Royal Assassin

  His voice clenched on his last words, and I suddenly saw how his sympathy for me overlay his frustration. He paced a few steps, then halted to stare into the fire. “We’ve talked long about it. Jonqui has much in her Mountain lore that I have never heard of before. And I’ve told her of cures I know. But we both agreed the best thing to do was give you time to heal. You’re in no danger of dying that we can see. Possibly, in time, your own body can cast out the last vestiges of the poison, or heal whatever damage was done inside you. ”

  “Or,” I added quietly, “it’s possible that I’ll be this way the rest of my life. That the poison or the beating damaged something permanently. Damn Regal, to kick me like that when I was trussed already. ”

  Burrich stood as if turned to ice. Then he sagged into the chair in the shadows. Defeat was in his voice. “Yes. That is just as possible as the other. But don’t you see we have no choice? I could physick you to try to force the poison out of your body. But if it’s damage, not poison, all I would do was weaken you, so that your body’s own healing would take that much longer. ” He stared into the flames, and lifted a hand to touch a streak of white at his temple. I was not the only one who’d fallen to Regal’s treachery. Burrich himself was but newly recovered from a skull blow that would have killed anyone less thickheaded than he. I knew he had endured long days of dizziness and blurred vision. I did not recall he had complained at all. I had the decency to feel a bit of shame.

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  “So what do I do?”

  Burrich started as if roused from dozing. “What we’ve been doing. Wait. Eat. Rest. Be easy on yourself. And see what happens. Is that so terrible?”

  I ignored his question. “And if I don’t get better? If I just stay like this, where the tremors or fits can come over me at any time?”

  His answer was slow in coming. “Live with it. Many folk have to live with worse. Most of the time you’re fine. You’re not blind. You’re not paralyzed. You’ve your wits, still. Stop defining yourself by what you can’t do. Why don’t you consider what you didn’t lose?”

  “What I didn’t lose? What I didn’t lose?” My anger rose like a covey of birds taking flight and likewise driven by panic. “I’m helpless, Burrich. I can’t go back to Buckkeep like this! I’m useless. I’m worse than useless, I’m a waiting victim. If I could go back and batter Regal into a pulp, that might be worth it. Instead, I will have to sit at table with Prince Regal, to be civil and deferential to a man who plotted to overthrow Verity and kill me as an added spice. I can’t endure him seeing me tremble with weakness, or suddenly fall in a seizure. I don’t want to see him smile at what he has made me; I don’t want to watch him savor his triumph. He will try to kill me again. We both know that. Perhaps he has learned he is no match for Verity, perhaps he will respect his older brother’s reign and new wife. But I doubt he will extend that to me. I’ll be one more way he can strike at Verity. And when he comes, what shall I be doing? Sitting by the fire like a palsied old man, doing nothing. Nothing! All I’ve been trained for, all Hod’s weaponry instruction, all Fedwren’s careful teachings about lettering, even all you’ve taught me about taking care of beasts! All a waste! I can do none of it. I’m just a bastard again, Burrich. And someone once told me that a royal bastard is only kept alive so long as he is useful. ” I was practically shouting at him as I said the last words. But even in my fury and despair, I did not speak aloud of Chade and my training as an assassin. At that, too, I was useless now. All my stealth and sleight of hand, all the precise ways to kill a man by touch, the painstaking mixing of poisons, all were denied me by my own rattling body.

  Burrich sat quietly, hearing me out. When my breath and my anger ran out and I sat gasping in my bed, clasping my traitorously trembling hands together, he spoke calmly.

  “So. Are you saying we don’t go back to Buckkeep?”

  That put me off balance. “We?”

  “My life is pledged to the man who wears that earring. There’s a long story behind that, one that perhaps I’ll tell you someday. Patience had no right to give it to you. I thought it had gone with Prince Chivalry to his grave. She probably thought it just a simple piece of jewelry her husband had worn, hers to keep or to give. In any wise, you wear it now. Where you go, I follow. ”

  I lifted my hand to the bauble. It was a tiny blue stone caught up in a web of silver net. I started to unfasten it.

