“Lord FitzChivalry is known to you?” she asked Brawndy as they took the wine from me.
“Indeed, I have had the pleasure of having him at my own table,” Brawndy assured her. Rain dripped off his bushy eyebrows while the wind had set his warrior’s tail to flapping.
“You would not mind, then, if I asked him to join us in our conversation?” Despite the rain that soaked her, the Queen spoke calmly, as if we basked in spring sunshine.
I wondered if Kettricken knew that Brawndy would see her request as a veiled command.
“I would welcome his counsels, if you consider he has wisdom to offer, my queen,” Brawndy acquiesced.
“I had hoped you would. FitzChivalry. Fetch yourself some wine, and rejoin us here, please.”
“As my queen wishes.” I bowed low and hurried off to obey. My contact with Verity had grown more tenuous with each passing day that he journeyed farther away, but at that moment I could sense his nudging, eager curiosity. I hastened back to my queen’s side.
“There is no undoing what has been done,” the Queen was saying as I returned to them. “I grieve that we were not able to protect our folk. Yet if I cannot undo what the Raiders from the sea have done already, at least, perhaps, I can help to shelter them from the storms to come. This, I bid you take them, from their queen’s hand and heart.”
I noticed in passing that she made no mention of King Shrewd’s evident refusal to act. I watched her. She moved leisurely and purposefully at once. The loose white sleeve that she drew back from her arm was already dripping with cold rain. She ignored it as she bared her pale arm, to reveal a snaking of gold wire up her arm, with the dark opals of her Mountains caught here and there in its web. I had seen the dark flash of Mountain opals before, but never ones of this size. Yet she held out her arm for me to unfasten the catch, and with no hesitation at all, she unwound the treasure from her arm. From her other sleeve, she drew a small velvet bag. I held its mouth open as she slid the bracelets into it. She smiled warmly at Duke Brawndy as she pressed it into his hand. “From your king-in-waiting Verity and me,” she said quietly. I barely resisted Verity’s impulse in me to fling himself on his knees at the feet of this woman and declare her far too royal for his insignificant love. Brawndy was left stuttering his amazed thanks and vowing to her that not a penny of its worth would go to waste. Stout houses would rise once more in Ferry, and the folk there would bless the Queen for the warmth of them.