Assassin’s Quest

‘Probably,’ I agreed. And then something pressed into my mind, something more terrible than all the things I knew and did not want to remember. It was all the things I did not know, all the questions that had been left unanswered. I went out to walk on the meadow. I went past the meadow, to the edge of the stream, and then down it, to the boggy part where the cattails grew. I gathered the green cattail spikes to cook with the porridge. Once more, I knew all the names of the plants. I did not want to, but I knew which ones would kill a man, and how to prepare them. All the old knowledge was there, waiting to reclaim me whether I would or no.

When I came back in with the spikes, he was cooking the grain. I set them on the table and got a pot of water from the barrel. As I rinsed them off and picked them over, I finally asked, ‘What happened? That night?’

He turned very slowly to look at me, as if I were game that might be spooked off by sudden movement. ‘That night?’

‘The night King Shrewd and Kettricken were to escape. Why didn’t you have the scrub horses and the litter waiting?’

‘Oh. That night.’ He sighed out as if recalling old pain. He spoke very slowly and calmly, as if fearing to startle me. ‘They were watching us, Fitz. All the time. Regal knew everything. I couldn’t have smuggled an oat out of the stable that day, let alone three horses, a litter and a mule. There were Farrow guards everywhere, trying to look as if they had just come down to inspect the empty stalls. I dared not go to you to tell you. So, in the end, I waited until the feasting had begun, until Regal had crowned himself and thought he had won. Then I slipped out and went for the only two horses I could get. Sooty and Ruddy. I’d hidden them at the smith’s, to make sure Regal couldn’t sell them off as well. The only food I could get was what I could pilfer from the guard-room. It was the only thing I could think to do.’

‘And Queen Kettricken and the Fool got away on them.’ The names fell strangely off my tongue. I did not want to think of them, to recall them at all. When I had last seen the Fool, he had been weeping and accusing me of killing his king. I had insisted he flee in the King’s place, to save his life. It was not the best parting memory to carry of one I had called my friend.

‘Yes.’ Burrich brought the pot of porridge to the table and set it there to thicken. ‘Chade and the wolf guided them to me. I wanted to go with them, but I couldn’t. I’d only have slowed them down. My leg … I knew I couldn’t keep up with the horses for long, and riding double in that weather would have exhausted the horses. I had to just let them go.’ A silence. Then he growled, lower than a wolf’s growl, ‘If ever I found out who betrayed us to Regal …’

‘I did.’

His eyes locked on mine, a look of horror and incredulity on his face. I looked at my hands. They were starting to tremble.

‘I was stupid. It was my fault. The Queen’s little maid, Rosemary. Always about, always underfoot. She must have been Regal’s spy. She heard me tell the Queen to be ready, that King Shrewd would be going with her. She heard me tell Kettricken to dress warmly. Regal would have to guess from that that she would be fleeing Buckkeep. He’d know she’d need horses. And perhaps she did more than spy. Perhaps she took a basket of poisoned treats to an old woman. Perhaps she greased a stair-tread she knew her Queen would soon descend.’

I forced myself to look up from the spikes, to meet Burrich’s stricken gaze. ‘And what Rosemary did not overhear, Justin and Serene did. They were leeched onto the King, sucking Skill-strength out of him, and privy to every thought he Skilled to Verity, or had from him. Once they knew what I was doing, serving as King’s Man, they began to Skill-spy on me as well. I did not know such a thing could be done. But Galen had discovered how, and taught it to his students. You remember Will, Hostler’s son? The coterie member? He was the best at it. He could make you believe he wasn’t even there when he was.’

I shook my head, tried to rattle from it my terrifying memories of Will. He brought back the shadows of the dungeon, the things I still refused to recall. I wondered if I had killed him. I didn’t think so. I didn’t think I’d got enough poison into him. I looked up to find Burrich watching me intently.