  “Don’t do that,” Burrich said. The words were quiet, deeper than a dog’s growl. But his voice held both threat and command. I dropped my hand away, unable to question him on this at least. It felt strange that the man who had watched over me since I was an abandoned child now put his future into my hands. Yet there he sat before the fire and waited for my words. I studied what I could see of him in the dance of firelight. He had once seemed a surly giant to me, dark and threatening, but also a savage protector. Now, for perhaps the first time, I studied him as a man. The dark hair and eyes were prevalent in those who carried Outislander blood, and in this we resembled each other. But his eyes were brown, not black, and the wind brought a redness to his cheeks above his curling beard that bespoke a fairer ancestor somewhere. When he walked, he limped, very noticeably on cold days. It was the legacy of turning aside a boar that had been trying to kill Chivalry. He was not so big as he had once seemed to me. If I kept on growing, I would probably be taller than he before another year was out. Nor was he massively muscled, but instead had a compactness to him that was a readiness of both muscle and mind. It was not his size that had made him both feared and respected at Buckkeep, but his black temper and his tenacity. Once, when I was very young, I had asked him if he had ever lost a fight. He had just subdued a willful young stallion and was in the stall with him, calming him. Burrich had grinned, teeth showing white as a wolf’s. The sweat had stood out in droplets on his forehead and was running down his cheeks into his dark beard. He spoke to me over the side of the stall. “Lost a fight?” he’d asked, still out of breath. “The fight isn’t over until you win it, Fitz. That’s all you have to remember. No matter what the other man thinks. Or the horse. ”

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  I wondered if I were a fight he had to win. He’d often told me that I was the last task Chivalry had given him. My father had abdicated the throne, shamed by my existence. Yet he’d given me over to this man, and told him to raise me well. Maybe Burrich thought he hadn’t finished that task yet.

  “What do you think I should do?” I asked humbly. Neither the words nor the humility came easily.

  “Heal,” he said after a few moments. “Take the time to heal. It can’t be forced. ” He glanced down at his own legs stretched toward the fire. Something not a smile twisted his lips.

  “Do you think we should go back?” I pressed.

  He leaned back into the chair. He crossed his booted feet at the ankle and stared into the fire. He took a long time answering. But finally he said, almost reluctantly, “If we don’t, Regal will think he has won. And he will try to kill Verity. Or at least do whatever he thinks he must to make a grab for his brother’s crown. I am sworn to my king, Fitz, as are you. Right now that is King Shrewd. But Verity is king-in-waiting. I don’t think it right that he should have waited in vain. ”

  “He has other soldiers, more capable than I. ”

  “Does that free you from your promise?”

  “You argue like a priest. ”

  “I don’t argue at all. I merely asked you a question. And one other. What do you forsake, if you leave Buckkeep behind?”

  It was my turn to fall silent. I did think of my king, and all I had sworn to him. I thought of Prince Verity, and his bluff heartiness and open ways with me. I recalled old Chade and his slow smile when I had finally mastered some arcane bit of lore. Lady Patience and her maid Lacey, Fedwren and Hod, even Cook and Mistress Hasty the seamstress. There were not so many folk that had cared for me, but that made them more significant, n
ot less. I would miss all of them if I never went back to Buckkeep. But what leaped up in me like an ember rekindled was my memory of Molly. And somehow, I found myself speaking of her to Burrich, and him just nodding as I spilled out the whole story.

  When he did speak, he told me only that he had heard that the Beebalm Chandlery closed when the old drunkard that owned it had died in debt. His daughter had been forced to go to relatives in another town. He did not know what town, but he was certain I could find it out, if I were determined. “Know your heart before you do, Fitz,” he added. “If you’ve nothing to offer her, let her go. Are you crippled? Only if you decide so. But if you’re determined that you’re a cripple now, then perhaps you’ve no right to go and seek her out. I don’t think you’d want her pity. It’s a poor substitute for love. ” And then he rose and left me, to stare into the fire and think.

  Was I a cripple? Had I lost? My body jangled like badly tuned harp strings. That was true. But my will, not Regal’s, had prevailed. My prince Verity was still in line for the Six Duchies throne, and the Mountain Princess was his wife now. Did I dread Regal smirking over my trembling hands? Could I not smirk back at he who would never be king? A savage satisfaction welled up in me. Burrich was right. I had not lost. But I could make sure that Regal knew I had won.

