on the pot, wrapped up the homely, simple moment of him setting the pot on the tray with some cups, and stowed it carefully somewhere in my heart.
For now, you must watch over yourself. And Kettricken. And the Fool. If there is even a drop of truth in your theories, you all become obstacles to Regal’s goal.’
‘You did not expect me?’ He paused, said more loudly, ‘Messages were sent ahead of me. Didn’t you get them?’ ‘We’ve heard nothing. What happened?’ Why are you back?
With a familiarity that astounded me, Patience felt his forehead, then searched under the angle of his jaw for swelling. She crouched slightly to look into his sleeping face. ‘Burr?’ she queried quietly. He did not even twitch. Very gently, she stroked his face. ‘You are so thin, so worn,’ she grieved softly. She damped a cloth in warm water and gently wiped his face and hands as if he were a child. Then she swept a blanket off my bed and tucked it carefully about his shoulders.
‘After you’ve eaten, you’ll rest,’ Patience informed him. ‘Lacey, please move aside.’ To my amazement, Burrich said nothing more. Lacey stepped back, out of the way, and Lady Patience knelt before the Stablemaster. He watched her, a strange expression on his face, as she lifted the cloth away.
But an empty cupboard, no matter how clean, is no comfort to a starving man.
Outside one, some men were loading sacks of grain into a wagon. Two other wagons, already loaded, stood nearby. I stood a bit, watching them, and then offered to help as the wagon’s load grew higher and the sacks harder to load. They accepted my help readily, and we talked as we worked. I waved them a cheery goodbye when the work was done, and walked slowly back to the keep, wondering why a full warehouse of grain was being loaded into a barge and sent upriver to Turlake.
‘The best of the horses are gone. I saw that at a glance when I came back. In ten years, I might breed stock up again to the quality of what we had. But I doubt it.’ He poured again. ‘There’s my life’s work gone, Fitz. A man likes to think he’ll leave his touch on the world somewhere. The horses I had brought together here, the blood-lines I was establishing — gone now, scattered throughout the Six Duchies. Oh, not that they won’t improve anything they’re bred to.
guard her door this night.’ ‘Must it be you? Can’t you rest, and I will …’ ‘A man can die of failure, Fitz. Do you know that?
As she spoke, her trembling lessened. I tilted her chin up so that she looked into my eyes.
Everything Patience warned me of, everything Ch … everyone warned me about, it’s all coming true.
‘Molly!’ I sprang after her, seized her by the shoulders. She spun and hit me. Not a slap. A solid punch in the mouth that rocked me back and put blood in my mouth. She stood glaring, daring me to touch her again. I didn’t.
‘I love you too much to see that happen.’ My words sounded weak, even to myself. She turned and walked away from me. She still hugged herself, as if to keep herself from flying apart.
‘Molly Red Skirts,’ I whispered after her, but I could no longer see that Molly. Only what I had made of her.
‘The Bastard?’ I had never heard such outrage in Burrich’s voice. ‘Say “FitzChivalry, son of Prince Chivalry”.’ The man gaped at him in astonishment. ‘Say it now!’ Burrich bellowed, and pulled steel. He suddenly seemed twice as large as he had. Anger radiated from him in waves I could feel. ‘FitzChivalry, son of Prince Chivalry,’ the man babbled.
Come, Heart of the Pack, speak to me. Will not we hunt well together? Heart of the Pack? I wondered. He knows it is his name. It is what they called him, all those dogs that worshipped him, when they all gave tongue in the chase.
But Kelvar should be able to hold them off almost indefinitely now. The Fourth Wall is worked stone. It took years to build. Bayguard has a good well, and her warehouses should still be fat with grain this early in winter. She won’t fall unless she falls to treachery.’
Heart of the Pack, they will hunt well for you, Nighteyes urged him. ‘Burrich, take command. They will fight with heart for you.’ My skin prickled to hear Queen Kettricken virtually echo Nighteyes’ thought.
But the Red Ships had been outward-bound with hostages. To where? To a ghost ship that only I had glimpsed? Even to think of the white ship brought a shudder over me and a pressure in my head like the beginning of pain. Perhaps they had intended to drown their hostages, or to Forge them, however that was done.
He sighed. ‘You said it. We are as we are. And he said it. Sometimes, they don’t give you a choice. They just bond to you.’ Somewhere off in the darkness, a dog howled. It was not really a dog. Burrich glared at me. ‘I can’t control him at all,’ I admitted. Nor I, you. Why should there be control, one of the other? ‘Nor does he stay out of personal conversations,’ I observed.
remember seeing Kettricken, robe looped up and knotted, fighting bare-legged and barefoot on the frozen ground. She held her ridiculously long Mountain sword in a two-handed grip. Her grace made a deadly dance of the battle that would have distracted me at any other time.
I had discovered Burrich, limping about the battleground. He did not say he had been looking for my body. His relief at seeing me was evidence enough of that.
They did seem to make straight for the Queen’s tent, didn’t they?’ ‘Like bees to honey,’ I observed tiredly. ‘The Queen is in Bayguard?’
‘That is not their way. I suspect a larger ship, transporting a sizeable force of men.’ ‘Where?’ ‘Gone now. I think I glimpsed it, going into that fog bank.’
Before we had left Neatbay, the songs were already being sung, about a queen with her skirts bundled up standing bold against the Red Ships, and of the child in her womb who was a warrior before birth.
