Royal Assassin (UK) Read online

  Enough! Enough! and fi­nally, ‘Enough!’ I roared, and he let go of me and leaped away. He fled over the snow, bound­ing ri­dicu­lously, to fling him­self in a circle and come ra­cing back at me. I flung my arms up to shel­ter my face, but he only seized my bag of bones and raced off with it, dar­ing me to fol­low. I could not let him win so eas­ily. So I leaped after him, tack­ling him, seiz­ing the bag of bones, and it de­gen­er­ated into a tug­ging match, at which he cheated by let­ting go sud­denly, nip­ping me on the fore­arm hard enough to numb my hand, and then grabbing the bag again. I gave chase again.

  Got you. A tug on the tail. Got you! I kneed his shoulder, push­ing him off bal­ance. Got the bones! And for an in­stant I had them and was run­ning. He hit me full square in the back, all four paws, and drove me face down in the snow, seized the trove and was off again.

  I do not know how long we played. We had flung ourselves fi­nally down in the snow to rest and lay pant­ing to­gether in thought­less sim­pli­city. The sack­ing of the bag was torn in places, the bones peek­ing through, and Cub seized one, to shake and drag it from the cling­ing folds. He set upon it, scis­sor­ing the meat and then pin­ning the bone down with his paws as his jaws cracked the knuckly car­til­age on the end. I reached for the sack and tugged at a bone, a good meaty one, a thick mar­rowbone and drew it forth.

  And ab­ruptly was a man again. Like awak­ing from a dream, like the pop­ping of a soap bubble, and Cub’s ears twitched and he turned to me as if I had spoken. But I had not. I had only sep­ar­ated my self from his. Ab­ruptly I was cold, snow had got in­side the tops of my boots and at my waist and col­lar. There were stand­ing welts on my fore­arms and hands where his teeth had dragged over my flesh. My cloak was torn in two places. And I felt as groggy as if I were just com­ing out of a drugged sleep.

  What’s wrong? Real con­cern. Why did you go away?

  I can’t do this. I can’t be like this, with you. This is wrong.

  Puz­zle­ment. Wrong? If you can do it, how can it be wrong?

  I am a man, not a wolf.

  Some­times, he agreed. But you don’t have to be all the time.

  Yes, I must. I don’t want to be bon­ded with you like this. We can­not have this close­ness. I have to set you free, to live the life you were meant to live. I must live the life I was meant for.

  A de­ris­ive snort, a sneer of fangs. This is it, brother. We are as we are. How can you claim to know what life I was meant to lead, let alone threaten to force me into it? You can­not even ac­cept what you are meant to be. You deny it even as you are it. All your quib­bling is non­sense. As well for­bid your nose to snuff, or your ears to hear. We are as we do. Brother.

  I did not drop my guard. I did not give him leave. But he swept through my mind like a wind sweeps through an un­shuttered win­dow and fills a room. The night and the snow. Meat in our jaws. Listen, snuff, the world is alive to­night and so are we! We can hunt un­til dawn, we are alive and the night and the forest are ours! Our eyes are keen, our jaws are strong, and we can run down a buck and feast be­fore morn­ing. Come! Come back to what you were born to be!

  A mo­ment later, I came to my­self. I was on my feet, stand­ing, and I was trem­bling from head to foot. I lif­ted my hands and looked at them, and sud­denly my own flesh seemed for­eign and con­fin­ing, as un­nat­ural as the clothes I wore. I could go. I could go, now, to­night, and travel far to find our own kind, and no one would ever be able to fol­low us, let alone find us. He offered me a moon­lit world of blacks and whites, of food and rest, so simple, so com­plete. Our eyes were locked, and his were lam­bent green and beck­on­ing to me. Come. Come with me. What have the likes of us to do with men and all their petty plot­ting? There is not one mouth­ful of meat to be had in all their wrangling, no clean joys in their schem­ing, and never a simple pleas­ure taken un­think­ingly. Why do you choose it? Come, come away!

  I blinked. Snow­flakes clung to my eye­lashes, and I was stand­ing in the dark, chilled and shak­ing. A short dis­tance from me, a wolf stood up and shook him­self all over. Tail out flat, ears up, he came to me, and rubbed his head along my leg and with his nose gave my cold hand a flip. I went down on one knee and hugged him, felt the warmth of his ruff against my hands, the solid­ity of his muscle and bone. He smelled good, clean and wild. ‘We are what we are, brother. Eat well,’ I told him. I rubbed his ears briefly, and then stood. As he picked up the sack of bones to drag them into the den he’d scuffed out un­der the cot­tage, I turned away. The lights of Buck­keep were al­most blind­ing, but I went to­ward them any­way. I could not have said why just then. But I did it.

