Royal Assassin

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  On my earlier foray to Kettricken’s room, I had noticed that makeshift curtains had been tacked up over the splintered door frames of the King’s chambers. Most of the wreckage had been carried off, but bits of oaken door still littered the corridor. No workmen had been called in to do repairs. Another sign that Regal had no intention of ever returning to Buckkeep.

  I tried to find some excuse to introduce myself into that room. The Keep downstairs was busier than ever, for today the Dukes of Bearns, Rippon, and Shoaks Duchies were expected to arrive with their retinues to witness the King-in-Waiting ceremony for Regal. They were being put in the lesser guest rooms, across the Keep. I wondered how they would react to the sudden disappearance of the King and Queen. Would it be seen as treachery, or would Regal find some way to conceal it from them? What would it auger for his new reign to begin so? I put it from my mind; it wasn’t helping me get the King alone in his chamber.

  I left my room and went pacing through Buckkeep, hoping for inspiration. Instead I found only confusion. Noble folk of every degree were arriving for Regal’s ceremony, and the influx of guests and their households and servants swept and eddied about the outflow of goods and folk that Regal was sending inland. My feet carried me unplanned to Verity’s study. The door was ajar and I went in. The hearth was cold, the room musty with disuse. There was a distinct odor of mouse in the air. I hoped whatever scrolls they were nesting in weren’t irreplaceable. I was fairly certain I had removed the ones Verity treasured to Chade’s rooms. I walked about the room, touching his things. I suddenly missed him acutely. His unyielding steadiness, his calmness, his strength; he would never have let things come to such a situation. I sat down in his work chair at his map table. Scuffs and scribbles of ink where he had tried colors on it marred the tabletop. Here were two badly cut quills, discarded with a brush worn hairless. In a box on the table were several little pots of color, cracked and dried now. They smelled like Verity to me, in the same way that leather and harness oil always smelled like Burrich. I leaned forward on the table and put my head in my hands. “Verity, we need you now. ”

  I cannot come.

  I leaped to my feet, my legs tangling in the chair’s, and fell on the rug. Frantically I scrabbled to my feet, and even more frantically scrabbled after the contact. Verity!

  I hear you. What is it, boy? A pause. You’ve reached me on your own, have you? Well done!

  We need you to come home right now!

  Why?

  Thoughts tumbled so much faster than words, and in far greater detail than he could have wished to know. I felt him grow sad with the information, and wearier. Come home. If you were here, you could put it all to rights. Regal could not claim to be King-in-Waiting, he could not strip Buckkeep like this, or take away the King.

  I cannot. Be calm now. Think this through. I could not come home in time to prevent any of this. It grieves me. But I am too close now to give up my goal. And if I am to be a father—his thoughts were warm with this new feeling—it becomes even more important that I succeed. My goal must be to retain the Six Duchies intact, and with a coast freed of sea wolves. This, for the child to inherit.

  What am I to do?

  Just as you have planned. My father, my wife, and my child; it is a weighty burden I have put upon you. He sounded suddenly uncertain.

  I will do what I can do, I told him, fearing to promise any more than that.

  I have faith in you. He paused. Did you feel that?

  What?

  Another is here, trying to break in, to listen on our Skilling. One of Galen’s spying brood of vipers.

  I did not think that possible!

  Galen found a way, and schooled his poisonous offspring in it. Skill no more to me now.

  I felt something similar to when he had broken our Skill contact the last time to save Shrewd’s strength, but much rougher. A surging outward of Verity’s Skill that pushed someone away from us. I thought I felt the effort it cost him. Our Skill contact broke.

  He was gone, as abruptly as I had found him. I groped tentatively after our contact, found nothing. What he had said about another listening in on us rattled me. Fear warred with triumph in me. I had Skilled. We had been spied upon. But I had Skilled, alone and unaided! But how much had they overheard? I pushed back the chair from the table, sat a moment longer in the storm of my thoughts. Skilling had been easy. I still didn’t know quite how I had initiated it, but it had been easy. I felt like a child who had worked a puzzle box, but was unable to recall the exact sequence of moves. The knowledge that it could be done made me want instantly to attempt it again. I set the temptation aside firmly. I had other tasks to accomplish, ones of far more weight.

