“Kettricken would love such a place,” I told him. “She gardened much in the Mountains.”
“Did she?” He looked surprised. “I would have thought her occupied with more … physical pastimes.”
I felt an instant of annoyance with him. No, of something more than annoyance. How could it be that I knew more of his wife than he did? “She kept gardens,” I said quietly. “Of many herbs, and knew all the uses of those that grew therein. I have told you of them myself.”
“Yes, I suppose you have.” He sighed. “You are right, Fitz. Visit her for me, and tell her of the Queen’s Garden. It is winter now, and there is probably little she can do with it. But come spring, it would be a wondrous thing to see it restored ….”
“Perhaps, you yourself, my prince,” I ventured, but he shook his head.
“I haven’t the time. But I trust it to you. And now, downstairs. To the maps. I have things I wish to discuss with you.”
I turned immediately toward the door. Verity followed more slowly. I held the door for him and on the threshold he paused and looked back over his shoulder at the open window. “It calls me,” he admitted to me, calmly, simply, as if observing that he enjoyed plums. “It calls to me, at any moment when I am not busied. And so I must be busy, Fitz. And too busy.”
“I see,” I said slowly, not at all sure that I did.
“No. You don’t.” Verity spoke with great certainty. “It is like a great loneliness, boy. I can reach out and touch others. Some, quite easily. But no one ever reaches back. When Chivalry was alive … I still miss him, boy. Sometimes I am so lonely for him; it is like being the only one of something in the world. Like the very last wolf, hunting alone.”