Royal Assassin (68 page)

So I gave off urging him. We waited for a time, and more than a time. At last the Fool came out of the King’s bedchamber. “He is not well,” he cautioned us. “It has taken me a time to make him understand who is here. But he says he will hear your report. In his chambers.”

So Burrich leaned on me as we went into the dimness and smoke of the King’s bedchamber. I saw Burrich wrinkle his nose in distaste. Acrid fumes of Smoke hung heavy here, and
several small censers burned. The Fool had drawn back the bed curtains, and as we stood he patted and poked cushions and pillows behind the King’s back until Shrewd waved him aside with a small gesture.

I looked at our monarch and wondered how I had not seen the signs of his disease. They were plainly there when one looked. The general wasting of his body, the sour edge of his sweat, the yellow in the whites of his eyes: these were the least things I should have seen. The shock on Burrich’s face told me plainly that the change since Burrich had last seen him was immense. But he covered it well and drew himself up straight.

“My king, I have come to report,” he said formally.

Shrewd blinked slowly. “Report,” he said vaguely, and I was not sure if he gave Burrich an order, or simply repeated the word. Burrich took it as a command. He was as thorough and exact as he had always insisted I be. I stood, and he supported his weight on my shoulder as he told of journeying with Prince Verity through the winter snows, traveling always toward the Mountain Kingdom. He did not mince words, but spoke plainly. The journey had been full of hardships. Despite messengers sent ahead of Verity’s expedition, hospitality and aid along the way had been poor. Those nobles whose homes lay along their route professed to have known nothing of Verity’s coming. In many cases, they found only servants to greet them, and the hospitality no more than what would have been offered to any ordinary traveler. Supplies and extra horses that should have been waiting for them at assigned locations were not. The horses had suffered more grievously than the men. The weather had been savage.

As Burrich reported I felt a tremor run through him from time to time. The man was at the edge of complete exhaustion. But each time he shook, I felt him take a deep breath, steady himself, and go on.

His voice quavered only slightly as he told how they had been ambushed on the plains of Farrow, before they came in sight of Blue Lake. He drew no conclusions himself, but only observed that these highwaymen fought in a military style. While they wore no Duke’s colors, they seemed well dressed and well armed for brigands. And Verity was obviously their
intended target. When two of the baggage animals broke loose and fled, none of their attackers broke away to follow them. Bandits usually would have preferred chasing laden pack beasts to fighting armed men. Verity’s men had finally found a place to take a stand and had successfully stood them off. Their attackers had finally given up when they realized that Verity’s guard would die to the last man before surrendering or giving way. They had ridden off, leaving their fallen dead in the snow.

“They had not defeated us, but we were not unscathed. We lost a good portion of our supplies. Seven men and nine horses were killed outright. Two of us were injured seriously. Three others took minor injuries. It was Prince Verity’s decision to send the injured back to Buckkeep. With us he sent two sound men. His plan was to continue his quest, to take his guard with him as far as the Mountain Kingdom, and to have them stay there to await his return. Keen was placed in charge of those of us returning. To him, Verity entrusted written information. I do not know what that information packet contained. Keen and the others were killed five days ago. We were ambushed just outside the border of Buck, as we were traveling by the Buck River. Archers. It was very … quick. Four of us went down right away. My horse was struck in the flank. Ruddy’s a young beast. He panicked. He plunged over an embankment into the river, and I with him. The river is deep there, and the current strong. I clung to Ruddy, but we were both swept downriver. I heard Keen shouting to the others to ride, that some must make it back to Buckkeep. But none of them did. When Ruddy and I managed to clamber out of the Buck, we went back. I found the bodies. The papers Keen had carried were gone.”

He stood straight as he reported, and his voice was clear. His words were simple. His report was a simple description of what had happened. He mentioned nothing of what he had felt at being sent back, or at being the sole survivor to return. He would drink himself sodden tonight, I suspected. I wondered if he would want company for that. But for now, he stood, silent, awaiting his king’s questions. The silence stretched overlong. “My king?” he ventured.

King Shrewd shifted in the shadows of his bed. “It reminds me of my younger days,” he said hoarsely. “Once I
could sit a horse and hold a sword. When a man loses that—well, once that is gone, he has actually lost far more than that. But your horse was all right?”

