Assassin’s Fate

I could not help her but my heart sank that I might never see her again. I reminded myself I had a plan of my own for my journey. I made several trips for firewood. I roasted the porcupine’s bones until they cracked and I could get at the marrow. Then it was time to fish. I had not tickled fish in a long time. I went to the creek and found a spot where I could lay on my belly, where dangling plants overshadowed an undercut bank, where the sun would not cast my shadow on the water. I was pleased that I remembered so well how it was done, and even more pleased with two fine, fat trout. I put a hooked willow wand through their gills and kept them in the water until I was rewarded with two more. Two to eat tonight, and two to smoke or dry for my journey. I felt very satisfied.

Are you sure you ‘don’t remember’ any of what Verity counselled you?

I stumbled into the stone and out of it again. I’ve no recall of our passage.

You were deep in the Skill. Verity found you. He is a large fish there now, swimming in those deep currents. He told you to carve your dragon and not delay. King Shrewd was there, smaller and thinner. Chade was with him. They wished you well in that effort.

I spoke eventually. ‘I don’t recall that at all. I truly wish I did.’

I recall it for you. He warned you not to delay it. He nearly failed. Had you not brought Kettle with you, and had she not been who and what she was, there would have been a half-finished dragon and a dead king. And probably the OutIslanders would hold Buckkeep Castle now.

We are not gambling for such high stakes as he was.

Only your life. And mine.

I will think well on it tonight.

Fitz. I do not want to cease being. Make us a dragon. Give me that vestige of life. Let me smell the night air again, let me hunt, let me feel the cold of night and the heat of the sun. There was such hunger in his words. I felt selfish. He experienced the world through me, but my senses were but a shadow of what his had been.

‘Nighteyes. What are you?’

He paused. I am a wolf. You need to be reminded of that?

‘You were a wolf. What are you now? A ghost that lives inside me? A mixture of my memories and me thinking what you might say or do?’

That seems unlikely. For I remember Verity, and you do not. And I sojourned with Bee, apart from you, and she heard me.

I wish I’d had more time to speak of you to her. To tell her the tales I promised she would know.

I was not derelict in that. She knows much of our time together. Much of my life.

I am glad of that.

And I. So, you do not imagine me.

You live in me.

Yes. And if you die, I die with you.

‘I want to go home, wolf. I want to see Bee. I need to be with her, and I need to make reparations for the sort of father I was. I need a chance to do better with her.’

That is what you told Verity. I will repeat what he said. Someone else will do that for you. And you must trust that they will do it well. As he did, with his son. The son he never met.

What is this urgency to carve a stone?

My brother, something eats you. From within. I feel it. Stop hiding it from yourself.

I was too long in the stone. That is all. I ran my silvered hands down my ribs. Felt the jut of my hip-bones. You think I have worms?