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First Duke Brawndy of Bearns, and now Kelvar of Rippon, I thought to myself. Kettricken was doing well at winning the duchies’ loyalty.
‘Dog-boy? Man-wolf!’ observed someone. I turned to see who had spoken, but the hall was crowded and no face seemed turned to watch us. I shrugged as if the remark were of no consequence, and Lady Grace appeared not to have even heard it.
Luckily for you, from a distance, for the strength of that … I began to warn Nighteyes. Burrich’s gaze swung to me. ‘I said, that will cease! Now!’ He looked aside from me in disgust. ‘I’d rather you rode with your hand in your pants than that you did that constantly in my presence. It offends me.’
She did not faint, nor cry out. Her eyes looked afar, and she set her hand gently upon her belly. And in that motion, I knew it was not Shrewd who was dead, but Verity.
‘Prince Regal has had tidings that King-in-Waiting Verity is dead.’
Foxglove was but a soldier, sworn to protect her queen. She could not, at this time, follow her into the keep, no matter how much she cared about her. Kettricken was in the care of her court ladies now. But I knew Burrich would not stand guard alone before Kettricken’s door tonight.
I left the stables feeling that somehow I had grown. I wondered if I would ever stop measuring myself by how Burrich treated me.
The Fool stood outside my door. I do not know if I was more surprised that he had knocked instead of slipping the latches, or at the way he was attired. I stood gaping at him. He bowed genteelly, then pushed his way into my room, closing the door behind him. He fastened a couple of latches, then stepped to the centre of the room and extended his arms. He turned in a slow circle for me to admire him. ‘Well?’ ‘You don’t look like you,’ I said bluntly. ‘I am not intended to.’
‘Care you not at all that Verity is dead?’ ‘Care you not at all that the flowers are blooming beneath the summer sun?’ ‘Fool, it is winter outside.’ ‘The one is as true as the other. Believe me.’
Galen, the Skillmaster, Queen Desire’s own bastard son,
You fog me, Bastard. You multiply the futures a thousandfold, just by existing. Catalyst. From some of those fogs go the blackest, twisted threads of damnation, and from others shining twines of gold. To the depths or the heights, it seems, are your paths. I long for a middle path. I long for a simple death for a master who was kind to a freakish, jeering servant.’
There was old King Shrewd, doddering and thin, nodding off over his dinner, or making vague and smiling conversation to no one in particular. There was the Queen-in-Waiting, unsmiling, barely eating, silent and mourning. Presiding over it all was Regal, the dutiful son seated next to the failing father, and beside him the Fool, magnificently clad and punctuating Regal’s conversation with witticisms to make the Prince’s conversation more sparkling than it truly was.
‘A Skilled one might be seen as the other end of this spectrum. Such a man can reach forth, and tell from afar what others are thinking and feeling. He can, if strongly Skilled, impose his thoughts and feelings on others. In this increased sensitivity to the emotions and thoughts of others, he has a surfeit of what Forged ones lack entirely.
Could Verity’s Skilling have been what drew them to Buckkeep? Did his reaching out awaken in them a hunger, a remembrance perhaps of what they had lost? Drawn as they were, through ice and flood, to travel always toward Buckkeep, the motivation must have been intense. And when Verity departed Buckkeep on his quest, the movement of Forged ones toward Buckkeep seemed to abate.’
It was the first and last time I would ever use force against the Fool. I took no joy in proving that I was physically stronger than he was. The look in his eyes as I forced him aside was something no one should ever see in a friend’s face.
The whole world was a spaceless place, all things inside of all other things. I did not say his name aloud or think of his face. Verity was there, had always been right there and joining him was effortless. You live!
Slowly I understood what I had done. I had Skilled. I had tapped my king’s strength to do it. You will be the death of kings, the Fool had told me. A prophecy or a shrewd guess? A Shrewd guess. Tears came to my eyes.
‘If I had a dog that was sick as often as you are, I’d put it down,’ he observed kindly.
‘A bleak spirit is sometimes what follows an over-indulgence in elfbark. Or so I have heard.’
She is always very correct with me. I am very direct with her. I simply told her you missed her.’ ‘And she said?’ ‘Nothing.’ He grinned. ‘But she blushes very prettily.’
