“I am not so easy a target as that,” she defied me. “ It would take an excellent archer indeed to make an arrow fly true in these shifting winds. As for a knife, well, I’ve a knife, too. To strike me, one must come where I can strike back.” She turned and strode off again.
I followed relentlessly. “And where would that lead? To your killing a man. And all the Keep in an uproar, and Verity chastising his guard, that you could be so endangered? And what if the killer were better with a knife than you? What consequence for the Six Duchies if I were now pulling your body out of a drift?” I swallowed and added, “My queen.”
Her pace slowed, but her chin was still up as she asked softly, “What consequence for me if I sit day after day in the Keep, growing soft and blind as a grub? FitzChivalry, I am not a game piece, to sit my space on the board until some player sets me in motion. I am … there’s a wolf watching us!”
“Where?”
She pointed, but he had vanished like a swirl of snow, leaving only a ghostly laughter in my mind. A moment later a trick of the wind brought his scent to Sidestep. The mule snorted and tugged at his lead rope. “I did not know we had wolves so near!” Kettricken marveled.
“Just a town dog, my lady. Probably some mangy, homeless beast out to sniff and paw through the village trash heap. He is nothing to fear.”
You think not? I’m hungry enough to eat that mule.
Go back and wait. I shall come soon.
The trash heap is nowhere near here. Besides, it’s full of seagulls and stinks of their droppings. And other things. The mule would be fresh and sweet.