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  I sprang up and rushed out of the study, almost tripping over Justin. He sat, legs outstretched, with his back against the wall. He looked drunk. I knew better. He was half-stunned by the push Verity had given him. I brought myself up short and stared down at him. I knew I should kill him. The poison I had composed for Wallace so long ago still rode in a pocket in my cuff. I could force it down his throat. But it was not designed to act quickly. As if he could guess my thoughts, he cowered away from me, scrabbling along the wall.

  For a moment longer I stared at him, striving to think calmly. I had promised Chade to take no more actions on my own without consulting him. Verity had not bid me find and kill the spy. He could have, in less than an instant of thought. This decision did not belong to me. One of the hardest things I have ever done was to force myself to walk away from Justin. Half a dozen strides down the hall, I suddenly heard him blurt, “I know what you’ve been doing!”

  I rounded to confront him. “What are you talking about?” I asked in a low voice. My heart began to thunder. I hoped he’d make me kill him. Frightening to know suddenly how badly I wanted to.

  He blanched but did not back down. He reminded me of a braggart child. “You walk like you are the King himself, you sneer down at me, and make mock of me behind my back. Don’t think I don’t know it!” He clawed his way up the wall, staggered to his feet. “But you are not so great. You Skill once, and think you are a master, but your Skilling stinks of your dog magic! Do not think you will walk so proud always. You will be brought down! And soon!”

  A wolf clamored in me for instant vengeance. I leashed my temper. “Do you dare to spy upon my Skilling to Prince Verity, Justin? I did not think you had the courage. ”

  “You know I did, Bastard. I do not fear you so that I must hide from you. I dare much, Bastard! Much more than you would suppose. ” His stance showed him growing braver by the minute.

  “Not if I suppose treachery and treason, though. Has not King-in-Waiting Verity been declared dead, oh loyally sworn coterie member? Yet you spy upon me Skilling to him, and you express no surprise?”

  For a moment Justin stood stock-still. Then he grew bold. “Say what you like, Bastard. No one will believe you if we deny it. ”

  “Have the sense to be silent at least,” Serene declared. She came down the hallway like a ship under full sail. I did not step aside, but forced her to brush past me. She seized Justin’s arm, claiming him like a dropped basket.

  “Silence is but another form of lying, Serene. ” She had turned Justin about and was walking him away from me. “You know that King Verity still lives!” I shouted after them. “Do you think he will never return? Do you think you will never have to answer for the lie you live?”

  They turned a corner and were gone, leaving me to seethe silently, and curse myself for shouting so blatantly aloud what as yet we must conceal. But the incident had pushed me into an aggressive frame of mind. I left Verity’s study and prowled the Keep. The kitchens were abustle and Cook had no time for me, other than to ask if I had heard that a serpent had been found lying before the fire on the main hearth. I said doubtless it had crawled into the firewood to shelter for the winter and come in with a
log. The warmth would have brought it to life. She just shook her head and said she had never heard of the like, but that it boded evil. She told me again of the Pocked Man by the well, but in her story, he had been drinking from the bucket, and when he lowered it from his spotted face, the water that ran down his chin was red as blood. She was making the kitchen boys bring water from the well in the washing courts for all the cooking. She’d have no one dropping dead at her table.

  On that cheerful note, I left the kitchen, with a couple of sweet cakes I had light-fingered from a tray. I had not gotten far before a page stood before me. “FitzChivalry, son of Chivalry?” he addressed me cautiously.

  His wider cheekbones marked him as probably being Bearns stock, and when I looked for it, I found the yellow flower that was the Bearns sigil sewn to his patched jerkin. For a boy of his height, he was wretchedly thin. I nodded gravely.

  “My master, Duke Brawndy of Bearns, desires that you wait upon him as soon as you handily may. ” He spoke the words carefully. I doubted he had been a page long.

  “That would be now. ”

  “Then shall I show you to him?”

