Assassin 3 - Royal Assassin (2 page)

There was a looking glass in the room. At first,
I smiled at my reflection. Not even King Shrewd's fool dressed as
gaily as this. But above the bright garments, my face was thin and
pale, making my dark eyes too large, while my fever-shorn hair,
black and bristly, stood up like a dog's hackles. My illness had
ravaged me. But I told myself I was finally on my way home. I
turned aside from the mirror. As I packed the few small gifts I had
selected to take home to my friends, the unsteadiness grew in my
hands.

For the last time Burrich, Hands, and I sat down
to break fast with Jonqui. I thanked her once again for all she had
done toward healing me. I picked up a spoon for the porridge, and
my hand gave a twitch. I dropped it. I watched the silvery shape
fall and fell after it.

The next thing I remember is the shadowy corners
of the bedroom. I lay for a long time, not moving or speaking. I
went from a state of emptiness to knowing I had had another
seizure. It had passed; both body and mind were mine to command
once more. But I no longer wanted them. At fifteen years old, an
age when most were coming into their full strength, I could no
longer trust my body to perform the simplest task. It was damaged,
and I rejected it fiercely. I felt savagely vindictive toward the
flesh and bone that enclosed me, and wished for some way to express
my raging disappointment. Why couldn't I heal? Why hadn't I
recovered?

It's going to take time, that's all. Wait until
half a year has passed since the day you were damaged. Then assess
yourself. It was Jonqui the healer. She was sitting near the
fireplace, but her chair was drawn back into the shadows. I hadn't
noticed her until she spoke. She rose slowly, as if the winter made
her bones ache, and came to stand beside my bed.

I don't want to live like an old man.

She pursed her lips. Sooner or later you will
have to. At least, I so wish that you will survive that many years.
I am old, and so is my brother King Eyod. We do not find it so
great a burden.

I should not mind an old man's body if the years
had earned it for me. But I can't go on like this.

She shook her head, puzzled. Of course you can.
Healing is tedious sometimes, but to say that you cannot go on ...
I do not understand. It is, perhaps, a difference in our
languages?

I took a breath to speak, but at that moment
Burrich came in. Awake? Feeling better?

Awake. Not feeling better, I grumbled. Even to
myself, I sounded like a fretful child. Burrich and Jonqui
exchanged glances over me. She came to the bedside, patted my
shoulder, and then left the room silently. Their obvious tolerance
was galling, and my impotent anger rose like a tide. Why can't you
heal me? I demanded of Burrich.

He was taken aback by the accusation in my
question. It's not that simple, he began.

Why not? I hauled myself up straight in the bed.
I've seen you cure all manner of ailments in beasts. Sickness,
broken bones, worms, mange ... you're stablemaster, and I've seen
you treat them all. Why can't you cure me?

You're not a dog, Fitz, Burrich said quietly.
It's simpler with a beast, when it's seriously ill. I've taken
drastic measures, sometimes, telling myself, well, if the animal
dies, at least it's not suffering anymore, and this may heal it. I
can't do that with you. You're not a beast.

That's no answer! Half the time the guards come
to you instead of the healer. You took the head of an arrow out of
Den. You laid his whole arm open to do it! When the healer said
that Greydin's foot was too infected and she'd have to lose it, she
came to you, and you saved it. And all the time the healer was
saying the infection would spread and she'd die and it would be
your fault.

Burrich folded his lips, quelling his temper. If
I'd been healthy, I'd have been wary of his wrath. But his
restraint with me during my convalescence had made me bold. When he
spoke, his voice was quiet and controlled. Those were risky
healings, yes. But the folk who wanted them done knew the risks.
And, he said, raising his voice to cover the objection I'd been
about to utter, they were simple things. I knew the cause. Take out
the arrowhead and haft from his arm and clean it up. Poultice and
draw the infection from Greydin's foot. But your sickness isn't
that simple. Neither Jonqui nor I really know what's wrong with
you. Is it the aftermath of the poison Kettricken fed you when she
thought you had come to kill her brother? Is this the effects of
the poisoned wine that Regal arranged for you? Or is it from the
beating you took afterward? From being near drowned? Or did all
those things combine to do this to you? We don't know, and so we
don't know how to cure you. We just don't know.

