Fool’s Assassin

Patience lifted her hand, I extended my arm, she placed her hand on my forearm, and we began a slow perambulation of the Great Hall. Folk parted for her, bowing and curtsying. Lady Patience, for so she was this evening, gravely inclined her head or warmly greeted or embraced as each person merited. I was content simply to be her escort, to see her enjoying herself, and to endeavor to keep a straight face through her whispered asides about Lord Durden’s breath or her pity for how quickly Tinker Dan was losing his hair. Some of the older guests remembered when she was not only the lady of Withywoods but wife to Prince Chivalry. In many ways, she still reigned here, for Nettle spent a good portion of her time at Buckkeep Castle as Skillmistress to King Dutiful, and Molly was content to let Patience have her way in most things.

“There are times in a woman’s life when only the company of other women can suffice,” Patience had explained to me when she had summarily moved in with us at Withywoods five years previously. “Girls need an older woman in the house as they become women, to explain those changes to them. And when that other change comes early to women, especially women who hoped to bear more children, it is good to have the guidance of a woman who has also known that disappointment. Men are simply not helpful at this time.” And while I had known trepidation about the arrangement when Patience first arrived with her baggage train of animals, seeds, and plants, she had proven the wisdom of her words. I knew it was rare for two women to exist so contentedly under one roof and blessed my good fortune.

When we reached her favorite chair by the hearth, I deposited her there, fetched her a cup of mulled cider, and then confided to her, “The last of your musicians arrived just as I came down the stairs. I haven’t seen them come in yet, but I thought you’d want to know that they are here.”

She raised her brows at me and then turned to peer the length of the room. The third set of musicians were moving to take over the dais there. She looked back at me, “No, they’re all here. I was most careful in my selection this year. For Winterfest, I thought to myself, we must have some warm-tempered folk to keep the chill away. And so, if you look, there is a redhead in every group that I’ve invited. There, see the woman warming her voice? Look at that cascade of auburn hair. Don’t tell me that she won’t warm this fest with her spirit alone.” She did indeed appear to be a very warm-natured woman. She let the dancers rest by launching into a long story song, more fit for listening than dancing, sung in a rich and throaty voice. Her audience, old and young, drew closer to her as she sang the old tale of the maiden seduced by the Old Man of winter and carried off to his distant ice fortress in the far south.

All were rapt by the tale, and so it was that my eye caught the motion as two men and a woman entered the hall. They looked around as if dazzled, and perhaps they were after their long hike through an evening of falling snow. It was obvious they had come on foot, for their rough leather trousers were soaked to the knee. Their garb was odd, as minstrels were wont to wear, but unlike any that I had ever seen. Their knee-boots were yellow mottled brown from the wet, their leather trousers short, barely hanging past the tops of their boots. Their jackets were of the same leather, tanned to the same pale brown, with shirts of heavy-knit wool beneath them. They looked uncomfortable, as if the wool were too snug a fit under the leathers. “There they are now,” I told her.

Patience stared at them from across the room. “I did not hire them,” she declared with an offended sniff. “Look at that woman, pale as a ghost. There’s no heat to her at all. And the men are just as wintry, with hair the color of an ice bear’s hide. Brr. They chill me just looking at them.” Then the lines smoothed from her brow. “So. I shall not allow them to sing tonight. But let’s invite them back for high summer, when a chilly tale or a cool wind would be welcome on a muggy evening.”

But before I could move to her bidding, I heard a roar of “Tom! There you are! So good to see you, old friend!”