“I pray you are wrong. I have had enough of intrigues, Chade, and not fared as well at that game as I had expected to.
“You did not do badly, with the hand you were dealt. You survived.” He looked past me into the fire. A question hung between us, almost palpably. Why had King Shrewd revealed to Prince Regal that I was his trained assassin? Why had he put me in the position of reporting to and taking orders from a man who wished me dead? Had he traded me away to Regal, to distract him from his other discontents? And if I had been a sacrificial pawn, was I still being dangled as bait and a distraction to the younger Prince? I think not even Chade could have answered all my questions, and to ask any of them would have been blackest betrayal of what we were both sworn to be: King’s Men. Both of us long ago had given our lives into Shrewd’s keeping, for the protection of the royal family. It was not for us to question how he chose to spend us. That way lay treason.
So Chade lifted the summer wine and filled a waiting glass for me. For a brief time we conversed of things that were of no import to any save us, and all the more precious for that. I asked after Slink the weasel, and he haltingly offered sympathy over Nosy’s death. He asked a question or two that let me know he was privy to everything I had reported to Verity, and a lot of stable gossip as well. I was filled in on the minor gossip of the Keep, and all the doings I had missed among the lesser folk while I was gone. But when I asked him what he thought of Kettricken, our queen-in-waiting, his face grew grave.