CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Conspiracy

    The Pocked Man at your window
The Pocked Man at your door
The Pocked Man brings the plague days
To stretch you on the floor.

    When blue flames at your candles suck
You know a witch has got your luck.

    Don't suffer a snake upon your hearthstone
Or plague will whittle your children to bone.

    Your bread not to rise, your milk to stand sour,
Your butter not to churn.
Your arrow shafts to twist as they dry,
Your own knife to turn and cut you,
Your roosters to crow by moonlight
By these may a householder know himself cursed.

    "We will need blood from somewhere." Kettricken had heard me out, and now made this request as calmly as if asking for a cup of wine. She looked from Patience to Lacey seeking for ideas.

    "I'll go fetch a chicken," Lacey said unwillingly at last. "I'll need a sack to put it in to keep it quiet-"

    "Go then," Patience told her. "Go quickly. Bring it back to my room. I shall fetch a knife and a basin, and we shall do it there, and bring but a cup of the blood back here. The less we do here, the less we must conceal."

    I had gone first to Patience and Lacey, knowing I would never get past the Queen's attendants on my own. While I made a quick visit to my room, they had gone before me to the Queen, ostensibly taking her a special herbal tea but really to quietly beg a private audience for me. She had dismissed all her ladies, telling them she would be fine with just Patience and Lacey, and then sent Rosemary to fetch me. Rosemary played by the hearth now, absorbed in dressing a doll.

    As Lacey and Patience left the room Kettricken looked to me. "I will splatter my gown and my bedding with the blood, and I will send for Wallace, telling him I fear a miscarriage from my fall. But that is as far as I will go, Fitz. I will not allow that man to lay a hand on me, nor be so foolish as to drink or eat anything of his concocting. I do this only for the sake of distracting him from my king. Nor will I say I have lost the child. Only that I fear it." She spoke fiercely. It chilled me that she accepted so easily what Regal had done and was doing, and what I said she must do as a countermove. I wished desperately I was sure her trust in me was well placed. She did not speak of treachery or evil. She only discussed strategy as coldly as a general planning a battle.

    "It will be enough," I promised her. "I know Prince Regal. Wallace will run to him with the tale, and he will follow Wallace here, no matter how inappropriate. He will not be able to resist, he will long to see exactly how well he has succeeded."

    "It is tedious enough to have all my women always commiserating with me over Verity's death. It will be all I can bear to have them speak as if my child were gone as well. But I can bear it, if I must. What if they leave a guard with the King?" Kettricken asked.

    "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.

    "Yes!" Impatiently. "Now what is it? It had better be good!"

    I lifted my hands to my mouth as I leaned toward the door, unwilling to let the slightest breath of my secret escape. The guard leaned closer to the crack. I gave a quick puff of my lips and a white powder misted his face. He staggered back, clawing at his eyes and strangling. In an instant he was down. Nightmist: it was quick, it was effective. It was also often deadly. I could not find it in myself to care. It was not so much that this was my shoulder-wrenching friend. This guard could not have stood in the antechamber of Shrewd's room and been totally unaware of what went on within.

    I had reached in through the crack and was struggling to undo the chains that secured the door when I heard a familiar hiss. "Get out of here. Leave the door alone, just go away. Don't unlatch it, you fool!" I had a brief glimpse of a pocked visage and then the door was shut firmly in my face. Chade was right. It would be best for Regal to encounter a fully latched door, and to spend his time having his men chop through it. Every moment Regal was shut out was another moment that Chade had with the King.

    What followed was harder to do than what I had already done. I went down the stairs to the kitchen, made friendly talk with the cook, and then asked her what the commotion upstairs had been. Had the Queen lost her baby? She banished me quickly to find folk to talk to who would know more. I made my way into the watch room off the kitchen to consume a small beer and force myself to eat as if I wanted to. The food lay in my stomach like so much gravel. No one spoke to me much, but I was a presence. The gossip about the Queen's fall ebbed and flowed around. me. There were Tilth and Farrow guards here now, big, slow-moving men, part of their dukes' retinues, hobnobbing with the Buckkeep counterparts. It was more bitter than bile to hear them speak avidly of what the loss of the child would mean to Regal's chances for the throne. It was as if they bet on a horse race.

