Royal Assassin (71 page)

Coming up the hill from town was Molly. Her servant’s blue dress flapped around her calves as she ran. And she ran heavily, unevenly, unlike her usual graceful stride. She was exhausted, or nearly so. “Fitz!” she cried out again, and there was fear in her voice.

I started to go to her, but the guard stepped suddenly into my path. Fear was on her face, too, but also determination. “I cannot let you go out of the gate. I have my orders.”

I wanted to smash her from my path. I forced my rage down. A struggle with her would not help Molly. “Then you go to her, damn you! Can’t you see the woman is in trouble of some kind?”

She stood eye to eye with me, unmoving. “Miles!” she called, and the boy leaped out. “Go see what is wrong with that woman. Quickly now!”

The boy took off like a shot. I stood, with the guard standing
squarely before me, and watched helplessly over her shoulder as Miles raced to Molly. When he reached her, he put an arm around her and took her basket on his other arm. Leaning heavily on him, gasping and near weeping, Molly came toward the gate. It seemed to take forever before she was through the gate and in my arms. “Fitz, oh Fitz,” she sobbed.

“Come,” I told her. I turned her away from the guard, walked her away from the gate. I knew I had done the sensible thing, the calm thing, but I felt shamed and small from it.

“Why didn’t you … come to me?” Molly panted.

“The guard would not let me. They have orders I am not to leave Buckkeep,” I said quietly. I could feel her trembling as she leaned against me. I took her around the corner of a warehouse, out of sight of the guards standing gaping in the gate. I held her in my arms until she quieted. “What’s wrong? What happened?” I tried to make my voice soothing. I brushed back the hair that hung about her face. After a few moments she quieted in my arms. Her breathing steadied, but she still trembled.

“I had gone into town. Lady Patience had given me the afternoon. And I needed to get a few things … for my candles.” As she spoke, her trembling lessened. I tilted her chin up so that she looked into my eyes.

“And then?”

“I was … coming back. I was on the steep bit, just outside of town. Where the alders grow?”

I nodded. I knew the spot.

“I heard horses coming. In a hurry. So I stepped off the road to make way for them.” She started to tremble again. “I kept walking, thinking they would pass me. But suddenly they were right behind me, and when I looked back, they were coming right at me. Not on the road, but right at me. I jumped back into the brush, and still they rode right at me. I turned and ran, but they kept coming….” Her voice was getting higher and higher.

“Hush! Wait a bit. Calm down. Think. How many of them? Did you know them?”

She shook her head wildly. “Two. I couldn’t see their faces. I was running away, and they were wearing the kind of
helm that comes down over your eyes and nose. They chased me. It’s steep there, you know, and brushy. I tried to get away, but they just rode their horses right through the brush after me. Herding me, like dogs herd sheep. I ran, and ran, but I couldn’t get away from them. Then I fell, I caught my foot on a log and I fell. And they jumped from their horses. One pinned me down while the other snatched up my basket. He dumped it all out, like he was looking for something, but they were laughing and laughing. I thought …”

My heart was hammering as hard as Molly’s now. “Did they hurt you?” I asked fiercely.

She paused, as if she could not decide, then shook her head wildly. “Not like you fear. He just … held me down. And laughed. The other one, he said … he said, I was pretty stupid, letting myself be used by a bastard. They said …”

Again she paused a moment. Whatever they had said to her, called her was ugly enough that she could not repeat it to me. It was like a sword through me, that they had been able to hurt her so badly she would not even share the pain. “They warned me,” she went on at last. “They said stay away from the bastard. Don’t do his dirty work for him. They said … things I didn’t understand, about messages and spies and treason. They said they could make sure that everyone knew I was the Bastard’s whore.” She tried just to say the word, but it came out with greater force. She defied me to flinch from it. “Then they said … I would be hanged … if I didn’t pay attention. That to run errands for a traitor was to be a traitor.” Her voice grew strangely calmer. “Then they spit on me. And they left me. I heard them ride away, but for a long time I was afraid to get up. I have never been so scared.” She looked at me and her eyes were like open wounds. “Not even my father ever scared me that bad.”

