Royal Assassin - Страница 38

“Stop teasing the child,” Patience rebuked her gently. “Yes, Fitz, Lacey. The most apt pupil that Hod ever had, even if she did come to Hod as a grown woman.” As Patience spoke Lacey took her weapons away from my body. She reseated herself, and deftly rethreaded her needles into her work. I swear she didn’t even drop a stitch. When she was finished, she looked up at me. She winked. And went back to her knitting. I remembered to start breathing again.

A very chastened assassin left their apartments sometime later. As I made my way down the hall I reflected that Chade had warned me I was underestimating Lacey. I wondered wryly if this was his idea of humor, or of teaching me greater respect for seemingly mild folk.

Thoughts of Molly pushed their way into my mind. I resolutely refused to give in to them, but could not resist lowering my face to catch that faint scent of her on the shoulder of my shirt. I took the foolish smile from my face and set off to locate Kettricken. I had duties.

I’m hungry.

The thought intruded without warning. Shame flooded me. I had taken Cub nothing yesterday. I had all but forgotten him in the sweep of the day’s events.

A day’s fast is nothing. Besides, I found a nest of mice beneath a corner of the cottage. Do you think I cannot care for myself at all? But something more substantial would be pleasing.

Soon, I promised him. There is a thing I must do first.

In Kettricken’s sitting chamber, I found only two young pages, ostensibly tidying, but giggling as I came in. Neither of them knew anything. I next tried Mistress Hasty’s weaving room, as it was a warm and friendly chamber where many of the Keep women gathered. No Kettricken, but Lady Modesty was there. She told me that her mistress had said she needed to speak with Prince Verity this morning. Perhaps she was with him.

But Verity was not in his chambers, nor his map room. Charim was there, however, sorting through sheets of vellum and separating them by quality. Verity, he told me, had arisen very early and immediately set out for his boat shed. Yes, Kettricken had been there this morning, but it had been after Verity left, and once Charim had told her he was gone, she, too, had departed. Where? He was not certain.

By this time I was starving, and I excused my trip to the kitchens on the grounds that gossip always grew thickest there. Perhaps someone there would know where our Queen-in-Waiting had gone. I was not worried, I told myself. Not yet.

The kitchens of Buckkeep were at their best on a cold and blustery day. Steam from bubbling stews mingled with the nourishing aroma of baking bread and roasting meat. Chilled stable boys loitered there, chatting with the kitchen help and pilfering fresh-baked rolls and the ends of cheeses, tasting stews and disappearing like mist if Burrich appeared in the door. I cut myself a slab of cold meal pudding from the morning’s cooking, and reinforced it with honey and some bacon ends that Cook was rendering down for cracklings. As I ate I listened to the talk.

Oddly enough, few people spoke directly of the previous day’s events. I grasped it would take a while for the Keep to come to terms with all that had happened. But there was something there, a feeling almost of relief. I had seen that before, in a man who had had his maimed foot removed, or the family that finally finds their drowned child’s body. To finally confront the worst there is, to look it squarely in the face and say, “I know you. You have hurt me, almost to death, but still I live. And I will go on living.” That was the feeling I got from the folk of the Keep. All had finally acknowledged the severity of our injuries from the Red-Ships. Now there was a sense that we might begin to heal, and to fight back.

I did not wish to make direct inquiries down here as to where the Queen might be. As luck would have it, one of the stable boys was speaking of Softstep. Some of the blood I had seen on the horse’s shoulder the previous day had been her own, and the boys were talking of how the horse had snapped at Burrich when he tried to work on her shoulder, and how it had taken two of them to hold her head. I wangled my way into the conversation. “Perhaps a horse of less temperament would be a better mount for the Queen?” I suggested.

“Ah, no. Our Queen likes Softstep’s pride and spirit. She said so herself, to me, when she was down in the stables this morning. She came herself, to see the horse, and to ask when she might be ridden again. She spoke directly to me, she did. So I told her, no horse wanted to be ridden on a day such as this, let alone with a gashed shoulder. And Queen Kettricken nodded, and we stood talking there, and she asked how I had lost my tooth.”

“And you told her a horse had thrown his head back when you were exercising him! Because you didn’t want Burrich to know we’d been wrestling up in the hayloft and you’d fallen into the gray colt’s stall!”

