I had long ago stopped being surprised at what Chade knew. But this time I was sure he did not know the real reason, and I had no desire to share it with him.
“Have you discovered yet who tried to kill him?”
“I haven’t … tried, really.”
Now Chade looked disgusted, and then puzzled. “Boy, you are not yourself at all. Six months ago you would have torn the stables apart to know such a secret. Six months ago, given a month’s holiday, you would have filled each day. What troubles you?”
I looked down, feeling the truth of his words. I wanted to tell him everything that had befallen me; I wanted not to say a word of it to anyone. “I’ll tell you all I do know of the attack on Burrich.” And I did.
“And the one who saw all this,” he asked when I had finished. “Did he know the man who attacked Burrich?”
“He didn’t get a good look at him,” I hedged. Useless to tell Chade that I knew exactly how he smelled, but had only a vague visual image.
Chade was quiet for a moment. “Well, as much as you can, keep an ear to the earth. I should like to know who has grown so brave as to kill the King’s stablemaster in his own stable.”
“Then you do not think it was just some personal quarrel of Burrich’s?” I asked carefully.
“Perhaps it was. But we will not jump to conclusions. To me, it has the feel of a gambit. Someone is building to something, but has missed their first block. To our advantage, I hope.”
“Can you tell me why you think so?”
“I could, but I will not. I want to leave your mind free to find its own assumptions, independent of mine. Now come. I will show you the teas.”
I was more than a bit hurt that he asked me nothing about my time with Galen or my test. He seemed to accept my failure as a thing expected. But as he showed me the ingredients he had chosen for Verity’s teas, I was horrified by the strength of the stimulants he was using.
I had seen little of my Verity, though Regal had been only too much in evidence. He had spent the last month coming and going. He was always just returning, or just leaving, and each cavalcade seemed richer and more ornate than the one before. It seemed to me he was using the excuse of his brother’s courting to feather himself more brightly than any peacock. Common opinion was that he must go so, to impress those he negotiated with. For myself, I saw it as a waste of coin that could have gone to defenses. When Regal was gone, I felt relief, for his antagonism toward me had taken a recent bound, and he had found sundry small ways to express it.
The brief times when I had seen Verity or the King, they had both looked harassed and worn. But Verity especially had seemed almost stunned. Impassive and distracted, he had noticed me only once, and then smiled wearily and said I had grown. That had been the extent of our conversation. But I had noticed that he ate like an invalid, without appetite, eschewing meat and bread as if they were too great of an effort to chew and swallow and instead subsisting on porridges and soups.
“He is using the Skill too much. That much Shrewd has told me. But why it should drain him so, why it should burn the very flesh from his bones, he cannot explain to me. So I give him tonics and elixirs, and try to get him to rest. But he cannot. He dares not, he says. He tells me that only all his efforts are sufficient to delude the Red-Ship navigators, to send their ships onto the rocks, to discourage their captains. And so he rises from bed, and goes to his chair by a window, and there he sits, all the day.”
“And Galen’s coterie? Are they of no use to him?” I asked the question almost jealously, almost hoping to hear they were of no consequence.