I held her close to me. “It’s all my fault.” I did not even know I had spoken aloud until she drew back from me, to look up in puzzlement.

“Your fault? Did you do something wrong?”

“No. I am no traitor. But I am a bastard. And I’ve let that spill over onto you. Everything Patience warned me of, everything
Ch—everyone warned me about, it’s all coming true. I’ve got you caught up in it.”

“What is happening?” she asked softly, eyes wide. Her breath suddenly caught. “You said … the guard wouldn’t let you out the gate. That you can’t leave Buckkeep? Why?”

“I don’t know, exactly. There’s a lot I don’t understand. But one thing I do know. I have to keep you safe. That means staying away from you, for a time. And you from me. Do you understand?”

A glint of anger came into her eyes. “I understand you’re leaving me alone in this!”

“No. That’s not it. We have to make them believe that they’ve scared you, that you’re obeying them. Then you’ll be safe. They’ll have no reason to come after you again.”

“They have scared me, you idiot!” she hissed at me. “One thing I know. Once someone knows you’re afraid of him, you’re never safe from that person. If I obey them now, they will come after me again. To tell me to do other things, to see how far I’ll obey them in my fear.”

These were the scars her father had left on her life. Scars that were a kind of strength, but also a vulnerability. “Now is not the time to stand up to them,” I whispered. I kept looking over her shoulder, expecting that at any moment the guard would come to see where we had vanished. “Come,” I said, and led her deeper into the maze of warehouses and outbuildings. She walked silently beside me for a ways, then suddenly jerked her hand from mine.

“It is time to stand up to them,” she declared. “Because once you start putting it off, you never do it. Why should not this be the time?”

“Because I don’t want you caught up in this. I don’t want you hurt. I don’t want people saying you are the Bastard’s whore.” I could barely force the words from my mouth.

Molly’s head came up. “I have done nothing I’m ashamed of,” she said evenly. “Have you?”

“No. But—”

“‘But.’ Your favorite word,” she said bitterly. She walked away from me.

“Molly!” I sprang after her, seized her by the shoulders.
She spun and hit me. Not a slap. A solid punch in the mouth that rocked me back and put blood in my mouth. She stood glaring, daring me to touch her again. I didn’t. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t fight back. Only that I didn’t want you caught up in it. Give me a chance to fight this my way,” I said. I knew blood was running over my chin. I let her look at it. “Trust that given time, I can find them and make them pay. My way. Now. Tell me about the men. What they wore, how they rode. What did the horses look like? Did they speak like Buck folk, or Inlanders? Did they have beards? Could you tell the color of their hair, their eyes?”

I saw her trying to think, saw her mind veer away from thinking about it. “Brown,” she said at last. “Brown horses, with black manes and tails. And the men talked like anybody else. One had a dark beard. I think. It’s hard to see face down in the dirt.”

“Good. That’s good,” I told her, though she had told me nothing at all. She looked down, away from the blood on my face. “Molly,” I said more quietly. “I won’t be coming … to your room. Not for a while. Because—”

“You’re afraid.”

“Yes!” I hissed. “Yes, I’m afraid. Afraid they’ll hurt you, afraid they’ll kill you. To hurt me. I won’t endanger you by coming to you.”

She stood still. I could not tell if she was listening to me or not. She folded her arms across her chest, hugged herself.

“I love you too much to see that happen.” My words sounded weak, even to myself.

She turned and walked away from me. She still hugged herself, as if to keep herself from flying apart. She looked very alone, in her draggled blue skirts with her proud head bowed. “Molly Redskirts,” I whispered after her, but I could no longer see that Molly. Only what I had made of her.