His voice clenched on his last words, and I
suddenly saw how his sympathy for me overlay his frustration. He
paced a few steps, then halted to stare into the fire. We've talked
long about it. Jonqui has much in her Mountain lore that I have
never heard of before. And I've told her of cures I know. But we
both agreed the best thing to do was give you time to heal. You're
in no danger of dying that we can see. Possibly, in time, your own
body can cast out the last vestiges of the poison, or heal whatever
damage was done inside you.

Or, I added quietly, it's possible that I'll be
this way the rest of my life. That the poison or the beating
damaged something permanently. Damn Regal, to kick me like that
when I was trussed already.

Burrich stood as if turned to ice. Then he
sagged into the chair in the shadows. Defeat was in his voice. Yes.
That is just as possible as the other. But don't you see we have no
choice? I could physick you to try to force the poison out of your
body. But if it's damage, not poison, all I would do was weaken
you, so that your body's own healing would take that much longer.
He stared into the flames, and lifted a hand to touch a streak of
white at his temple. I was not the only one who'd fallen to Regal's
treachery. Burrich himself was but newly recovered from a skull
blow that would have killed anyone less thickheaded than he. I knew
he had endured long days of dizziness and blurred vision. I did not
recall he had complained at all. I had the decency to feel a bit of
shame.

So what do I do?

Burrich started as if roused from dozing. What
we've been doing. Wait. Eat. Rest. Be easy on yourself. And see
what happens. Is that so terrible?

I ignored his question. And if I don't get
better? If I just stay like this, where the tremors or fits can
come over me at any time?

His answer was slow in coming. Live with it.
Many folk have to live with worse. Most of the time you're fine.
You're not blind. You're not paralyzed. You've your wits, still.
Stop defining yourself by what you can't do. Why don't you consider
what you didn't lose?

What I didn't lose? What I didn't lose? My anger
rose like a covey of birds taking flight and likewise driven by
panic. I'm helpless, Burrich. I can't go back to Buckkeep like
this! I'm useless. I'm worse than useless, I'm a waiting victim. If
I could go back and batter Regal into a pulp, that might be worth
it. Instead, I will have to sit at table with Prince Regal, to be
civil and deferential to a man who plotted to overthrow Verity and
kill me as an added spice. I can't endure him seeing me tremble
with weakness, or suddenly fall in a seizure. I don't want to see
him smile at what he has made me; I don't want to watch him savor
his triumph. He will try to kill me again. We both know that.
Perhaps he has learned he is no match for Verity, perhaps he will
respect his older brother's reign and new wife. But I doubt he will
extend that to me. I'll be one more way he can strike at Verity.
And when he comes, what shall I be doing? Sitting by the fire like
a palsied old man, doing nothing. Nothing! All I've been trained
for, all Hod's weaponry instruction, all Fedwren's careful
teachings about lettering, even all you've taught me about taking
care of beasts! All a waste! I can do none of it. I'm just a
bastard again, Burrich. And someone once told me that a royal
bastard is only kept alive so long as he is useful. I was
practically shouting at him as I said the last words. But even in
my fury and despair, I did not speak aloud of Chade and my training
as an assassin. At that, too, I was useless now. All my stealth and
sleight of hand, all the precise ways to kill a man by touch, the
painstaking mixing of poisons, all were denied me by my own
rattling body.

Burrich sat quietly, hearing me out. When my
breath and my anger ran out and I sat gasping in my bed, clasping
my traitorously trembling hands together, he spoke
calmly.

So. Are you saying we don't go back to
Buckkeep?

That put me off balance. We?

My life is pledged to the man who wears that
earring. There's a long story behind that, one that perhaps I'll
tell you someday. Patience had no right to give it to you. I
thought it had gone with Prince Chivalry to his grave. She probably
thought it just a simple piece of jewelry her husband had worn,
hers to keep or to give. In any wise, you wear it now. Where you
go, I follow.

