Assassin 3 - Royal Assassin (27 page)

Thank you, I said quietly. And meant it with all
my heart.

Well. She turned aside from my look quickly.
Well. You are welcome, you know.

I know. But the truth was, I came here this
morning thinking that perhaps someone should warn you and Lacey to
be careful of yourselves. Times are unstable here, and you might be
seen as an ... obstacle.

Now Patience laughed aloud. I! I? Funny, dowdy,
foolish old Patience? Patience, who cannot keep an idea fixed in
her head for more than ten minutes? Patience, all but made mad by
her husband's death? My boy, I know how they talk of me. No one
perceives me as a threat to anyone. Why, I am but another fool here
at the court, a thing to be made sport of. I am quite safe, I
assure you. But, even if I were not, I have the habits of a
lifetime to protect me. And Lacey.

Lacey? I could not keep incredulity from my
voice nor a grin from my face. I turned to exchange a wink with
Lacey. Lacey glared at me as if affronted by my smile. Before I
could even unfold from the hearth, Lacey sprang up from her rocking
chair. A long needle, stripped of its eternal yarn, prodded my
jugular vein, while the other probed a certain space between my
ribs. I very nearly wet myself. I looked up at a woman I suddenly
knew not at all, and dared not make a word.

Stop teasing the child, Patience rebuked her
gently. Yes, Fitz, Lacey. The most apt pupil that Hod ever had,
even if she did come to Hod as a grown woman. As Patience spoke
Lacey took her weapons away from my body. She reseated herself, and
deftly rethreaded her needles into her work. I swear she didn't
even drop a stitch. When she was finished, she looked up at me. She
winked. And went back to her knitting. I remembered to start
breathing again.

A very chastened assassin left their apartments
sometime later. As I made my way down the hall I reflected that
Chade had warned me I was underestimating Lacey. I wondered wryly
if this was his idea of humor, or of teaching me greater respect
for seemingly mild folk.

Thoughts of Molly pushed their way into my mind.
I resolutely refused to give in to them, but could not resist
lowering my face to catch that faint scent of her on the shoulder
of my shirt. I took the foolish smile from my face and set off to
locate Kettricken. I had duties.

I'm hungry.

The thought intruded without warning. Shame
flooded me. I had taken Cub nothing yesterday. I had all but
forgotten him in the sweep of the day's events.

A day's fast is nothing. Besides, I found a nest
of mice beneath a corner of the cottage. Do you think I cannot care
for myself at all? But something more substantial would be
pleasing.

Soon, I promised him. There is a thing I must do
first.

In Kettricken's sitting chamber, I found only
two young pages, ostensibly tidying, but giggling as I came in.
Neither of them knew anything. I next tried Mistress Hasty's
weaving room, as it was a warm and friendly chamber where many of
the Keep women gathered. No Kettricken, but Lady Modesty was there.
She told me that her mistress had said she needed to speak with
Prince Verity this morning. Perhaps she was with him.

But Verity was not in his chambers, nor his map
room. Charim was there, however, sorting through sheets of vellum
and separating them by quality. Verity, he told me, had arisen very
early and immediately set out for his boat shed. Yes, Kettricken
had been there this morning, but it had been after Verity left, and
once Charim had told her he was gone, she, too, had departed.
Where? He was not certain.

By this time I was starving, and I excused my
trip to the kitchens on the grounds that gossip always grew
thickest there. Perhaps someone there would know where our
queen-in-waiting had gone. I was not worried, I told myself. Not
yet.

The kitchens of Buckkeep were at their best on a
cold and blustery day. Steam from bubbling stews mingled with the
nourishing aroma of baking bread and roasting meat. Chilled stable
boys loitered there, chatting with the kitchen help and pilfering
fresh-baked rolls and the ends of cheeses, tasting stews and
disappearing like mist if Burrich appeared in the door. I cut
myself a slab of cold meal pudding from the morning's cooking, and
reinforced it with honey and some bacon ends that Cook was
rendering down for cracklings. As I ate I listened to the
talk.

