Regal turned an appraising glance on me. “What did you do to my father?” he growled.
“I? Nothing.” That at least was truthful. Whatever had happened, it had been the King’s doing and Verity’s. “We were talking quietly. Suddenly I felt overwhelmed. Dizzy. Weak. As if I were losing consciousness.” I turned my gaze to Wallace. “Could it have been the Smoke?”
“Perhaps,” he conceded unhappily. He looked nervously at Regal’s darkening stare. “Well, it seems every day I must make it stronger, for it to have any effect at all. And still he complains that-”
“SILENCE!” Regal cut him off with a roar. He gestured at me as if I were offal. “Get him out of here. Then get back here to tend the King.”
At that moment Shrewd moaned in his sleep, and I felt again the feathersoft brushing of the Skill against my senses. My hair hackled.
“No. Go to the King now, Wallace. Fool. You get the Bastard out of here. And see that this is not spoken of amongst the servants. I shall know if I am disobeyed. Hurry up, now. My father is not well.”
I had thought I could rise on my own and depart, but found that I did need the Fool’s assistance, at least to stand. Once I was up on my feet, I teetered along precariously, feeling as if I tottered on stilts. Walls loomed near and then far, the floor heaved gently beneath me like the deck of a ship when she rides a slow swell.
“I can manage from here,” I told the Fool once we were outside the door. He shook his head.
“You are too vulnerable to be left alone just now,” he told me quietly, and then linked arms with me, and began some nonsensical discourse. He put a fine front of camaraderie on helping me up the stairs and to my door. He waited, chattering on, while I unlatched it and then followed me in.