Assassin’s Quest

‘Whoa! Whoa!’ Chade sat up very straight. ‘The rumour about Kettricken … you remember that from the night Burrich and I discussed it.’

I looked aside from him. ‘In the way that you might remember a dream you once had. In underwater colours, and the events out of order. Only that I heard you say something about it.’

‘And that about Verity?’ The sudden tension in him put a chill of dread down my spine.

‘He Skilled to me that night,’ I said quietly. ‘I told you then that he was alive.’

‘DAMN!’ Chade leaped to his feet and hopped about in rage. It was a performance I had never witnessed before and I stared at him, caught between amazement and fear. ‘Burrich and I gave your words no credence! Oh, we were pleased to hear you utter them, and when you ran off, he said, “Let the boy go, that’s as much as he can do tonight, he remembers his prince”. That’s all we thought it was. Damn and damn!’ He halted suddenly and pointed a finger at me. ‘Report. Tell me everything.’

I fumbled after what I recalled. It was as difficult to sort it out as if I had seen it through the wolf’s eyes. ‘He was cold. But alive. Either tired or hurt. Slowed, somehow. He was trying to get through and I was pushing him away so he kept suggesting I drink. To get my walls down, I suppose …’

‘Where was he?’

‘I don’t know. Snow. A forest.’ I groped after ghostly memories. ‘I don’t think he knew where he was.’

Chade’s green eyes bored into me. ‘Can you reach him at all, feel him at all? Can you tell me he still lives?’

I shook my head. My heart was starting to pound in my chest.

‘Can you Skill to him now?’

I shook my head. Tension tightened my belly.

Chade’s frustration grew with every shake of my head. ‘Damn it, Fitz, you must!’

‘I don’t want to!’ I cried out suddenly. I was on my feet.

Run away! Run away fast!

I did. It was suddenly that simple. I fled Chade and the hut as if all the devils of the Outislander hell-islands were after me. Chade called after me but I refused to hear his words. I ran, and as soon as I was in the shelter of the trees, Nighteyes was beside me.

Not that way, Heart of the Pack is that way, he warned me. So we bolted uphill, away from the creek, up to a big tangle of brambles that overhung a bank where Nighteyes sheltered on stormy nights. What was it? What was the danger? Nighteyes demanded.

He wanted me to go back, I admitted after a time. I tried to frame it in a way that Nighteyes would understand. He wanted me to … be not a wolf any more.

A sudden chill went up my back. In explaining to Nighteyes, I had brought myself face to face with the truth. The choice was simple. Be a wolf, with no past, no future, only today. Or a man, twisted by his past, whose heart pumped fear with his blood. I could walk on two legs, and know shame and cowering as a way of life. Or run on four, and forget until even Molly was just a pleasant scent I recalled. I sat still beneath the brambles, my hand resting lightly on Nighteyes’ back, my eyes staring into a place only I could see. Slowly the light changed and evening deepened to dusk. My decision grew as slowly and inevitably as the creeping dark. My heart cried out against it, but the alternatives were unbearable. I steeled my will to it.

It was dark when I went back. I crept home with my tail between my legs. It was strange to come back to the cabin as a wolf again, to smell the rising wood smoke as a man’s thing, and to blink at the fire’s glow through the shutters. Reluctantly I peeled my mind free of Nighteyes’.

Would you not rather hunt with me?

I would much rather hunt with you. But I cannot this night.

Why?

I shook my head. The edge of decision was so thin and new, I dared not test it by speaking. I stopped at the edge of the woods to brush the leaves and dirt from my clothes and to smooth back my hair and retie it in a tail. I hoped my face was not dirty. I squared my shoulders and forced myself to walk back to the cabin, to open the door and enter and look at them. I felt horribly vulnerable. They’d been sharing information about me. Between the two of them they knew almost all of my secrets. My tattered dignity now dangled in shreds. How could I stand before them and expect to be treated as a man? Yet I could not fault them for it. They had been trying to save me. From myself, it was true, but save me all the same. Not their fault that what they had saved was scarcely worth having.

They were at table when I entered. If I had run off like this a few weeks ago, Burrich would have leapt up, to shake me and cuff me when I returned. I knew we were past that sort of thing now but the memory gave me a wariness I could not completely disguise. However, his face showed only relief, while Chade looked at me with shame and concern.

‘I did not mean to press you that hard,’ he said earnestly, before I could speak.

‘You didn’t,’ I said quietly. ‘You but put your finger on the spot where I had been pressing myself the most. Sometimes a man doesn’t know how badly he’s hurt until someone else probes the wound.’

I drew up my chair. After weeks of simple food to see cheese and honey and elderberry wine all set out on the table at once was almost shocking. There was a loaf of bread as well to supplement the trout Burrich had caught. For a time we just ate, without talk other than table requests. It seemed to ease the strangeness. But the moment the meal was finished and cleared away, the tension came back.

‘I understand your question now,’ Burrich said abruptly. Chade and I both looked at him in surprise. ‘A few days ago, when you asked what we would do next. Understand that I had given Verity up as lost. Kettricken carried his heir, but she was safe now in the Mountains. There was no more I could do for her. If I intervened in any way, I might betray her to others. Best to let her stay hidden, safe with her father’s people. By the time her child came to an age to reach for his throne … well, if I was not in my grave by then, I supposed I would do what I could. For now, I saw my service to my king as a thing of the past. So when you asked me I saw only the need to take care of ourselves.’

