"Your word of thanks would be all he would accept. He would bridle that you thought he needed more. My own feelings are that no object you gave him would be a match for what he did for me. The way to handle him is to tell him to take his pick of the likely two-year-olds, for his horse is growing old. He'd understand that." I considered it carefully. "Yes. You might do that."
"Might I?" Verity asked me dryly. There was an acid edge to the amusement in his voice.
I was suddenly amazed at my own boldness. "I forgot myself, my prince," I said humbly.
A smile curved his lips and his hand fell on my shoulder in a heavy pat. "Well, l asked you, did I not? For a moment I would have sworn it was old Chivalry instructing me in handling my men, rather than my young nephew. Your trip to Jhaampe has quite changed you, boy. Come. I meant what I said about a warmer spot and a glass of something. Kettricken will be wanting to see you later in the day. And Patience, too, I imagine."
My heart sank as he heaped the tasks before me. Buckkeep Town pulled at me like a lodestone. But this was my king-in-waiting. I bowed my head to his will.
We left the tower and I followed him down the stairs, speaking of inconsequential things. He told me to tell Mistress Hasty I needed new clothes; I asked after Leon, his wolfhound. He stopped a lad in the corridor and asked him to bring wine and meat pies to his study. I followed him, not up to his chambers, but to a lower room at once familiar and strange. The last time I had been in it, Fedwren the scribe had been using it to sort and dry herbs and shells and roots for the making of his inks. All signs of that had been cleared from it. A fire burned low in the small hearth. Verity poked this up and added wood as I looked around. There was a large carved oak table and two smaller ones, a variety of chairs, a scroll rack, and a battered shelf littered with miscellaneous objects. Spread out on the table was the beginnings of a map of the Chalced States. The corners of it were weighted with a dagger and three stones. Various scraps of parchment that littered the tabletop were covered with Verity's hand and preliminary sketches with notes scratched across them. The friendly litter that covered the two smaller tables and several of the chairs seemed familiar. After a moment I recognized it as the layer of Verity's possessions that had previously been scattered about his bedchamber. Verity rose from awakening the fire and smiled ruefully at my raised eyebrows. "My queen-in-waiting has small patience with clutter. `How,' she asked me, `can you hope to create precise lines in the midst of such disorder?' Her own chamber has the precision of a military encampment. So I hide myself away down here, for I quickly found that in a clean and sparse chamber I could get no work done at all. Besides, it gives me a place for quiet talk, where not all know to seek me."
He had scarcely finished speaking when the door opened to admit Charim with a tray. I nodded to Verity's serving man, who not only seemed unsurprised to see me, but had added to Verity's request a certain type of spice bread that I had always enjoyed. He moved about the room briefly, making perfunctory tidying motions as he shifted a few books and scrolls to free a chair for me, and then vanished again. Verity was so accustomed to him he scarce seemed to notice him, save for the brief smile they exchanged as Charim left.
"So," he said, as soon as the door was fairly shut. "Let's have a full report. From the time you left Buckkeep."
This was not a simple recounting of my journey and the events of it. I had been trained by Chade to be a spy as well as an assassin. And since my earliest days Burrich had always demanded that I be able to give a detailed account of anything that went on in the stables in his absence. So as we ate and drank I gave Verity an accounting of all I had seen and done since I had left Buckkeep. This was followed by my summation of what I had concluded from my experiences, and then by what I suspected from what I had learned. By then, Charim had returned with another meal. While we consumed this Verity limited our talk to his warships. He could not conceal his enthusiasm for them. "Mastfish has come down to supervise the building. I went up to Highdowns myself to fetch him. He claimed to be an old man now. `The cold would stiffen my bones; I can't build a boat in winter anymore, that was the word he sent me. So I set the apprentices work, and I myself went to fetch him. He could not refuse me to my face. When he got here, I took him down to the shipyards. And I showed him the heated shed, big enough to house a warship, built so he might work and not be cold. But that was not what convinced him. It was the white oak that Kettricken brought me. When he saw the timber, he could not wait to put a drawknife to it. The grain is straight and true throughout. The planking is well begun already. They will be lovely ships, swan-necked, sinuous as snakes upon the water." Enthusiasm spilled from him. I could already imagine the rising and falling of the oars, the bellying of the square masts when they were under way.
Then the dishes and oddments were pushed to one side, and he began to quiz me upon the events in Jhaampe. He forced me to reconsider each separate incident from every possible perspective. By the time he was finished with me, I had relived the entire episode and my anger at my betrayal was fresh and vivid once more.
Verity was not blind to it. He leaned back in his chair to reach for another log. He flipped it onto the fire, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. "You have questions," he observed. "This time you may ask them." He folded his hands quietly into his lap and waited.
I tried to master my emotions. "Prince Regal, your brother," I began carefully, "is guilty of the highest treason. He arranged the killing of your bride's elder brother, Prince Rurisk. He attempted a plot that would have resulted in your death. His aim was to usurp both your crown and your bride. As little more than a spice, he twice tried to kill me. And Burrich." I paused to breathe, forcing my heart and voice back to calmness.
"You and I both accept those things as true. They would be difficult for us to prove," Verity observed mildly.
"And he relies upon that!" I spat out, and then turned my face aside from Verity until I could master my anger. The very intensity of it frightened me, for I had not allowed myself to feel it until now. Months ago, when I was using all my wits to stay alive, I had pushed it aside to keep my mind clear. There had followed the wasting months of convalescence as I recovered from Regal's botched poisoning attempt. Not even to Burrich had I been able to tell all, for Verity had made it clear that he wished no one to know any more about the situation than could be helped. Now I stood before my prince and trembled with the force of my own anger. My face spasmed suddenly in a violent series of twitches. That dismayed me enough that I was able to force calm upon myself once more.
"Regal relies upon it," I said more quietly. All this while Verity had not budged nor changed expression despite my outburst. He sat gravely at his end of the table, his work-scarred hands composed before him, watching me with dark eyes. I looked down at the tabletop and traced with a fingertip the carved scrollwork on the corner. "He does not admire you, that you keep the laws of the kingdom. He sees it as a weakness, as a way to circumvent justice. He may try to kill you again. Almost certainly, he will make an attempt upon me."
"Then we must be careful, we two, mustn't we?" Verity observed mildly.
I lifted my eyes to look him in the face. "That is all you say to me?" I asked tightly, choking down my outrage.
"FitzChivalry. I am your prince. I am your king-in-waiting. You are sworn to me, as much as to my father. And, if it comes to it, you are sworn to my brother as well." Verity rose suddenly to take a pace around the room. "Justice. There's a thing we shall ever thirst after, and ever be parched. No. We content ourselves with law. And this is only more true, the higher a man's rank rises. Justice would put you next in line for the throne, Fitz. Chivalry was my elder brother. But law says you were born outside of wedlock, and hence can never make any claim to the crown. Some might say I had snatched the throne from my brother's son. Should I be shocked that my younger brother should want to grab it from me?"