    The only other gossip that could compete with it was a rumor that a boy had seen the Pocked Man by the castle well in the courtyard. It was supposed to have been nearly midnight when the lad saw him. Not one had the sense to wonder what the boy was doing out there, or what light his eyes had used to see this vision of ill omen. Instead they were vowing to stay well away from water, for surely this omen meant the well had gone bad. At the rate at which they were drinking beer, I decided they had little to worry about. I stayed until word was sent down that Regal wanted three strong men with axes sent immediately to the King's chambers. That excited a fresh round of talk, and during it, I quietly left the room and went to the stables.

    I had intended to seek out Burrich and see if the Fool had found him yet. Instead I encountered Molly coming down his steep stairs just as I had begun to climb them. She looked down at the astounded look on my face and laughed. But it was a short laugh, and it never reached her eyes.

    "Why did you go to see Burrich?" I demanded, and instantly realized how rude my question was. I had feared she had gone seeking help.

    "He is my friend," she said succinctly. She started to push past me. Without thinking, I stood firm. "Let me past!" she hissed savagely.

    Instead I put my arms around her. "Molly; Molly, please," I said hoarsely as she pushed at me without heart. "Let us find a place to talk, if only for a moment. I cannot bear to have you look at me that way, when I swear I have done you no wrong. You act as if I have cast you off, but you are in my heart always. If I cannot be with you, it is not because I do not wish to."

    She stopped struggling suddenly. ,

    "Please?" I begged her.

    She glanced about the dim barn. "We will stand and we will talk. Briefly. Right here."

    "Why are you so angry with me?"

    She nearly answered me. I saw her bite back words, then turn suddenly cold. "Why do you think that what I feel about you is the centermost pillar of my life?" she retorted. "Why do you think I have no other concerns but you?"

    I gaped at her. "Perhaps because it is how I feel about you," I said gravely.

    "It is not." She was exasperated, correcting me the way she would correct a child who insisted the sky was green.

    "It is," I insisted. I tried to gather her to me, but she was wooden in my arms.

    "Your king-in-waiting Verity was more important. King Shrewd is more important. Queen Kettricken and her unborn child are more important." She ticked them off on her fingers as if she were numbering my faults.

    "I know my duty," I said quietly.

    "I know where your heart is," she said flatly. "And it is not first with me."

    "Verity is ... is no longer here to protect his queen, his child, or his father," I said reasonably. "So, for this time, I must put them ahead of my own life. Ahead of everything I hold dear. Not because I love them more but ..." I floundered uselessly after words. "I am a King's Man," I said helplessly.

    "I am my own woman." Molly made it the loneliest statement in the world. "I will take care of myself."

    "Not forever," I protested. "Someday we will be free. Free to wed, to do-"

    "Whatever your king asks you to do," she finished for me. "No, Fitz." There was finality in her voice. Pain. She pushed away from me, stepped past me on the staircase. When she was two steps away and all of winter seemed to be blowing between us, she spoke.

    "I have to tell you something," she said, almost gently. "There is another in my life now. One who is for me what your king is for you. One who comes before my own life, who comes ahead of all else I hold dear. By your own words, you cannot fault me." She looked back up at me.

    I do not know what I looked like, only that she looked aside as if she could not bear it.

    "For the sake of that one, I am going away," she told me. "To a safer place than this."

    "Molly, please, he cannot love you as I do," I begged.

    She did not look at me. "Nor can your king love you as I ... used to. But. It is not a matter of what he feels for me," she said slowly. "It is what I feel for him. He must be first in my life. He needs that from me. Understand this. It is not that I no longer care for you. It is that I cannot put that feeling ahead of what is best for him." She went down two more steps. "Good-bye, Newboy." She no more than breathed those final words, but they sank into my heart as if branded there.

