Assassin's Quest (60 page)

I sighed. I understood all too well. “I never knew Jhaampe to host intrigue before,” I observed.

He chuckled. “You have visited here only briefly before this. Believe me, Jhaampe breeds intrigues every bit as convoluted as Buckkeep did. As strangers here, we are wise to avoid being drawn into them, as much as we can.”

“Save for the ones we bring with us,” I told him, and he smiled bitterly as he nodded.

The day was bright and crisp. The sky glimpsed overhead through the dark evergreen boughs was an endless blue. A small breeze ran alongside us, rattling dry snow crystals across the frozen tops of the snowbanks. The dry snow squeaked under our boots and the cold roughly kissed my freshly shaven cheeks. From farther off in the village, I could hear the shouts of children at play. Nighteyes pricked his ears to that, but continued to shadow us. The small voices in the distance reminded me of seabirds crying and I suddenly missed the shores of Buck acutely.

“You had a seizure last night,” the Fool said quietly. It was not quite a question.

“I know,” I said briefly.

“Kettle seemed very distressed by it. She questioned Chade most closely about the herbs he prepared for you. And when they did not rouse you as he had said they would, she went off in her corner. She sat there most of the night, knitting loudly and peering at him disapprovingly. It was a relief to me when they all finally left.”

I wondered if Starling had stayed, but did not ask it. I did not even want to know why it mattered to me.

“Who is Kettle?” the Fool asked abruptly.

“Who is Kettle?” I asked, startled.

“I believe I just said that.”

“Kettle is . . .” It suddenly seemed odd that I knew so little about someone I had traveled with so long. “I think she grew up in Buck. And then she traveled, and studied scrolls and prophecies, and returned to seek the White Prophet.” I shrugged at the scantiness of my knowledge.

“Tell me. Do you find her . . . portentous?”

“What?”

“Do you not feel there is something about her, something that . . .” He shook his head angrily. It was the first time I had ever seen the Fool searching for words. “Sometimes, I feel she is significant. That she is wound up with us. Other times, she seems but a nosy old woman with an unfortunate lack of taste in her choice of companions.”

“You mean me,” I laughed.

“No. I mean that interfering minstrel.”

“Why do you and Starling dislike one another so?” I asked tiredly.

“It is not dislike, dear Fitzy. On my part, it is disinterest. Unfortunately, she cannot conceive of a man who could look at her with no interest in bedding her. She takes my simple dismissal of her as an insult, and strives to make of it some lack or fault in me. Whilst I take offense at her proprietary attitude toward you. She has no true affection for Fitz, you know, only for being able to say she knew FitzChivalry.”

I was silent, fearing that what he said was true. And so we came to the palace at Jhaampe. It was as unlike Buckkeep as I could imagine. I have heard it said that the dwellings at Jhaampe owe their origins to the dome-shaped tents some of the nomadic tribes still use. The smaller dwellings were still tentlike enough that they did not startle me as the palace still did. The living heart tree that was its centerpole towered immensely above us. Other secondary trees had been patiently contorted over years to form supports for the walls. When this living framework had been established, mats of barkcloth had been draped gracefully over them to form the basis for the smoothly curving walls. Plastered with a sort of clay and then painted in bright colors, the houses would always remind me of tulip buds or mushroom caps. Despite its great size, the palace seemed organic, as if it had sprouted up from the rich soil of the ancient forest that sheltered it.

Size made it a palace. There were no other outward signs, no flags, no royal guards flanking the doors. No one sought to bar our entrance. The Fool opened the carved wood-framed doors of a side entrance, and we went in. I followed him as he threaded his way through a maze of freestanding chambers. Other rooms were on platforms above us, reached by ladders or, for the grander ones, staircases of wood. The walls of the chambers were flimsy things, with some temporary rooms of no more than barkcloth tapestries stretched on frameworks. The inside of the palace was but only slightly warmer than the forest outside. The individual chambers were heated by freestanding braziers in the winter.