Oddly enough, few people spoke directly of the
previous day's events. I grasped it would take a while for the Keep
to come to terms with all that had happened. But there was
something there, a feeling almost of relief. I had seen that
before, in a man who had had his maimed foot removed, or the family
that finally finds their drowned child's body. To finally confront
the worst there is, to look it squarely in the face and say, I know
you. You have hurt me, almost to death, but still I live. And I
will go on living. That was the feeling I got from the folk of the
Keep. All had finally acknowledged the severity of our injuries
from the Red-Ships. Now there was a sense that we might begin to
heal, and to fight back.

I did not wish to make direct inquiries down
here as to where the Queen might be. As luck would have it, one of
the stable boys was speaking of Softstep. Some of the blood I had
seen on the horse's shoulder the previous day had been her own, and
the boys were talking of how the horse had snapped at Burrich when
he tried to work on her shoulder, and how it had taken two of them
to hold her head. I wangled my way into the conversation. Perhaps a
horse of less temperament would be a better mount for the Queen? I
suggested.

Ah, no. Our queen likes Softstep's pride and
spirit. She said so herself, to me, when she was down in the
stables this morning. She came herself, to see the horse, and to
ask when she might be ridden again. She spoke directly to me, she
did. So I told her, no horse wanted to be ridden on a day such as
this, let alone with a gashed shoulder. And Queen Kettricken
nodded, and we stood talking there, and she asked how I had lost my
tooth.

And you told her a horse had thrown his head
back when you were exercising him! Because you didn't want Burrich
to know we'd been wrestling up in the hayloft and you'd fallen into
the gray colt's stall!

Shut up! You're the one who pushed me, so it was
your fault as much as mine!

And the two were off, pushing and scuffling with
each other, until a shout from Cook sent them tumbling from the
kitchen. But I had as much information as I needed. I headed out
for the stables.

I found it a colder and nastier day outside than
I had expected. Even within the stables, the wind found every crack
and came shrieking through the doors each time one was opened. The
horses' breath steamed in the air, and stable mates leaned
companionably close for the warmth they could share. I found Hands,
and asked where Burrich was.

Cutting wood, he said quietly. For a funeral
pyre. He's been drinking since dawn, too.

Almost this drove my quest from my mind. I had
never known such a thing to be. Burrich drank, but in the evenings,
when the day's work was done. Hands read my face.

Vixen. His old bitch hound. She died in the
night. Yet I have never heard of a pyre for a dog. He's out behind
the exercise pen now.

I turned toward the pen.

Fitz! Hands warned me urgently.

It will be all right, Hands. I know what she
meant to him. The first night he had care of me, he put me in a
stall beside her, and told her to guard me. She had a pup beside
her, Nosy ...

Hands shook his head. He said he wanted to see
no one. To send him no questions today. No one to talk to him. He's
never given me an order like that.

All right. I sighed.

Hands looked disapproving. As old as she was, he
should have expected it. She couldn't even hunt with him anymore.
He should have replaced her a long time ago.

I looked at Hands. For all his caring for the
beasts, for all his gentleness and good instincts, he couldn't
really know. Once, I had been shocked to discover my Wit sense as a
separate sense. Now to confront Hands's total lack of it was to
discover his blindness. I just shook my head and dragged my mind
back to my original errand. Hands, have you seen the Queen
today?

Yes, but it was a while ago. His eyes scanned my
face anxiously. She came to me and asked if Prince Verity had taken
Truth out of the stables and down to town. I told her no, that the
Prince had come to see him, but had left him in the stables today.
I told her the streets would be all iced cobbles. Verity would not
risk his favorite on a surface like that. He walks down to Buckkeep
Town as often as not these days, though he comes through the stable
almost every day. He told me it's an excuse to be out in the air
and the open.

My heart sank. With a certainty that was like a
vision, I knew that Kettricken had followed Verity into Buckkeep
Town. On foot? With no one accompanying her? On this foul day?
While Hands berated himself for not foreseeing the Queen's
intention, I took Sidekick, a well-named but surefooted mule, from
his stall. I dared not take the time to go back to my room for
warmer clothes. So I borrowed Hands's cloak to supplement mine and
dragged the reluctant animal out of the stables and into the wind
and falling snow.

