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She threw her head back, baring the long column of her throat, and keened as if she were a wolf mourning her cub. Prosper sank to his knees beside her and put his arm around his mother’s shoulders.

Chivalry lifted his voice. “Can we be sure she is gone forever? All know tales of folk who have emerged from the stones years later …”Advertisement

Nettle replied. “She has no training, and she entered the stone as part of a company of untrained folk. She would be like a drop of wine splashing into a rushing river. I will hold no false hopes. We have to let her go.”

I found I was shaking. Kettricken took the chair beside me and put her arm protectively around me. “It’s all my fault,” I confessed to her.

“Oh, Fitz, always you are …” She bit back whatever it was she had started to say. More gently she added, “No one blames you.”

“I blame me.”

“Of course you do,” she said, as if I were a child insisting the moon was a cheese.

Elliania had overheard. “No! Blame them! The ones who took her. They all must be hunted down and killed! Killed like pigs screaming before the butcher!”

“Elliania. Fitz killed those he could. The stone took the rest.” Dutiful tried to comfort her. I lifted my head. Blind or not, the Fool’s gaze met mine. He stood, groping for Spark’s shoulder, and she slipped beneath his hand as if it was a well-practiced trick. I saw his mouth move and knew that he whispered to her. He would go to Elliania and that alliance would be as unpredictable and explosive as one of Chade’s fire-pots.

“Family,” Dutiful said. His voice had that indefinable ring of someone taking control of a situation. “Please. We gathered here to mourn little Bee. We must keep our sorrow private until we have determined how magic was used against us, and if there is any further danger of attack from invisible enemies. We will strike back once we have a tactic and a target. Until we then, we gather information and we plan. We should not alarm our duchies until we have a defense to offer them.” He shook his head, his teeth set in a grimace.

“We are threatened on more than one front. An immense green dragon has been raiding Farrow, not only taking livestock but destroying barns to get at the animals. Two other dragons have been menacing Bearns. The Dragon Traders simultaneously claim they have no control over them and threaten retaliation against any who attack them. The Pirate Isles have increased levies against our trading ships by thirty percent, and have begun to insist those levies can only be paid in gold or Sandsedge brandy. Tilth is reporting a pestilence that is killing their sheep and their dogs. And in the Mountains—”

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“It was ever so,” Kettricken said, interrupting his listing of woes. “Tragedy does not mean that other problems cease. But you are right, Dutiful. We came here to mourn, and to give one another whatever small comfort we can.” She rose and extended a hand toward her son’s wife. Elliania took it and Kettricken helped her to rise. “Come.”

The two queens led and all followed them to the hearth. Chivalry, son of Burrich and Molly, came to me and offered me his arm. “Can you walk?” he asked me without pity.

“I can”—but I accepted his arm to stand, and he stayed beside me.

Spark had scissors in her apron pocket. Both Kettricken and Elliania had brought their shorn hair in silken bags. Into the flames they went, and the stench filled the room. The smell reminded me of how Bee and I had burned the messenger’s body. My little girl had been so brave that night. My gorge rose suddenly. Such a fond memory to cherish of my little child: how she had helped me conceal a murder. I could not speak as each person contributed a lock of hair to the flames and spoke a memory or a regret or bowed a head silently. Hap spoke of a dress he had given her, and how she had looked like a “little holiday cake, trimmed with sugar and spice” when she wore it for him. Kettricken spoke, with regret, of how she had misjudged her viability when she saw my infant. Nettle shared something I’d never known, that she had passed a room and seen Bee dancing, alone, as she watched snow fall through the window. But when it came my turn all I could do was shake my head.

Dutiful took Spark’s scissors. He cut a lock from the back of my neck, where it would scarcely show, and gave it to me to offer to the fire. He did the same for the others. There was no restoring Kettricken’s or Elliania’s hair, but we would give no others cause to wonder. When the Fool came forward to offer his lock of hair, he put his hand on my arm. “Later,” he said quietly.

And that was all. There was no little body to set on a pyre. All felt it. Our small farewell ceremony was unfinished and always would be. In the midst of my family, I had never felt more alone. Nettle embraced me. Kettricken took both my hands in hers, looked in my eyes, and simply shook her head. Spark came to take me over to Chade. He smiled at me and thanked me, very softly, for bringing his girl back to him. I could not tell if he even knew that Bee was lost to me forever. pqdm.com