find peace in each other briefly, and then begin to wrangle about things. She was lonely, she hated being a servant, the little bit of money she could set aside for herself grew terribly slowly, she missed me, why did I have to be gone so much when I was the only thing that made her life bearable? I approached her once with the offer of what money I had earned aboard the ship, but she stiffened as if I had called her a whore. She would take nothing of mine until we were joined in marriage before all. And I could offer her no real hope as to when that might happen. I still had never found the moment in which to reveal Shrewd’s plans for Celerity and me. We were apart so much, we lost the threads of one another’s day-to-day lives, and when we did come together, we always rechewed the bitter rinds of the same arguments.
One night, when I came to her, I found her with her hair bound back all in red ribbons, and graceful silver earrings shaped like willow leaves dangling against her bare neck. Clad in her simple white nightgown, the sight of her took my breath away. Later, during a quieter moment when we had breath for speaking, I complimented her on the earrings. Artlessly, she told me that when Prince Regal had last come to buy candles of her, he had gifted her with them, for he said he was so pleased with what she created that he scarcely felt he paid her what such finely-scented candles were worth. She smiled proudly as she told me this, her fingers toying with my warrior’s queue while her own hair and ribbons tangled wildly upon the pillows. I do not know what she saw in my face, but it widened her eyes and she drew back from me.
‘You will take gifts from Regal?’ I asked her coldly. ‘You will not accept from me coin that I had honestly earned, but you take jewellery from that …’
I teetered on the edge of treason, but could find no word to express what I thought of him.
Molly’s eyes narrowed, and it was my turn to draw back. ‘What should I have said to him? “No, sir, I cannot accept your largesse, until you marry me?” There is not between Regal and me what there is between us. This was a perquisite from a customer, such as is often given to a skilled craftsman. Why did you think he gave them to me? In exchange for my favours?’
We stared at one another, and after a time I managed to speak what she was almost willing to accept as an apology. But then I made the mistake of suggesting that perhaps he had given them to her solely because he knew it would vex me. And then she wanted to know how Regal might know what was between us, and did I think her work so poor that largesse such as the earrings was not due her? Suffice to say that we mended our quarrels as well as we could in the short time we had left together. But a mended pot is never as sound as a whole one, and I returned to the ship as lonely as if I had had no time at all with her.
In the times when I leaned on my oar and kept perfect rhythm and tried to think of nothing at all, I often found myself missing Patience and Lacey, Chade, Kettricken, or even Burrich. The few times I was able to call on our Queen-in-Waiting that summer, I always found her on her tower-top garden. It was a beautiful place, but despite her efforts, it was nothing like the other Buckkeep gardens had ever been. There was too much of the mountains in her for her to ever convert entirely to our ways. There was a honed simplicity to how she arranged and trained the plants. Simple stones had been added, and bare driftwood branches, twisted and smoothed by the sea, rested against them in stark beauty. I could have meditated calmly there, but it was not a place to loll in the warm wind of summer, and I suspected that was how Verity had recalled it. She kept herself busy there, and enjoyed it, but it did not bond her to Verity as she had once believed it would. She was as beautiful as ever, but always her blue eyes were clouded grey with preoccupation and worry. Her brow was furrowed so often that when she did relax her face, one saw the pale lines of the skin the sun had never reached. In the times I spent with her there, she often dismissed most of her ladies, and then quizzed me about the Rurisk’s activities as thoroughly as if she were Verity himself. When I had finished reporting to her, often she folded her lips into a firm line and went to stare out over the top of the tower wall and beyond to the sea touching the edge of the sky. Towards the end of summer, as she was staring so one afternoon, I ventured close to her to ask to be excused from her presence to return to my ship. She scarcely seemed to hear what I had asked. Instead, she said softly, ‘There has to be a final solution. Nothing, no one can go on like this. There must be a way to make an end of this.’
‘Autumn storms come soon, my lady queen. Already, frost has touched some of your vines. Storms are never far behind the first chilling, and with them comes peace for us.’
‘Peace? Ha.’ She snorted in disbelief. ‘Is it peace to lie awake and wonder who will die next, where will they attack next year? That is not peace. That is a torture. There must be a way to put an end to the Red Ships. And I intend to find it.’
Her words sounded almost like a threat.
‘Of stone were their bones made, of the sparkling veined stone of the mountains. Their flesh was made of the shining salts of the earth. But their hearts were made of the hearts of wise men.
‘They came from afar, those men, a long and trying way. They did not hesitate to lay down the lives that had become a weariness to them. They ended their days and began eternities, they put aside flesh and donned stone, they let fall their weapons and rose on new wings. Elderlings.’
When the King finally summoned me, I went to him. True to my promise to myself, I had not voluntarily gone to his chambers since that afternoon. Bitterness still ate at me over his arrangements with Duke Brawndy concerning Celerity and me. But a summons from one’s king was not a thing to be ignored, regardless of what anger churned inside me still.
King Shrewd sent for me on an autumn morning. It had been at least two months since I had last stood before him. I had ignored the wounded looks the Fool flung at me when I encountered him, and turned aside Verity’s occasional query as to why I had not sought out Shrewd’s chamber. It was easy enough. Wallace still guarded his door like a serpent on the hearth, and the King’s poor health was no secret from anyone. No one was admitted to his rooms before noon any more. So I told myself this morning summons betokened something important.
I had thought the morning would belong to me. An unseasonably early and vicious autumn storm had pounded us for two days. The driving wind was merciless, while drenching rain promised that anyone in an open boat would be fully occupied with bailing. I had spent the evening before in the tavern with the rest of the Rurisk’s crew, toasting the storm and wishing the Red Ships the full kiss of it. I had come back to the keep to tumble suddenly into my bed, certain that I could sleep as long as I wished the next morning. But a determined page had battered my door until sleep forsook me, and then delivered to me the King’s formal summons.
I washed, shaved, smoothed my hair back into a tail and donned clean clothes. I steeled myself to betray nothing of my smouldering resentment. When I was confident I was master of myself, I left my chamber. I presented myself at the King’s door. I fully expected Wallace to sneer and turn me aside. But this morning he opened the door promptly to my knock. His glance was still disapproving, but he immediately ushered me into the King’s presence.
Shrewd sat before his hearth in a cushioned chair. Despite myself, my heart sank at how wasted he had become. His skin was papery and translucent as parchment, his fingers gone to bone. His face sagged, skin drooping where flesh had once held it firm. His dark eyes were sunken into his face. He clasped his hands in his lap in a gesture I knew well. Thus did I hold my hands to conceal the trembling that occasionally overtook me still. A small table at his elbow supported a censer, and Smoke rose from it. The fumes already made a