    I stood on the steps, watching her go. And suddenly that feeling was too familiar, the pain too well-known. I flung myself down the steps after her, I seized her arm, I pulled her under the loft stairs into the darkness there. "Molly," I said, "please."

    She said nothing. She did not even resist my grip on her arm.

    "What can I give you, what can I tell you to make you understand what you are to me? I can't just let you go!"

    "No more can you make me stay," she pointed out in a low voice. I felt something go out of her. Some anger, some spirit, some will. I have no word for it. "Please," she said, and the word hurt me, because she begged. "Just let me go. Don't make it hard. Don't make me cry."

    I let go of her arm, but she did not leave.

    "A long time ago," she said carefully, "I told you that you were like Burrich." '

    I nodded in the darkness, not caring that she could not see me.

    "In some ways you are. In others you are not. I decide for us, now, as he once decided for Patience and himself. There is no future for us. Someone already fills your heart. And the gap between our stations is too great for any love to bridge. I know that you love me. But your love is ... different from mine. I wanted us to share all our lives. You wish to keep me in a box, separate from your life. I cannot be someone you come to when you have nothing more important to do. I don't even know what it is that you do when you are not with me. You have never even shared that much with me."

    "You wouldn't like it," I told her. "You don't really want to know."

    "Don't tell me that," she whispered angrily. "Don't you see that that is what I cannot live with, that you do not let me even decide that for myself? You cannot make that decision for me. You have no right! If you cannot even tell me that, how can I believe you love me?"

    "I kill people," I heard myself say. "For my king. I'm an assassin, Molly."

    "I don't believe you!" she whispered. She spoke too quickly. The horror in her voice was as great as the contempt. A part of her knew I had spoken the truth to her. Finally. A terrible silence, brief but so cold, grew between us as she waited for me to admit a lie. A lie she knew was truth. At last she denied it for me. "You, a killer? You couldn't even run past the guard that day to see why I was crying! You didn't have the courage to defy them for me! But you want me to believe you kill people for the King." She made a choking sound, of anger and despair. "Why do you say such things now? Why now, of all times? To impress me?"

    "If I had thought it would impress you, I probably would have told you a long time ago," I confessed. And it was true. My ability to keep my secrets had been soundly based on my fear that telling Molly would mean losing her. I was right.

    "Lies," she said, more to herself than me. "Lies, all lies. From the very beginning. I was so stupid. If a man hits you once, he'll hit you again, they say. And the same is true for lying. But I stayed, and I listened and I believed. What a fool I've been!" This last, so savagely that I recoiled from it as from a blow. She stood clear of me. "Thank you, FitzChivalry," she said coldly, formally. "You've made this so much easier for me." She turned away from me.

    "Molly," I begged. I reached to take her arm, but she spun about, her hand raised to slap me.

    "Don't touch me," she warned in a low voice. "Don't you ever dare to touch me again!"

    She left.

    After a time I remembered I was standing under Burrich's stairs in the dark. I shivered with cold and something more. No. Something less. My lips drew back from my teeth in something neither a smile nor a snarl. I had always feared that my lies would make me lose Molly. But the truth had severed in an instant what my lies had held together for a year. What must I learn from that? I wondered. Very slowly I climbed up the steps. I knocked on the door.

    "Who is it?" Burrich's voice.

    "Me." He unlatched the door and I came into the room. "What was Molly doing here?" I asked him, not caring how it might sound, not caring that the bandaged Fool sat still at Burrich's table. "Did she need help?"

    Burrich cleared his throat. "She came for herbs," he said uneasily. "I could not help her, I did not have what she wanted. Then the Fool came, and she stayed to help me with him."

    "Patience and Lacey have herbs. Lots of them," I pointed out.

    "That is what I told her." He turned away from me, and began clearing away the things he had used to work on the Fool. "She did not wish to go to them." There was something in his voice, almost prodding, pushing me to the next question.

