Assassin's Quest

"My lord king, it is not for me to say …"

"Verity," he interrupted wearily. "Call me Verity, and for Eda's sake, answer the question, Fitz."

He sounded so like his old self I wanted to embrace him. Instead, I said, "I do not know if she is angry. She is definitely hurt. She came a long and weary way to find you, bearing terrible news. And you did not seem to care."

"I care, when I think of it," he said gravely. "When I think of it, I grieve. But there are so many things I must think of, and I cannot think of them all at once. I knew when the child died, Fitz. How could I not know? He, too, and all I felt, I have put into the dragon."

He walked slowly away from me, and I followed him out of the tent. Outside, he stood up straight, but did not lose the stoop in his shoulders. Verity was an old man now, far older than Chade somehow. I did not understand that, but I knew it was true. Kettricken glanced up at his approach. She looked back into the fire, and then, almost unwillingly she stood, stepping clear of the sleeping wolf. Kettle and Starling were binding the Fool's fingers in strips of cloth. Verity went straight to Kettricken and stood beside her. "My queen," he said gravely. "If I could, I would embrace you. But you have seen that my touch …" He gestured at the Fool and let his words trail away.

I had seen the look on her face when she had told Verity about the stillbirth. I expected her to turn aside from him, to hurt him as he had hurt her. But Kettricken's heart was larger than that. "Oh, my husband," she said, and her voice broke on the words. He held his silvered arms wide, and she came to him, taking him in her embrace. He bowed his gray head over the rough gold of her hair, but could not allow his hand to touch her. He turned his silvered cheek away from her. His voice was husky and broken as he asked her, "Did you give him a name? Our son?"

"I named him according to the customs of your land." She took a breath. The word was so soft I scarce heard it. "Sacrifice," she breathed. She clung to him tightly and I saw his thin shoulders convulse in a sob.

"Fitz!" Kettle hissed at me sharply. I turned to find her scowling at me. "Leave them alone," she whispered. "Make yourself useful. Get a plate for the Fool."

I had been staring at them. I turned away, shamed to have been gawking, but glad to see them embrace, even in sorrow. I did as Kettle had ordered, getting food for myself at the same time. I took the plate to the Fool. He sat cradling his injured hand in his lap.

He looked up as I sat beside him. "It doesn't rub off on anything else," he complained. "Why did it cling to my fingers?"

"I don't know."

"Because you're alive," Kettle said succinctly. She sat down across from us as if we needed supervising.

"Verity told me he can shape rock with his fingers because of the Skill on them," I told her.

"Is your tongue hinged in the middle so that it flaps at both ends? You talk too much!" Kettle rebuked me.

"Perhaps I would not talk too much if you spoke a bit more," I replied. "Rock is not alive."

She looked at me. "You know that, do you? Well, what is the point of my talking when you already know everything?" She attacked her food as if it had done her a personal wrong.

Starling joined us. She sat down beside me, her plate on her knees and said, "I don't understand about the silvery stuff on his hands. What is it?"

The Fool snickered into his plate like a naughty child when Kettle glared at her. But I was getting tired of Kettle's evasions. "What does it feel like?" I asked the Fool.

He glanced down at his bandaged fingers. "Not pain. Very sensitive. I can feel the weave of the threads in the bandages." His eyes started to get distant: He smiled. "I can see the man who wove it, and I know the woman who spun it. The sheep on the hillside, rain falling on their thick wool, and the grass they ate … wool is from grass, Fitz. A shirt woven from grass. No, there is more. The soil, black and rich and …"

"Stop it!" Kettle said harshly. And she turned to me angrily. "And you stop asking him, Fitz. Unless you want him to follow it too far and be lost forever." She gave the Fool a sharp poke. "Eat your food."

"How is it you know so much about the Skill?" Starling suddenly asked her.

"Not you, too!" Kettle angrily declared: "Is there nothing private anymore?"

"Among us? Not much," the Fool replied, but he was not looking at her. He was watching Kettricken, her face still puffy from weeping, as she dished up food for herself and Verity. Her worn and stained clothing, her rough hair and chapped hands and the simple, homely task she performed for her husband should have made her seem like any woman. But I looked at her and saw perhaps the strongest queen that Buckkeep had ever known.