‘That night, at the very last moment, the King refused to go,’ I told him quietly. ‘I had thought of Regal as a traitor so long, I had forgotten that Shrewd would still see him as a son. What Regal did, taking Verity’s crown when he knew his brother was alive … King Shrewd didn’t want to go on living, knowing Regal was capable of that. He asked me to be King’s Man, to lend him the strength to Skill a farewell to Verity. But Serene and Justin were waiting.’ I paused, new pieces of the puzzle falling into place. ‘I should have known it was too easy. No guards on the King. Why? Because Regal didn’t need them. Because Serene and Justin were leeched onto him. Regal was finished with his father. He had crowned himself King-in-Waiting; there was no more good to be had out of Shrewd for him. So they drained King Shrewd dry of Skill-strength. They killed him. Before he could even bid Verity farewell. Probably Regal had told them to be sure he did not Skill to Verity again. So then I killed Serene and Justin. I killed them the same way they had killed my king. Without a chance of fighting back, without a moment of mercy.’

‘Easy. Easy now.’ Burrich crossed swiftly to me, put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me down in a chair. ‘You’re shaking as if you’re going into a seizure. Calm yourself.’

I could not speak.

‘This is what Chade and I could not puzzle out,’ Burrich told me. ‘Who had betrayed our plan? We thought of everyone. Even the Fool. For a time we feared we had sent Kettricken off in the care of a traitor.’

‘How could you think that? The Fool loved King Shrewd as no one else did.’

‘We could think of no one else who knew all our plans,’ Burrich said simply.

‘It was not the Fool who was our downfall. It was I.’ And that, I think, was the moment when I came fully back to myself. I had said the most unsayable thing, faced my most unfaceable truth. I had betrayed them all. ‘The Fool warned me. He said I would be the death of kings, if I did not learn to leave things alone. Chade warned me. He tried to make me promise I would set no more wheels in motion. But I would not. So my actions killed my king. If I had not been helping him to Skill, he would not have been so open to his killers. I opened him up, reaching for Verity. But those two leeches came in instead. The King’s assassin. Oh, in so many, many ways, Shrewd. I am so sorry, my king. So sorry. But for me, Regal would have had no reason to kill you.’

‘Fitz.’ Burrich’s voice was firm. ‘Regal never needed a reason to kill his father. He needed only to run out of reasons to keep him alive. And you had no control over that.’ A sudden frown creased his brow. ‘Why did they kill him, right then? Why did they not wait until they had the Queen as well?’

I smiled at him. ‘You saved her. Regal thought he had the Queen. They thought they’d stopped us when they kept you from getting horses out of the stables. Regal even bragged of it to me, when I was in my cell. That she’d had to leave with no horses. And with no warm winter things.’

Burrich grinned hard. ‘She and the Fool took what had been packed for Shrewd. And they left on two of the best horses ever to come out of Buckkeep’s stables. I’ll wager they got to the Mountains safely, boy. Sooty and Rud are probably grazing in Mountain pastures now.’

It was too thin a comfort. That night I went out and ran with the wolf, and Burrich made no rebuke to me. But we could not run far enough, nor fast enough, and the blood we shed that night was not the blood I wished to see run, nor could the hot fresh meat fill the void inside me.

So I remembered my life and who I had been. As the days passed, Burrich and I began to speak openly, as friends again. He gave over his dominance of me, but not without mockingly expressing his regrets for that. We recalled our old ways with one another, old ways of laughing together, old ways of disagreeing. But as things steadied between us and became normal, we were both reminded, all the more sharply, of all we no longer had.

There was not enough work in a day to busy Burrich. This was a man who had had full authority over all of Buckkeep’s stables and the horses, hounds and hawks that inhabited them. I watched him invent tasks to fill the hours, and knew how much he pined for the beasts he had overseen for so long. I missed the bustle and folk of court, but hungered most keenly for Molly. I invented conversations I would have had with her, gathered meadowsweet and daysedge flowers because they smelled like her, and lay down at night recalling the touch of her hand on my face. But these were not the things we spoke of. Instead, we put our pieces together to make a whole, of sorts. Burrich fished and I hunted, there were hides to scrape, shirts to wash and mend, water to haul. It was a life. He tried to speak to me, once, of how he had come to see me in the dungeon, to bring me the poison. His hands worked with small twitching motions as he spoke of how he had had to walk away, to leave me inside that cell. I could not let him go on. ‘Let’s go fishing,’ I suddenly proposed. He took a deep breath and nodded. We went fishing and spoke no more that day.

But I had been caged, and starved, and beaten to death. From time to time, when he looked at me, I knew he saw the scars. I shaved around the seam down my cheek, and watched the hair grow in white above my brow where my scalp had been split. We never spoke about it. I refused to think about it. But no man could have come through that unchanged.