  “I can find my way. Here. I should not take these up there with me. ” I handed him the sweet cakes, and he received them doubtfully.

  “Shall I save them for you, sir?” he asked seriously, and it smote me to see a boy put such a high value on food.

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  “Perhaps you would eat them for me, and if they suit you, you might go in the kitchens and tell our cook Sara what you think of her work. ”

  No matter how busy it was in there, I knew a compliment from a skinny boy would win him at least a bowl of stew.

  “Yes, sir!” His face lit at my orders and he hastened away from me, half of one cake already in his mouth.

  The lesser guest rooms were those on the opposite side of the Great Hall from the King’s rooms. They were considered lesser, I suppose, mostly because their windows faced onto the mountains rather than the sea, and hence the rooms were gloomier. But the chambers were no smaller, nor less handsome in any other way.

  Save that the last time I had been admitted to one, it had been decently furnished. Bearns guards admitted me to a sitting room that offered only three chairs in which to sit and a bare rickety table in the middle. Faith greeted me, neutrally formal, and then went to let Duke Brawndy know I was there. The tapestries and hangings that had once warmed the walls and given color to the stone chamber were gone. It was as cheery as a dungeon, save that a warm fire on the hearth brightened it. I remained standing in the center of the room until Duke Brawndy emerged from his bedchamber to greet me. He invited me to be seated, and awkwardly we drew two of the chairs closer to the hearth. There should have been breads and pastries upon the table, there should have been kettles and mugs and brewing herbs for tea, and bottles of wine in these rooms to welcome Buckkeep’s guests. It pained me that there were not. Faith hovered in the background like a hunting hawk. I could not help but wonder where Celerity was.

  We exchanged a few minor pleasantries, and then Brawndy plunged into his topic like a draft horse into a snowdrift. “I understand King Shrewd is ill, too ill to see any of his dukes. Regal, of course, is much too busy with preparations for tomorrow. ” The sarcasm was heavy as thick cream. “So I wished to visit Her Majesty Queen Kettricken,” he announced ponderously. “For as you know, she has been most courteous to me in the past. But at her door, her ladies told me she was not well and should not have visitors. I have heard a rumor that she was with child, and that now, in her grief and her foolishness at riding to Rippon’s defense, she has lost it. Is this so?”

  I took a breath, studied fair words for my response. “Our king is, as you say, very ill. I do not think you shall see him, save at the ceremony. Our queen is likewise indisposed, but I am sure that if she had been told you were at her door yourself, you would have been admitted. She has not lost the child. She rode to the defense of Neatbay for the same reasons she has gifted you with opals; for fear that if she did not act, no other would. Nor was it her actions at Neatbay that threatened her child, but a fall down a tower stair here at Buckkeep. And the child was only threatened, not lost, though our queen was sorely bruised. ”

  “I see. ” He sat back in his chair and pondered for a bit. The silence took root between us and grew while I waited. At last he leaned forward and motioned me to do the same. When our heads were close together, he asked quietly, “FitzChivalry, have you any ambitions?”

  This was the moment. King Shrewd had predicted it years ago, and Chade more recently. When I made no immediate answer, Brawndy went on as if each word were a stone he shaped before handing it to me. “The heir to the Farseer throne is a babe as yet unborn. Once Regal has declared himself King-in-Waiting, do you think he will wait long to claim the throne? We do not. For although these words come from my lips, I speak for Rippon and Shoaks Duchies as well. Shrewd has become old, and feeble. A King in name only. We have had a taste of what kind of king Regal would be. What should we suffer while Regal holds title until Verity’s child comes of age? Not that I expect the child will manage to be born, let alone mount the throne. ” He paused, cleared his throat, and looked at me earnestly. Faith stood by the door as if guarding our talk. I kept my silence.

  “You’re a man we know, a son of a man we knew. You bear his looks and almost his name. You’ve as much a right to call yourself royal as many who have worn the crown. ” He paused again. Waiting.

  Again I kept silent. It was not, I told myself, a temptation. I would simply hear him out. That was all. He had said nothing, as yet, that suggested I would betray my king.

  He floundered for words, then looked up and met my eyes. “Times are difficult. ”

  “They are,” I agreed quietly.

