Assassin's Quest

I groped inside me after the lost feelings. It had been long since I had even thought about it. "Chade already knew of them." I said quietly. "He would have found a way, even if you had not existed. He is very … resourceful. And I have come to understand that you do not live by the same rules that I do."

"I used to," she said softly. "A long time ago. Before the keep was sacked and I was left for dead. After that, it was hard to believe in the rules. Everything was taken from me. All that was good and beautiful and truthful was laid waste by evil and lust and greed. No. By something even baser than lust and greed, some drive I could not even understand. Even while the Raiders were raping me, they seemed to take no pleasure in it. At least, not the kind of pleasure … They mocked my pain and struggling. Those who watched were laughing as they waited." She was looking past me into the darkness of the past. I believe she spoke as much to herself as me, groping to understand something that defied meaning. "It was as if they were driven, but not by any lust or greed that could be sated. It was a thing they could do to me, so they did it. I had always believed, perhaps childishly, that if you followed the rules, you would be protected, that things like that would not happen to you. Afterward, I felt … tricked. Foolish. Gullible, that I had thought ideals could protect me. Honor and courtesy and justice … they are not real, Fitz. We all pretend to them, and hold them up like shields. But they guard only against folk who carry the same shields. Against those who have discarded them, they are no shields at all, but only additional weapons to use against their victims."

I felt dizzied for an instant. I had never heard a woman speak of something like that so dispassionately. Mostly it was not spoken of at all. The rapes that occurred during a raid, the pregnancies that might follow, even the children that Six Duchies women bore to the Red-Ship Raiders were seldom spoken of as such. I suddenly realized we had been standing still a long time. The chill of the spring night was reaching me. "Let's go back to the camp," I suggested abruptly.

"No," she said flatly. "Not yet. I fear I may cry, and if I do, I'd rather do it in the dark."

It was getting close to full dark. But I led her back to a wider game trail, and we found a log to sit down on. Around us, the frogs and insects filled the night with mating songs.

"Are you all right?" I asked her after we had sat some time in the silence.

"No. I am not," she said shortly. "I need to make you understand. I did not sell your child cheaply, Fitz. I did not betray you casually. At first, I did not even think of it that way. Who would not want her daughter to become a princess, and eventually a queen? Who would not want lovely clothes and a fine home for his child? I did not think that you or your woman would see it as a misfortune befalling her."

"Molly is my wife," I said quietly, but I truly believe she did not hear me.

"Then, even after I knew it would not please you, I did it anyway. Knowing it would buy me a place here, at your side, witnessing … whatever it is you are going to do. Seeing strange sights no minstrel has ever sung of before, like those statues today. Because it was my only chance at a future. I must have a song, I must witness something that will assure me forever of a place of honor among minstrels. Something that will guarantee me my soup and wine when I am too old to travel from keep to keep."

"Couldn't you have settled for a man to share your life and children?" I asked quietly. "It seems to me you have no problem catching a man's eye. Surely there must be one that …"

"No man wants a barren woman to wed," she said. Her voice went flat, losing its music. "At the fall of Dimity Keep, Fitz, they left me for dead. And I lay there among the dead, sure that I would die soon, for I could not imagine continuing to live. Around me buildings were burning and injured folk were screaming and I could smell flesh scorching …." She stopped speaking. When she resumed, her voice was a bit more even. "But I didn't die. My body was stronger than my will. On the second day, I dragged myself to water. Some other survivors found me. I lived, and was better off than many. Until two months later. By then I was sure that what had been done to me was worse than killing me. I knew I carried a child fathered by one of those creatures.

"So I went to a healer, who gave me herbs that did not work. I went to her again, and she warned me, saying if they had not worked, then I had better leave it to happen. But I went to another healer, who gave me a different potion. It … made me bleed. I shook the child loose from me, but the bleeding did not stop. I went back to the healers, both of them, but neither could help me.