  If I had won against Regal, could I not win Molly as well? What stood between her and me? Jade? But Burrich had heard she had left Buckkeep Town, not wed. Gone penniless to live with relatives. Shame upon him, had Jade let her do so. I would seek her out, I would find her and win her. Molly, with her hair loose and blowing, Molly with her bright red skirts and cloak, bold as a red-robber bird, and eyes as bright. The thought of her sent a shiver down my spine. I smiled to myself, and then felt my lips set like a rictus, and the shiver become a shuddering. My body spasmed and the back of my head rebounded sharply off the bedstead. I cried out involuntarily, a gargling wordless cry.

  In an instant Jonqui was there, calling Burrich back, and then they were both holding down my flailing limbs. Burrich’s body weight was flung atop me as he strove to restrain my thrashing. And then I was gone.

  I came out of blackness into light, like surfacing from a deep dive into warm waters. The deep down of the feather bed cradled me, the blankets were soft and warm. I felt safe. For a moment all was peaceful. I lay quiescently, almost feeling good.

  “Fitz?” Burrich asked, leaning over me.

  The world came back. I knew myself a mangled, pitiful thing, a puppet with half its strings tangled or a horse with a severed tendon. I would never be as I was before; there was no place left for me in the world I had once inhabited. Burrich had said pity is a poor substitute for love. I wanted pity from none of them.

  “Burrich. ”

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  He leaned closer over me. “It wasn’t that bad,” he lied. “Just rest now. Tomorrow—”

  “Tomorrow you leave for Buckkeep,” I told him.

  He frowned. “Let’s take it slowly. Give yourself a few days to recover, and then we’ll—”

  “No. ” I dragged myself up to a sitting position. I put every bit of strength I had into the words. “I’ve made a decision. Tomorrow you will go back to Buckkeep. There are people and animals waiting for you there. You’re needed. It’s your home and your world. But it’s not mine. Not anymore. ”

  He was silent for a long moment. “And what will you do?”

  I shook my head. “That’s no longer your concern. Or anyone’s, save mine. ”

  “The girl?”

  I shook my head again, more violently. “She’s taken care of one cripple already, and spent her youth doing so, only to find that he left her a debtor. Shall I go back and seek her out, like this? Shall I ask her to love me so I can be a burden to her like her father was? No. Alone or wed to another, she’s better off now as she is. ”

  The silence stretched long between us. Jonqui was busy in a corner of the room, concocting yet another herbal draft that would do nothing for me. Burrich stood over me, black and lowering as a thundercloud. I knew how badly he wanted to shake me, how he longed to cuff the stubbornness from me. But he did not. Burrich did not hit cripples.

  “So,” he said at last. “That leaves only your king. Or do you forget you are sworn as a King’s Man?”

  “I do not forget,” I said quietly. “And did I believe myself a man still, I would go back. But I am not, Burrich. I am a liability. On the game board, I have become but one of those tokens that must be protected. A hostage for the taking, powerless to defend myself or anyone else. No. The last act I can make as a King’s Man is to remove myself, before someone else does and injures my king in the doing. ”

  Burrich turned aside from me. He was a silhouette in the dim room, his face unreadable by the firelight. “Tomorrow we will talk,” he began.

  “Only to say farewell,” I interrupted. “My heart is firm on this, Burrich. ” I reached up to touch the earring in my ear.

  “If you stay, then so must I. ” There was a fierceness in his low voice.

  “That isn’t how it works,” I told him. “Once, my father told you to stay behind, and raise a bastard for him. Now I tell you to leave, to go to serve a King who still needs you. ”

  “FitzChivalry, I don’t—”

  “Please. ” I don’t know what he heard in my voice. Only that he was suddenly still. “I am so tired. So damnably tired. The only thing I know is that I can’t live up to what everyone else thinks I should do. I just can’t do it. ” My voice quavered like an old man’s. “No matter what I ought to do. No matter what I am pledged to do. There isn’t enough of me left to keep my word. Maybe that’s not right, but that’s how it is. Everyone else’s plans. Everyone else’s goals. Never mine. I tried, but …” The room rocked around me as if someone else were speaking, and I was shocked at what he was saying. But I couldn’t deny the truth of his words. “I need to be alone now. To rest,” I said simply.