  TEN

  Fool’s Er­rand

  In times of peace, the teach­ing of the Skill was re­stric­ted to those of royal blood, to keep the ma­gic more ex­clus­ive and re­duce the chance of it be­ing turned against the King. Thus, when Ga­len be­came ap­pren­tice to Skill­mas­ter So­li­city, his du­ties con­sisted of as­sist­ing in com­plet­ing the train­ing of Chiv­alry and Ver­ity. No oth­ers were re­ceiv­ing in­struc­tion at that time. Regal, a del­ic­ate child, was judged by his mother to be too sickly to with­stand the rigours of the Skill train­ing. Thus, after So­li­city’s un­timely death, Ga­len came to the title of Skill­mas­ter, but had few du­ties. Some, at least, felt that the time he had served as ap­pren­tice to So­li­city was in­suf­fi­cient to be the full train­ing of a Skill­mas­ter. Oth­ers have averred that he never pos­sessed the Skill strength ne­ces­sary to be a true Skill­mas­ter. In any case, dur­ing those years he had no op­por­tun­ity to prove him­self, and dis­prove his crit­ics. There were no young princes or prin­cesses to train dur­ing the years that Ga­len was Skill­mas­ter.

  It was only with the Red Ship raids that it was de­cided that the circle of those trained in the Skill must be ex­pan­ded. A proper co­terie had not ex­is­ted for years. Tra­di­tion tells us that in pre­vi­ous troubles with the Outis­landers, it was not un­usual for three, or even four co­ter­ies to ex­ist. These usu­ally con­sisted of six to eight mem­bers, mu­tu­ally chosen, well suited to be bon­ded among them­selves, and with at least one mem­ber pos­sess­ing a strong af­fin­ity with the reign­ing mon­arch. This key mem­ber re­por­ted dir­ectly to the mon­arch all that his co­terie mem­bers re­layed to him, if they were a mes­saging, or in­form­a­tion-gath­er­ing co­terie. Other co­ter­ies ex­is­ted to pool strength and ex­tend to the mon­arch their Skilling re­sources as he might need them. The key mem­bers in these co­ter­ies were of­ten re­ferred to as a King’s or Queen’s Man or Wo­man. Very rarely, such a one ex­is­ted in­de­pend­ent of any co­terie or train­ing, but simply as one who had such an af­fin­ity for the mon­arch that strength could be tapped, usu­ally by a phys­ical touch. From this key mem­ber, the mon­arch could draw en­dur­ance as needed to sus­tain a Skilling ef­fort. By cus­tom, a co­terie was named after its key mem­ber. Thus we have le­gendary ex­amples such as Cross­fire’s Co­terie.

  Ga­len chose to ig­nore all tra­di­tion in the cre­ation of his first and only co­terie. Ga­len’s Co­terie came to be named after the Skill­mas­ter who fash­ioned it, and re­tained that name even after his death. Rather than cre­at­ing a pool of Skilled ones and let­ting a co­terie emerge from it, Ga­len him­self se­lec­ted those who would be mem­bers of it. The co­terie lacked the in­ternal bond­ing of the le­gendary groups, and their truest af­fin­ity was to the Skill­mas­ter rather than to the King. Thus, the key mem­ber, ini­tially Au­gust, re­por­ted to Ga­len fully as of­ten as he re­por­ted to King Shrewd or King-in-Wait­ing Ver­ity. With the death of Ga­len and the blast­ing of Au­gust’s Skill sense, Se­rene rose to be key mem­ber of Ga­len’s Co­terie. The other sur­viv­ing mem­bers of the group were Justin, Will, Car­rod and Burl.

  By night I ran as a wolf.

  The first time I thought it a sin­gu­larly vivid dream. The wide stretch of white snow wi
th the inky tree shad­ows spilled on it, the elu­sive scents on the cold wind, the ri­dicu­lous fun of bound­ing and dig­ging after shrews that ven­tured out of their winter bur­rows. I awoke clear-minded and good-tempered.

  But the next night I dreamed again as vividly. I awoke know­ing that when I blocked from Ver­ity and hence my­self my dreams of Molly, I left my­self wide to the wolf’s night thoughts. Here was a whole realm where neither Ver­ity nor any Skilled one could fol­low me. It was a world bereft of court in­trigues or plot­ting, of wor­ries and plans. My wolf lived in the present. I found his mind clean of the clut­ter­ing de­tail of memor­ies. From day to day, he car­ried only that ne­ces­sary to his sur­vival. He did not re­mem­ber how many shrews he had killed two nights ago, but only lar­ger things, such as which game yiel­ded the most rab­bits to chase or where the spring ran swift enough that it never iced over.