‘And now?’ I asked quietly.

‘If Verity lives still, then a pretender has claimed his throne. I am sworn to come to my king’s aid. As is Chade. As are you.’ They were both looking at me very hard.

Run away again.

I can’t.

Burrich flinched as if I had poked him with a pin. I wondered, if I moved for the door, would he fling himself upon me to stop me? But he did not speak or move, just waited.

‘Not I. That Fitz died,’ I said bluntly.

Burrich looked as if I had struck him. But Chade asked quietly, ‘Then why does he still wear King Shrewd’s pin?’

I reached up and drew it out of my collar. Here, I had intended to say, here, you take it and all that goes with it. I’m done with it. I haven’t the spine for it. Instead I sat and looked at it.

‘Elderberry wine?’ Chade offered, but not to me.

‘It’s cool tonight. I’ll make tea,’ Burrich countered.

Chade nodded. Still I sat, holding the red-and-silver pin in my hand. I remembered my king’s hands as he’d pushed the pin through the folds of a boy’s shirt. ‘There,’ he had said. ‘Now you are mine.’ But he was dead now. Did that free me from my promise? And the last thing he had said to me? ‘What have I made of you?’ I pushed that question aside once more. More important, what was I now? Was I now what Regal had made of me? Or could I escape that?

‘Regal told me,’ I said consideringly, ‘that I had but to scratch myself to find Nameless the dog-boy.’ I looked up and forced myself to meet Burrich’s eyes. ‘It might be nice to be him.’

‘Would it?’ Burrich asked. ‘There was a time when you did not think so. Who are you, Fitz, if you are not the King’s Man? What are you? Where would you go?’

Where would I go, were I free? To Molly, cried my heart. I shook my head, thrusting aside the idea before it could sear me. No. Even before I had lost my life, I had lost her. I considered my empty, bitter freedom. There was only one place I could go, really. I set my will, looked up, and met Burrich’s eyes with a firm gaze. ‘I’m going away. Anywhere. To the Chalced States, to Bingtown. I’m good with animals, I’m a decent scribe, too. I could make a living.’

‘No doubt of it. But a living is not a life,’ Burrich pointed out.

‘Well, what is?’ I demanded, suddenly and truly angry. Why did they have to make this so hard? Words and thoughts suddenly gouted from me like poison from a festering wound. ‘You’d have me devote myself to my king and sacrifice all else to it, as you did. Give up the woman I love to follow a king like a dog at his heels, as you did. And when that king abandoned you? You swallowed it, you raised his bastard for him. Then they took it all away from you, stable, horses, dogs, men to command. They left you nothing, not even a roof over your head, those kings you were sworn to. So what did you do? With nothing else left to you, you hung onto me, dragged the Bastard out of a coffin and forced him back to life. A life I hate, a life I don’t want!’ I glared at him accusingly.

He stared at me, bereft of words. I wanted to stop, but something drove me on. The anger felt good, like a cleansing fire. I clenched my hands into fists as I demanded, ‘Why are you always there? Why do you always stand me up again, for them to knock down? For what? To make me owe you something? To give you a claim on my life because you don’t have the spine to have a life of your own? All you want to do is make me just like you, a man with no life of my own, a man who gives it all up for my king. Can’t you see there’s more to being alive than giving it all up for someone else?’

I met his eyes and then looked away from the pained astonishment I saw there. ‘No,’ I said dully after a breath. ‘You don’t see, you can’t know. You can’t even imagine what you’ve taken away from me. I should be dead, but you wouldn’t let me die. All with the best of intentions, always believing you were doing what was right, no matter how it hurt me. But who gave you that right over me? Who decreed you could do this to me?’

There was no sound but my own voice in the room. Chade was frozen, and the look on Burrich’s face only made me angrier. I saw him gather himself up. He reached for his pride and dignity as he said quietly, ‘Your father gave me that task, Fitz. I did my best by you, boy. The last thing my prince told me. Chivalry said to me, “Raise him well.” And I …’

‘Gave up the next decade of your life to raising someone else’s bastard,’ I cut in with savage sarcasm. ‘Took care of me, because it was the only thing you really knew how to do. All your life, Burrich, you’ve been looking after someone else, putting someone else first, sacrificing any kind of a normal life for someone else’s benefit. Loyal as a hound. Is that a life? Haven’t you ever thought of being your own man, and making your own decisions? Or is a fear of that what pushes you down the neck of a bottle?’ My voice had risen to a shout. When I ran out of words, I stared at him, my chest rising and falling as I panted out my fury.

As an angry boy, I’d often promised myself that someday he would pay for every cuff he had given me, for every stall I’d had to muck out when I thought I was too tired to stand. With those words, I kept that sulky little promise tenfold. His eyes were wide and he was speechless with pain. I saw his chest heave once, as if to catch a breath knocked out of him. The shock in his eyes was the same as if I had suddenly plunged a knife into him.