“Your game with Peottre today?”

“I shared some talk with him last evening. In the course of discussing the chance that Dutiful and Elliania would be truly happy, other talk of ‘chance’ came up. And from there, we moved to games of chance. Do you recall a Mountain game played with cards and rune chips?”

I dredged through my memory. “I think you spoke of it to me once. And yes, I recall reading a scroll about it, when I was recovering from Regal’s first attempt on me.”

“There are cards or tablets, either painted on heavy paper or carved on thin slabs of wood. They have emblems from our old tales, such as Old Weaver Man and Hunter in Hiding. The rune chips have runes on them, for Stone, Water, and Pasture.”

“Yes. I’m sure I’ve heard of it.”

“Well, Peottre wants me to teach him to play it. He was very interested when I spoke of it. He says that in the Out Islands they have a game played with rune cubes, where they are shaken and tumbled out. Then the players set out their markers onto a cloth or board that is painted with minor godlings, such as Wind and Smoke and Tree. It sounds as if it might be a similar game, does it not?”

“Perhaps,” I conceded. But her face had brightened at the prospect of teaching Peottre this new game in a way that was out of proportion to the pleasure I expected her to take in it. Did my queen find this bluff Outislander warrior attractive? “You must tell me more of this game later. I would like to hear if the runes on the dice are similar to the runes on your rune chips.”

“That would be intriguing, wouldn’t it? If the runes resembled one another? Especially as some of the runes from my game were similar to the runes on the Skill pillars.”

“Ah.” My queen was still capable of putting me off balance. She had always seemed able to think along several lines at once, bringing oddly disparate facts together to make a pattern others had missed. This had been how she had rediscovered the lost map to the kingdom of the Elderlings. I suddenly felt as if she had given me too much to think over.

I stood to excuse myself, bowed, and then wished I had words to thank her. An instant later it seemed a strange impulse, to thank someone for mourning someone you had loved. I made a fumbling effort, but she stopped me, coming to take both my hands in hers. “And perhaps only you understood what I felt at Verity’s loss. To see him transformed, to know he would triumph, and yet still to mourn selfishly that I would never again see him as the man he had been. This is not the first tragedy we have shared, FitzChivalry. We both have walked alone through much of our lives.”