“Shut up! You’re the one who pushed me, so it was your fault as much as mine!”

And the two were off, pushing and scuffling with each other, until a shout from Cook sent them tumbling from the kitchen. But I had as much information as I needed. I headed out for the stables.

I found it a colder and nastier day outside than I had expected. Even within the stables, the wind found every crack and came shrieking through the doors each time one was opened. The horses’ breath steamed in the air, and stable mates leaned companionably close for the warmth they could share. I found Hands, and asked where Burrich was.

“Cutting wood,” he said quietly. “For a funeral pyre. He’s been drinking since dawn, too.”

Almost this drove my quest from my mind. I had never known such a thing to be. Burrich drank, but in the evenings, when the day’s work was done. Hands read my face.

“Vixen. His old bitch hound. She died in the night. Yet I have never heard of a pyre for a dog. He’s out behind the exercise pen now.”

I turned toward the pen.

“Fitz!” Hands warned me urgently.

“It will be all right, Hands. I know what she meant to him. The first night he had care of me, he put me in a stall beside her, and told her to guard me. She had a pup beside her, Nosy . . .”

Hands shook his head. “He said he wanted to see no one. To send him no questions today. No one to talk to him. He’s never given me an order like that.”

“All right.” I sighed.

Hands looked disapproving. “As old as she was, he should have expected it. She couldn’t even hunt with him anymore. He should have replaced her a long time ago.”

I looked at Hands. For all his caring for the beasts, for all his gentleness and good instincts, he couldn’t really know. Once, I had been shocked to discover my Wit sense as a separate sense. Now to confront Hands’s total lack of it was to discover his blindness. I just shook my head and dragged my mind back to my original errand. “Hands, have you seen the Queen today?”

“Yes, but it was a while ago.” His eyes scanned my face anxiously. “She came to me and asked if Prince Verity had taken Truth out of the stables and down to town. I told her no, that the Prince had come to see him, but had left him in the stables today. I told her the streets would be all iced cobbles. Verity would not risk his favorite on a surface like that. He walks down to Buckkeep Town as often as not these days, though he comes through the stable almost every day. He told me it’s an excuse to be out in the air and the open.”

My heart sank. With a certainty that was like a vision, I knew that Kettricken had followed Verity into Buckkeep Town. On foot? With no one accompanying her? On this foul day? While Hands berated himself for not foreseeing the Queen’s intention, I took Sidekick, a well-named but surefooted mule, from his stall. I dared not take the time to go back to my room for warmer clothes. So I borrowed Hands’s cloak to supplement mine and dragged the reluctant animal out of the stables and into the wind and falling snow.

Are you coming now?

Not now, but soon. There is something I must see to.

May I go, too?

No. It isn’t safe. Now be quiet and stay out of my thoughts.

I stopped at the gate to question the guard most bluntly. Yes, a woman on foot had come this way this morning. Several of them, for there were some whose trades made this trip necessary, no matter the weather. The Queen? The men on watch exchanged glances. No one replied. I suggested perhaps there had been a woman, heavily cloaked, and hooded well? White fur trimming the hood? A young guard nodded. Embroidery on the cloak, white and purple at the hem? They exchanged uncomfortable glances. There had been a woman like that. They had not known who she was, but now that I suggested those colors, they should have known. . .

In a coldly level voice, I berated them as dolts and morons. Unidentified folk passed unchallenged through our gates? They had looked on white fur and purple embroidery, and never even guessed it might be the Queen? And none had seen fit to accompany her? None chose to be her guard? Even after yesterday? A fine place was Buckkeep these days, when our Queen had not even a foot soldier at her heels when she went out walking in a snowstorm down to Buckkeep Town. I kicked Sidekick and left them settling blame among themselves.

The going was miserable. The wind was in a fickle mood, changing directions as often as I found a way to block it with my cloak. The snow not only fell, the wind caught up the frozen crystals from the ground and swirled it up under my cloak at every opportunity. Sidekick was not happy, but he plodded along through the thickening snow. Beneath the snow, the uneven trail to town was glazed with treacherous ice. The mule became resigned to my stubbornness and trudged disconsolately along. I blinked the clinging flakes from my eyelashes and tried to urge him to greater speed. Images of the Queen, crumpled in the snow, the blowing flakes covering her over, kept trying to push into my mind. Nonsense! I told myself firmly. Nonsense.