Burrich furrowed his brow. “I did what I could for him, my king. He will take no permanent harm from it.”

“Well. At least there is that, then. At least there is that.” King Shrewd paused. For a moment we listened to his breathing. He seemed to be working at it. “Go and get some rest, man,” he said at last, gruffly. “You look terrible. I may …” He paused and took two breaths. “I will call you back later. When you are rested. I am sure there are things to ask….” His voice trailed off, and again he simply breathed. The deep breaths a man takes when the pain is almost too much to bear. I remembered what I had felt that night. I tried to imagine listening to Burrich report while enduring such pain. And struggling not to show it. The Fool leaned in over the King to look into his face. Then he looked at us and gave a tiny shake to his head.

“Come,” I said softly to Burrich. “Your king has given you an order.”

He seemed to lean on me more heavily as we left the King’s bedchamber.

“He did not seem to care,” Burrich said quietly, carefully to me as we moved laboriously down the corridor.

“He does. Trust me. He cares deeply.” We had come to the staircase. I hesitated. A flight down, through the hall, the kitchen, across the court, and into the stables. Then up the steep stairs to Burrich’s loft. Or up two flight of steps and down the hall to my room. “I’m taking you up to my room,” I told him.

“No. I want to be in my own place.” He sounded fretful as a sick child.

“In a while. After you’ve rested a bit,” I told him firmly. He did not resist as I eased him up the steps. I don’t think he had the strength. He leaned against the wall while I unlatched my door. Once the door was open, I helped him in. I tried to get him to lie down on my bed, but he insisted on the chair by the hearth. Once ensconced there, he leaned his head back and closed his eyes. When he relaxed, all the privations of his
journey showed in his face. Too much bone showed beneath his flesh, and his color was terrible.

He lifted his head and looked around the room as if he’d never seen it before. “Fitz? Have you anything to drink up here?”

I knew he didn’t mean tea. “Brandy?”

“The cheap blackberry stuff you drink? I’d sooner drink horse liniment.”

I turned back to him, smiling. “I might have some of that up here.”

He didn’t react. It was as if he hadn’t heard me.

I built up my fire. I quickly sorted through the small supply of herbs I kept in my room. There wasn’t much there. I had given most of them to the Fool. “Burrich, I’m going to go get you some food, and a few things. All right?”

There was no reply. He was already deeply asleep sitting there. I went to stand by him. I did not even need to touch the skin of his face to feel the fever burning there. I wondered what had happened to his leg this time. An injury atop an old injury, and then traveled on. It would not be soon healed, that was plain to me. I hurried out of my room.

In the kitchens, I interrupted Sara at pudding making, to tell her that Burrich was injured and sick and in my room. I lied and said he was ravenously hungry, and to please send a boy up with food, and some buckets of clean hot water. She immediately put someone else to stirring the pudding and began to clatter trays and teapots and cutlery. I would have enough food to supply a small banquet very quickly.

I ran out to the stables to let Hands know that Burrich was up in my room and would be for a while. Then I climbed the steps to Burrich’s room. I had it in my mind to get the herbs and roots I would need there. I opened the door. The chamber was cold. The damp had got into it, and mustiness. I made a mental note to have someone come up and make a fire, and bring in a supply of wood, water, and candles. Burrich had expected to be gone all winter. Characteristically, he had tidied his room to the point of severity. I found a few pots of herbal salve, but no stores of freshly dried herbs. Either he had taken them with him, or given them away before he left.

I stood in the center of the room and looked around me. It had been months since I’d been here. Childhood memories came crowding back into my head. Hours spent before that hearth, mending or oiling harness. I’d used to sleep on a mat before the fire. Nosy, the first dog I’d ever bonded to. Burrich had taken him away, to try to break me of using the Wit. I shook my head at the flood of conflicting emotions, and quickly left the room.

The next door I knocked on was Patience’s. Lacey opened it and, at the look on my face, demanded immediately, “What’s wrong?”

“Burrich’s come back. He’s up in my room. He’s badly hurt. I don’t have much in the way of healing herbs—”

“Did you send for the healer?”

