Fool’s Assassin

I rose and soundlessly paced the room, a wolf guarding his den. Molly slept on, the sleep of exhaustion. The swaddled babe next to her stirred softly and then subsided. I had to protect them, to give the child a future she could determine for herself. My mind swirled with ideas. Flight. We would pack tomorrow and flee; we’d travel to where we could settle as simply Molly and Tom and our baby … no. Molly would never consent to breaking off contact with her other children; nor could I just walk away from those I loved, no matter what threat they might seem to present right now.

So what could I do? I looked at them, sleeping so peacefully, so vulnerable. I would keep them safe, I vowed to myself. It suddenly came to me that the child’s fair hair and blue eyes might be in our favor. No one would look at her and assume that she was the natural child of Molly or me. We could claim she was a foundling, taken in. The falsehood blossomed in my mind. So easy to claim! Not even Nettle need know; once I had shown Molly the threat to the child, perhaps she would agree to the deception. Nettle would believe we had adopted the babe to placate her mother’s longing for an infant. No one need know that she was truly a Farseer. One simple lie could keep her safe.

If I could get Molly to agree to it.

That night I went to our room for bedding and took it back down to the nursery. I slept across the door, on the floor, like a wolf guarding his den and cub. It felt right.

The next day was filled with both sweetness and trepidation. By the light of dawn, I saw my plans for denying my child as the foolishness it was. The servants in a great house know all, and Revel would immediately know that no foundling had been delivered to us the night before. I could not possibly conceal from the staff that Molly had borne her child, so I warned them that the babe was small, and her mother weary. I am sure they considered me quite as mad as they had Molly as I insisted that I would take Molly’s meals in to her and that she must absolutely not be disturbed. Not only my veracity as to there being a baby in the house but my authority as a male in such a female area was instantly dismissed. By ones and twos and threes, the women of the Withywoods staff each found some pressing errand that demanded entrance to the nursery. First it was Cook Nutmeg, insisting that she must speak with Molly to know exactly what her mistress would wish to have for her luncheon and supper on such a momentous day. Her daughter Mild slipped in behind her, a slender shadow to her mother’s generous figure. Molly had been unaware of my efforts to keep her undisturbed. I could not blame her for a certain starchy smugness as she presented the baby to Cook and her daughter.

Molly, I think, was aware only that she was proving them wrong: She had been pregnant, and all their snide dismissal of her insistence that a nursery be prepared was now answered. She was regal as a queen as they advanced to look at the tiny bundle she held so protectively. Cook kept control of herself, smiling at what a “dear little thing” our baby was. Mild was less schooled to decorum. “She’s so tiny!” the girl exclaimed. “Like a doll! And pale as milk! Such blue eyes! Is she blind?”

“Of course not,” Molly replied, gazing at her child adoringly. Cook swatted her daughter and hissed, “Manners!”

“My mother was fair. With blue eyes,” I asserted.

“Well, then, that explains it,” Cook Nutmeg asserted with an unnatural amount of relief. She bobbed a curtsy to Molly. “Mistress, shall it be the river fish or the salt cod, then? For all know fish is best for a woman who has just delivered a child.”

“River fish, please,” Molly replied, and with that vast decision settled, Cook whisked herself and her child from the room.

Scarcely had enough time elapsed for Cook to return to her duties before two housemaids presented themselves, asking if the baby or her mother required fresh linens. Each bore an armful and they all but trampled me as they overran my position in the door, insisting, “Well, if not now, then soon, for all know how quickly a baby will soil her crib.”