Assassin's Quest

We journeyed on, moving only as fast as laden wagons and a herd of sheep would permit. The days were remarkably similar. The countryside we passed was remarkably similar. There were a few novelties. Sometimes there were other folk camped at the watering places we came to. At one, there was a tavern of sorts, and here the caravan master delivered some small kegs of brandy.

Once we were followed for half a day by folk on horseback who might have been bandits. But they veered off and left our trail in the afternoon, either bound to a destination of their own, or deciding what we possessed wasn't worth the effort of a raid. Sometimes other folk passed us, messengers and folk traveling on horseback, unslowed by sheep and wagons. Once it was a troop of guards in the Farrow colors, pushing their horses hard as they passed us. I felt an uneasiness as I watched them pass our caravan, as if an animal scrabbled briefly against the walls that shielded my mind. Did a Skilled one ride amongst them, Burl or Carrod, or even Will? I tried to persuade myself it was merely the sight of the gold-and-brown livery that unnerved me.

On another day we were intercepted by three of the nomadic folk whose grazing territory we were in. They came to us on tough little ponies that wore no more harness than a hackamore. The two grown women and the boy were all blond with faces baked brown by the sun. The boy's face was tattooed with stripes like a cat's. Their arrival occasioned a complete halting of the caravan, while Madge set up a table and cloth and brewed a special tea which she served to them with candied fruit and barley-sugar cakes. No coin exchanged hands that I saw, only this ceremonial hospitality. I suspected from their manner that Madge was long known to them, and that her son was being groomed to continue this passage arrangement.

But most days were the same plodding routine. We rose, we ate, we walked. We stopped, we ate, we slept. One day I caught myself wondering if Molly would teach her to make candles and tend bees. What could I teach her? Poisons and strangling techniques, I thought bitterly. No. Her letters and numbers she'd learn from me. She'd still be young enough when I returned for me to teach her that. And all Burrich had ever taught me about horses and dogs. That was the day when I realized I was looking ahead again, was planning for a life after I'd found Verity and somehow taken him safely back to Buck. My baby was just an infant now, I told myself, suckling at Molly's breast and looking about with wide eyes and seeing all new. She was too young to know something was missing, too young to know her father wasn't there. I'd be back with them soon, before she learned to say "Pa." I'd be there to see her first steps.

That resolve changed something in me. I'd never looked forward to something so much. This was not an assassination that would end in someone's death. No, I looked forward to a life, and imagined teaching her things, imagined her growing up bright and pretty and loving her father, knowing nothing, ever, of any other life he'd ever led. She wouldn't remember me with a smooth face and a straight nose. She'd only know me as I was now. That was oddly important to me. So I would go to Verity because I had to, because he was my king and I loved him, and because he needed me. But finding him no longer marked the end of my journey, but the beginning. Once I had found Verity, I could turn about and come home to them. For a time, I forgot Regal.

So I thought to myself sometimes, and when I did I walked behind the sheep in their dust and stink and smiled a tight upped smile behind the kerchief over my face. At other times, when I lay down alone at night, all I could think of was the warmth of a woman and a home and a child of my own. I think I felt every mile that stretched between us. Loneliness was a thing that ate at me then. I longed to know every detail of what was going on. Every night, every moment of quiet was a temptation to reach out with the Skill. But I understood Verity's admonition now. If I Skilled to them, then Regal's coterie could find them as well as me. Regal would not hesitate to use them against me in any way he could imagine. So I hungered for knowledge of them, but dared not attempt to satisfy that hunger.