Once, in describing my father, Chivalry, Verity had said that when he Skilled it was like being trampled by a horse, that Chivalry would rush into his mind, dump out his messages, and flee. I now had a better understanding of what my uncle had meant. I felt rather like a fish suddenly deserted by a wave. There was that gaping sense of something missing in the instant after Verity's departure. It took me a moment to remember I was a person. Had I not been fortified already with the elfbark, I think I might have fainted. As it was, the drug was increasing its hold on me. I had a sense of being muffed in a warm soft blanket. My weariness was gone, but I felt muted. I finished the little that was left in my cup and waited for the flush of energy that elfbark usually gave me. It didn't come.

"I don't think you used enough," I told Kettle.

"You have had plenty," she said with asperity. She sounded like Molly did when she thought I was drinking too much. I braced myself, expecting images of Molly to fill my mind. But I stayed within my own life. I do not know if I felt relieved or disappointed. I longed to see her and Nettle. But Verity had warned me… Belatedly I announced to Kettricken, "Verity Skilled to me. Just now." Then I cursed myself as a churl and a lackwit as I saw the hope flush her face. "It was not really a message," I amended hastily. "Just a warning reminder to me that I am to avoid Skilling. He still believes there may be others seeking me that way."

Her face fell. She shook her head to herself. Then she looked up to demand, "He had no word at all for me?"

"I do not know if he realizes you are with me," I hastily sidestepped the question.

"No words," she said dully as if she had not heard me. Her eyes were opaque as she asked. "Does he know how I have failed him? Does he know about… our child?"

"I do not believe he does, my lady. I sense no such grief in him, and well I know how it would grieve him."

Kettricken swallowed. I cursed my clumsy words, and yet, was it my place to utter words of comfort and love to his wife? She straightened up abruptly, then rose. "I think I shall bring in a bit more firewood for tonight," she announced. "And grain the jeppas. There is scarcely a twig for them to browse on here."

I watched her leave the tent for the dark and still cold outside. No one spoke a word. After a breath or two, I rose and followed her. "Don't be long," Kettle warned me enigmatically. The wolf shadowed after me.

Outside the night was clear and cold. The wind was no worse than usual. Familiar discomforts can almost be ignored. Kettricken was neither fetching wood nor graining the jeppas. I was sure both tasks had already been done earlier. Instead she was standing at the edge of the cloven road, staring out over the blackness of cliff at her feet. She stood tall and stiff as a soldier reporting to his sergeant and made not a sound. I knew she was crying.

There is a time for courtly manners, a time for formal protocol, and a time for humanity. I went to her, took her by the shoulders, and turned her to face me. She radiated misery, and the wolf beside me whined high. "Kettricken," I said simply. "He loves you. He will not blame you. He will grieve, yes, but what kind of a man would not? As for Regal's deeds, they are Regal's deeds. Do not take the blame for those to yourself. You could not have stopped him."

She wiped a hand across her face and did not speak. She looked past me, her face a pale mask in the starlight. She sighed heavily, but I could sense her strangling on her sorrow. I set my arms about my queen and pulled her to me, pressing her face to my shoulder. I stroked her back, feeling the terrible tension there. "It's all right," I lied to her. "It's going to be all right. In time, you'll see. You'll be together again, you'll make another child, both of you will sit in the Great Hall at Buckkeep and listen to the minstrels sing. There will be peace again, somehow. You've never seen Buckkeep at peace. There will be time for Verity to hunt and fish, and you'll ride at his side. Verity will laugh and shout and roar through the halls like the north wind again. Cook used to chase him out of the kitchen for slicing the meat from the roast before it was cooked through, he would come home from the chase that hungry. He'd come right in and cut the leg off a cooking fowl, that he would, and carry it about with him, telling stories in the guardroom, waving it about like a sword…"

I patted her back as if she were a child and told her tales of the bluff, hearty man I remembered from my boyhood. For a time, her forehead rested on my shoulder and she was completely still. Then she coughed once, as if starting to choke, but instead terrible sobs welled up from her. She cried suddenly and unabashedly as a child that has taken a bad fall and is hurt as well as frightened. I sensed these were tears that had long gone unshed, and I did not try to help her stop. Instead I went on talking and patting her, scarcely hearing what I was saying myself, until her sobs began to quiet and her shaking to still. At last she drew away from me a little, to grope in her pocket for a kerchief. She wiped her face and eyes and blew her nose before she tried to speak.

"I'm going to be all right," she said. To hear the strength of her belief in those words made my heart ache. "It's just… It's hard just now. Waiting to tell him all these terrible things. Knowing how they will hurt him. They taught me so many things about being Sacrifice, Fitz. From the beginning, I knew I might have terrible sorrows to bear. I am strong enough… to bear these things. But no one warned me that I might come to love the man they'd choose for me. To bear my sorrow is one thing. To bring sorrow to him is another." Her throat closed on the words and she bowed her head. I feared she might begin to weep again. Instead when she lifted her head she smiled at me. Moonlight touched the silver wetness on her cheeks and lashes. "Sometimes I think only you and I see the man beneath the crown. I want him to laugh, and roar about, and leave his bottles of ink open and his maps scattered about. I want him to put his arms about me and hold me. Sometimes I want those things so much, I forget about the Red-Ships and Regal and… everything else. Sometimes I think that, if we could only be together again, all the rest would come right as well. It is not a very worthy thought to have. A Sacrifice is supposed to be more…"

A glint of silver behind her caught my eyes. I saw the black column over her shoulder. It leaned at a cant over the broken edge of the road, half its stone support gone. I did not hear the rest of what she said. I wondered how I had not seen it before. It gleamed brighter than the moon on the sparkling snow. It was hewn of black stone webbed with glittering crystal. Like moonlight on a rippling river of Skill. I could decipher no writing on its surface. The wind was screaming behind me as I reached out and ran a hand down that smooth stone. It welcomed me.