  Both of them just looked at me. Neither one of them spoke. They left the room, slowly, as if hoping I would relent and call them back. I did not.

  But after they had gone, and I was alone, I permitted myself to breathe out. I felt dizzy with the decision I had made. I wasn’t going back to Buckkeep. What I was going to do, I had no idea. I had swept my broken bits of life from the game table. Now there was room to set out anew what pieces I still had, to plot a new strategy for living. Slowly, I realized I had no doubts. Regrets warred with relief, but I had no doubts. Somehow it was much more bearable to move forward into a life where no one would recall who I had once been. A life not pledged to someone else’s will. Not even my king’s. It was done. I lay back in my bed, and for the first time in weeks, I relaxed completely. Farewell, I thought wearily. I would have liked to wish them all farewell, to stand one last time before my king and see his brief nod that I had done well. Perhaps I could have made him understand why I did not wish to go back. It was not to be. It was done now, all done. “I am sorry, my king,” I muttered. I stared into the dancing flames in the hearth until sleep claimed me.

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  Siltbay

  TO BE THE King-in-Waiting, or the Queen-in-Waiting, is to firmly straddle the fence between responsibility and authority. It is said the position was created to satisfy the ambitions of an heir for power, while schooling him in the exercising of it. The eldest child in the royal family assumes this position upon the sixteenth birthday. From that day on, the King-or Queen-in-Waiting assumes a full share of responsibility for the running of the Six Duchies. Generally, he immediately assumes such duties as the ruling monarch cares least for, and these have varied greatly from reign to reign.

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  Under King Shrewd, Prince Chivalry first became king-in-waiting. To him, King Shrewd ceded over all that had to do with the borders and frontiers: warfare, negotiations and diplomacy, the discomforts of extended travel and the miserable conditions often e
ncountered on the campaigns. When Chivalry abdicated and Prince Verity became king-in-waiting, he inherited all the uncertainties of the war with the Outislanders, and the civil unrest this situation created between the Inland and Coastal Duchies. All of these tasks were rendered more difficult in that, at any time, his decisions could be overridden by the King. Often he was left to cope with a situation not of his creating, armed only with options not of his choosing.

  Even less tenable, perhaps, was the position of Queen-in-Waiting Kettricken. Her Mountain ways marked her as a foreigner in the Six Duchies court. In peaceful times, perhaps she would have been received with more tolerance. But the court at Buckkeep seethed with the general unrest of the Six Duchies. The Red-Ships from the Outislands harried our shoreline as they had not for generations, destroying far more than they stole. The first winter of Kettricken’s reign as queen-in-waiting saw also the first winter raiding we had ever experienced. The constant threat of raids, and the lingering torment of Forged ones in our midst rocked the foundations of the Six Duchies. Confidence in the monarchy was low, and Kettricken had the unenviable position of being an unadmired king-in-waiting’s outlandish queen.

  Civil unrest divided the court as the Inland Duchies voiced their resentment at taxes to protect a coastline they did not share. The Coastal Duchies cried out for warships and soldiers and an effective way to battle the Raiders that always struck where we were least prepared. Inland-bred Prince Regal sought to gather power to himself by courting the Inland Dukes with gifts and social attentions. King-in-Waiting Verity, convinced that his Skill was no longer sufficient to hold the Raiders at bay, put his attentions to building warships to guard the Coastal Duchies, with little time for his new queen. Over all, King Shrewd crouched like a great spider, endeavoring to keep power spread among himself and his sons, to keep all in balance and the Six Duchies intact.

  I awakened to someone touching my forehead. With an annoyed grunt, I turned my head aside from the touch. My blankets were weltered around me; I fought my way clear of their restraint and then sat up to see who had dared disturb me. King Shrewd’s fool perched anxiously on a chair beside my bed. I stared at him wildly, and he drew back from my look. Uneasiness assailed me.