    "She's going away," I said in a small voice. "She's going away." I sat down on a chair before Burrich's fire and clenched my hands between my knees. I became aware I was rocking back and forth, tried to stop.

    "Did you succeed?" the Fool asked quietly.

    I stopped rocking. I swear that for an instant I had no idea what he was talking about. "Yes," I said quietly. "Yes, I think I did." I had succeeded at losing Molly, too. Succeeded at wearing away her loyalty and her love, taking her for granted, succeeded at being so logical and practical and loyal to my king that I had just lost any chance of ever having a life of my own. I looked at Burrich. "Did you love Patience?" I asked suddenly. "When you decided to leave?"

    The Fool started, then visibly goggled. So there were some secrets even he did not know. Burrich's face went as dark as I had ever seen it. He crossed his arms on his chest, as if to restrain himself. He might kill me, I thought. Or maybe he sought only to hold some pain inside himself. "Please," I added, "I have to know."

    He glared at me, then spoke carefully. "I am not a changeable man," he told me. "If I had loved her, I would love her still."

    So. It would never go away. "But, still, you decided-"

    "Someone had to decide. Patience would not see it could not be. Someone had to end the torment for us both."

    As Molly had decided for us. I tried to think just what I should do next. Nothing came to me. I looked at the Fool. "Are you all right?" I asked him.

    "I'm better off than you are," he replied sincerely.

    "I meant, your shoulder. I had thought ..."

    "Wrenched, but not broken. Much better than your heart."

    A quick bantering of witty words. I had not known he could weight a jest with so much sympathy. The kindness pushed me to the edge of breaking. "I don't know what to do," I said brokenly. "How can I live with this?"

    The brandy bottle made a very small thud as Burrich set it in the center of the table. He put out three cups around it. "We will have a drink," he said. "To Molly finding happiness somewhere. We will wish it for her with all our hearts."

    We drank a round and Burrich refilled the cups.

    The Fool swirled the brandy in his cup. "Is this wise, just now?" he asked.

    "Just now, I am done with being wise," I told him. "I would rather be a fool."

    "You do not know of what you speak," he told me. All the same, he raised his glass alongside mine. To fools of all kinds. And a third time, to our king.

    We made a sincere effort, but fate did not allow us sufficient time. A determined rapping at Burrich's door proved to be Lacey with a basket on her arm. She came in quickly, shutting the door fast behind her. "Get rid of this for me, will you?" she asked, and tumbled the slain chicken out on the table before us.

    "Dinner!" announced the Fool enthusiastically.

    It took Lacey a moment to realize the state we were in. It took her less than that to be furious. "While we gamble our lives and reputations, you get drunk!" She rounded on Burrich. "In twenty years, you have not learned that it solves nothing! "

    Burrich flinched not at all. "Some things cannot be solved," he pointed out philosophically. "Drink makes those things much more tolerable." He came to his feet easily, stood rock steady before her. Years of drinking seemed to have taught him the knack of handling it well. "What did you need?

    Lacey bit her lip a moment. She decided to follow where he had pointed the conversation. "I need that disposed of. And I need an ointment for bruises."

    "Does no one around here ever use the healer?" the Fool asked of no one in particular. Lacey ignored him.

    "That is what I supposedly came here for, so I had best return with it, in case someone asks to see it. My real mission is to find the Fitz, and ask him if he knows there are guards chopping down King Shrewd's door with axes."

    I nodded gravely. I wasn't going to attempt Burrich's graceful stance. The Fool leaped to his feet instead, crying, "What?" He rounded on me. "I thought you said you had succeeded! What success is this?"

    "The best I could manage on very short notice," I retorted. "It will either be all right, or it won't. We've done all we can just now. Besides, think on it. That's a good stout oaken door. It will take them a while to get through it. And when they do, I fancy they will find the inner door to the King's bedchamber is likewise bolted and barred."

    "How did you manage that?" Burrich asked quietly.

