But what about Serene? Or Justin, or any of the others of the coterie? Why was not Verity using them to keep in touch with what was happening, and to let his will be known?
A creeping dread filled me. The messenger birds from Beams. The signal lights, the Skilled ones in the towers. All the lines of communications within the kingdom and with the King seemed not to be working very well. They were what stitched the Six Duchies into one and made of us a kingdom rather than an alliance of Dukes. Now, in these troubled times, more than ever we needed them. Why were they failing?
I saved the question to ask Chade, and prayed that he would summon me soon. He called me less often than he had once, and I felt I was not as privy to his councils as I once had been. Well, and had not I excluded him from much of my life as well? Perhaps what I felt was only a reflection of all the secrets I kept from him. Perhaps it was the natural distance that grew between assassins.
I arrived at the door of my room just as Rosemary had given up knocking.
“Did you need me?” I asked her.
She dropped a grave curtsy. “Our lady, the Queen-in-Waiting Kettricken, wishes you to attend her at your earliest convenience.”
“That’s right now,, isn’t it?” I tried to get a smile out of her.
“No.” She frowned up at me. “I said `at your earliest convenience, sir.’ Isn’t that right?”
“Absolutely. Who has you practicing your manners so assiduously?”
She heaved a great sigh. “Fedwren.”
“Fedwren is back from his summer travels already?”