“My lady,” I said hoarsely. “Take this truth from my lips as surely as it came from Verity’s own. All this is as false as you are true. I shall find the bottom of this net of lies and slash it wide open. We shall see what sort of fish falls out.”
“I can trust you to pursue this quietly, Fitz?”
“My lady, you are one of the few who knows the extent of my training in quiet undertakings.”
She nodded gravely. “The King, you understand, denies none of this. But neither did he seem to follow all that Regal said. He was … like a child, listening to his elders converse nodding, but understanding little ….” She glanced down fondly at Rosemary at her feet.
“I shall go to see the King as well. I promise, I shall have answers for you, and soon.”
“Before Duke Bearns arrives,” she cautioned me. “ must have the truth by then. I owe him at least that.”
“We shall have more than just the truth for him, my lady queen,” I promised her. The emeralds weighed heavy still in my pouch. I knew she would not begrudge them.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Mishaps
DURING THE YEARS of the Red-Ship raids, the Six Duchies suffered significantly from their atrocities. The folk of the Six Duchies at that time learned a greater hatred of the Outislanders than ever they had felt before.
In their grandfathers’ and fathers’ times, Outislanders had been both traders and pirates. Raids were carried out by solitary ships. We had not had a raiding “war” such as this since the days of King Wisdom. Although pirate attacks were not rare occurrences, they were still far more infrequent than the Outisland ships that came to our shores to trade. The blood ties among the noble families to Outisland kin were openly acknowledged, and many a family owned to a “cousin” in the Outislands.