My mind reeled. Truly, I had not known how close they had been. Nighteyes also had kept his secrets well. I had known that Queen Kettricken had a predilection for the Wit. I had sensed faint questing from her when she meditated. I had often suspected that her Mountain “connection” with the natural world would have a less kindly name in the Six Duchies. But she and my wolf?
“He spoke to you? You heard Nighteyes in your mind?”
She shook her head, not lifting her face from her hands. Her fingers muffled her reply. “No. But I felt him in my heart, when I was numb to all else.”
Slowly I rose. I walked around the small table. I had intended only to pat her bent shoulders, but when I touched her, she abruptly stood and stumbled into my embrace. I held her and let her weep against my shoulder. Whether I would or no, my own tears welled. Then her grief, not sympathy for me but true grief at Nighteyes’ death, gave permission to mine, and my mourning ripped free. All the anguish I had been trying to conceal from those who could not understand the depth of loss I felt suddenly demanded vent. I think I only realized that our roles had changed when she pushed me gently down into her chair. She offered me her tiny, useless handkerchief and then gently kissed my brow and both my cheeks. I could not stop crying. She stood by me, my head cradled against her breast, and stroked my hair and let me weep. She spoke brokenly of my wolf and all he had been to her, words I scarcely heard.
She did not try to stop my tears or tell me that everything would be all right. She knew it would not. But when my weeping finally had run its course, she stooped and kissed me on my mouth, a healing kiss. Her lips were salt with her own tears. Then she stood straight again.
Kettricken gave a sudden deep sigh as if setting aside a burden. “Your poor hair,” she murmured, and smoothed it to my head. “Oh, my dear Fitz. How hard we used you! Both of you. And I can never . . .” She seemed to feel the uselessness of words. “But . . . well . . . drink your tea while it is still hot.” She moved apart from me, and after a moment I felt I again had control of myself. As she took my chair, I lifted her cup and drank from it. The tea was still steaming hot. Only a short time had elapsed, yet I felt as if I had passed some important turning point. When I took a breath, it seemed to fill my lungs more deeply than it had in days. She took up my cup. When I looked up at the Queen, she gave me a small smile. Her tears had left her pale eyes outlined in red, and her nose was pink. She had never looked lovelier to me.
So we shared some time. The tea was a spice tea, friendly and enlivening. There were flaky rolls stuffed with sausage, and little cakes with tart fruit filling, and plain oatcakes, simple and hearty. I don’t think either of us trusted our voices to speak, and we didn’t have to. We ate in silence. I got up once to replenish the hot water in the teapot. After the herbs had steeped, I poured more tea for both of us. After a time of silence, she leaned back in her chair and said quietly, “So, you see, this supposed ‘taint’ in my son comes from me.”
She spoke it as if we were continuing a conversation. I had wondered if she would make the connection. Now that she did, I grieved for the guilt and chagrin I heard in her voice. “There have been Witted Farseers before Dutiful,” I pointed out. “Myself among them.”
“And you had a Mountain mother. For were not you given over to Verity at Moonseye? Who but a Mountain woman could have birthed you there? I see her, in the fineness of your hair, and I heard her, in how swiftly you recalled the language of your infancy when first you came to Jhaampe. As the Mountains left their mark on you in those ways, why not in another? It’s possible that she was the source of your Wit. Perhaps Mountain blood carries it.”
I walked perilously close to the edge of the truth as I said, “I consider it just as likely that Dutiful could have gotten the Wit from his father as his mother.”
“But—”
“But it matters little where it came from,” I ruthlessly interrupted my queen. I wanted to divert this conversation. “The boy has it, and that is what we must deal with. When he first asked me to teach him about it, I was horrified. Now I think his instincts were true. Better he know as much as I can teach him about both his magics.”
Her face lit. “Then you have agreed to teach him!”
Truly, I was out of practice at intrigue. Or perhaps, I reflected wryly, over the years my lady had learned that subtlety and gentleness could win her secrets that even Chade’s deviousness had not pried from me. The accuracy with which she read my face seemed to support the second theory.
“I will say nothing of it to the Prince. If he wishes it to remain private between you, then so it shall be. When will you start?”