The Golden Fool (Tawny Man, #2)

by Robin Hobb

Bingtown’s continuing war with Chalced was disrupting shipping and travel badly. Chalced’s fleet evidently had been temporarily beaten back, for two ships from the south had docked today, with rumours of others following. I had seen Lord Golden’s face light up at that news. Lord Golden dismissed the war to his friends as an inconvenience that interrupted his supply of apricot brandy but I noticed that the ships that did evade Chalced’s patrols often brought packets of letters for him as well as brandy, and these the Fool took into his private room immediately. I suspected that far more than his supply of brandy and money concerned him. But he said nothing of what the missives contained, and I knew better than to ask. Evincing curiosity on any topic had always been the swiftest way to make the Fool cut off the flow of information.