Assassin 3 - Royal Assassin (82 page)

As soon as they leave to visit you, I intend to
knock on the door and create a diversion. I will deal with any
guard they have left.

But if you are drawing off the guard, how can
you hope to accomplish anything?

I have a ... another who will be assisting me. I
hoped. I cursed again that Chade had never let me establish some
way of reaching him in situations such as this. Trust me, he had
always told me. I watch, I listen where I should. I summon you when
it is safe to do so. A secret is only a secret as long as only one
man knows it. I would not confide to anyone that I had already
divulged my plans to my fireplace, in the hopes Chade was somehow
listening. I hoped that in the brief time I would be able to buy,
Chade would find a way to the King, to bring him respite from his
pain, that he might withstand Regal's badgering.

It amounts to torture, Kettricken said quietly,
as if able to read my thoughts. To abandon an old man like that to
his pain. She looked at me directly. You do not trust your queen
enough to tell me who your assistant is?

It is not my secret to share, but my king's, I
told her gently. Soon, I believe, it will have to be revealed to
you. Until then-

Go, she dismissed me. She shifted uncomfortably
on her couch. As bruised as I am, at least I shall not have to
feign misery. Only tolerance of a man who would seek to kill his
unborn kin and torment his aged father.

I go, I said quickly, sensing her rage building
and not desiring to feed it. All must be convincing for this
masquerade. She must not reveal that she now knew her fall had not
been any clumsiness of her own. I went out, brushing past Lacey,
who was carrying a tray with a teapot. Patience was on her heels.
There would not be tea in that pot. As I went past the Queen's
ladies in her antechamber, I took care to look concerned. Their
reactions to the Queen's request that King Shrewd's personal healer
be sent for would be genuine enough. I hoped it would be enough to
draw Regal out of his lair.

I slipped into Patience's rooms and left the
door just barely ajar. I waited. As I waited I thought of an old
man, the herbs fading from his body and his pain reawakening in
him. I had visited that pain. Given that, and a man relentlessly
questioning me, how long could I remain silent and vague? Days
seemed to pass. Finally there was a flurry of skirts and pattering
footsteps down the hall, and a frenzied knocking at King Shrewd's
door. I did not need to hear words, it was all in the tone, the
frightened pleading of the women with someone at the door, then
Regal's angry questions, turning suddenly to feigned concern. I
heard him call Wallace from whatever corner he had been banished
to, heard the excitement in his voice as he ordered the man to
attend the Queen immediately, she was suffering a
miscarriage.

The ladies clattered past my door again. I stood
still, holding my breath. That trot, that mutter, that would be
Wallace, laden no doubt with all sorts of remedies. I waited,
taking slow quiet breaths, trying to be patient, waited until I was
sure my ploy had failed. Then I heard the more deliberate strides
of Regal, and then the running strides of a man overtaking him.
That's good wine, you idiot, don't jostle it, Regal rebuked him,
and then they were out of my hearing. I waited again. Long after I
was sure he had been admitted to the Queen's apartments, I forced
myself to wait for another hundred count. And then I eased out of
the door and went to the King's.

I tapped. I did not knock loudly, but my tapping
was insistent and unending. After a moment or two a voice demanded
to know who was there. .

FitzChivalry, I said boldly. I demand to see the
King.

A silence. Then: No one is to be
admitted.

By whose order?

Prince Regal.

I bear a token from the King, one on which he
gave me his word that I would always be admitted to see him
whenever I so wished.

Prince Regal said specifically that you were not
to be admitted.

But that was before ... And I let my voice drop
lower as I muttered a few meaningless syllables.

What did you say?

I muttered again.

Speak up.

This is not for all the Keep to hear! I retorted
indignantly. This is no time to spread a panic.

That did it. The door opened a tiny crack. What
is it? the man hissed.

I leaned in close to the door, looked up and
down the corridor. I peered past him through the crack. Are you
alone? I asked suspiciously.

Yes! Impatiently. Now what is it? It had better
be good!

I lifted my hands to my mouth as I leaned toward
the door, unwilling to let the slightest breath of my secret
escape. The guard leaned closer to the crack. I gave a quick puff
of my lips and a white powder misted his face. He staggered back,
clawing at his eyes and strangling. In an instant he was down.
Nightmist: it was quick, it was effective. It was also often
deadly. I could not find it in myself to care. It was not so much
that this was my shoulder-wrenching friend. This guard could not
have stood in the antechamber of Shrewd's room and been totally
unaware of what went on within.

I had reached in through the crack and was
struggling to undo the chains that secured the door when I heard a
familiar hiss. Get out of here. Leave the door alone, just go away.
Don't unlatch it, you fool! I had a brief glimpse of a pocked
visage and then the door was shut firmly in my face. Chade was
right. It would be best for Regal to encounter a fully latched
door, and to spend his time having his men chop through it. Every
moment Regal was shut out was another moment that Chade had with
the King.

What followed was harder to do than what I had
already done. I went down the stairs to the kitchen, made friendly
talk with the cook, and then asked her what the commotion upstairs
had been. Had the Queen lost her baby? She banished me quickly to
find folk to talk to who would know more. I made my way into the
watch room off the kitchen to consume a small beer and force myself
to eat as if I wanted to. The food lay in my stomach like so much
gravel. No one spoke to me much, but I was a presence. The gossip
about the Queen's fall ebbed and flowed around. me. There were
Tilth and Farrow guards here now, big, slow-moving men, part of
their dukes' retinues, hobnobbing with the Buckkeep counterparts.
It was more bitter than bile to hear them speak avidly of what the
loss of the child would mean to Regal's chances for the throne. It
was as if they bet on a horse race.

