This is pack, Nighteyes observed in contentment from his corner. And I could do no more than agree.

Starling cleansed her fingers of grease and took her harp back from the Fool, who had asked to see it. To my surprise, he leaned over it with her, and traced down the frame with a pale fingernail, saying, "Had I my tools here, I could shave the wood here, and here, and smooth a curve like so along this side. I think it might fit your hands better."

Starling looked at him hard, caught between suspicion and hesitancy. She studied his face for mockery, but found none. Carefully she observed, as if she spoke to us all, "My master who taught me harping was good at the making of harps as well. Too good, perhaps. He tried to teach me, and I learned the basics, but he could not stand to watch me 'fumble and scrape at fine wood,' as he put it. So I never learned for myself the finer points of shaping the frame. And with this hand still stiff…"

"Were we back at Jhaampe, I could let you fumble and scrape as much as you wanted. To do is truly the only way to learn. But for here, for now, even with such knives as we have, I think I might bring a more graceful shape out of this wood." The Fool spoke openly.

"If you would," she accepted quietly. I wondered when they had set aside their hostilities and realized I had not, for some days, paid much attention to anyone save myself. I had accepted that Starling wanted little more to do with me than to be present if I did something of vast import. I had not made any of friendship's demands upon her. Both Kettricken's rank and her grief had imposed a barrier between us that I had not ventured to breach. Kettle's reticence about herself made any true conversation difficult. But I could think of no excuse for how I had excluded the Fool and the wolf from my thoughts lately.

When you throw up walls against those who would use Skill against you, you lock more than your Skill-sense inside, Nighteyes observed.

I sat pondering that. It seemed to me that my Wit and my feeling for people had dimmed somewhat of late. Perhaps my companion was right. Kettle poked me suddenly, sharply. "Don't wander!" she chided me.

"I was just thinking," I said defensively.

"Well, think aloud then."

"I've no thoughts worth sharing just now."

Kettle glowered at me for being uncooperative.

"Recite then," commanded the Fool. "Or sing something. Anything to keep yourself focused here."

"That's a good idea," Kettle agreed, and it was my turn to glower at the Fool. But all eyes were on me. I took a breath and tried to think of something to recite. Almost everyone had a favorite story or bit of poetry memorized. But most of what I had possessed had to do with the poisoning herbs or others of the assassin's arts. "I know one song," I finally admitted. "'Crossfire's Sacrifice.'"

Now Kettle scowled, but Starling struck up the opening notes with an amused smile on her face. After one false start, I launched into it, and carried it off fairly well, though I saw Starling flinch a time or two at a soured note. For whatever reason my choice of song displeased Kettle, who sat grim and staring at me defiantly. When I had finished, the turn was passed to Kettricken, who sang a hunting ballad from the Mountains. Then it was the Fool's turn, and he humored us with a ribald folk song about courting a milkmaid. I believe I saw grudging admiration from Starling for that performance. That left Kettle, and I had expected her to beg off. Instead, she sang the old children's nursery rhyme about "Six Wise Men went to Jhaampe-town, climbed a hill and never came down," all the time eyeing me as if each word from her cracked old voice were a barb meant just for me. But if there was a veiled insult there, I missed it, as well as the reason for her ill will.

Wolves sing together, Nighteyes observed, just as Kettricken suggested, "Play us something we all know, Starling. Something to give us heart." So Starling played that ancient song about gathering flowers for one's beloved, and we all sang along, some with more heart than others.

As the last note died away, Kettle observed, "The wind's dropping."

We all listened, and then Kettricken crawled from the tent. I followed her, and we stood quiet for a time in a wind that had gone quieter. Dusk had stolen the colors from the world. In the wake of the wind, snow had begun thickly falling. "The storm has almost blown itself out," she observed. "We can be on our way tomorrow."

"None too soon for me," I said. Come to me, come to me still echoed in the beating of my heart. Somewhere up in those Mountains, or beyond them, was Verity.

And the river of Skill.

"As for me," Kettricken said quietly. "Would that I had followed my instincts a year ago, and gone to the ends of the map. But I reasoned that I could do no better than Verity had done. And I feared to risk his child. A child I lost anyway, and thus failed him both ways."

"Failed him?" I exclaimed in horror. "By losing his child?"

"His child, his crown, his kingdom. His father. What did he entrust me with that I did not lose, FitzChivalry? Even as I rush to be with him again, I wonder how I can meet his eyes."

"Oh, my queen, you are mistaken in this, I assure you. He would not perceive that you have failed him, but fears only that he abandoned you in the greatest of danger."

"He only went to do what he knew he must," Kettricken said quietly. And then added plaintively, "Oh, Fitz, how can you speak for what he feels, when you cannot even tell me where he is?"

"Where he is, my queen, is but a bit of information, a spot on that map. But what he feels, and what he feels for you… that is what he breathes, and when we are together in the Skill, joined mind to mind, then I know such things, almost whether I would or no." I recalled the other times I had been privy unwillingly to Verity's feelings for his queen, and was glad the night hid my face from her.

"Would this Skill were a thing I could learn… Do you know how often and how angry I have felt with you, solely because you could reach forth to the one I longed for, and know his mind and heart so easily? Jealousy is an ugly thing, and always I have tried to set it aside from me. But sometimes it seems so monstrously unfair that you are joined to him in such a way, and I am not."

It had never occurred to me that she might feel such a thing. Awkwardly, I pointed out, "The Skill is as much curse as it is gift. Or so it has been to me. Even if it were a thing I could gift you with, my lady, I do not know that is a thing one would do to a friend."

"To feel his presence and his love for even a moment, Fitz… for that I would accept any curse that rode with it. To know his touch again, in any form… can you imagine how I miss him?"

"I think I can, my lady," I said quietly. Molly. Like a hand gripping my heart. Chopping hard winter turnips on the tabletop. The knife was dull, she would ask Burrich to put an edge on it if he ever came in from the rain. He was cutting wood to take down to the village and sell tomorrow. The man worked too hard, his leg would be hurting him tonight.

"Fitz? FitzChivalry!"

I snapped back to Kettricken shaking me by the shoulders.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly. I rubbed at my eyes and laughed. "Irony. All my life, it has been so difficult to use the Skill. It came and went like the wind in a ship's sails. Now I am here, and suddenly Skilling is as effortless as breathing. And I hunger to use it, to find out what is happening to those I love best. But Verity warns me I must not, and I must believe he knows best."

"As must I," she agreed wearily.

We stood a moment longer in the dimness, and I fought a sudden impulse to put my arm around her shoulders and tell her it would be all right, that we would find her husband and king. Briefly, she seemed that tall slender girl who had come from the Mountains to be Verity's bride. But now she was the Queen of the Six Duchies, and I had seen her strength. Surely she needed no comfort from one such as I.