I followed the Fool to a chamber whose outer walls were decorated with delicate illustrations of waterbirds. This was a more permanent room, with sliding wooden doors likewise carved with birds. I could hear the notes of Starling’s harp from within and the murmur of low voices. He tapped at the door, waited briefly, and then slid it open to admit us. Kettricken was within, and the Fool’s friend Jofron and several other people I did not recognize. Starling sat on a low bench to one side, playing softly while Kettricken and the others embroidered a quilt on a frame that almost filled the room. A bright garden of flowers was being created on the quilt top. Chade sat not far from Starling. He was dressed in a white shirt and dark leggings with a long wool vest, gaily embroidered, over the shirt. His hair was pulled back in a gray warrior’s tail, with the leather band on his brow bearing the buck sigil. He looked decades younger than he had at Buckkeep. They spoke together more softly than the music.

Kettricken looked up, needle in hand, and greeted us calmly. She introduced me to the others as Tom, and politely asked if I were recovering well from my injury. I told her I was, and she bade me be seated and rest myself a bit. The Fool circled the quilt, complimented Jofron on her stitchery, and when she invited him, he took a place beside her. He took up a needle and floss, threaded it, and began adding butterflies of his own invention to one corner of the quilt while he and Jofron talked softly of gardens they had known. He seemed very at ease. I felt at a loss, sitting idly in a room full of quietly occupied people. I waited for Kettricken to speak to me, but she went on with her work. Starling’s eyes met mine and she smiled but stiffly. Chade avoided my glance, looking past me as if we were strangers.

There was conversation in the room, but it was soft and intermittent, mostly requests for a skein of thread to be passed, or comments on each other’s work. Starling played the old familiar Buck ballads, but wordlessly. No one spoke to me or paid me any mind. I waited.

After a time, I began to wonder if it was a subtle form of punishment. I tried to remain relaxed, but tension repeatedly built up in me. Every few minutes I would remember to unclench my jaws and loosen my shoulders. It took some time for me to see a similar anxiety in Kettricken. I had spent many hours attending my lady in Buckkeep when she had first come to court. I had seen her lethargic at her needlework, or lively in her garden, but now she sewed furiously, as if the fate of the Six Duchies depended on her completing this quilt. She was thinner than I recalled, the bones and planes of her face showing more plainly. Her hair, a year after she had cut it to mourn Verity, was still too short for her to confine it well. The pale strands of it constantly crept forward. There were lines in her face, around her eyes and mouth, and she frequently chewed on her lips, a thing I had never seen her do before.

The morning seemed to drag on, but finally one of the young men sat up straight, then stretched and declared his eyes were getting too weary for him to do any more today. He asked the woman at his side if she had a mind to hunt with him today, and she readily agreed. As if this were some sort of signal, the others began to rise and stretch and make their farewells to Kettricken. I was struck at their familiarity with her, until I recalled that here she was not regarded as Queen, but as eventual Sacrifice to the Mountains. Her role among her own folk would never be seen as that of ruler, but as guide and coordinator. Her father King Eyod was known amongst his own folk as the Sacrifice, and was expected to be ever and always unselfishly available to his folk to help in any way they might require. It was a position that was both less regal than that of Buck royalty, and more beloved. I wondered idly if it might not have suited Verity more to have come here and been Kettricken’s consort.

“FitzChivalry.”

I looked up to Kettricken’s command. Only she, I, Starling, Chade, and the Fool remained in the room. I almost looked to Chade for direction. But his eyes had excluded me earlier. I sensed I was on my own here. The tone of Kettricken’s voice made this a formal interview. I stood straight, and then managed a rather stiff bow. “My queen, you summoned me.”

“Explain yourself.”

The wind outside was warmer than her voice. I glanced up at her eyes. Blue ice. I lowered my gaze and took a breath. “Shall I report, my queen?”

“If it will explain your failures, do so.” That startled me. My eyes flew to hers, but though our glances met, there was no meeting. All the girl in Kettricken had burned away, as the impurities are burned and beaten from iron ore in a foundry. With it seemed to have gone any feeling for her husband’s bastard nephew. She sat before me as ruler and judge, not friend. I had not expected to feel that loss so keenly.

Despite my better judgment, I let ice creep into my own voice. “I shall submit to my queen’s judgment on that,” I offered.

