‘No, no, Thick! Stop that. He’s good. He can be here. I say so.’

Chade spoke to him as if he were three years old. And while I recognized that the small eyes in the round face that glowered at me were not the eyes of a man my intellectual equal, I also saw a flash of resentment there at being thus addressed. I seized on it, keeping my gaze on Thick’s face but speaking to Chade.

‘You don’t need to talk to him like that. He isn’t stupid. He’s…’ I groped for a word to express what I suddenly was certain of. Thick’s intelligence might be limited in some ways, but it was there. ‘…different,’ I ended lamely. Different, I reflected, as a horse was different from a cat and they both were different from a man. But not lesser. Almost I could sense how his mind reached in another direction from mine, attaching significance to items I dismissed even as he dismissed whole areas that anchored my reality.

Thick scowled from me to Chade and back again. Then he took up his broom and a bucket of ash and cinders from the fireplace and scuttled from the room. After the scroll rack had swung back into place behind him, I caught the flung thought-fragment. Dog-stinker.

‘He doesn’t like me. He knows I’m Witted, too. I complained to Chade as I dropped into the other chair. Almost sulkily, I added, ‘Prince Dutiful didn’t meet me in Verity’s tower this morning. He had said he would.’

My remarks seemed to drift past the old man. The Queen wants to see you. Right away.’ He was neatly if not elegantly attired in a simple robe of blue this morning with soft fur slippers on his feet. Did they ache from dancing?

‘What about?’ I asked as I rose and followed him. We went back to the wine rack, and as we triggered the concealed door, I remarked, ‘Thick didn’t seem surprised to see me enter from here.’

Chade shrugged one shoulder. ‘I do not think he is bright enough to be surprised by something like that. I doubt that he even noticed it.’

I considered and decided that it might be true. To him, it might have no significance. ‘And the Queen wanted to see me because?’

‘Because she told me so,’ he replied a bit testily.

After that I kept silent and followed him. I suspected his head throbbed, as mine did. I knew he had an antidote to a night’s hard drinking, and knew also how difficult it was to compound. Sometimes it was easier to put up with the throbbing headache than to grind one’s way through creating a cure.

We entered the Queen’s private chambers as we had before. Chade paused to peer and listen to be sure there were no witnesses, then admitted us to a privy chamber, and from there to the Queen’s sitting room, where Kettricken awaited us. She looked up with a weary smile as we entered. She was alone.

We both bowed formally. ‘Good morning, my queen,’ Chade greeted her for us, and she held out her hands in welcome, gesturing us in. The last time I had been here, an anxious Kettricken had awaited us in an austere chamber, her thoughts centred solely on her missing son. This time, the room displayed her handiwork. In the middle of a small table, six golden leaves had been arranged on a tray of gleaming river pebbles. Three tall candles burning there gave off the scent of violets. Several rugs of wool eased the floor against winter’s oncoming chill, and the chairs were softened with sheepskins. A day-fire burned in the hearth, and a kettle puffed steam above it. It reminded me of her home in the Mountains. She had also arranged a small table of food. Hot tea exhaled from a fat pot. I noticed there were only two cups as Kettricken said, Thank you for bringing FitzChivalry here, Lord Chade.’

It was a dismissal, smoothly done. Chade bowed again, perhaps a bit more stiffly than he had the first time, and retreated by way of the privy chamber. I was left standing alone before the Queen, wondering what all this was about. When the door closed behind Chade, she gave a sudden great sigh, sat down at the table and gestured at the other chair. ‘Please, Fitz,’ and her words were an invitation to drop all formality as well as to be seated.

As I took my place opposite her, I studied her. We were nearly of an age, but her years rode her far more graciously than mine did me. Where the passage of time had scarred me, it had brushed her, leaving a tracery of lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. She wore a green gown today, and it set off the gold of her hair as well as carrying her eyes to the jade end of their spectrum. Her dress was simple, as was the plaiting of her hair; she wore no jewelry or cosmetics.

And she did not indulge in any kind of ceremony as she poured tea for me and set my cup before me. ‘There are cakes, too, if you wish,’ she said, and I did, for I had not yet broken my fast that day. Yet something in her voice, an edge of hoarseness, made me set down the cup I’d started to lift. She was looking aside from me, avoiding my eyes. I saw the frantic fluttering of her eyelashes, and then a tear brimmed over and splashed down her cheek.

‘Kettricken?’ I asked in alarm. What had gone awry that I did not know about? Had she discovered the Narcheska’s reluctance to wed her son? Had there been another Wit-threat?

She caught her breath raggedly and suddenly looked me full in the face, ‘Oh, Fitz, I did not call you here for this. I meant to keep this to myself. But… I am so sorry. For all of us. When first I heard, I already knew. I woke that dawn, feeling as if something had broken, something important.’ She tried to clear her throat and could not. She croaked out her words, tears coursing down her face. ‘I could not put my finger on the loss, but when Chade brought your tidings to me, I knew instantly. I felt him go, Fitz. I felt Nighteyes leave us.’ And then a sob wracked her, and she dropped her face into her hands and wept like a devastated child.

I wanted to flee. I had almost succeeded in mastering my grief, and now she tore the wound afresh. For a time I sat woodenly, numbed by pain. Why couldn’t she just leave it alone?

But she seemed not to notice my coldness. ‘The years pass, but you never forget a friend like him.’ She was speaking to herself, her head bowed into her hands. Her words came muffled and thick with tears. She rocked a little in her chair. ‘I’d never felt so close to an animal, before we travelled together. But in the long hours walking, he was always there, ranging ahead and coming back and then checking behind us. He was like a shield for me, for when came trotting back, I always knew that he was satisfied no danger awaited us. Without his assurance, I am sure my own poor courage would have failed a hundred times. When we began our journey, he seemed just a part of you. But then I got to know him for himself. His bravery and tenacity, even his humour. There were times, especially at the quarry, when we went off to hunt and he alone seemed to understand my feelings. It was not just that I could hold tight to him and cry into his fur and know he would never betray my weakness, it was that he rejoiced in my strengths, too. When we hunted together and I made a kill, I could feel his approval like… like a fierceness that said I deserved to survive, that I had earned my place in this world.’ She drew breath raggedly. ‘I think I will always miss him. And I didn’t even get to see him again before…’

My mind reeled. Truly, I had not known how close they had been. Nighteyes also had kept his secrets well. I had known that Queen Kettricken had a predilection for the Wit. I had sensed faint questing from her when she meditated. I had often suspected that her Mountain ‘connection’ with the natural world would have a less kindly name in the Six Duchies. But she and my wolf?

‘He spoke to you? You heard Nighteyes in your mind?’

She shook her head, not lifting her face from her hands. Her fingers muffled her reply. ‘No. But I felt him in my heart, when I was numb to all else.’