I began to dream at night. Short vivid dreams, frozen moments of fire, searing pain, hopeless fear. I awoke, cold sweat sleeking my hair, queasy with fear. Nothing remained of those dreams when I sat up in darkness, not the tiniest thread by which I could unravel them. Only the pain, the fear, the anger, the frustration. But above all, the fear. The overwhelming fear that left me shaking and gulping for air, my eyes tearing, sour bile up the back of my throat.

The first time it happened, the first time I sat bolt upright with a wordless cry, Burrich rolled from his bed and put his hand on my shoulder, to ask if I was all right. I shoved him away from me so savagely he crashed into the table and nearly overset it. Fear and anger crested into an instant of fury when I would have killed him simply because he was where I could reach him. At that moment I rejected and despised myself so completely that I desired only to destroy everything that was me, or bordered on myself. I repelled savagely at the entire world, almost displacing my own consciousness. Brother, brother, brother, Nighteyes yelped desperately within me, and Burrich staggered back with an inarticulate cry. After a moment I could swallow and mutter to Burrich, ‘A nightmare, that was all. Sorry. I was still dreaming, just a nightmare.’

‘I understand,’ he said brusquely, and then, more thoughtfully, ‘I understand.’ He went back to his bed. But I knew what he understood was that he could not help me with this, and that was all.

The nightmares did not come every night, but often enough to leave me dreading my bed. Burrich pretended to sleep through them, but I was aware of him lying awake as I fought my night battles alone. I had no recollection of the dreams, only the wrenching terror they brought me. I had felt fear before. Often. Fear when I had fought Forged ones, fear when we had battled Red Ship warriors, fear when I had confronted Serene. Fear that warned, that spurred, that gave one the edge to stay alive. But the night fear was an unmanning terror, a hope that death would come and end it, because I was broken and knew I would give them anything rather than face more pain.

There is no answer to a fear like that or the shame that comes after it. I tried anger, I tried hatred. Neither tears nor brandy could drown it. It permeated me like an evil smell and coloured every remembrance I had, shading my perception of who I had been. No moment of joy, or passion, or courage that I could recall was ever quite what it had been, for my mind always traitorously added, ‘yes, you had that, for a time, but after came this, and this is what you are now’. That debilitating fear was a cowering presence inside me. I knew, with a sick certainty, that if I were pressed I would become it. I was no longer FitzChivalry. I was what was left after fear had driven him from his body.

On the second day after Burrich had run out of brandy, I told him, ‘I’ll be fine here if you want to go into Buckkeep Town.’

‘We’ve no money to buy more supplies, and nothing left to sell off.’ He said it flatly, as if it were my fault. He was sitting by the fire. He folded his two hands together and clasped them between his knees. They had been shaking, just a little. ‘We’re going to have to manage on our own now. There’s game in plenty to be had. If we can’t feed ourselves up here, we deserve to starve.’

‘Are you going to be all right?’ I asked flatly.

He looked at me through narrowed eyes. ‘Meaning what?’ he asked.

‘Meaning there’s no more brandy,’ I said as bluntly.

‘And you think I can’t get by without it?’ His temper was rising already. It had become increasingly short since the brandy ran out.

I gave a very small shrug. ‘I was asking. That’s all.’ I sat very still, not looking at him, hoping he wouldn’t explode.

After a pause, he said, very quietly, ‘Well, I suppose that’s something we’ll both have to find out.’

I let a long time pass. Finally I asked, ‘What are we going to do?’

He looked at me with annoyance. ‘I told you. Hunt to feed ourselves. That’s something you should be able to grasp.’

I looked away from him, gave a bobbing nod. ‘I understood. I mean … past that. Past tomorrow.’

‘Well. We’ll hunt for our meat. We can get by for a bit that way. But sooner or later, we’ll want what we can’t get nor make for ourselves. Some Chade will get for us, if he can. Buckkeep is as picked over as bare bones now. I’ll have to go to Buckkeep Town, for a while, and hire out if I can. But for now …’

‘No,’ I said quietly. ‘I meant … we can’t always hide up here, Burrich. What comes after that?’

It was his turn to be quiet a while. ‘I suppose I hadn’t given it much thought. At first it was just a place to take you while you recovered. Then, for a time, it seemed as if you’d never …’

‘But I’m here, now.’ I hesitated. ‘Patience,’ I began.