Are you coming now?

Not now, but soon. There is something I must see
to.

May I go, too?

No. It isn't safe. Now be quiet and stay out of
my thoughts.

I stopped at the gate to question the guard most
bluntly. Yes, a woman on foot had come this way this morning.
Several of them, for there were some whose trades made this trip
necessary, no matter the weather. The Queen? The men on watch
exchanged glances. No one replied. I suggested perhaps there had
been a woman, heavily cloaked, and hooded well? White fur trimming
the hood? A young guard nodded. Embroidery on the cloak, white and
purple at the hem? They exchanged uncomfortable glances. There had
been a woman like that. They had not known who she was, but now
that I suggested those colors, they should have known
...

In a coldly level voice, I berated them as dolts
and morons. Unidentified folk passed unchallenged through our
gates? They had looked on white fur and purple embroidery, and
never even guessed it might be the Queen? And none had seen fit to
accompany her? None chose to be her guard? Even after yesterday? A
fine place was Buckkeep these days, when our queen had not even a
foot soldier at her heels when she went out walking in a snowstorm
down to Buckkeep Town. I kicked Sidekick and left them settling
blame among themselves.

The going was miserable. The wind was in a
fickle mood, changing directions as often as I found a way to block
it with my cloak. The snow not only fell, the wind caught up the
frozen crystals from the ground and swirled it up under my cloak at
every opportunity. Sidekick was not happy, but he plodded along
through the thickening snow. Beneath the snow, the uneven trail to
town was glazed with treacherous ice. The mule became resigned to
my stubbornness and trudged disconsolately along. I blinked the
clinging flakes from my eyelashes and tried to urge him to greater
speed. Images of the Queen, crumpled in the snow, the blowing
flakes covering her over, kept trying to push into my mind.
Nonsense! I told myself firmly. Nonsense.

I was on the outskirts of Buckkeep Town before I
overtook her. I knew her from behind, even if she had not been
wearing her purple and white. She strode through the drifting snow
with a fine indifference to it, her Mountain-bred flesh as immune
to the cold as I was to salt breeze and damp. Queen Kettricken!
Lady! Please, wait for me!

She turned and, as she caught sight of me,
smiled and waited. I slid from Sidekick's back as I came abreast of
her. I had not realized how worried I was until the relief flooded
through me at seeing her unharmed. What are you doing out here,
alone, in this storm? I demanded of her, and belatedly added, My
lady.

She looked about her as if just noticing the
falling snow and gusting wind, then turned back to me with a rueful
grin. She was not the least bit chilled or uncomfortable. To the
contrary, her cheeks were rosy with her walk, and the white fir
around her face set off her yellow hair and blue eyes. Here, in
this whiteness, she was not pale and colorless, but tawny and pink,
blue eyes sparkling. She looked more vital than I had seen her in
days. Yesterday she had been Death astride a horse, and Grief
washing the bodies of her slain. But today, here, in the snow, she
was a merry girl, escaped from Keep and station to go hiking
through the snow. I go to find my husband.

Alone? Does he know you are coming, and like
this, afoot?

She looked startled. Then she tucked her chin
and bridled just like my mule. Is he not my husband? Do I need an
appointment to see him? Why should not I go afoot and alone? Do I
seem so incompetent to you that I might become lost on the road to
Buckkeep Town?

She set off walking again, and I was forced to
keep pace with her. I dragged the mule along with me. Sidekick was
not enthused. Queen Kettricken, I began, but she cut me
off.

I grow so weary of this. She halted abruptly and
turned to face me. Yesterday, for the first time in many days, I
felt as if I were alive and had a will of my own. I do not intend
to let that slip away from me. If I wish to visit my husband at his
work, I shall. Well do I know that not one of my ladies would care
for this outing, in this weather and afoot, or otherwise. So I am
alone. And any horse was injured yesterday, and the footing here is
not kind to a beast anyway. So I do not ride. All of this makes
sense. Why have you followed me and why do you question
me?