I do not think he has followed you before. But I cannot be sure either. Nighteyes, my brother. How do I thank you? Stay alive. A pause. And bring me ginger cake. You shall have it, I promised fervently.
Drugs, and pain even more so, will drive a sagacious man to foolish acts. A man dying of his wounds will leap to his horse to lead a last charge. Pain can make a man take risks, or assert himself in strange ways.’
But we are two old men, who have grown old together. Sometimes that is a greater closeness.
It is like being two foreigners, trapped in a land we have come to, unable to return to our own, and having only each other to confirm the reality of the place where we once lived.
It was possible to be homesick for a time, and to be lonely for the only other person who could recall it.
‘I suppose. Catalyst.’ He muttered. ‘So the Fool calls me too,’ I complained. Chade stopped abruptly in the midst of starting to say something. ‘Does he really?’ he asked intently. ‘He clubs me with the word every chance he gets.’
When I came to Sooty’s empty stall, my heart stood still. I could not speak. I leaned on her manger, my face in my hands.
I nearly discovered it as Kettricken had. But I caught my balance and then crouched low to study the step. Lamp-black had been mixed with the grease, to take the sheen off it and blend it with the well-used steps. It was right where the foot would most naturally fall,
If the Fool had crept up on me, could not Will?
‘I can. I promise that if my king is taken, and I do not go with him, I will betray every one of your secrets. Every one.’ The Fool’s voice was shaking. He put his head back against the wall. I turned away hastily. The tears on his cheeks were tinged pink from the cuts on his face. I could not bear to see them. I
A secret is only a secret as long as only one man knows it.’
‘I am my own woman.’ Molly made it the loneliest statement in the world. ‘I will take care of myself.’
‘I have to tell you something,’ she said, almost gently. ‘There is another in my life now. One who is for me what your king is for you. One who comes before my own life, who comes ahead of all else I hold dear. By your own words, you cannot fault me.’ She looked back up at me. I do not know what I looked like, only that she looked aside as if she could not bear it. ‘For the sake of that one, I am going away,’ she told me. ‘To a safer place than this.’ ‘Molly, please, he cannot love you as I do,’ I begged. She did not look at me. ‘Nor can your king love you as I … used to. But. It is not a
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If a man hits you once, he’ll hit you again, they say. And the same is true for lying.
I had always feared that my lies would make me lose Molly. But the truth had severed in an instant what my lies had held together for a year. What must I learn from that, I wondered?
The Fool swirled the brandy in his cup. ‘Is this wise, just now?’ he asked. ‘Just now, I have finished with being wise,’ I told him. ‘I would rather be a fool.’
I crouched down in the snow and he came to me, to rest his throat on my shoulder. I hugged him hard. Foolishness, he told me gruffly. Go on, now. I will be here in case you need me. My thanks. My brother.
A few minutes were all Chade had asked for. I wondered if I would have to give my life for them.
And if I am to be a father – his thoughts were warm with this new feeling – it becomes even more important that I succeed.
‘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?’
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.
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.’
It will be a hard winter for all of us, but lean wolves fight fiercest, or so they say.’ And we are lean, my brother, oh we are lean.
I had thought to save my king from a disloyal prince. I should have known there was no saving a father from the betrayal of a son.
Son of my son, blood of my blood. In my own way, I have loved you. My king.
The King had looked at me, and wondered, what have I made of you? I did not need to wonder. I was the King’s assassin. In more ways than one.
He released me. ‘Goodbye, boy,’ he said gruffly, and stooped to kiss me on the forehead. It was farewell. He didn’t expect to see me alive again. That made two of us.
The ecstasy of the Skill, or the frantic flush and heat of the hunt. Did I taunt self-destruction, or did I desire it?
did not hesitate. ‘Surprise!’ I said softly. I jerked Serene’s head back and pulled the King’s blade across her exposed throat. She jerked once, and I let her fall to the floor. There was a remarkable amount of blood. Justin leaped to his feet with a shriek and I braced myself for his onslaught.
Folk were still standing shocked at his entrance when I leaped on him and pulled him down. I punched the knife in and out of him half a dozen times before anyone thought they should interfere.
