Royal Assassin

He sighed. He glanced about my room, then walked over to stand before the tapestry of King Wisdom greeting the Elderling. He glanced up at it, then smiled sourly, finding some humor there I had never seen. He assumed the stance of a poet about to recite. Then he halted, looked at me squarely once more. "You are certain you wish to know, Fitzy-fitz?"

Like a liturgy, I repeated the question. "Whence comes the Fool and why?"

"Whence? Ah, whence?" He went nose to nose with Ratsy for a moment, formulating a reply to his own question. Then he met my eyes. "Go south, Fitz. To lands past the edges of every map that Verity has ever seen. And past the edges of the maps made in those countries as well. Go south, and then east across a sea you have no name for. Eventually, you would come to a long peninsula, and on its snaking tip you would find the village where a Fool was born. You might even find, still, a mother who recalled her wormy-white babe, and how she cradled me against her warm breast and sang." He glanced up at my incredulous, enraptured face and gave a short laugh. "You ca

"When I was… old enough, I bade them all farewell. I set off to find my place in history, and choose where I would thwart it. This was the place I selected; the time had been destined by the hour of my birth. I came here, and became Shrewd's. I gathered up whatever threads the fates put into my hands, and I began to twist them and color them as I could, in the hopes of affecting what was woven after me."

I shook my head. "I don't understand a thing you just said."

"Ah." He shook his head, setting his bells to jingling. "I offered to tell you my secret. I didn't promise to make you understand it."

"A message is not delivered until it is understood," I countered. This was a direct quote from Chade.

The Fool teetered on accepting it. "You do understand what I said," he compromised. "You simply do not accept it. Never before have I spoken so plainly to you. Perhaps that is what confuses you."

He was serious. I shook my head again. "You make no sense! You went somewhere to discover your place in history? How can that be? History is what is done and behind us."

He shook his head, slowly this time. "History is what we do in our lives. We create it as we go along." He smiled enigmatically. "The future is another kind of history."

"No man can know the future," I agreed.

His smile widened. "Ca

"Preposterous," I objected. "How would anyone know if any of it were true?"

"If such a loom were made, and such a tapestry of predictions woven, not for a few years, but for tens of hundreds of years, after a time it could be shown that it presented a surprisingly accurate foretelling. Bear in mind that those who keep these records are another race, an exceedingly long-lived one. A pale lovely race, that occasionally mingled its bloodlines with that of men. And then!" He spun in a circle, suddenly fey, pleased insufferably with himself. "And then, when certain ones were born, ones marked so clearly that history must recall them, they are called to step forward, to find their places in that future history. And they might further be exhorted to examine that place, that juncture of a hundred threads, and say, these threads, here, these are the ones I shall tweak, and in the tweaking, I shall change the tapestry, I shall warp the weft, alter the color of what is to come. I shall change the destiny of the world."

He was mocking me. I was certain of it now. "Once, in perhaps a thousand years, there may come a man capable of making such a great change in the world. A powerful King, perhaps, or a philosopher, shaping the thoughts of thousands. But you and I, Fool? We are pawns. Ciphers."

He shook his head pityingly. "This, more than anything else, is what I have never understood about your people. You can roll dice, and understand that the whole game may hinge on one turn of a die. You deal out cards, and say that all a man's fortune for the night may turn upon one hand. But a man's whole life, you sniff at, and say, what, this naught of a human, this fisherman, this carpenter, this thief, this cook, why, what can they do in the great wide world? And so you putter and sputter your lives away, like candles burning in a draft."

"Not all men are destined for greatness," I reminded him.

"Are you sure, Fitz? Are you sure? What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? A sadder thing I ca

"This is philosophy, Fool. I have never had time to study such things."

"No, Fitz, this is life. And no one has time not to think of such things. Each creature in the world should consider this thing, every moment of the heart's beating. Otherwise, what is the point of arising each day?"

"Fool, this is beyond me," I declared uneasily. I had never seen him so impassioned, never heard him speak so plainly. It was as if I had stirred gray-coated embers and suddenly found the cherry-red coal that glowed in their depths. He burned too brightly.

"No, Fitz. I have come to believe it is through you." He reached out and tapped me lightly with Ratsy. "Keystone. Gate. Crossroads. Catalyst. All these you have been, and continue to be. Whenever I come to a crossroads, whenever the scent is uncertain, when I put my nose to the ground, and cast about and bay and snuffle, I find one scent. Yours. You create possibilities. While you exist, the future can be steered. I came here for you, Fitz. You are the thread I tweak. One of them, anyway. "

I felt a sudden chill of foreboding. Whatever more he had to say, I did not wish to hear it. Somewhere, far away, a thin howl arose. A wolf baying in midday. A shiver ran up me, setting up every hair on my body. "You've had your joke," I said, laughing nervously. "I should have known better than to expect a real secret from you."

"You. Or not you. Linchpin, anchor, knot in the line. I have seen the end of the world, Fitz. Seen it woven as plainly as I've seen my birth. Oh, not in your lifetime, nor even mine. But shall we be happy, to say that we live in the dusk rather than in the full night? Shall we rejoice that we shall only suffer, while your offspring will be the ones to know the torments of the damned? Shall this be why we do not act?"