  This, then, was when and how I first showed him how to hunt. We did not do so well at first. I still arose very early each morn­ing, to take him food as needed. I told my­self that it was but a small corner of my life that I kept for my­self. It was as the wolf had said, not a thing I did, but some­thing I was. Be­sides, I prom­ised my­self, I would not let this join­ing be­come a full bond. Soon, very soon, he would be able to hunt for him­self, and I would send him away to be free. Some­times I told my­self that I per­mit­ted him into my dreams only that I might teach him to hunt, the sooner to set him free. I re­fused to con­sider what Burrich would think of such a thing.

  I re­turned from one of my early morn­ing ex­ped­i­tions to find two sol­diers spar­ring with one an­other in the kit­chen yard. They had staves and were good-naturedly in­sult­ing one an­other as they huffed and shif­ted and traded whacks in the cold clear air. The man I did not know at all, and for a mo­ment I thought both were strangers. Then the wo­man of the pair caught sight of me. ‘Ho! FitzChiv­alry. A word with you!’ she called, but without re­tir­ing her stave.

  I stared at her, try­ing to place her. Her op­pon­ent missed a parry and she clipped him sharply with her stave. As he hopped, she danced back and laughed aloud, an un­mis­tak­able high-pitched whinny. ‘Whistle?’ I asked in­cred­u­lously.

  The wo­man I had just ad­dressed flashed her fam­ous gap-toothed smile, caught her part­ner’s stave a ringing blow and danced back again. ‘Yes?’ she asked breath­lessly. Her spar­ring part­ner, see­ing her oc­cu­pied, cour­teously lowered his stave. Whistle im­me­di­ately dar­ted hers at him. With so much skill he al­most looked lazy, his stave leaped up to counter hers. Again she laughed and held up her hand to ask a truce.

  ‘Yes,’ she re­peated, this time turn­ing to me. ‘I’ve come … that is, I’ve been chosen to come and ask a fa­vour of you.’

  I ges­tured at the clothes she wore. ‘I don’t un­der­stand. You’ve left Ver­ity’s guard?’

  She gave a tiny shrug, but I could see the ques­tion de­lighted her. ‘But not to go far. Queen’s Guard. Vixen badge. See?’ She tugged the front of the short white jacket she wore to hold the fab­ric taut. Good sens­ible wool­len homespun, I saw, and saw too the em­broidered snarling white fox on a purple back­ground. The purple matched the purple of her heavy wool­len trousers. The loose cuff had been tucked into knee-boots. Her part­ner’s garb matched hers. Queen’s Guard. In light of Kettricken’s ad­ven­ture, the uni­form made sense.

  ‘Ver­ity de­cided she needed a guard of her own?’ I asked de­lightedly.

  The smile faded a bit from Whistle’s face. ‘Not ex­actly,’ she hedged, and then straightened as if re­port­ing to me. ‘We de­cided she needed a Queen’s Guard. Me and some of the oth­ers that rode with her the other day. We got to talk­ing about … everything, later. About how she handled her­self out there. And back here. And how she came here, all alone. We talked about it then, that someone should get per­mis­sion to form up a guard for her. But none of us really knew how to ap­proach it. We knew it was needed, but no one else seemed to be pay­ing much at­ten­tion … but then last week, at the gate, I heard you got pretty hot about how she’d gone out, on foot and alone, and no one at her back. Well you did! I was in the other room, and I heard!’

  I bit back my protest, nod­ded curtly, and Whistle went on. ‘So. Well, we just did. Those of us who felt we wanted to wear the purple and white just said so. It was a pretty even split. It was time to take in some new blood any­way; most of Ver­ity’s guard was get­ting a bit long in the tooth. And soft, from too much time in the keep. So we re­formed, giv­ing rank to some who should have made it long ago, if there’d been any open­ings to fill, and tak­ing in some re­cruits to fill in where needed. It all worked out per­fectly. These new­comers will give us some­thing to hone our skills on while we teach them. The Queen will have her own guard, when she wants one. Or needs one.’

  ‘I see.’ I was be­gin­ning to get an un­easy feel­ing. ‘And what was the fa­vour you wanted of me?’

  ‘Ex­plain it to Ver­ity. Tell the Queen she has a guard.’ She said the words simply and quietly.