    "I didn't," I said brusquely. I looked at the Fool. "I have said enough, for now. It is time to have a bit of trust." I turned to Lacey. "How are the Queen and Patience? How went our masquerade?"

    "Well enough. The Queen is sore bruised from her fall, and for myself, I am not all that sure that the babe is out of danger of being lost. A miscarriage from a fall does not always happen immediately. But let us not borrow trouble. Wallace was concerned but ineffectual. For a man who claims to be a healer, he knows remarkably little of the true lore of herbs. As for the Prince ..." Lacey snorted, but said no more.

    "Does no one beside myself think there is a danger to letting a rumor of a miscarriage circulate?" the Fool asked airily.

    "I had no time to devise anything else," I retorted. "In a day or so, the Queen will deny the rumor, saying that all seems to be well with the child."

    "So. For the moment we are as secured as we may be," Burrich observed. "But what comes next? Are we to see the King and Queen Kettricken carried off to Tradeford?"

    "Trust. I ask for one day of trust," I said carefully. I hoped it would be enough. "And now we must disperse and go about our lives as normally as we can."

    "A stablemaster with no horses and a Fool with no king," the Fool observed. "Burrich and I can continue to drink. I believe that is a normal life under these circumstances. As for you, Fitz, I have no idea what title you give yourself these days, let alone what you normally do all day. Hence-"

    "No one is going to sit about and drink," Lacey intoned ominously. "Put the bottle aside and keep your wits sharp. And disperse, as Fitz here said. Enough has been said and done in this room to put us all swinging from a tree for treason. Save you, of course, FitzChivalry. It would have to be poison for you. Those of the royal blood are not allowed to swing."

    Her words had a chilling effect. Burrich picked up the cork and restoppered the bottle. Lacey left first, a pot of Burrich's ointment in her basket. The Fool followed her a short time later. When I left Burrich, he had finished cleaning the fowl and was plucking the last stubborn feathers from it. The man wasted nothing.

    I went out and wandered about a bit. I watched behind me for shadows. Kettricken would be resting, and I did not think I could withstand Patience's nattering, or her insights just then. If the Fool was in his chamber, it was because he did not want company. And if he was elsewhere, I had no idea where that might be. The whole of Buckkeep was as plagued with Inlanders as a sick dog with fleas. I strolled through the kitchen, purloining gingerbread. Then I wandered about disconsolately, trying not to think, trying to appear without purpose as I headed back to the hut where once I had hidden Nighteyes. The hut was empty now, as cold within as without. It had been some time since Nighteyes had laired here. He preferred the forested hills behind Buckkeep. But I did not wait long before his shadow crossed the threshold of the open door.

    Perhaps the greatest comfort of the Wit bond is never having to explain. I did not need to recount the last day's events to him, did not have to find words to describe how it felt to watch Molly walk away from me. Nor did he ask questions or make sympathetic talk. The human events would have made small sense to him. He acted on the strength of what I felt, not why. He simply came to me and sat beside me on the dirty floor. I could put an arm around him and lean my face against his ruff and sit.

    Such packs men make, he observed to me after a while. How can you hunt together when you cannot all run in the same direction?

    I made no reply to this. I knew no answer and he did not expect one.

    He leaned down to nibble an itch on his foreleg. Then he sat up, shook himself all over, and asked, What will you do for a mate now?

    Not all wolves take mates.

    The leader always does. How else would the pack multiply?

    My leader has a mate, and she is with child. Perhaps wolves have it aright, and men should pay attention. Perhaps only the leader should mate. That was the decision that Heart of the Pack made long ago. That he could not have both a mate, and a leader he followed with all of his heart.

    That one is more wolf than he cares to admit. To anyone. A pause. Gingerbread?

    I gave it to him. He gobbled it greedily while I watched.

    I've missed your dreams at night.

    They are not my dreams. They are my life. You are welcome to them, so long as Heart of the Pack does not get angry with us. Life shared is better. A pause. You would rather have shared the female's life.

