“Does no one beside myself think there is a danger to letting a rumor of a miscarriage circulate?” the Fool asked airily.
“I had no time to devise anything else,” I retorted. “In a day or so, the Queen will deny the rumor, saying that all seems to be well with the child.”
“So. For the moment we are as secured as we may be,” Burrich observed. “But what comes next? Are we to see the King and Queen Kettricken carried off to Tradeford?”
“Trust. I ask for one day of trust,” I said carefully. I hoped it would be enough. “And now we must disperse and go about our lives as normally as we can.”
“A stablemaster with no horses and a Fool with no king,” the Fool observed. “Burrich and I can continue to drink. I believe that is a normal life under these circumstances. As for you, Fitz, I have no idea what title you give yourself these days, let alone what you normally do all day. Hence-”
“No one is going to sit about and drink,” Lacey intoned ominously. “Put the bottle aside and keep your wits sharp. And disperse, as Fitz here said. Enough has been said and done in this room to put us all swinging from a tree for treason. Save you, of course, FitzChivalry. It would have to be poison for you. Those of the royal blood are not allowed to swing.”
Her words had a chilling effect. Burrich picked up the cork and restoppered the bottle. Lacey left first, a pot of Burrich’s ointment in her basket. The Fool followed her a short time later. When I left Burrich, he had finished cleaning the fowl and was plucking the last stubborn feathers from it. The man wasted nothing.