Assassin's Quest

A flash of anger crossed her face. She looked down to her old hands curled in her lap. She gave a sigh of exasperation. "It might. The old legends that I have heard say that when a thing is Skill-wrought, it can be dangerous to some folk. Not to ordinary people, but to those who have an aptitude for the Skill but have not been trained in it. Or to those whose training is not advanced far enough for them to know how to be wary."

"I have never heard of any legends about Skill-wrought things." I turned to the Fool and Starling. "Have either of you?"

Both shook their heads slowly.

"It seems to me," I said carefully to Kettle, "that someone as well-read as the Fool should have come across such legends. And certainly a trained minstrel should have heard something about them." I continued to look at her levelly.

She crossed her arms on her chest. "I am not to blame for what they have not read or heard," she said stiffly. "I only tell you what I was told, a long time ago."

"How long ago?" I pressed. Across from me, Kettricken frowned, but did not interfere.

"A very long time ago," Kettle replied coldly. "Back when young men respected their elders."

The Fool's face lit with a delighted grin. Kettle seemed to feel she had won something, for she set her tea mug in her porridge bowl with a clatter and handed them to me. "It is your turn to clean the dishes," she told me severely. She got up and stamped away from the fire and into the tent.

As I slowly gathered the dishes to wipe them out with clean snow, Kettricken came to stand beside me. "What do you suspect?" she asked me in her forthright way. "Do you think she is a spy, an enemy among us?"

"No. I do not think she is an enemy. But I think she is … something. Not just an old woman with a religious interest in the Fool. Something more than that."

"But you don't know what?"

"No. I don't. Only I have noticed that she seems to know a deal more about the Skill than I expect her to. Still, an old person gathers much odd knowledge in a lifetime. It may be no more than that." I glanced up to where the wind was stirring the tree tops. "Do you think we shall have snow tonight?" I asked Kettricken.

"Almost certainly. And we shall be fortunate if it stops by morning. We should gather more firewood, and stack it near the tent's door. No, not you. You should go within the tent. If you wandered off now, in this darkness and with snow to come, we'd never find you."

I began to protest, but she stopped me with a question. "My Verity. He is more highly trained than you are in the Skill?"

"Yes, my lady."

"Do you think this road would call to him, as it does to you?"

"Almost certainly. But he has always been far stronger than I in matters of Skill or stubbornness."

A sad smile tweaked her lips. "Yes, he is stubborn, that one." She sighed suddenly, heavily. "Would that we were only a man and a woman, living far from both sea and mountains. Would that things were simple for us."

"I wish for that as well," I said quietly. "I wish for blisters on my hands from simple work and Molly's candles lighting our home. "

"I hope you get that, Fitz," Kettricken said quietly. "I truly do. But we've a long road to tread between here and there."

"That we do," I agreed. And a sort of peace bloomed between us. I did not doubt that if circumstances demanded it, she would take my daughter for the throne. But she could no more have changed her attitude about duty and sacrifice than she could have changed the blood and bones of her body. It was who she was. It was not that she wished to take my child from me.

All I needed do to keep my daughter was to bring her husband safely back to her.

We went to bed later that night than had become our custom. All were wearier than usual. The Fool took first watch despite the lines of strain in his face. The new ivory cast his skin had taken on made him look terrible when he was cold, like a statue of misery carved from old bone. The rest of us did not notice the cold much when we were moving during the day, but I don't think the Fool was ever completely warm. Yet he bundled himself warmly and went to stand outside in the rising wind without a murmur of complaint. The rest of us lay down to sleep.