The only other gossip that could compete with it
was a rumor that a boy had seen the Pocked Man by the castle well
in the courtyard. It was supposed to have been nearly midnight when
the lad saw him. Not one had the sense to wonder what the boy was
doing out there, or what light his eyes had used to see this vision
of ill omen. Instead they were vowing to stay well away from water,
for surely this omen meant the well had gone bad. At the rate at
which they were drinking beer, I decided they had little to worry
about. I stayed until word was sent down that Regal wanted three
strong men with axes sent immediately to the King's chambers. That
excited a fresh round of talk, and during it, I quietly left the
room and went to the stables.

I had intended to seek out Burrich and see if
the Fool had found him yet. Instead I encountered Molly coming down
his steep stairs just as I had begun to climb them. She looked down
at the astounded look on my face and laughed. But it was a short
laugh, and it never reached her eyes.

Why did you go to see Burrich? I demanded, and
instantly realized how rude my question was. I had feared she had
gone seeking help.

He is my friend, she said succinctly. She
started to push past me. Without thinking, I stood firm. Let me
past! she hissed savagely.

Instead I put my arms around her. Molly; Molly,
please, I said hoarsely as she pushed at me without heart. Let us
find a place to talk, if only for a moment. I cannot bear to have
you look at me that way, when I swear I have done you no wrong. You
act as if I have cast you off, but you are in my heart always. If I
cannot be with you, it is not because I do not wish to.

She stopped struggling suddenly. ,

Please? I begged her.

She glanced about the dim barn. We will stand
and we will talk. Briefly. Right here.

Why are you so angry with me?

She nearly answered me. I saw her bite back
words, then turn suddenly cold. Why do you think that what I feel
about you is the centermost pillar of my life? she retorted. Why do
you think I have no other concerns but you?

I gaped at her. Perhaps because it is how I feel
about you, I said gravely.

It is not. She was exasperated, correcting me
the way she would correct a child who insisted the sky was
green.

It is, I insisted. I tried to gather her to me,
but she was wooden in my arms.

Your king-in-waiting Verity was more important.
King Shrewd is more important. Queen Kettricken and her unborn
child are more important. She ticked them off on her fingers as if
she were numbering my faults.

I know my duty, I said quietly.

I know where your heart is, she said flatly. And
it is not first with me.

Verity is ... is no longer here to protect his
queen, his child, or his father, I said reasonably. So, for this
time, I must put them ahead of my own life. Ahead of everything I
hold dear. Not because I love them more but ... I floundered
uselessly after words. I am a King's Man, I said
helplessly.

I am my own woman. Molly made it the loneliest
statement in the world. I will take care of myself.

Not forever, I protested. Someday we will be
free. Free to wed, to do-

Whatever your king asks you to do, she finished
for me. No, Fitz. There was finality in her voice. Pain. She pushed
away from me, stepped past me on the staircase. When she was two
steps away and all of winter seemed to be blowing between us, she
spoke.

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 matter of what he feels for
me, she said slowly. It is what I feel for him. He must be first in
my life. He needs that from me. Understand this. It is not that I
no longer care for you. It is that I cannot put that feeling ahead
of what is best for him. She went down two more steps. Good-bye,
Newboy. She no more than breathed those final words, but they sank
into my heart as if branded there.

I stood on the steps, watching her go. And
suddenly that feeling was too familiar, the pain too well-known. I
flung myself down the steps after her, I seized her arm, I pulled
her under the loft stairs into the darkness there. Molly, I said,
please.

She said nothing. She did not even resist my
grip on her arm.

What can I give you, what can I tell you to make
you understand what you are to me? I can't just let you
go!

No more can you make me stay, she pointed out in
a low voice. I felt something go out of her. Some anger, some
spirit, some will. I have no word for it. Please, she said, and the
word hurt me, because she begged. Just let me go. Don't make it
hard. Don't make me cry.

I let go of her arm, but she did not
leave.

A long time ago, she said carefully, I told you
that you were like Burrich. '

I nodded in the darkness, not caring that she
could not see me.

In some ways you are. In others you are not. I
decide for us, now, as he once decided for Patience and himself.
There is no future for us. Someone already fills your heart. And
the gap between our stations is too great for any love to bridge. I
know that you love me. But your love is ... different from mine. I
wanted us to share all our lives. You wish to keep me in a box,
separate from your life. I cannot be someone you come to when you
have nothing more important to do. I don't even know what it is
that you do when you are not with me. You have never even shared
that much with me.

You wouldn't like it, I told her. You don't
really want to know.

Don't tell me that, she whispered angrily. Don't
you see that that is what I cannot live with, that you do not let
me even decide that for myself? You cannot make that decision for
me. You have no right! If you cannot even tell me that, how can I
believe you love me?

I kill people, I heard myself say. For my king.
I'm an assassin, Molly.

I don't believe you! she whispered. She spoke
too quickly. The horror in her voice was as great as the contempt.
A part of her knew I had spoken the truth to her. Finally. A
terrible silence, brief but so cold, grew between us as she waited
for me to admit a lie. A lie she knew was truth. At last she denied
it for me. You, a killer? You couldn't even run past the guard that
day to see why I was crying! You didn't have the courage to defy
them for me! But you want me to believe you kill people for the
King. She made a choking sound, of anger and despair. Why do you
say such things now? Why now, of all times? To impress
me?