I nodded grudgingly. “Exactly.”
“And he who made it is gone. Sad. So sad. Sadder than hot meat on the table and red wine in your glass. But he who is gone was made by someone in turn.”
“Solicity. But she is also gone.”
“Ah. But Shrewd is not. Nor Verity. It seems to me that if there are two she created still breathing, there ought to be others. Where are they?”
I shrugged. “Gone. Old. Dead. I don’t know.” I forced my impatience down, tried to consider his question.- “King Shrewd’s sister, Merry. August’s mother. She would have been trained, perhaps, but she is long dead. Shrewd’s father, King Bounty, was the last to have a coterie, I believe. But very few folk of that generation are still alive.” I halted my tongue. Verity had once told me that Solicity had trained as many in the Skill as she could find the talent in. Surely there must be some of them left alive; they would be no more than a decade or so older than Verity ….
“Dead, too many of them, if you ask me. I do know.” The Fool interjected an answer to my unspoken question. I looked at him blankly. He stuck his tongue out at me, waltzed away from me a bit. He considered his scepter, chucked the rat lovingly under the chin. “You see, Ratsy. It is as I told you. None of them know. None of them are smart enough to ask.”
“Fool, cannot you ever speak plain?” I cried out in frustration.
He halted as suddenly as if struck. In mid-pirouette, he lowered his heels to the floor and stood like a statue. “Would it help any?” he asked soberly. “Would you listen to me if I came to you and did not speak in riddles? Would that make you pause and think and hang upon every word, and ponder those words later, in your chamber? Very well then. I shall try. Do you know the rhyme `Six Wisemen went to Jhaampe town’?”