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Two blunders in one short conversation. One, to speak as if I still resided at Buckkeep and these were visiting minstrels, and the other, to have no name planned out. I searched my mind for a name, and then after a bit too much of a pause, blurted out, “Cob.” And then wondered with a shiver why I had taken to myself the name of a man I’d known and killed.
Is there truly a magic in the naming of a man’s name? So much of the old lore insists there is. I suddenly recalled who I was, and that I did not belong here.
Perhaps obeying old men was simply too deep a habit with me for me to defy it. Perhaps it was the look on Honey’s face that told me plainly she doubted I could do it.
“You don’t like me, do you?” she asked quietly. Her tone was gentle. “I don’t know you,” I said as tactfully as I could. “Um. And you don’t wish to,” she observed. She looked at me levelly. “But I’ve wanted to know you since I saw you blush in the inn. Nothing challenges my curiosity quite as much as a man who blushes. I’ve known few men who turn scarlet like that, simply because they’re caught looking at a woman.” Her voice went low and throaty, as she leaned forward confidentially. “I would love to know what you were thinking that brought the blood to your face like that.”
I wondered if there was any way to live amongst other people and refuse to be harnessed by their expectations and dependencies.
Almost, I felt something. Did Burrich, perhaps, somewhere lift up his head and look about the field he worked in, did he for an instant smell blood and dust instead of the rich earth he turned up to harvest the root crops? Did Molly straighten up from her laundering and set her hands to her aching back and look about, wondering at a sudden pang of desolation? Did I tug at Verity’s weary consciousness, distract Patience for a moment or two from sorting her herbs on the drying trays, set Chade to frowning as he set a scroll aside? Like a moth battering against a window, I rattled myself against
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I felt an insidious probing of my defenses, more intimate than a kiss. As if he kneaded a whore’s flesh, he felt me over for weaknesses. I dangled like a rabbit in his grasp, waiting only for the twist and jerk that would end my life. I felt how he had grown in strength and cunning. Verity, I whimpered, but my king could neither hear nor respond.
Josh sighed heavily. “Yesterday was an ugly day. I would not base any life decision on it.” He swung his head to look toward me. “Whatever it is, Cob, I think time will make it better. It does most things, you know.” “Some things,” I muttered distractedly. “Other things don’t get better until you…mend them. One way or another.”
“You fought what they call the Skill. Didn’t you?” His eyes locked with mine. When I did not answer, he went on anyway. “There are many of us who would like to know how it was done. In our past, Skilled ones have hunted us down as if we were vermin. No one of the Old Blood can say that his family has not suffered at their hands. Now those days have come again. If there is a way to use the talents of the Old Blood against those who wield the Farseer’s Skill, it is knowledge worth much to us.”
“I doubt that. But I thank you for what you have given me.” “No. I know you will be back. It is not a matter of your wanting what I can teach you. You will find you need it. You are not a man as ordinary men are. They think they have a right to all beasts; to hunt them and eat them, or to subjugate them and rule their lives. You know you have no such right to mastery. The horse that carries you will do so because he wishes to, as does the wolf that hunts beside you. You have a deeper sense of yourself in the world. You believe you have a right, not to rule it, but to be part of it. Predator or
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Don’t bring them to his attention. He would not scruple to use them against you. Give them up, to protect them.” He suddenly seemed a bit stronger. He smiled bitterly. “I know what it means to do that; to give them up to keep them safe. So did your father. You’ve the strength for it. Give it all up, boy. Just come to me. If you’ve still a mind to. Come to me, and I’ll show you what can be done.”
You are all I have, I told him, full of melancholy.
It surprised me that I had never pondered this before. “Some men think they are better than beasts,” I said slowly. “That they have the right to use them or command them in any way they please.” Do you think this way? I didn’t answer right away. I worked my blade along the line between the skin and the fat, keeping a constant pull on the hide as I worked up around the shoulder of the animal. I rode a horse, didn’t I, when I had one? Was it because I was better than the horse that I bent it to my will? I’d used dogs to hunt for me, and hawks on occasion. What right had I to command them? There
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Why should he want to return to me, if this pack would accept him? After a time, I allowed myself to realize I was as heartsore and hurt as if a human friend had snubbed me for the company of others.
A bleak spirit, Burrich had once told me, was one of the aftereffects of elfbark. So that was all I was feeling. That was all. I bade the innkeeper farewell and he wished me good luck. Outside, the sun was already high. It bid to be another fine day. I set myself a steady pace as I headed out of Pome and toward Tradeford.
Was this what one could have, if one did not need warships and standing armies? Had Patience ever known this sort of beauty in her parents’ home? Was this what the Fool echoed in the delicate vases of flowers and bowls of silver fish in his room? I felt grubby and uncouth, and it was not because of my clothes. This, indeed, I suddenly felt, was how a king should live. Amid art and music and graciousness, elevating the lives of his people by providing a place for such things to flourish. I glimpsed my own ignorance, and worse, the ugliness of a man trained only to kill others. I felt a sudden
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“FitzChivalry,” I told him quietly. “FitzChivalry.” His eyes widened in sudden understanding and terror, then lost all expression as life left him. Abruptly he was stillness and nothingness, as devoid of life as a stone. To my Wit-sense, he had disappeared.
I wondered belatedly if there was somewhere a woman who had loved this handsome man, blond children who depended on his wages for food. It is not good for an assassin to have such thoughts; they had never plagued me when I had carried out the King’s Justice for King Shrewd. I shook them from my head.