    It is my weakness to want too much.

    He blinked his deep eyes. You love too many. My life is much simpler.

    He loved only me.

    That is true. The only real difficulty I have is knowing that you will never trust that is so.

    I sighed heavily. Nighteyes sneezed suddenly, then shook himself all over. I mislike this mouse dust. But before I go, use your so clever hands to scratch inside my ears. It is hard for me to do well without leaving welts.

    And so I scratched his ears, and under his throat and the back of his neck, until he fell over on his side like a puppy.

    "Hound," I told him affectionately.

    For that insult, you pay! He flipped himself up onto his feet, bit me hard through my sleeve, and then darted out the door and was gone. I pulled back my sleeve to survey the deep white dents in my flesh that were not quite bleeding. Wolf humor.

    The brief winter day had ended. I went back to the Keep and forced myself to go through the kitchens, to allow Cook to tell me all the gossip. She stuffed me full of plum cake and mutton as she told me of the Queen's possible miscarriage, and then how the men had chopped through the outer door of the King's room after his guard had suddenly perished of apoplexy. "And the second door, too, all the time Prince Regal worrying and urging them on, for fear something had befallen the King himself. But when they got through, despite all that chopping, the King was sleeping like a babe, sir. And so deep a sleep they could not rouse him at all, to tell him why they'd chopped his doors away."

    "Amazing," I agreed, and she went on to the lesser gossip of the Keep. I found that centered these days mostly on who was and was not included in the flight to Tradeford. Cook was to go, for the sake of her gooseberry tarts and bundle cakes. She did not know who was to take over the cooking here, but no doubt it would be one of the guards. Regal had told her she might take all her best pots, for which she was grateful, but what she would really miss was the west hearth, for she had never cooked on a better, for the draft being just right and the meat hooks at all the right heights. I listened to her, and tried to think only of her words, to be fully intrigued by the small details of what she considered important in her life. The Queen's guard, I found, was to stay at Buckkeep, as would those few who still wore the colors of King Shrewd's personal guard. Since they had lost the privilege of his rooms, they had become a dispirited lot. But Regal insisted it was necessary those groups stay, to maintain a royal presence in Buckkeep. Rosemary would go, and her mother, but that was hardly surprising, seeing as who they served. Fedwren would not, nor Mellow. Now, there was a voice she would miss, but she'd probably get used to that inland warbling after a while.

    She never thought to ask me if I was going.

    As I climbed the stairs to my room I tried to visualize Buckkeep as it would be. The High Table would be empty at every meal, the food served would be the simple campaign food the military cooks were most familiar with. For as long as the food supplies lasted. I expected we would eat a lot of wild game and seaweed before spring. I worried more for Patience and Lacey than I did for myself. Rough quarters and coarse food did not bother me, but it was not what they were used to. At least there would be Mellow still to sing, if his melancholy nature did not overtake him at his abandonment. And Fedwren. With few children to teach, perhaps he and Patience could finally study out their paper making. So putting a brave face on it all, I tried to find a future for us.

    "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. Beams 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."

    "Such a man sounds like a woman to me," Kettricken quipped, and Hopeful laughed merrily, more to see the Queen's mood lightened than at the witticism. Kettricken paused with her cup at her lips. "Perhaps I should have to go myself, to see the thing done right," she added, and smiled when my eyes widened. But the look she gave me was serious.

    There followed some light talk, and a recipe of mostly fictitious herbs from Kettricken that I promised to do my best to find for her. I believed I took her meaning. When I excused myself and went back to my room, I wondered how I would keep her from acting before Chade could. It was a pretty puzzle.

    I had scarcely refastened all my door catches and bars before I felt a draft up my back. I turned to find the entry to Chade's realm standing ajar. I climbed the stairs wearily. I longed to sleep, but knew that once I lay down, I would be unable to close my eyes.

    The smell of food enticed me as I entered Chade's chamber, and I was suddenly aware I was hungry. Chade was already at the small table he had set out. "Sit down and eat," he told me tersely. "We must plot together."

