Royal Assassin - Страница 78

She looked aside. “I would rather go with you,” she said fiercely.

I averted my eyes as he reached and took her chin in his fingers and lifted her face so he might see her eyes. “I know,” he said evenly. “That is the sacrifice I must ask you to make. To stay here, when you would rather go. To be alone, yet again. For the sake of the Six Duchies.”

Something went out of her. Her shoulders sagged as she bowed her head to his will. As Verity gathered her to him I rose silently. I took Rosemary with me and we left them alone.

*

I was in my room, poring belatedly over the scrolls and tablets there, when the page came to my door that afternoon. “You are summoned to the King’s chambers, in the hour after dinner,” was the only message he gave me. Dismay rolled over me. It had been two weeks since my last visit to his chamber. I did not wish to confront the King again. If he were summoning me to say that he expected me to begin courting Celerity, I did not know what I would do or say. I feared I would lose control of myself. Resolutely I unrolled one of the Elderling scrolls and tried to study it. It was hopeless. I saw only Molly.

In the brief nights we had shared since our day on the beach, Molly had refused to discuss Celerity with me any further. In some ways it was a relief. But she had also stopped teasing me about all she would demand from me when I was truly her husband and all the future children we would have. She had quietly given up hope that we would ever be wed. If I stopped to think of it, it grieved me to the edge of madness. She did not rebuke me with it, as she knew it was not of my choosing. She did not even ask what was to become of us. Like Nighteyes, she seemed to live only in the present now. Each night of closeness we shared, she accepted as a thing complete, and did not question if there would be another. What I sensed from her was not despair, but containment: a fierce resolve that we would not lose what we had now to what we could not have tomorrow. I did not deserve the devotion of such a faithful heart.

When I dozed beside her in her bed, safe and warm amid the perfume of her body and her herbs, it was her strength that protected us. She did not Skill, she had no Wit. Her magic was a stronger kind, and she worked it by her will alone. When she closed and bolted her door behind me late at night, she created within her chamber a world and a time that belonged to us. If she had blindly placed her life and happiness in my hands, it would have been intolerable. But this was even worse. She believed there would eventually be a terrible price to pay for her devotion to me. Still she refused to forsake me. And I was not man enough to turn away from her and bid her seek a happier life. In my most lonely hours, when I rode the trails around Buckkeep with my saddlebags full of poisoned bread, I knew myself for a coward, and worse than a thief. I had once told Verity I could not draw off another man’s strength to feed my own, that I would not. Yet every day, that was what I did to Molly. The Elderling scroll fell from my lax fingers. My room was suddenly suffocating. I pushed aside the tablets and scrolls.

I had been attempting to study. In the hour before dinner, I sought out Patience’s chamber.

It had been some time since I had last called upon her. But her sitting chamber never seemed to change, save in the uppermost layer of litter that reflected her current passion. This day was no exception. Fall gathered herbs, bundled for drying, were suspended everywhere, filling the room with their scents. I felt I was strolling through an inverted meadow as I ducked to avoid the dangling foliage.

“You’ve hung these a bit low,” I complained as Patience entered.

“No. You’ve managed to grow a bit too tall. Stand up straight and let me look at you now.”

I obeyed, even though it left me with a bundle of catmint resting on my head.

“Well. At least rowing about killing people all summer has left you in good health. Much better than the sickly boy who came home to me last winter. I told you those tonics would work. As long as you’ve gotten that tall, you may as well help me hang up these lot.”

Without more ado, I was put to work stringing lines from sconces to bedposts to anything else that a string could be tied to, and then to fastening bundles of herbs to them. She had me treed, up on a chair and tying bundles of balsam, when she demanded, “Why do you no longer whine to me about how much you miss Molly?”

“Would it do me any good?” I asked her quietly after a moment. I did my best to sound resigned.

“No.” She paused a moment as if thinking. She handed me yet another bouquet of leaves. “Those,” she informed me as I fastened them up, “are stipple-leaf. Very bitter. Some say they will prevent a woman conceiving. They don’t. At least, not dependably. But if a woman eats them for too long, she can become ill from them.” She paused as if considering. “Perhaps, if a woman is sick, she does not conceive as easily. But I would not recommend them to anyone, least of all anyone I cared about.”

I found my tongue, sought a casual air. “Why do you dry them, then?”

“An infusion of them, gargled, will help a sore throat. So Molly Chandler told me, when I found her gathering them in the women’s garden.”