She was merciless. She had me start not with my own death, but days before that, when we had first begun plotting to whisk King Shrewd secretly from Buckkeep and Regal’s reach. I stood before her, and had to admit that the Coastal Dukes had approached me with the offer of recognizing me as King-in-Waiting rather than Regal. Worse, I had to tell her that although I had refused that, I had promised to stand with them, assuming the command of Buckkeep Castle and the protection of Buck’s coast. Chade had once warned me that it was as close to treason as made no difference. But I was tired to death of all my secrets, and I relentlessly bared them. More than once I wished Starling were not in the room, for I dreaded hearing my own words made into a song denouncing me. But if my queen deemed her worthy of confidence, it was not my place to question it.

So on I went, down the weary track of days. For the first time, she heard from me how King Shrewd had died in my arms, and how I had hunted down and killed both Serene and Justin in the Great Hall before everyone. When it came to my days in Regal’s dungeon, she had no pity on me. “He had me beaten and starved, and I would have perished there if I had not feigned death,” I said. It was not good enough for her.

No one, not even Burrich, had known a full telling of those days. I steeled myself and launched into it. After a time, my voice began to shake. I faltered in my telling. Then I looked past her at the wall, took a breath, and went on. I glanced at her once, to find her gone white as ice. I stopped thinking of the events behind my words. I heard my own voice dispassionately relating all that had happened. I heard Kettricken draw in her breath when I spoke of Skilling to Verity from my cell. Other than that, there was not a sound in the room. Once my eyes wandered to Chade. I found him sitting, deathly still, his jaw set as if he endured some torment of his own.

I forged my way on through the story, telling without judgment of my own resurrection by Burrich and Chade, of the Wit magic that made it possible and of the days that followed. I told of our angry parting, of my journeys in detail, of the times when I could sense Verity and the brief joinings we shared, of my attempt on Regal’s life, and even of how Verity had unwittingly implanted into my soul his command to come to him. On and on, my voice getting huskier as my throat and mouth dried with the telling. I did not pause nor rest until I had finished telling her of my final staggering trek into Jhaampe. And when at last my full tale of days was told out to her, I continued to stand, emptied and weary. Some people say there is a relief in the sharing of cares and pains. To me there was no catharsis, only an unearthing of rotting corpses of memories, a baring of still suppurating wounds. After a time of silence, I found the cruelty to ask, “Does my account excuse my failures, my queen?”

But if I had thought to rend her, I failed there also. “You make no mention of your daughter, FitzChivalry.”

It was true. I had not made mention of Molly and the child. Fear sliced through me like a cold blade. “I had not thought of her as pertaining to my report.”

“She obviously must,” Queen Kettricken said implacably. I forced myself to look at her. She clasped her hands before her. Did they tremble, did she feel any remorse for what she said next? I could not tell. “Given her lineage, she much more than “pertains’ to this discussion. Ideally, she should be here, where we could guarantee a measure of safety to the Farseer heir.”

I imposed calm on my voice. “My queen, you are mistaken in naming her so. Neither I nor she have any legitimate claim to the throne. We are both illegitimate.”

Kettricken was shaking her head. “We do not consider what is or is not between you and her mother. We consider only her bloodline. Irregardless of what you may claim for her, her lineage will claim her. I am childless.” Until I heard her speak that word aloud, I did not grasp what her depth of pain was. A few moments ago, I had thought her heartless. Now I wondered if she was completely sane anymore. Such was the grief and despair that one word conveyed. She forced herself on. “There must be an heir to the Farseer throne. Chade has advised me that alone I cannot rally the people to protect themselves. I am too foreign to their eyes still. But no matter how they see me, I remain their queen. I have a duty to do. I must find a way to unite the Six Duchies and repulse the invaders from our shores. To do that, they must have a leader. I had thought to offer you, but he has said that they will not accept you either. That matter of your supposed death and use of Beast magic is too big an obstacle. That being so, there remains only your child of the Farseer line. Regal has proven false to his own blood. She, then, must be Sacrifice for our people. They will rally to her.”

I dared to speak. “She is only an infant, my queen. How can she . . .”