    I was two bites into a meat pie when he asked me softly, "How long do you think we might keep King Shrewd here, in these chambers, undetected?"

    I chewed and swallowed. "I've never been able to find a way into this chamber," I pointed out quietly.

    "Oh, but they do exist. And as food and other necessities must go in and out of them, there are some few who are aware of them, without knowing exactly what they know. My warren connects to rooms in the Keep which are regularly stocked with supplies for me. But my life was much simpler when food and linens were supplied for Lady Thyme."

    "How will you fare after Regal is gone to Tradeford?" I asked.

    "Likely not as well as I have. Some tasks will be done out of habit, if those with the habits remain, no doubt. But as food becomes scarcer some will wonder why they store supplies of it in a disused part of the Keep. But we were speaking of Shrewd's comfort, not mine."

    "It depends on how Shrewd disappeared. If Regal thought he had left the Keep by ordinary means, you might keep him hidden here for some time. But if Regal knows he is within Buckkeep still, he will stop at nothing. I suspect his first order would be to put men with hammers to work on the walls of the King's bedchamber."

    "Direct, but effective," Chade concurred.

    "Have you found a safe place for him, at Bearns or Rippon?"

    "As swift as that? Of course not. We would have to hide him here, for days or perhaps weeks before a place was made ready. And then he must be smuggled out of the Keep. It would mean finding men who can be bribed, and knowing when they are on the gate. Unfortunately, men that can be bribed to do a thing can be bribed to speak of it later. Unless they had accidents." He looked at me.

    "Let that not be a concern. There is another way out of Buckkeep," I told him, thinking of my wolf's way. "We have another problem also, and that is Kettricken. She will act on her own if she does not soon know we have a plan. Her own thoughts have taken her in the same direction as yours. Tonight she proposed herself taking Shrewd to the Mountains for safety."

    "A pregnant woman and a sick old man in midwinter? Ridiculous." Chade paused. "But. It would never be expected. They would never look for them on that road. And with all the flow of folk that Regal has created going up the Buck River, one more woman and her ailing father would scarcely be marked."

    "It's still ridiculous," I protested. I did not like the sparks of interest I had seen kindle in Chade's eyes. "Who could go with them?"

    "Burrich. It would save him from drinking himself to death from boredom, and he could manage their animals for them. And likely much else they would need. Would he go?"

    "You know he would," I said unwillingly. "But Shrewd would never survive such a trip."

    "He is more likely to survive such a trip than to survive going with Regal. That which eats at him will continue to devour his life, wherever he is." He frowned more darkly.

    "But why it eats at him so much more swiftly these days is beyond me to say."

    "The cold. The privation. It will not help him."

    "There are inns for part of the way. I can find some coin for them yet. Shrewd looks so little like he used to, we almost need not fear him being recognized. The Queen would be trickier. There are few women with her coloring and height. Still, clothed heavily, we could increase her girth. Hood her hair, and-"

    "You cannot be serious."

    "Tomorrow night," he replied. "We must do something by tomorrow night. For that is when the sleeping potion I gave Shrewd will wear off. Another attempt will probably not be made on the Queen until she is on her way to Tradeford. But once Regal has her in his power, well, so many accidents can happen on a journey. A slip from a barge into a freezing river, a runaway horse, a meal of bad meat. If his assassin is half as good as we are, he'll succeed."

    "Regal's assassin?"

    Chade gave me a pitying look. "You don't suppose our prince is up to spreading grease and lampblack on steps himself, do you? Who do you think it is?"

    "Serene." The name popped to my lips.

    "Then most obviously it is not her. No, we will find it to be some mouse of a man with a pleasant demeanor and a settled life. If we ever find him out at all. Ah, well, set it aside for now. Though there's nothing quite as challenging as stalking another assassin."

    "Will," I said quietly.

    "Will what?" he asked.

    I told him of Will, quickly and quietly. As he listened his eyes widened.

