Assassin's Quest

As I fled, a part of me knew with undeniable certainty that I was dead. I might be able to hide myself for a time, but Will knew I was within the mansion. All he had to do was block off every exit and begin a systematic search. I raced down a hall, turned a corner, and went up a staircase there. I held my Skill walls firm and clutched my tiny plan to myself as if it were a precious gem. I would find Regal's chambers and poison everything there. Then I would go seeking Regal himself. If the guards discovered me first, well, I'd lead them a merry chase. They couldn't kill me. Not with all the poison I was carrying. I'd take my own life first. It wasn't much of a plan, but the only alternative was surrendering.

So I raced on, past more doors, more statuary and flowers, more hangings. Every door I tried was locked. I turned another corner and was suddenly back at the top of the staircase. I felt a moment of dizzy disorientation. I attempted to brush it off but panic rose like a black tide inside my mind. It appeared to be the same staircase. I knew I had not turned enough corners to have come back to it. I hurried past the staircase, past the doors again, hearing the shouts of guardsmen below me as knowledge grew and squirmed queasily inside me.

Will leaned on my mind.

Dizziness and pressure inside my eyes. Grimly I set my mental walls yet again. I turned my head quickly and my vision doubled for a moment. Smoke, I wondered? I had no head for any of the fume intoxicants that Regal favored. Yet this felt like more to me than the giddiness of Smoke or the mellowness of merrybud.

The Skill is a powerful tool in the hand of a master. I had been with Verity when he had used it against the Red-Ships, to so muddle a helmsman that he turned his own ships onto the rocks, to convince a navigator that be had not yet passed a point of land when it was far behind him, to raise fears and doubts in a captain's heart before he went into battle, or to bolster the courage of a ship's crew so that they foolhardily set sail into the very teeth of a storm.

How long had Will been working on me? Had he lured me here, for this encounter, by subtly convincing me that he would never expect me to come?

I forced myself to halt at the next door. I held myself firm, focused myself on the latch of the door as I worked it. It was not locked. I slipped into it, closing the door behind me. Blue fabric was set out on a table before me, ready for sewing. I'd been in this room before. I knew a moment of relief, then checked it. No. This room had been on the ground floor. I was upstairs. Wasn't I? I crossed quickly to the window, stood to one side of it as I peered out. Far below me were the torch lit grounds of the King's Gardens. I could see the white of the great drive gleaming in the night. Carriages were coming up it and liveried servants darted here and there, opening doors. Ladies and gentlemen in extravagant red evening clothes were leaving in droves. I gathered that Verde's end had rather spoiled Regal's ball. There were liveried guards on the doors, regulating who might leave and who must wait. All this I took in at a glance, and realized also that I was up a lot higher than I thought.

Yet I had been sure that this table and the blue garments waiting to be sewn had been down in the servants' wing of the ground floor.

Well, it was not all that unlikely that Regal would be having two different sets of blue clothes sewn. No time to puzzle about it; I had to find his bedchamber. I felt a strange elation as I slipped out of the room and fled once more down the hallway, a thrill not unlike that of a good hunt. Let them catch me if they could.

I came suddenly to a T in the corridor and stood a moment, puzzled. It did not seem to fit in with what I had seen of the building from outside. I glanced left, then right. Right was noticeably grander, and the tall double doors at the end of the hall were emblazoned with the golden oak of Farrow. As if to put spurs to me, I heard a mutter of angry voices from a room somewhere off to my left. I went right, drawing my knife as I ran. When I came to the great double doors, I put my hand to the latch quietly, expecting to find it locked tight. Instead the door gave easily and swung forward silently. It was almost too easy. I set those apprehensions aside and slipped in, knife drawn.

The room before me was dark, save for two candles burning in silver holders on the mantelpiece. I slipped inside what was obviously Regal's sitting room. A second door stood ajar, revealing the corner of a magnificently curtained bed and beyond it a hearth with a rack of firewood laid ready in it. I pulled the door gently closed behind me and advanced into the room. On a low table a carafe of wine and two glasses awaited Regal's return, as did a platter of sweets. The censer beside it was heaped with powdered Smoke waiting to be ignited on his return. It was an assassin's fantasy. I could scarcely decide where to begin.