Fool’s Assassin

I turned with that mixture of elation and dismay that surprise visits from unconventional and loving friends stir in one. Web was crossing the room in long strides, with Swift but a step or two behind. I lifted my arms wide and went to greet them. The burly Witmaster had grown in girth these last few years. As always, his cheeks were as red as if he had just stepped in from the wind. Molly’s son Swift was a couple of steps behind him, but as I watched, Nettle emerged from the crowd of guests and ambushed her brother in a hug. He stopped to lift her and whirl her in a joyous circle. Then Web engulfed me in a spine-cracking hug, followed by several solid thumps to my back. “You’re looking well!” he told me as I tried to catch my breath. “Almost whole again, aren’t you? Ah, and Lady Patience!” Having released me from his exuberant greeting, he bowed gracefully over the hand that Patience extended to him. “Such a rich blue gown! You put me in mind of a jay’s bright feathers! But please tell me the feathers in your hair did not come from a live bird!”

“Of course not!” Patience looked properly horrified at the thought. “I found him dead on the garden path last summer. And I thought, now here is a time for me to see just what is beneath those lovely blue feathers. But I saved his feathers, of course, plucking them carefully before I boiled him down to bones. And then, once I had discarded the jay broth, my task was before me: to assemble his little bones into a skeleton. Did you know that a bird’s wing is as close to a man’s hand as is a frog’s flipper? All those tiny bones! Well, doubtless you know the task is somewhere on my workbench, half-done as are so many of my projects. But yesterday, when I was thinking of feathers to take flight from our troubles, I remembered that I had a whole box full! And luckily for me, the beetles had not found and eaten them down to the quill, as they did when I tried to save the gull feathers. Oh! Gull! Have I been thoughtless? I beg pardon!”

She had obviously suddenly recalled that he was bonded with a gull. But Web smiled at her kindly and said, “We of the Wit know that when life is done, what remains is empty. None, I think, know better than we do. We sense the presence of all life, with some burning brighter than others. A plant is not as vital in our senses as is a tree. And of course a deer outshines both, and a bird most of all.”

I opened my mouth to object to that. With my Wit I could sense birds, but had never found them particularly brimming with life. I recalled something that Burrich—the man who had all but raised me—had said to me, many years ago, when he had declared that I would not work with the hawks at Buckkeep Castle. “They don’t like you; you are too warm.” And I had thought he meant my flesh, but now I wondered if he had sensed something about my Wit that he could not then have explained to me. For the Wit had then been a despised magic, and if either of us had admitted to possessing it, we would have been hanged, quartered, and burned over water.

“Why do you sigh?” Patience abruptly demanded of me.

“Your pardon. I was not aware I had done so.”

“Well, you did! Witmaster Web was just telling me the most fascinating things about a bat’s wing and suddenly you sigh as if you find us the most boring old things in the world!” She punctuated her words with a tap of her fan on my shoulder.

Web laughed. “Lady Patience, doubtless his thoughts were elsewhere. I know Tom of old, and recall his melancholy streak well! Ah, but I have been keeping you to myself, and here are others of your guests, come to claim you!”

Was Patience deceived? I think not, but it pleased her to allow herself to be drawn away from us by the charming young man that doubtless Nettle had dispatched to allow Web to speak to me privately. Almost I wished she had not done so; Web had sent me several letters and I was sure I knew the current of the conversation he wished to draw me into. It had been long since I had been bonded with an animal through my Wit. But what Web seemed to equate with a sulking child I felt was more like the solitude of a long-married man who is suddenly widowed. No one could replace Nighteyes in my heart; nor could I imagine such a connection with any other creature. Gone was gone, as he had just said. The echoes of my wolf within me were enough to sustain me now. Those vivid memories, so strong that sometimes I felt I still heard his thoughts in my mind, would always be preferable to any other joining.

So now, as Web ventured past banalities about how I had been, and if Molly had been keeping well, and had the harvest been good this year, I deliberately diverted a conversation that would lead us, inevitably, to the importance he placed on my learning more of the Wit and on discussing my solitary status. My considered opinion was that as I was unpartnered and intended to remain so for the rest of my life, I needed no more knowledge of the Wit-magic than what I had now.