  He looked down at his hands. They were worn hands, hands that bore the small scars and roughness of a man who did things with them. His shirt was freshly washed and mended, but it was not a new garment made especially for this occasion. Times might be hard in Buckkeep, but they were harder in Bearns. Quietly he said it. “If you saw fit to oppose Regal, to declare yourself king-in-waiting in his stead, Bearns and Rippon and Shoaks would support you. It is my belief that Queen Kettricken would support you as well, and that Buck would follow her. ” He looked up at me again. “We have talked much of this. We believe Verity’s child would stand a better chance of gaining the throne with you as regent than with Regal. ”

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  So. They had dismissed Shrewd already. “Why not follow Kettricken?” I asked carefully.

  He looked into the flames. “It’s a hard thing to say, after she has shown herself so true. But she is foreign-born, and in some ways untried. It is not that we doubt her; we do not. Nor would we be setting her aside. Queen she is, and would remain, and her child to reign after her. But in these times, we need both king-in-waiting and queen. ”

  A question bubbled in me. A demon wanted me to ask, “And if, when the child comes of age, I do not wish to relinquish power, what then?” They had to have asked themselves, they had to have agreed on some answer to have ready for me. For a moment longer I sat still and silent. Almost I could feel the eddies of possibility swirling about me; was this what the Fool was always prattling about, was this one of his misty crossroads where I always stood in the center? “Catalyst,” I taunted myself quietly.

  “Beg pardon?” Brawndy leaned closer to me.

  “Chivalry,” I said. “As you have said, I bear his name. Almost. Duke Bearns. You are a man hard-pressed. I know what you have risked in speaking to me, and I will be as blunt with you. I am a man with ambitions. But I do not desire the crown of my king. ” I took a breath and looked into the fire. For the first time I really considered what it would do to Bearns, Rippon, and Shoaks for both Shrewd and Kettricken suddenly to disappear. The Coastal Duchies would become like a rudderless ship with decks awash. Brawndy h
ad as much as said they would not follow Regal. Yet I had nothing else I could offer them at this time. To whisper to him that Verity lived would demand that they rise tomorrow, to deny Regal’s right to declare himself king-in-waiting. To warn them that both Shrewd and Kettricken would suddenly vanish would be no assurance at all to them, but would certainly mean that too many folk would not be surprised when it happened. Once they were safely in the Mountain Kingdom, then, perhaps, the Coastal Dukes could be told all. But that could be weeks away. I tried to think what I could offer him now, what assurances, what hopes.

  “For what it is worth, I, as a man, am with you. ” I said the words carefully, wondering if I spoke treason. “To King Shrewd I am pledged. To Queen Kettricken, and the heir she carries, I am loyal. I foresee dark days ahead of us, and the Coastal Duchies must act as one against the Raiders. We have no time to worry what Prince Regal does inland. Let him go to Tradeford. Our lives are here, and here we must stand and fight. ”

  With my own words, I felt a sea change in me. Like the shedding of a cloak, or an insect crawling from its cocoon, I felt myself emerge. Regal was leaving me here at Buckkeep, abandoning me as he thought, to hardship and danger, along with those I most cared about. Well let him. With the King and Queen Kettricken safely stashed in the Mountains, I would no longer fear Regal. Molly was gone, lost to me. What had Burrich said, a time ago? That I might not see her, but perhaps she might see me. Let her see, then, that I could act, that one man standing could make a difference. Patience and Lacey would be safer in my keeping than inland as Regal’s hostages. My mind was racing. Could I make Buckkeep my own, and hold it for Verity until he returned? Who would follow me? Burrich would be gone. I could not count on using his influence. But those swilling inland soldiers would be gone as well. What would be left would be Buckkeep warriors, with a vested interest in keeping this cold rock of a castle from falling. Some had watched me grow up, some had learned how to spar and swing a sword at the same time I had. Kettricken’s guard I knew, and the old soldiers who still wore the colors of King Shrewd’s guard knew me. I had belonged to them before I had belonged to King Shrewd. Would they remember that?