I sat staring at Chade. I had never heard him speak so forcefully, nor had I ever known him to criticize Shrewd so openly. It shocked me. I held my breath, hoping he’d say more but almost fearful of what I might hear. He seemed unaware of my stare. “Poke that a bit deeper. But be careful. If it explodes, King Shrewd may have himself two pocked men instead of one.” He glanced at me. “Yes, that’s how I was marked. But it might have well and truly been a pox, for how Shrewd hears me lately. ‘I’ll omens and warnings and cautions fill you,’ he said to me. `But I think you want the boy trained in the Skill simply because you were not. It’s a bad ambition, Chade. Put it from you’ There speaks the Queen’s ghost with the King’s tongue.”
Chade’s bitterness filled me with stillness.
“Chivalry. That’s who we need now,” he went on after a moment. “Shrewd holds back, and Verity is a good soldier, but he listens to his father too much. Verity was raised to be second, not first. He does not take the initiative. We need Chivalry. He’d go into those towns, talk to the folk who have lost loved ones to Forging. Damn, he’d even talk to the Forged ones themselves ….”
“Do you think it would do any good?” I asked softly. I scarcely dared to move. I sensed that Chade was talking more to himself than to me.
“It wouldn’t solve it, no. But our folk would have a sense of their ruler’s involvement. Sometimes that’s all it takes, boy. But all Verity does is march his toy soldiers about and weigh strategies. And Shrewd watches it happen, and thinks not of his people, but only of how to assure that Regal can be kept safe and yet readied in power should Verity manage to get himself killed.”
“Regal?” I blurted in amazement. Regal, with his pretty clothes and cockerel posturings? Always he was at Shrewd’s heels, but never had I thought of him as a real prince. To hear his name come up in such a discussion jolted me.
“He has become his father’s favorite,” Chade growled. “Shrewd has done nothing but spoil him since the Queen died. He tries to buy the boy’s heart with gifts, now that his mother is no longer around to claim his allegiance. And Regal takes full advantage. He speaks only what the old man loves to hear. And Shrewd gives him too much rein. He lets him wander about, squandering coin on useless visits to Farrow and Tilth, where his mother’s people fill Regal full of ideas of his self-importance. The boy should be kept at home and made to give some account for how he spends his time. And the King’s money. What he spends gallivanting about would have outfitted a warship.” And then, suddenly annoyed: “That’s too hot! You’ll lose it, fish it out quickly.”
But his words came too late, for the crucible cracked with a noise like breaking ice and its contents filled Chade’s tower room with an acrid smoke that brought all lessons and talk to an end for that night.
I was not soon summoned again. My other lessons went on, but I missed Chade as the weeks passed and he did not call for me. I knew he was not displeased with me, but only preoccupied. When, idle one day, I pushed my awareness toward him, I felt only secrecy and discordance. And a wallop to the back of my head when Burrich caught me at it.
“Stop it,” he hissed, and ignored my studied look of shocked innocence. He glanced about the stall I was mucking out as if he expected to find a dog or cat lurking.
“There’s nothing here!” he exclaimed.
“Just manure and straw,” I agreed, rubbing the back of my head.
“Then what were you doing?”
“Daydreaming,” I muttered. “That was all.”
“You can’t fool me, Fitz,” he growled. “And I won’t have it. Not in my stables. You won’t pervert my beasts that way. Or degrade Chivalry’s blood. Mind what I’ve told you.
I clenched my jaws and lowered my eyes and kept on working. After a time I heard him sigh and move away. I went on raking, inwardly seething and resolving never to let Burrich come up on me unawares again.