Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb
Burrich cleared his throat. “She came for herbs,” he said uneasily. “I could not help her, I did not have what she wanted. Then the Fool came, and she stayed to help me with him. ”
“Patience and Lacey have herbs. Lots of them,” I pointed out.
“That is what I told her. ” He turned away from me, and began clearing away the things he had used to work on the Fool. “She did not wish to go to them. ” There was something in his voice, almost prodding, pushing me to the next question.
“She’s going away,” I said in a small voice. “She’s going away. ” I sat down on a chair before Burrich’s fire and clenched my hands between my knees. I became aware I was rocking back and forth, tried to stop.
“Did you succeed?” the Fool asked quietly.
I stopped rocking. I swear that for an instant I had no idea what he was talking about. “Yes,” I said quietly. “Yes, I think I did. ” I had succeeded at losing Molly, too. Succeeded at wearing away her loyalty and her love, taking her for granted, succeeded at being so logical and practical and loyal to my king that I had just lost any chance of ever having a life of my own. I looked at Burrich. “Did you love Patience?” I asked suddenly. “When you decided to leave?”
The Fool started, then visibly goggled. So there were some secrets even he did not know. Burrich’s face went as dark as I had ever seen it. He crossed his arms on his chest, as if to restrain himself. He might kill me, I thought. Or maybe he sought only to hold some pain inside himself. “Please,” I added, “I have to know. ”
He glared at me, then spoke carefully. “I am not a changeable man,” he told me. “If I had loved her, I would love her still. ”
So. It would never go away. “But, still, you decided—”
“Someone had to decide. Patience would not see it could not be. Someone had to end the torment for us both. ”
As Molly had decided for us. I tried to think just what I should do next. Nothing came to me. I looked at the Fool. “Are you all right?” I asked him.
“I’m better off than you are,” he replied sincerely.
“I meant, your shoulder. I had thought …”
“Wrenched, but not broken. Much better than your heart. ”
A quick bantering of witty words. I had not known he could weight a jest with so much sympathy. The kindness pushed me to the edge of breaking. “I don’t know what to do,” I said brokenly. “How can I live with this?”
The brandy bottle made a very small thud as Burrich set it in the center of the table. He put out three cups around it. “We will have a drink,” he said. “To Molly finding happiness somewhere. We will wish it for her with all our hearts. ”
We drank a round and Burrich refilled the cups.
The Fool swirled the brandy in his cup. “Is this wise, just now?” he asked.
“Just now, I am done with being wise,” I told him. “I would rather be a fool. ”
“You do not know of what you speak,” he told me. All the same, he raised his glass alongside mine. To fools of all kinds. And a third time, to our king.
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We made a sincere effort, but fate did not allow us sufficient time. A determined rapping at Burrich’s door proved to be Lacey with a basket on her arm. She came in quickly, shutting the door fast behind her. “Get rid of this for me, will you?” she asked, and tumbled the slain chicken out on the table before us.
“Dinner!” announced the Fool enthusiastically.
It took Lacey a moment to realize the state we were in. It took her less than that to be furious. “While we gamble our lives and reputations, you get drunk!” She rounded on Burrich. “In twenty years, you have not learned that it solves nothing!”
Burrich flinched not at all. “Some things cannot be solved,” he pointed out philosophically. “Drink makes those things much more tolerable. ” He came to his feet easily, stood rock steady before her. Years of drinking seemed to have taught him the knack of handling it well. “What did you need?”
Lacey bit her lip a moment. She decided to follow where he had pointed the conversation. “I need that disposed of. And I need an ointment for bruises. ”
“Does no one around here ever use the healer?” the Fool asked of no one in particular. Lacey ignored him.
“That is what I supposedly came here for, so I had best return with it, in case someone asks to see it. My real mission is to find the Fitz, and ask him if he knows there are guards chopping down King Shrewd’s door with axes. ”
I nodded gravely. I wasn’t going to attempt Burrich’s graceful stance. The Fool leaped to his feet instead, crying, “What?” He rounded on me. “I thought you said you had succeeded! What success is this?”
“The best I could manage on very short notice,” I retorted. “It will either be all right, or it won’t. We’ve done all we can just now. Besides, think on it. That’s a good stout oaken door. It will take them a while to get through it. And when they do, I fancy they will find the inner door to the King’s bedchamber is likewise bolted and barred. ”
“How did you manage that?” Burrich asked quietly.
“I didn’t,” I said brusquely. I looked at the Fool. “I have said enough, for now. It is time to have a bit of trust. ” I turned to Lacey. “How are the Queen and Patience? How went our masquerade?”
“Well enough. The Queen is sore bruised from her fall, and for myself, I am not all that sure that the babe is out of danger of being lost. A miscarriage from a fall does not always happen immediately. But let us not borrow trouble. Wallace was concerned but ineffectual. For a man who claims to be a healer, he knows remarkably little of the true lore of herbs. As for the Prince …” Lacey snorted, but said no more.
“Does no one beside myself think there is a danger to letting a rumor of a miscarriage circulate?” the Fool asked airily.