I hesitated. “Burrich has always liked to do things his own way.”

“Indeed he has.” It was Patience, entering the sitting room. “What’s that madman done to himself now? Is Prince Verity all right?”

“The Prince and his guard were attacked. The Prince was not harmed and has continued to the Mountains. He sent back those who were injured, with two sound men as an escort. Burrich was the only one to survive and get home.”

“Was the journey back so difficult?” Patience asked. Lacey was already moving about the room, gathering herbs and roots and materials for bandaging.

“It was cold and treacherous. Little hospitality was offered them along the way. But the men died when they were ambushed by archers, just across the Buck border. Burrich’s horse carried him off into a river. They were swept downstream quite a ways; it was probably the only thing that saved him.”

“How is he hurt?” Now Patience was moving, too. She opened a little cupboard and began to take out prepared salves and tinctures.

“His leg. The same one. I don’t know exactly, I haven’t looked at it yet. But it won’t take his weight; he can’t walk by himself. And he has a fever.”

Patience took down a basket and began loading the medicines into it. “Well, what are you standing about for?” she
snapped at me as I waited. “Go back to your room and see what you can do for him. We’ll be up in a moment with these.”

I spoke bluntly. “I don’t think he’ll let you help.”

“We’ll see,” Patience said calmly. “Now go see that there is hot water.”

The buckets of water I had asked for were outside my door. By the time the water in my kettle was boiling, people had begun to converge on my room. Cook sent up two trays of food, and warmed milk as well as hot tea. Patience arrived and began to set out her herbs on my clothing chest. She quickly sent Lacey to fetch a table for her, and two more chairs. Burrich slept on in my chair, deeply asleep despite occasional bouts of shivering.

With a familiarity that astounded me, Patience felt his forehead, then searched under the angle of his jaw for swelling. She crouched slightly to look into his sleeping face. “Burr?” she queried quietly. He did not even twitch. Very gently, she stroked his face. “You are so thin, so worn,” she grieved softly. She damped a cloth in warm water and gently wiped his face and hands as if he were a child. Then she swept a blanket off my bed and tucked it carefully about his shoulders. She caught me staring at her, and glared at me. “I need a basin of warmed water,” she snapped. As I went to fill one she crouched before him and calmly took out her silver shears and snipped up the side of the bandaging wrapping his leg. The stained wrappings did not look as if they had been changed since his dunk in the river. It went up past his knee. As Lacey took the basin of warmed water and knelt next to her, Patience opened the soiled bandaging as if it were a shell.

Burrich came awake with a groan, dropping his head forward onto his chest as his eyes opened. For a moment he was disoriented. He looked at me standing over him, and then at the two women crouched by his leg. “What?” was all he managed.

“This is a mess,” Patience told him. She rocked back on her heels and confronted him as if he’d tracked muck on a clean floor. “Why haven’t you at least kept it clean?”

Burrich glanced down at his leg. Old blood and river silt were caked together over the swollen fissure down his knee. He recoiled visibly from it. When he replied to Patience, his voice
was low and harsh. “When Ruddy took me into the river, we lost everything. I had no clean bandaging, no food, nothing. I could have bared it and washed it, and then frozen it. Do you think that would have improved it?”

“Here is food,” I said abruptly. It seemed the only way to prevent their quarreling was to prevent them from talking to each other. I moved the small table laden with one of Cook’s trays over beside him. Patience stood to be out of his way. I poured him a mug of the warmed milk and put it into his hands. They began to shake slightly as he raised it to his mouth. I had not realized how hungry he was.

“Don’t gulp that!” Patience objected. Both Lacey and I shot her warning looks. But the food seemed to take Burrich’s attention completely. He set down the mug and took a warm roll that I had slathered butter onto. He ate most of it in the space of time it took me to refill his mug. It was odd to see him begin to shake once he had the food in his hands. I wondered how he had managed to hold himself together before that.

“What happened to your leg?” Lacey asked him gently. Then: “Brace yourself,” she warned him, and placed a warm, dripping cloth onto his knee. He gave a shudder and went paler, but refrained from making a sound. He drank some more milk.