I lifted my hand to the bauble. It was a tiny
blue stone caught up in a web of silver net. I started to unfasten
it.

Don't do that, Burrich said. The words were
quiet, deeper than a dog's growl. But his voice held both threat
and command. I dropped my hand away, unable to question him on this
at least. It felt strange that the man who had watched over me
since I was an abandoned child now put his future into my hands.
Yet there he sat before the fire and waited for my words. I studied
what I could see of him in the dance of firelight. He had once
seemed a surly giant to me, dark and threatening, but also a savage
protector. Now, for perhaps the first time, I studied him as a man.
The dark hair and eyes were prevalent in those who carried
Outislander blood, and in this we resembled each other. But his
eyes were brown, not black, and the wind brought a redness to his
cheeks above his curling beard that bespoke a fairer ancestor
somewhere. When he walked, he limped, very noticeably on cold days.
It was the legacy of turning aside a boar that had been trying to
kill Chivalry. He was not so big as he had once seemed to me. If I
kept on growing, I would probably be taller than he before another
year was out. Nor was he massively muscled, but instead had a
compactness to him that was a readiness of both muscle and mind. It
was not his size that had made him both feared and respected at
Buckkeep, but his black temper and his tenacity. Once, when I was
very young, I had asked him if he had ever lost a fight. He had
just subdued a willful young stallion and was in the stall with
him, calming him. Burrich had grinned, teeth showing white as a
wolf's. The sweat had stood out in droplets on his forehead and was
running down his cheeks into his dark beard. He spoke to me over
the side of the stall. Lost a fight? he'd asked, still out of
breath. The fight isn't over until you win it, Fitz. That's all you
have to remember. No matter what the other man thinks. Or the
horse.

I wondered if I were a fight he had to win. He'd
often told me that I was the last task Chivalry had given him. My
father had abdicated the throne, shamed by my existence. Yet he'd
given me over to this man, and told him to raise me well. Maybe
Burrich thought he hadn't finished that task yet.

What do you think I should do? I asked humbly.
Neither the words nor the humility came easily.

Heal, he said after a few moments. Take the time
to heal. It can't be forced. He glanced down at his own legs
stretched toward the fire. Something not a smile twisted his
lips.

Do you think we should go back? I
pressed.

He leaned back into the chair. He crossed his
booted feet at the ankle and stared into the fire. He took a long
time answering. But finally he said, almost reluctantly, If we
don't, Regal will think he has won. And he will try to kill Verity.
Or at least do whatever he thinks he must to make a grab for his
brother's crown. I am sworn to my king, Fitz, as are you. Right now
that is King Shrewd. But Verity is king-in-waiting. I don't think
it right that he should have waited in vain.

He has other soldiers, more capable than
I.

Does that free you from your promise?

You argue like a priest.

I don't argue at all. I merely asked you a
question. And one other. What do you forsake, if you leave Buckkeep
behind?

It was my turn to fall silent. I did think of my
king, and all I had sworn to him. I thought of Prince Verity, and
his bluff heartiness and open ways with me. I recalled old Chade
and his slow smile when I had finally mastered some arcane bit of
lore. Lady Patience and her maid Lacey, Fedwren and Hod, even Cook
and Mistress Hasty the seamstress. There were not so many folk that
had cared for me, but that made them more significant, not less. I
would miss all of them if I never went back to Buckkeep. But what
leaped up in me like an ember rekindled was my memory of Molly. And
somehow, I found myself speaking of her to Burrich, and him just
nodding as I spilled out the whole story.

When he did speak, he told me only that he had
heard that the Beebalm Chandlery closed when the old drunkard that
owned it had died in debt. His daughter had been forced to go to
relatives in another town. He did not know what town, but he was
certain I could find it out, if I were determined. Know your heart
before you do, Fitz, he added. If you've nothing to offer her, let
her go. Are you crippled? Only if you decide so. But if you're
determined that you're a cripple now, then perhaps you've no right
to go and seek her out. I don't think you'd want her pity. It's a
poor substitute for love. And then he rose and left me, to stare
into the fire and think.