T
HE
POCKED
MAN
is the legendary harbinger of disaster for the folk of the Six Duchies. To see him, striding down the road, is to know that disease and pestilence will soon come to call. To dream of him is said to be a warning of a death to come. Often the tales of him show him appearing to those deserving of punishment, but sometimes he is used, most often in puppet shows, as a general omen of disaster to come. A marionette of the Pocked Man, hung dangling across the scenery, is a warning to all in the audience that soon they will witness a tragedy
.

The days of winter dragged agonizingly slow. With every passing hour, I was braced for something to happen. I never walked into a room without surveying it first, ate no food I had not seen prepared, drank only the water I drew from the well myself. I slept poorly. The constant watchfulness told on me in a hundred ways. I was snappish to those who spoke to me casually, moody when I checked on Burrich, reticent with the Queen. Chade, the only one to whom I could have unburdened myself, did not summon me. I was miserably alone. I dared not go to Molly. I kept my visits to Burrich as brief as possible for fear of bringing my troubles down on him. I could not openly
leave Buckkeep to spend time with Nighteyes, and I feared to leave by our secret way lest I be watched. I waited and I watched, but that nothing further happened to me became a sophisticated torture of suspense.

I did call on King Shrewd daily. I watched him dwindle before my eyes, saw the Fool become daily more morose, his humor more acid. I longed for savage winter weather to match my mood, but the skies continued blue and the winds calm. Within Buckkeep, the evenings were noisy with gaiety and revel. There were masked balls, and summonings of minstrels to compete for fat purses. The Inland Dukes and nobles ate well at Regal’s table, and drank well with him late into the night.

“Like ticks on a dying dog,” I said savagely to Burrich one day as I was changing the dressing on his leg for him. He had made comment that it was no trick to stay awake on his night guard duty at Kettricken’s door, for the noise of the revelry would have made it difficult to sleep.

“Who’s dying?” he asked.

“All of us. One day at a time, we’re all dying. Did no one ever tell you that? But this is healing, and surprisingly well for all you’ve done to it.”

He looked down at his bared leg and cautiously flexed it. The tissue pulled unevenly, but held. “Maybe the gash is closed up, but it doesn’t feel healed inside,” he observed. It was not a complaint. He lifted his brandy cup and drained it off. I eyed it narrowly. His days had a pattern now. Once he left Kettricken’s door in the morning, he went to the kitchen and ate. Then he came back to his room and began drinking. After I appeared and helped him change the bandaging on his leg, he would drink until it was time for him to sleep. And wake up in the evening, just in time to eat and then go guard Kettricken’s door. He no longer did anything in the stables. He had given them over to Hands, who went about looking as if the job were a punishment he hadn’t deserved.

Every other day or so, Patience sent Molly up to tidy Burrich’s room for him. I knew little of these visits other than that they happened, and that Burrich, surprisingly, tolerated them. I had mixed feelings about them. No matter how much
Burrich drank, he always treated women graciously; yet the emptied brandy bottles in a row could not but remind Molly of her father. Still, I wished them to know one another. One day I told Burrich that Molly had been threatened because of her association with me. “Association?” he had asked sharply.

“Some few know that I care for her,” I admitted gingerly.

“A man does not bring his problems down on a woman he cares for,” he told me severely.

I had no reply to that. Instead I gave him the few details Molly had recalled about her attackers, but they suggested nothing to him. For a time he had stared off, right through the walls of his room. After a time he picked up his cup and drained it. He spoke carefully. “I am going to tell her that you are worried about her. I am going to tell her that if she fears danger, she must come to me. I am more in a position to deal with it.” He looked up and met my eyes. “I am going to tell her that you are wise to stay away from her, for her sake.” As he poured himself another drink he had added quietly to the tabletop, “Patience was right. And she was wise to send her to me.”

I blanched to consider the full implications of that statement. For once, I was smart enough to know when to be quiet. He drank his brandy down, then looked at the bottle. Slowly, he slid it across the table toward me. “Put that back on the shelf for me, will you?” he requested.