Royal Assassin

I let go of the door and walked woodenly back to my bench. I sat down. Reflex more than thought made me drape Brawndy's cloak about my shoulders. The cold I felt now would not be warmed away by wool. As the wave of a rising tide rushes into a sea cavern, so the knowledge of my death once more filled me. Once again, I thought I might faint. I pushed at it, vaguely repelling at my own thoughts of how Regal might choose to kill me. There were so many ways. I suspected he would try to wring a confession from me. Given enough time, he might be successful. The thought made me sick. I tried to pull myself back from the brink, not to realize so thoroughly that I was going to die painfully.

With a peculiar lightening of heart, I reflected that I could cheat him. Within my blood-matted sleeve cuff was the tiny pocket that still held the poison I had so long ago prepared for Wallace. Had it offered a less horrendous death, I would have taken it right then. But I had not formulated that poison for a quick and painless sleep, but for cramps and flux and fever. Later, I thought, it might become preferable to whatever Regal offered. There was no comfort in that thought. I lay back on my slab and rolled myself up well in Brawndy's ample cloak. I hoped he would not miss it too much. It was probably the last kind thing anyone would ever do for me. I did not fall asleep. I fled, willfully submerging myself into my wolf's world.

I awoke later from a human dream in which Chade had been lecturing me for not paying attention. I drew myself smaller in Brawndy's cloak. Torchlight trickling into my cell. Day or night, I could not tell, but I thought it was deep night. I tried to find sleep again. Chade's urgent voice had been pleading with me…

I sat up slowly. The cadence and tone of the mufed voice was definitely Chade's. It seemed fainter when I sat up. I lay down again. Now it was louder, but I still couldn't pick out the words. I pressed my ear to the stone bench. No. I got up slowly and moved about my small cell, from wall to corner and back again. There was one corner in which the voice was loudest, but I still could not make out the words. "I can't understand you," I said to my empty cell.

The mufed voice paused. Then it spoke again, a questioning inflection.

"I can't understand you!" I said more loudly.

Chade's voice resumed, more excitedly, but no louder.

"I can't understand you!" I shouted in frustration.

Footsteps outside my cell. "FitzChivalry!"

The guard was short. She couldn't see in. "What?" I asked sleepily.

"What were you shouting?"

"What? Oh. Bad dream."

The footsteps went away. I heard her laugh to the other guard and say, "Hard to imagine what dream could be worse than waking up for him." She had an inland accent.

I went back to my bench and lay down. Chade's voice had stopped. I tended to agree with the guard. I would not sleep again for a while, but would wonder what Chade had been so desperately trying to tell me. I doubted it would be good news, and I did not want to imagine bad. I was going to have to die here. At least let it be because I had aided the Queen's escape. I wondered how far she was on her journey. I thought of the Fool, and wondered how well he would withstand the rigors of a winter journey. I forbade myself to wonder why Burrich was not with them. Instead, I thought of Molly.

I must have drowsed, for I saw her. She was toiling up a path, a yoke of water buckets on her shoulders. She looked pale and sick and worn. On top of the hill was a tumbledown cottage, snow banked against its walls. She stopped and set her water buckets down at the door and stood looking out, over the sea. She frowned at the fair weather and the light wind that only tipped the waves with white. The wind lifted her thick hair just as I used to and slid its hand along the curve of her warm neck and jaw. Her eyes went suddenly wide. Then tears brimmed them. "No," she said aloud. "No. I won't think of you anymore. No." She stooped and lifted the heavy buckets and went into the cottage. She shut the door firmly behind her. The wind blew past it. The roof was poorly thatched. The wind blew harder and I let it carry me away.

I tumbled on it, dove through it, and let it flow my pains away. I thought of diving deeper, down into the main flow of it, where it could sweep me entirely away, right out of myself and all my petty worries. I trailed my hands in that deeper current, swift and heavy as a moving river. It tugged at me.

I'd stand back from that if I were you.

Would you? I let Verity consider my situation for a moment.

Perhaps not, he replied grimly. Something like a sigh. I should have guessed at how bad it was. It seems it takes great pain, or illness, or extreme duress of some kind to break down your walls so you can Skill. He paused long and we were both silent, thinking of nothing and everything all at once. So. My father is dead. Justin and Serene. I should have guessed somehow. His weariness and dwindling strength; those are the hallmarks of a King's Man, drained too low too often. I suspect it had been going on long, probably since before Galen… died. Only he could have conceived such a thing, let alone devised a way to do it. What a loathsome way to use the Skill. And they spied upon us?

Yes. I do not know how much they learned. And there is another to fear. Will.

Damn me thrice for a fool. Look at it, Fitz. We should have known. The ships worked so well for us at first, and then, as soon as they knew what we were up to, you and I, they found ways to block us. The coterie has been in Regal's pocket since they were formed. Thus we have delayed messages, or messages not delivered. Help always sent too late, or never sent at all. He is as full of hate as a tick is full of blood. And he has won.

Not quite, my king. I reined my mind back from thinking of Kettricken safely on her way to the Mountains. Instead, I repeated, There is still Will. And Burl and Carrod. We must be circumspect, my. prince.

A shade of warmth. l shall. But you know the depths of my thanks. Perhaps we paid highly, but what we bought was worth it. To me, at least.

To me, also. I sensed the weariness in him, and the resignation. Are you giving up?

Not yet. But like yours, my future does not seem promising. The others are all dead or fled, I will go on. But I don't know how much farther I must go. Or what I must do when I get there. And I am so very tired. To give in would be so easy.

Verity read me with ease, I knew. But I had to reach for him and for all he was not conveying to me. I sensed the great cold that surrounded him, and an injury that made it painful to breathe. His aloneness, and the pain of knowing that those who had died had died so far from home, and for him. Hod, I thought, my own grief echoing his. Charim. Gone forever. And something else, something he could not quite convey. A temptation, a teetering at the brink. A pressure, a plucking, very similar to the Skillish plucking I had felt from Serene and Justin. I tried to push past him, to look at it more closely, but he held me back.

Some dangers become more dangerous when confronted, he warned me. This is one of them. But I am sure it is the path I must follow, if I am to find the Elderlings.

"Prisoner!"

I jolted out of my trance. A key turned in the lock of my door and it swung open. A girl stood in the doorway. Regal was beside her, one hand comfortingly on her shoulder. Two guards, Inlanders both by the cut of their clothes, flanked them. One leaned forward to thrust a torch into my cell. I cowered back inadvertently, then sat blinking in the unaccustomed light. "Is that him?" Regal asked the girl gently. She peered at me fearfully. I peered back, trying to decide why she looked familiar.

"Yes, sir, Lord Prince, King, sir. That's him. I went to the well that morning, had to, had to have water, or the baby would die, just as sure as if the Raiders killed him. And it had been quiet awhile, all Neatbay as quiet as the dead. So I went to the well in the early morning, creeping like through the mist, sir. Then there was this wolf there, right by the well, and he starts up and stares at me. And the wind moves the mist, and the wolf is gone, he's a man now. That man, sir. Your Majesty King." She continued to stare at me wide-eyed.