“I had no time to devise anything else,” I retorted. “In a day or so, the Queen will deny the rumor, saying that all seems to be well with the child. ”
“So. For the moment we are as secured as we may be,” Burrich observed. “But what comes next? Are we to see the King and Queen Kettricken carried off to Tradeford?”
“Trust. I ask for one day of trust,” I said carefully. I hoped it would be enough. “And now we must disperse and go about our lives as normally as we can. ”
“A stablemaster with no horses and a Fool with no king,” the Fool observed. “Burrich and I can continue to drink. I believe that is a normal life under these circumstances. As for you, Fitz, I have no idea what title you give yourself these days, let alone what you normally do all day. Hence—”
“No one is going to sit about and drink,” Lacey intoned ominously. “Put the bottle aside and keep your wits sharp. And disperse, as Fitz here said. Enough has been said and done in this room to put us all swinging from a tree for treason. Save you, of course, FitzChivalry. It would have to be poison for you. Those of the royal blood are not allowed to swing. ”
Her words had a chilling effect. Burrich picked up the cork and restoppered the bottle. Lacey left first, a pot of Burrich’s ointment in her basket. The Fool followed her a short time later. When I left Burrich, he had finished cleaning the fowl and was plucking the last stubborn feathers from it. The man wasted nothing.
I went out and wandered about a bit. I watched behind me for shadows. Kettricken would be resting, and I did not think I could withstand Patience’s nattering, or her insights just then. If the Fool was in his chamber, it was because he did not want company. And if he was elsewhere, I had no idea where that might be. The whole of Buckkeep was as plagued with Inlanders as a sick dog with fleas. I strolled through the kitchen, purloining gingerbread. Then I wandered about disconsolately, trying not to think, trying to appear without purpose as I headed back to the hut where once I had hidden Nighteyes. The hut was empty now, as cold within as without. It had been some time since Nighteyes had laired here. He preferred the
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Perhaps the greatest comfort of the Wit bond is never having to explain. I did not need to recount the last day’s events to him, did not have to find words to describe how it felt to watch Molly walk away from me. Nor did he ask questions or make sympathetic talk. The human events would have made small sense to him. He acted on the strength of what I felt, not why. He simply came to me and sat beside me on the dirty floor. I could put an arm around him and lean my face against his ruff and sit.
Such packs men make, he observed to me after a while. How can you hunt together when you cannot all run in the same direction?
I made no reply to this. I knew no answer and he did not expect one.
He leaned down to nibble an itch on his foreleg. Then he sat up, shook himself all over, and asked, What will you do for a mate now?
Not all wolves take mates.
The leader always does. How else would the pack multiply?
My leader has a mate, and she is with child. Perhaps wolves have it aright, and men should pay attention. Perhaps only the leader should mate. That was the decision that Heart of the Pack made long ago. That he could not have both a mate, and a leader he followed with all of his heart.
That one is more wolf than he cares to admit. To anyone. A pause. Gingerbread?
I gave it to him. He gobbled it greedily while I watched.
I’ve missed your dreams at night.
They are not my dreams. They are my life. You are welcome to them, so long as Heart of the Pack does not get angry with us. Life shared is better. A pause. You would rather have shared the female’s life.
It is my weakness to want too much.
He blinked his deep eyes. You love too many. My life is much simpler.
He loved only me.
That is true. The only real difficulty I have is knowing that you will never trust that is so.
I sighed heavily. Nighteyes sneezed suddenly, then shook himself all over. I mislike this mouse dust. But before I go, use your so clever hands to scratch inside my ears. It is hard for me to do well without leaving welts.
And so I scratched his ears, and under his throat and the back of his neck, until he fell over on his side like a puppy.
“Hound,” I told him affectionately.
For that insult, you pay! He flipped himself up onto his feet, bit me hard through my sleeve, and then darted out the door and was gone. I pulled back my sleeve to survey the deep white dents in my flesh that were not quite bleeding. Wolf humor.
The brief winter day had ended. I went back to the Keep and forced myself to go through the kitchens, to allow Cook to tell me all the gossip. She stuffed me full of plum cake and mutton as she told me of the Queen’s possible miscarriage, and then how the men had chopped through the outer door of the King’s room after his guard had suddenly perished of apoplexy. “And the second door, too, all the time Prince Regal worriting and urging them on, for fear something had befallen the King himself. But when they got through, despite all that chopping, the King was sleeping like a babe, sir. And so deep a sleep they could not rouse him at all, to tell him why they’d chopped his doors away. ”
“Amazing,” I agreed, and she went on to the lesser gossip of the Keep. I found that centered these days mostly on who was and was not included in the flight to Tradeford. Cook was to go, for the sake of her gooseberry tarts and bundle cakes. She did not know who was to take over the cooking here, but no doubt it would be one of the guards. Regal had told her she might take all her best pots, for which she was grateful, but what she would really miss was the west hearth, for she had never cooked on a better, for the draft being just right and the meat hooks at all the right heights. I listened to her, and tried to think only of her words, to be fully intrigued by the small details of what she considered important in her life. The Queen’s guard, I found, was to stay at Buckkeep, as would those few who still wore the colors of King Shrewd’s personal guard. Since they had lost the privilege of his rooms, they had become a dispirited lot. But Regal insisted it was necessary those groups stay, to maintain a royal presence in Buckkeep. Rosemary would go, and her mother, but that was hardly surprising, seeing as who they served. Fedwren would not, nor Mellow. Now, there was a voice she would miss, but she’d probably get used to that inland warbling after a while.