‘Believes you dead,’ Burrich cut in, perhaps more harshly than he’d intended. ‘Chade and I are the only ones who know different. Before we pulled you from that coffin, we weren’t sure. Had the dose been too strong, would you be really dead from it, or frozen from your days in the earth? I’d seen what they’d done to you.’ He stopped, and for a moment stared at me. He looked haunted. He gave his head a tiny shake. ‘I didn’t think you could live through that, let alone the poison. So we offered no hope to anyone. And then, when we had you out …’ He shook his head, more violently. ‘At first, you were so battered. What they’d done to you – there was just so much damage … I don’t know what possessed Patience to clean and bind a dead man’s wounds, but if she hadn’t … Then later … it was not you. After those first few weeks, I was sickened at what we had done. Put a wolf’s soul in a man’s body, it seemed to me.’

He looked at me again, his face going incredulous at the memory. ‘You went for my throat. The first day you could stand on your own, you wanted to run away. I wouldn’t let you and you went for my throat. I could not show Patience that snarling, snapping creature, let alone …’

‘Do you think Molly … ?’ I began.

Burrich looked away from me. ‘Probably she heard you died.’ After a time, he added, uncomfortably, ‘Someone had burned a candle on your grave. The snow had been pushed away, and the wax stump was there still when I came to dig you up.’

‘Like a dog after a bone.’

‘I was fearful you would not understand it.’

‘I did not. I just took Nighteyes’ word for it.’

It was as much as I could handle, just then. I tried to let the conversation die. But Burrich was relentless. ‘If you went back to Buckkeep, or Buckkeep Town, they would kill you. They’d hang you over water and burn your body. Or dismember it. But folk would be sure you stayed dead this time.’

‘Did they hate me so?’

‘Hate you? No. They liked you well enough, those that knew you. But if you came back, a man who had died and been buried, again walking among them, they’d fear you. It’s not a thing you could explain away as a trick. The Wit is not a magic that is well thought of. When a man is accused of it and then dies and is buried, well, in order for them to remember you fondly, you’d have to stay dead. If they saw you walking about, they’d take it as proof that Regal was right; that you were practising Beast magic, and used it to kill the King. They’d have to kill you again. More thoroughly the second time.’ Burrich stood suddenly, and paced the room twice. ‘Damn me, but I could use a drink,’ he said.

‘Me, too,’ I said quietly.

Ten days later, Chade came up the path. The old assassin walked slowly, with a staff, and he carried his pack up high on his shoulders. The day was warm, and he had thrown back the hood of his cloak. His long grey hair blew in the wind and he had let his beard grow to cover more of his face. At first glance, he looked to be an itinerant tinker. A scarred old man, perhaps, but no longer the Pocked Man. Wind and sun had weathered his face. Burrich had gone fishing, a thing he preferred to do alone. Nighteyes had come to sun himself on our doorstep in Burrich’s absence, but had melted back into the woods behind the hut at the first waft of Chade’s scent on the air. I stood alone.

For a time I watched him come. The winter had aged him, in the lines of his face and the grey of his hair. But he walked more strongly than I remembered, as if privation had toughened him. At last I went to meet him, feeling strangely shy and embarrassed. When he looked up and saw me, he halted and stood in the trail. I continued toward him. ‘Boy?’ he asked cautiously when I was near. I managed a nod and a smile. The answering smile that broke forth on his face humbled me. He dropped his staff to hug me, and then pressed his cheek to mine as if I were a child. ‘Oh, Fitz, Fitz, my boy,’ he said in a voice full of relief. ‘I thought we had lost you. I thought we’d done something worse than let you die.’ His old arms were tight and strong about me.

I was kind to the old man. I did not tell him that they had.

TWO The Parting

After crowning himself King of the Six Duchies, Prince Regal Farseer essentially abandoned the Coastal Duchies to their own devices. He had stripped Buckkeep itself and a good part of Buck Duchy of as much coin as he could wring from it. From Buckkeep, horses and stock had been sold off, with the very best taken inland to Regal’s new residence at Tradeford. The furnishings and library of the traditional royal seat had been plundered as well, some to feather the new nest, some divvied out to his Inland dukes and nobles as favours or sold outright to them. Grain warehouses, winecellars, the armouries, all had been plundered and the loot carried off inland.

