“Oh? Well, and perhaps it is.” Chade chuckled to himself. “Omens and portents they shall have, boy, until a vanishing King and a missing Queen seem but a natural thing in the midst of it.” He grinned like a boy, and the years dropped from his face. Something like their old spark of mischief came into his green eyes. “Go get some rest. And let Burrich and the Queen know of our plans. I shall speak to Shrewd and the Fool. No others are to know even a whisper. For some of it, we must trust to luck. But for the rest, trust to me!”
His laughter was not a wholly reassuring sound as it followed me down the stairs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Treasons and Traitors
PRINCE REGAL WAS the only child of King Shrewd and Queen Desire to survive birth. Some say the midwives never cared for the Queen and did not do overmuch to see her babes lived. Others that the midwives, in their anxiety to spare the Queen her birth pangs, gave her too much of those herbs that dull pain. But as only two of her stillborn children had been carried more than seven months in her womb, most midwives say the Queen’s use of intoxicants was at fault, as well as her evil habit of carrying her belt knife with the blade toward her belly, as all know this is bad luck for a woman of childbearing years.
I did not sleep. Whenever I pushed my worries about King Shrewd from my mind, Molly stood there instead, beside someone else. My mind shuttled between them, weaving me a coat of misery and worry. I promised myself that as soon as King Shrewd and Kettricken were safe, I would find a way to win Molly back from whoever had stolen her from me. That decided, I turned over and stared into the dark some more.