  ‘This walks close to dis­loy­alty,’ I said just as simply. ‘Sol­diers of Ver­ity’s own guard, set­ting aside his col­ours to take on his queen’s …’

  ‘Some might see it that way. Some might speak it that way.’ Her eyes met mine squarely, and the smile was gone from her face. ‘But you know it is not. It’s a needed thing. Your … Chiv­alry would have seen it, would have had a guard for her be­fore she even ar­rived here. But King-in-Wait­ing Ver­ity … well, this is no dis­loy­alty to him. We’ve served him well, be­cause we love him. Still do. This is those who’ve al­ways watched his back, fall­ing back and re­form­ing to watch his back even bet­ter. That’s all. He’s got a good queen, is what we think. We don’t want to see him lose her. That was all. We don’t think any the less of our King-in-Wait­ing. You know that.’

  I did. But still. I looked away from her plea, shook my head and tried to think. Why me? a part of me de­man­ded an­grily. Then I knew, that in the mo­ment I’d lost my tem­per and be­rated the guard for not pro­tect­ing their queen, I’d vo­lun­teered for this. Burrich had warned me about not re­mem­ber­ing my place. ‘I will speak to King-in-Wait­ing Ver­ity. And to the Queen, if he ap­proves this.’

  Whistle flashed her smile again. ‘We knew you’d do it for us. Thanks, Fitz.’

  As quickly she was spin­ning away from me, stave at the ready as she danced threat­en­ingly to­ward her part­ner, who gave ground grudgingly. With a sigh, I turned away from the court­yard. I had thought Molly would be fetch­ing wa­ter at this time. I’d hoped for a glimpse of her. But she was not, and I left feel­ing dis­ap­poin­ted. I knew I should not play at such games, but some days I could not res­ist the tempta­tion. I left the court­yard.

  The last few days had be­come a spe­cial sort of self-tor­ture for me. I re­fused to al­low my­self to see Molly again, but could not res­ist shad­ow­ing her. So I was in the kit­chen but a mo­ment after she had left, fancy­ing I could still catch the trace of her per­fume in the air. Or I sta­tioned my­self in the Great Hall of an even­ing, and tried to be where I could watch her without be­ing no­ticed. No mat­ter what amuse­ment was offered, min­strel or poet or pup­pet­eer, or just folk talk­ing and work­ing on their han­di­crafts, my eyes would be drawn al­ways to wherever Molly might be. She looked so sober and de­mure in her dark blue skirts and blouse, and she had never a glance for me. Al­ways she spoke with the other keep wo­men, or on the rare even­ings when Pa­tience chose to des­cend, she sat be­side her and at­ten­ded to her with a fo­cus of at­ten­tion that denied I even ex­is­ted. Some­times I thought my brief en­counter with her had been a dream. But at night I could go back to my room, and take out the shirt I had hid­den in the bot­tom of my clothes chest, and if I held it close to my face, I fan­cied I could still smell the faint trace of her per­fume upon it. And so I en­dured.

  A num­ber of days
had passed since we had burned the Forged ones on their fu­neral pyre. In ad­di­tion to the form­a­tion of the Queen’s Guard, other changes were afoot within and without the keep. Two other mas­ter boat-build­ers, un­summoned, had come to vo­lun­teer their skills for the build­ing of the ships. Ver­ity had been de­lighted. But even more so had Queen Kettricken been moved, for it was to her that they presen­ted them­selves, say­ing that they de­sired to be of ser­vice. Their ap­pren­tices came with them, to swell the ranks of those work­ing in the shipyards. Now the lamps burned both be­fore dawn and after the sun’s set­ting, and work pro­ceeded at a break­neck pace. So Ver­ity was away all the more, and Kettricken, when I called on her, was more sub­dued than ever. I temp­ted her with books or out­ings to no avail. She spent most of her time sit­ting near idle at her loom, grow­ing more pale and list­less with every passing day. Her dark mood in­fec­ted those ladies who at­ten­ded her, so that to visit her room was as cheery as keep­ing a death watch.

  I had not ex­pec­ted to find Ver­ity in his study, and was not dis­ap­poin­ted. He was down at the boat-sheds, as al­ways. I left word with Charim to ask that I be summoned whenever Ver­ity might have the time to see me. Then, with a re­solve to keep my­self busy and to do as Chade sug­ges­ted, I re­turned to my room. I took both dice and tally sticks with me, and headed for the Queen’s cham­bers.

  I had re­solved to teach her some of the games of chance that the lords and ladies were fond of, in the hopes that she might ex­pand her circle of en­ter­tain­ments. I also hoped, with less ex­pect­a­tion, that such games might draw her to so­cial­ize more widely and to de­pend less on my com­pan­ion­ship. Her bleak mood was be­gin­ning to bur­den me with its op­press­ive­ness, so that I of­ten heart­ily wished to be away from her.