His announced plan had been to move the ailing King Shrewd, and the widowed and pregnant Queen-in-Waiting Kettricken inland to Tradeford, that they might be safer from the Red Ship raids that plagued the Coastal Duchies. This, too, was the excuse for the looting of furnishings and valuables from Buckkeep. But with the death of Shrewd and the disappearance of Kettricken, even this flimsy reason vanished. Nonetheless he left Buckkeep as soon after his coronation as he could. The tale has been told that when his Council of Nobles questioned his decision, he told them that the Coastal Duchies represented only war and expense to him, that they had always been a leech upon the resources of the Inland Duchies and he wished the Outislanders the joy of taking such a rocky and cheerless place. Regal was later to deny having ever uttered such words.

When Kettricken vanished, King Regal was left in a position for which there was no historical precedent. The child Kettricken carried had obviously been next in line for the crown. But both Queen and unborn child had vanished, under very suspicious circumstances. Not all were certain that Regal himself had not engineered it. Even if the Queen had remained at Buckkeep, the child could not assume even the title of King-in-Waiting for at least seventeen years. Regal became very anxious to assume the title of King as swiftly as possible, but by law he needed the recognition of all Six Duchies to claim it. He bought the crown with a number of concessions to his Coastal Dukes. The major one was Regal’s promise that Buckkeep would remain manned and ready to defend the coast.

The command of the ancient keep was foisted off on his eldest nephew, heir to the title Duke of Farrow. Lord Bright, at twenty-five, had grown restless waiting for his father to pass power to him. He was more than willing to assume authority over Buckkeep and Buck, but had little experience to draw on. Regal took himself inland to Tradeford Castle on the Vin River in Farrow, while young Lord Bright remained at Buckkeep with a picked guard of Farrow men. It is not reported that Regal left him any funds to operate from, so the young man endeavoured to wring what he needed from the merchants of Buckkeep Town, and the already embattled farmers and shepherds of surrounding Buck Duchy. While there is no indication that he felt any malice toward the folk of Buck or the other Coastal Duchies, neither did he have any loyalty toward them.

Also in residence at Buckkeep at this time were a handful of minor Buck nobility. Most landholders of Buck were at their own lesser keeps, doing what little they could to protect their local folk. The most notable to remain at Buckkeep was Lady Patience, she who had been Queen-in-Waiting until her husband Prince Chivalry abdicated the throne to his younger brother Verity. Manning Buckkeep were the Buck soldiers, as well as Queen Kettricken’s personal guard, and the few men who remained of King Shrewd’s guard. Morale was poor among the soldiers, for wages were intermittent and the rations poor. Lord Bright had brought his own personal guard with him to Buckkeep, and obviously preferred them to the Buck men. The situation was further complicated by a muddled chain of command. Ostensibly the Buck troops were to report to Captain Keffel of the Farrow men, the commander of Lord Bright’s guard. In reality, Foxglove of the Queen’s Guard, Kerf of the Buckkeep Guard, and old Red of King Shrewd’s guard banded together and kept their own counsels. If they reported regularly to anyone, it was Lady Patience. In time the Buck soldiers came to speak of her as the Lady of Buckkeep.

Even after his coronation, Regal remained jealous of his title. He sent messengers far and wide, seeking word of where Queen Kettricken and the unborn heir might be. His suspicions that she might have sought shelter with her father, King Eyod of the Mountain Kingdom, led him to demand her return of him. When Eyod replied that the whereabouts of the Queen of the Six Duchies was no concern for the Mountain folk, Regal angrily severed ties with the Mountain Kingdom, cutting off trade and attempting to block even common travellers from crossing the boundaries. At the same time, rumours that almost certainly began at Regal’s behest began to circulate that the child Kettricken carried was not of Verity’s getting and hence had no legitimate claim to the Six Duchies throne.

It was a bitter time for the small folk of Buck. Abandoned by their king and defended only by a small force of poorly-provisioned soldiers, the common folk were left rudderless on a stormy sea. What the Raiders did not steal or destroy, Lord Bright’s men seized for taxes. The roads became plagued with robbers, for when an honest man cannot make a living, folk will do what they must. Small crofters gave up any hope of making a living and fled the coast, to become beggars, thieves and whores in the inland cities. Trade died, for ships sent out seldom came back at all.