“I see.” I fastened the leaves to the line, dangling them like a body from a noose. Even their odor was bitter. Had I wondered, earlier, how Verity could be so unaware of what was right before him? Why had I never thought of this? How must it be for her, to dread what a rightfully married woman would long for? What Patience had longed for in vain?

“. . . seaweed, FitzChivalry?”

I started. “Beg pardon?”

“I said, when you have an afternoon free, would you gather seaweed for me? The black, crinkly sort? It has the most flavor this time of year.”

“I will try,” I replied absently. For how many years would Molly have to worry? How much bitterness must she swallow?

“What are you looking at?” Patience demanded.

“Nothing. Why?”

“Because I’ve asked you twice to get down so we can move the chair. We’ve all these other packets to hang, you know.”

“Beg pardon. I didn’t get much sleep last night; it’s left me dull-witted today.”

“I agree. You should start sleeping more at night.” These words were uttered a bit heavily. “Now come down and move the chair so we can hang these mints.”

I didn’t eat much at dinner. Regal was alone on the high dais, looking sullen. His usual circle of fawners clustered at a table just below him. I did not understand why he chose to dine separately. Certainly, he had the rank to, but why choose this isolation? He summoned one of the more flattering of the minstrels he had recently imported to Buckkeep. Most of them were from Farrow. All of them affected the nasal intonations of that region and favored the long, chanting styles of epics. This one sang a long telling of some adventure of Regal’s maternal grandfather. I listened as little as I was able; it seemed to have to do with riding a horse to death in order to be the one to shoot a great stag that had eluded a generation of hunters. It praised endlessly the greathearted horse who had gone to his death at his master’s bidding. It said nothing of the master’s stupidity in wasting such an animal to gain some tough meat and a rack of antlers.

“You look half-sick,” Burrich observed as he paused beside me. I rose to leave table and walked through the hall with him.

“Too much on my mind. Too many directions to think in all at once. I sometimes feel that if I had time to focus my mind on just one problem, I could solve it. And then go on to solve the others.”

“Every man believes that. It isn’t so. Slay the ones you can as they come to hand, and after a while you get used to the ones you can do nothing about.”

“Such as?”

He shrugged and gestured downward. “Such as having a game leg. Or being a bastard. We all get used to things we once swore we could never live with. But what’s eating your liver this time?”

“Nothing I can tell you about just yet. Not here, anyway.”

“Oh. More of those, huh.” He shook his head. “I don’t envy you, Fitz. Sometimes all a man needs is to growl about his problems to another man. They’ve denied you even that. But take heart. I have faith you can handle them even if you think you can’t.”

He clapped me on the shoulders, and then left in a blast of cold air from the outer doors. Verity was right. The winter storms were rising, if tonight’s wind was any indicator. I was halfway up the stairs before I reflected that Burrich now spoke to me straight across. He finally believed I was a man grown. Well, maybe I would do better if I believed that about myself. I squared my shoulders and went up to my room.

I put more effort into dressing than I had in a long time. As I did I thought of Verity hastily changing his shirt for Kettricken. How had he ever managed to be so blind to her? And I to Molly? What other things did Molly do for our sake that I had never realized? My misery returned, stronger than ever. Tonight. Tonight after Shrewd was done with me. I could not let her continue her sacrifices. For now, I could do nothing save put it out of my mind. I pulled my hair back into the warrior’s tail that I felt fully earned now, and tugged the front of my blue jerkin straight. It was a bit snug across the shoulders, but so was everything I owned lately. I left my room.

In the hallway outside King Shrewd’s apartments, I encountered Verity with Kettricken on his arm. Never had I seen them as they presented themselves now. Here, suddenly, was the King-in-Waiting and his Queen. Verity was dressed in a long formal robe of deep forest green. An embroidered band of stylized bucks graced the sleeves and hem. He wore on his brow the silver circlet with the blue gem that was the mark of the King-in-Waiting. I had not seen him wear it in some time; Kettricken was dressed in the purple and white that she so often chose. Her gown of purple was very simple, the sleeves cut short and wide to reveal narrower and longer sleeves of white beneath them. She wore the jewelry, that Verity had gifted her with, and her long blond hair had been intricately dressed with a net of silver chain junctured with amethysts. I halted at the sight of them. Their faces were grave. They could be going nowhere except to see King Shrewd.