Assassin's Quest

Now Kettle scowled, but Starling struck up the opening notes with an amused smile on her face. After one false start, I launched into it, and carried it off fairly well, though I saw Starling flinch a time or two at a soured note. For whatever reason my choice of song displeased Kettle, who sat grim and staring at me defiantly. When I had finished, the turn was passed to Kettricken, who sang a hunting ballad from the Mountains. Then it was the Fool's turn, and he humored us with a ribald folk song about courting a milkmaid. I believe I saw grudging admiration from Starling for that performance. That left Kettle, and I had expected her to beg off. Instead, she sang the old children's nursery rhyme about "Six Wise Men went to Jhaampe-town, climbed a hill and never came down," all the time eyeing me as if each word from her cracked old voice were a barb meant just for me. But if there was a veiled insult there, I missed it, as well as the reason for her ill will.

Wolves sing together, Nighteyes observed, just as Kettricken suggested, "Play us something we all know, Starling. Something to give us heart." So Starling played that ancient song about gathering flowers for one's beloved, and we all sang along, some with more heart than others.

As the last note died away, Kettle observed, "The wind's dropping."

We all listened, and then Kettricken crawled from the tent. I followed her, and we stood quiet for a time in a wind that had gone quieter. Dusk had stolen the colors from the world. In the wake of the wind, snow had begun thickly falling. "The storm has almost blown itself out," she observed. "We can be on our way tomorrow."

"None too soon for me," I said. Come to me, come to me still echoed in the beating of my heart. Somewhere up in those Mountains, or beyond them, was Verity.

And the river of Skill.

"As for me," Kettricken said quietly. "Would that I had followed my instincts a year ago, and gone to the ends of the map. But I reasoned that I could do no better than Verity had done. And I feared to risk his child. A child I lost anyway, and thus failed him both ways."

"Failed him?" I exclaimed in horror. "By losing his child?"

"His child, his crown, his kingdom. His father. What did he entrust me with that I did not lose, FitzChivalry? Even as I rush to be with him again, I wonder how I can meet his eyes."

"Oh, my queen, you are mistaken in this, I assure you. He would not perceive that you have failed him, but fears only that he abandoned you in the greatest of danger."

"He only went to do what he knew he must," Kettricken said quietly. And then added plaintively, "Oh, Fitz, how can you speak for what he feels, when you cannot even tell me where he is?"

"Where he is, my queen, is but a bit of information, a spot on that map. But what he feels, and what he feels for you … that is what he breathes, and when we are together in the Skill, joined mind to mind, then I know such things, almost whether I would or no." I recalled the other times I had been privy unwillingly to Verity's feelings for his queen, and was glad the night hid my face from her.

"Would this Skill were a thing I could learn …. Do you know how often and how angry I have felt with you, solely because you could reach forth to the one I longed for, and know his mind and heart so easily? Jealousy is an ugly thing, and always I have tried to set it aside from me. But sometimes it seems so monstrously unfair that you are joined to him in such a way, and I am not."

It had never occurred to me that she might feel such a thing. Awkwardly, I pointed out, "The Skill is as much curse as it is gift. Or so it has been to me. Even if it were a thing I could gift you with, my lady, I do not know that is a thing one would do to a friend."

"To feel his presence and his love for even a moment, Fitz … for that I would accept any curse that rode with it. To know his touch again, in any form … can you imagine how I miss him?"

"I think I can, my lady," I said quietly. Molly. Like a hand gripping my heart. Chopping hard winter turnips on the tabletop. The knife was dull, she would ask Burrich to put an edge on it if he ever came in from the rain. He was cutting wood to take down to the village and sell tomorrow. The man worked too hard, his leg would be hurting him tonight.

"Fitz? FitzChivalry!"

I snapped back to Kettricken shaking me by the shoulders.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly. I rubbed at my eyes and laughed. "Irony. All my life, it has been so difficult to use the Skill. It came and went like the wind in a ship's sails. Now I am here, and suddenly Skilling is as effortless as breathing. And I hunger to use it, to find out what is happening to those I love best. But Verity warns me I must not, and I must believe he knows best."

"As must I," she agreed wearily.