Assassin's Apprentice

He nodded, and I felt a fool. "But after you had eaten them, you spoke so fair to her that she came to doubt you could be what it was said you were. So she asked you, but you turned the question aside by pretending to not understand. So again she doubted you. Still, it should not have taken her all night to come to me with her tale of what she had done, and her doubts of the wisdom of it. For that, I apologize."

"Too late to apologize. I have already forgiven you," I heard myself say.

Rurisk looked at me. "That was your father's saying as well." He glanced at the door a moment before Kettricken came through it. Once she was within the room, he slid the screen shut and took the tray from her. "Sit down," he told her sternly. "And see another way of dealing with an assassin." He lifted a heavy mug from the tray and drank deeply of it before passing it to me. He shot Kettricken another glance. "And if that was poisoned, you have just killed your brother as well." He broke an apple pastry into three portions. "Select one," he told me, and then took that one for himself, and gave the next I chose to Kettricken. "So you may see there is nothing amiss with this food."

"I see small reason why you would give me poison this morning after coming to tell me I was poisoned last night," I admitted. Still, my palate was alive, questing for the slightest mistaste. But there was none. It was rich, flaky pastry stuffed with ripe apples and spices. Even if I had not been so empty, it would have been delicious.

"Exactly," Rurisk said in a sticky voice, and then swallowed. "And, if you were an assassin"-here he shot a warning to silence to Kettricken "you would find yourself in the same position. Some murders are only profitable if no one else knows they were murders. Such would be my death. Were you to slay me now, indeed, were I to die within the next six months, Kettricken and Jonqui both would be shrieking to the stars that I had been assassinated. Scarcely a good foundation for an alliance of peoples. Do you agree?"

I managed a nod. The warm broth in the mug had stilled most of my trembling, and the sweet pastry tasted fit for a god.

"So. We agree that were you an assassin, there would now be no profit to carrying out my murder. Indeed, there would be a very great loss to you if I died. For my father does not look on this alliance with the favor that I do. Oh, he knows it is wise, for now. But I see it as more than wise. I see it as necessary.

"Tell this to King Shrewd. Our population grows, but there is a limit to our arable soil. Wild game will only feed so many. Comes a time when a country must open itself to trade, especially so rocky and mountainous a country as mine. You have heard, perhaps, that the Jhaampe way is that the ruler is the servant of his people? Well, I serve them in this wise. I marry my beloved younger sister away, in the hopes of winning grain and trade routes and lowland goods for my people, and grazing rights in the cold part of the year when our pastures are under snow. For this, too, I am willing to give you timbers, the great straight timbers that Verity will need to build his warships. Our mountains grow white oak such as you have never seen. This is a thing my father would refuse. He has the old feelings about the cutting of live trees. And like Regal, he sees your coast as a liability, your ocean as a great barrier. But I see it as your father did – a wide road that leads in all directions, and your coast as our access to it. And I see no offense in using trees uprooted by the annual floods and windstorms."

I held my breath a moment. This was a momentous concession. I found myself nodding to his words.

"So, will you carry my words to King Shrewd, and say to him that it is better to have a live friend in me?"

I could think of no reason not to agree.

"Aren't you going to ask him if he intended to poison you?" Kettricken demanded.

"If he answered yes, you would never trust him. If he answered no, you would probably not believe him, and think him a liar as well as an assassin. Besides, is not one admitted poisoner in this room enough?"

Kettricken ducked her head and a flush suffused her cheeks.

"So come," Rurisk told her, and held out a conciliatory hand. "Our guest must get what little rest he can before the day's festivities. And we must be back to our chambers before the whole household wonders why we are dashing about in our nightclothes."