She never thought to ask me if I was going.
As I climbed the stairs to my room I tried to visualize Buckkeep as it would be. The High Table would be empty at every meal, the food served would be the simple campaign food the military cooks were most familiar with. For as long as the food supplies lasted. I expected we would eat a lot of wild game and seaweed before spring. I worried more for Patience and Lacey than I did for myself. Rough quarters and coarse food did not bother me, but it was not what they were used to. At least there would be Mellow still to sing, if his melancholy nature did not overtake him at his abandonment. And Fedwren. With few children to teach, perhaps he and Patience could finally study out their paper making. So putting a brave face on it all, I tried to find a future for us.
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“Where have you been, Bastard?”
Serene, stepping out suddenly from a doorway. She had expected me to startle. I had known by the Wit someone was there. I did not flinch. “Out. ”
“You smell like a dog. ”
“At least I have the excuse of having been with dogs. What few are left in the stable. ”
It took her an instant to discover the insult in my polite reply.
“You smell like a dog because you are more than half a dog yourself. Beast-magicker. ”
I nearly responded with some remark about her mother. Instead, I suddenly and truly recalled her mother. “When we were first learning to scribe, remember how your mother always made you wear a dark smock, for you splattered your ink so?”
She stared at me sullenly, turning the remark every which way in her mind, trying to discover some insult or slight or trick in it.
“What of it?” she asked at last, unable to leave it hanging.
“Nothing. I but remembered it. Was a time when I helped you getting the tails right on your letters. ”
“That has nothing to do with now!” she declared angrily.
“No, it does not. This is my door. Were you expecting to come in with me?”
She spat, not quite at me, but it landed on the floor at my feet. For some reason, I decided she would not have done it had not she been leaving Buckkeep with Regal. It was no longer her home, and she felt free to soil it before leaving it. It told me much. She never expected to come back here.
Inside my room, I reset every latch and bolt meticulously, then added the heavy bar to the door. I went and checked my window and found it well shuttered still. I looked under my bed. Finally, I sat down in a chair by my hearth to doze until Chade summoned me.
I came out of a light doze to a tapping at my door. “Who is it?” I called.
“Rosemary. The Queen wishes to see you. ”
By the time I had undone the latches and catches, the child was gone. She was only a girl, but it still unnerved me to have such a message vocalized through a door. I groomed myself hastily and then hurried down to the Queen’s chambers. I noted in passing the wreckage that had once been the oak door to Shrewd’s room. A bulky guard stood in the gap; an Inlander, not a man I knew.
Queen Kettricken was reclining on a couch near her hearth. Several knots of her ladies gossiped in different corners of the room, but the Queen herself was alone. Her eyes were closed. She looked so utterly worn that I wondered if Rosemary’s message had been an error. But Lady Hopeful ushered me to the Queen’s side and fetched me a low stool to perch upon. She offered me a cup of tea and I accepted. As soon as Lady Hopeful departed to brew it, Kettricken opened her eyes. ??
I looked askance at her.
“Shrewd sleeps now. He cannot sleep forever. Whatever was given him will wear off, and when it does, we are back to where we were. ”
“The King-in-Waiting ceremony approaches. Perhaps the Prince will be busied with that. No doubt there are new clothes to be sewn and tried upon him, and all the other details he glories in. It may keep him from the King. ”
“After that?”
Lady Hopeful was back with my cup of tea. I took it with murmured thanks, and as she pulled up a chair beside us, Queen Kettricken smiled weakly and asked if she might have one also. I was almost shamed by how swiftly Lady Hopeful leaped to do her bidding.
“I do not know,” I murmured in reply to her earlier question.
“I do. The King would be safe in my Mountains. He would be honored and protected, and perhaps Jonqui would know of—oh, thank you, Hopeful. ” Queen Kettricken took the proffered cup and sipped at it as Lady Hopeful settled herself.
I smiled at Kettricken, and chose my words carefully, trusting her to read my meaning. “But it is so far to the Mountains, my queen, and the weather so hard this time of year. By the time a courier got through to seek your mother’s remedy, it would be nigh on to spring. There are other places that might offer the same cure for your troubles. Bearns or Rippon, perhaps, might offer if we asked. The worthy Dukes of those provinces can deny you nothing, you know. ”
“I know,” Kettricken smiled wearily. “But they have such problems of their own just now, I hesitate to ask anything more of them. Besides, the root we call livelong grows only in the Mountains. A determined courier could travel there, I think. ” She sipped again at her tea.
“Who to send with such a request; ah, that would be the hardest question,” I pointed out. Surely she could see the difficulties of sending a sick old man off on a journey to the Mountains in winter. He could not go alone. “The man that went would have to be very trustworthy and strong of will. ”
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