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My heart sank in me. I was sure I knew exactly which guard had assisted him out the door. It was as Burrich had always warned me. One could never know what Regal might dare. “What did the King tell them?”

“Ah! Not, was the King all right, or was the King recovering? No. Only what did the King tell them? Do you fear your precious hide is in danger, Princeling?”

“No.” I could feel no resentment at his question, or even how he phrased it. I deserved it. I had not taken good care of our friendship lately. Despite that, when he needed help, he had come to me. “No. But as long as the King says nothing of Verity being alive, then Regal has no reason to—”

“My King was being . . . taciturn. It had started out as a pleasant conversation between father and son, with Regal telling him how pleased he should be to have him finally as King-in-Waiting. King Shrewd was rather vague, as he often is these days. Something about it irritated Regal, and he began to accuse him of not being pleased, of even being opposed. Finally he began to insist there was a plot, a conspiracy to see that he never came to the throne. No man is so dangerous as the man who cannot decide what he fears. Regal is that man. Even Wallace was put ajar by his rantings. He had brought the King one of his brews, to deaden his mind along with his pain, but as he brought it near, Regal dashed it from his hands. He then spun on the poor trembling Wall’s Ass and accused him of being part of the conspiracy. He claimed Wallace had intended to drug our King to keep him from speaking what he knew. He ordered Wallace from the room, saying the King would have no need of him until he had seen fit to speak plainly to his son. He ordered me out as well, then. My reluctance to leave was overcome by a couple of his hulking inland plowmen.”

A creeping dread rose in me. I remembered my moment of sharing the King’s pain. Regal would remorselessly watch while that pain crept past the numbing herbs to overwhelm his father. I could not imagine a man being capable of this. Yet I knew Regal would do it. “When did this happen?”

“Just an hour or so ago. You are not an easy person to find.”

I looked more closely at the Fool. “Go down to the stables, to Burrich. See what he can do for you.” The healer, I knew, would not touch the Fool. Like many around the Keep, he feared his strange appearance.

“What will you be doing?” the Fool asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. This was exactly one of the situations I had warned Chade about. I knew whether I acted or not, the consequences would be grave. I needed to distract Regal from what he was doing. Chade, I was sure, was aware of what was going on. If Regal and all others could be lured away for a time . . . I could think of only one piece of news that might be important enough to Regal to make him leave Shrewd.

“You’ll be all right?”

The Fool had sunk down to sit on the cold stone steps. He leaned his head against the wall. “I suppose so. Go.”

I started down the steps.

“Wait!” he called suddenly.

I halted.

“When you take my King away, I go with him.”

I just stared up at him.

“I mean it. I wore Regal’s collar for the sake of that promise from him. It means nothing now to him.”

“I can make no promises,” I said quietly.

“I can. I promise that if my King is taken, and I do not go with him, I will betray every one of your secrets. Every one.” The Fool’s voice was shaking. He put his head back against the wall.

I turned away hastily. The tears on his cheeks were tinged pink from the cuts on his face. I could not bear to see them. I ran down the stairs.

27
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.

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