I was going to die. I was going to die and I’d never see them again, not Molly, not Burrich, not my king. I should have gone to Verity. I knew that now. I should have gone to Verity.
It was an assassin’s fantasy. I could scarcely decide where to begin.
“He has walls the like of which you have never experienced. But a wall that will not yield to a battering ram can still be breached by the gentle twining of ivy.” He swung his attention back to me. “You would have been a worthy opponent, save that in your conceit you always underestimated me.”
Will sighed lackadaisically.
There was no choice left for me in that command. It was impregnated with the Skill it rode on, and it burned into my brain, becoming one with my breathing and the beating of my heart. I had to go to Verity. It was a cry both of command
I had believed myself a self-sufficient and clever fellow. I had taken pride in my skills as an assassin, had even, deep down, believed that although I could not competently master my Skill ability, my strength at it was easily the equal of any in Galen’s Coterie. But take away both King Shrewd’s largesse and my wolf companion’s hunting ability, subtract from me Chade’s secret information and plotting skill and Verity’s Skill-guidance, and what I saw left was a starving man in stolen clothes, halfway between Buckkeep and the Mountains, with small prospect of getting any closer to either one.
But despite all that, I decided to keep the earring. Not for what it meant to Burrich, but what it had come to mean to me. It was my last physical link to my past, to who I had been, to the man who had raised me, even to the father who had once worn it.
There was no mention of the Red Ships, no talk at all of the war that raged along the coast. I understood abruptly how much these folk would resent being taxed for troops to protect a coast they’d never even seen, for warships to sail an ocean they could not even imagine. The arid plains between Landing and Blue Lake were their ocean, and these drovers the sailors who traveled on it.
It was the right sort of night for such a tale.
“You tell it like it’s all new, but all knew her big belly came not from Verity but from the Wit-Bastard. Had Regal not driven off the Mountain whore, we would eventually have had one like the Piebald Prince in line for the throne.”
I wondered if anyone, anywhere, got to live the life he’d wanted.
Chade had only taught me how to kill; Regal had made me a true assassin.
But now I not only had Verity’s Skill-command eating at me, but also the knowledge that if I survived, I had a woman and child awaiting me. I was no longer willing to trade my life for Regal’s. This time, I needed a plan.
I took his advice. Someone had given much to send me this courier. I did not wish to face Will in any case. Much as I wanted to kill him, I knew now I was not his equal in the Skill. Nor did I wish to spoil Small Ferret’s chance. There is honor among assassins, of a kind. It warmed my heart to know I was not Regal’s only enemy.
A year ago, her charm and smile might have won me. A year ago I would have wanted to believe this engaging woman, I’d have wanted her to be my friend. Now she only made me tired. She was an encumbrance, a connection to avoid.
“And you know the size of the King’s feet?” I knew she was correct. Regal had small hands and feet, and was more vain of them than many a court lady.
As alone as you are, FitzChivalry, you had better decide to trust someone.” When she called me by my name, it was as if something twisted inside me. And yet, “Why?” I asked her softly. “Why do you aid me? And don’t tell me it’s the hope of a song that may never be.”
FitzChivalry. Hero. Just words. But it was as if she had lanced something inside me, drained away some poison, and now I could heal.
She was beginning to remind me of Patience.
I had expected to shorten my stride to accommodate her, but found that we matched pace easily.
Moonseye looked to me both as strange and as familiar as any small town I had ever visited.
As prisons go, it was the nicest one I’d ever been in.
It would take very little baiting to make that one want to hit me. I wondered if that could be useful. I was very tired of being hit, but it seemed the one thing I did well lately.
“You’ve heard of honor among thieves? Well, Nik and his men have avenged theirs.”
“I learned long ago not to blame myself for evil done to me. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t even your fault. You were just the catalyst that started the chain of events.” “Don’t call me that,” I begged her. The wagon rumbled on, carrying us deeper into the night.
“What are you going to do?” Starling asked in a low voice. “Nighteyes and I are going our own way. As we should have a long time ago. We travel fastest alone.” “I came back for you,” Starling said. Her voice was close to breaking at my betrayal. “Despite all that had happened to me. Despite…my hand…and everything else…”
“I know.” There was no time to explain all of it to her. “Goodbye,” I said quietly. And I left them there, walking away from them into the forest. Nighteyes walked at my side. The trees closed in around us and they were soon lost to sight.
He had been spoiled and rude and selfish. But he had been human. What I had felt from him just now was so far beyond what I could understand in terms of cruelty that it was almost incomprehensible. Forged ones had lost their humanity, but in their emptiness was the shadow of what they had been. Had Regal opened his breast and showed me a nest of vipers, I could not have been more shocked.
She could say to others who had known me, “Yes, I saw him, and he truly lives. How? Why, by his Wit, of course.”
What would it do to Molly, to hear it from afar like that, not only that I was alive and had not returned to her, but that I was tainted with the Wit? It had cut me to the heart to know she had kept from me the knowledge that she carried our child. That had been my first true glimpse of how betrayed and hurt she must have felt by all the secrets I had kept from her over the years. To have one more and one of such magnitude pushed in her face might end whatever feelings she might still have for me. My chances of rebuilding a life with her were small enough; I could not bear for them to dwindle
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A Witted one to hunt me. Old Blood had been bought.
Stop. My brother, do not do this. Do what? I love you. But I do not wish to be you.