    "It would be brilliant," he said admiringly. "A Skilled assassin. It's a wonder no one thought of it before."

    "Perhaps Shrewd did," I said quietly. "But perhaps his assassin failed to learn ...."

    Chade leaned back in his chair. "I wonder," he said speculatively. "Shrewd is closemouthed enough to have such an idea, and keep it even from me. But I doubt, myself, that Will is any more than a spy, just now. A formidable one, and no mistaking that. You must be especially vigilant. But I do not think we need fear him as an assassin." He cleared his throat. "Ah, well. The urgency for speed becomes ever plainer. The escape must be made from the King's room. You must find a way to draw the watchers all off again."

    "During the King-in-Waiting ceremony-"

    "No. We dare not wait that long. Tomorrow night. No later than that. You need not keep them occupied long. Just a few minutes will be all I will need."

    "We must wait! Otherwise, the whole plot is impossible. By tomorrow night, you wish me to have the Queen and Burrich prepared, which means telling them you exist. And Burrich will have to see to horses and supplies-"

    "Plug horses. Nothing fine. They would be noticed too quickly. And a litter for the King."

    "Plug horses we have in plenty, for they are all that is left. But it will stick in Burrich's craw for his king and queen to ride them."

    "And a mule for himself. They are to be humble folk, with scarce the coin to journey inland. We have no wish to attract highwaymen. "

    I snorted to think of Burrich astride a mule. "It cannot be done," I said quietly. "The time is too short. It must be done the night of the King-in-Waiting ceremony. All will be down at the feasting."

    "Anything that must be done, can be done," Chade asserted. He sat thoughtfully a moment. "Perhaps you have a point. Regal cannot have the King incapacitated for the ceremony. If he is not there, not one of the Coastal Dukes will give it any credence. Regal will have to allow Shrewd his pain herbs, to keep him tractable, if nothing else. Very well, then. The night after tomorrow. And if you absolutely must speak to me tomorrow, put some bitterbark on your hearthfire. Not a lot, I have no wish to be smoked out. But a generous handful. I will open the way."

    "The Fool will want to go with the King." I reminded myself slowly.

    "He cannot," Chade said decisively. "There is no disguising him. He would only increase the danger. Besides, it is necessary he stay. We will need his help to prepare for this disappearance."

    "I do not think that will change his mind."

    "Leave the Fool to me. I can show him that his King's life depends on his getting away from here cleanly. An `atmosphere' must be created, in which the King and Queen's disappearance is not seen as ... ah, well. Leave that part to me. I will discourage them from smashing walls. The Queen's role is easy. All she need do is retire early from the ceremony, and declare that she wishes to sleep long, and send her attendants away. She should leave word she does not wish to be disturbed until she summons them. If all goes well, we should be able to give Shrewd and Kettricken most of the night hours to gain some distance." He smiled at me kindly. "Well. I think that is as much planning as we can do. No, no, I know nothing is fixed. It is better this way. We are more flexible. Now go get what sleep you can, boy. You've a busy day tomorrow. And I've much to do right now. I must mix enough medicines to take King Shrewd all the way to the Mountains. And package them clearly. Burrich reads, does he not?"

    "Very well," I assured him. I paused. "Were you at the Keep well last night, about midnight? Supposedly the Pocked Man was seen. Some are saying it means the well will go bad. Others are seeing it as a bad omen for Regal's ceremony."

    "Oh? Well, and perhaps it is." Chade chuckled to himself. "Omens and portents they shall have, boy, until a vanishing King and a missing Queen seem but a natural thing in the midst of it." He grinned like a boy, and the years dropped from his face. Something like their old spark of mischief came into his green eyes. "Go get some rest. And let Burrich and the Queen know of our plans. I shall speak to Shrewd and the Fool. No others are to know even a whisper. For some of it, we must trust to luck. But for the rest, trust to me!"

    His laughter was not a wholly reassuring sound as it followed me down the stairs.