Fool’s Assassin

I watched the girl as she rose to accept his invitation. She moved like a cat, save for the sway of her hips as she sauntered to the table. If she’d been wearing bells on them, they’d have rung at each step. I tried to catch Chade’s gaze. He evaded me. So I studied her as she crossed the room. She did not look dangerous; nor did she appear innocuous in the way that the most dangerous people I have known appeared. She looked ordinary, but contained. No. Not contained. Ready to burst with pride in herself. She walked like a cat with a bird in her mouth, one that wasn’t quite dead. In a moment she’d release her prey for the joy of pouncing on it again.

I suddenly recognized what made her familiar. Her heritage was unmistakably Farseer. I was accustomed to seeing those features echoed in the males of my lineage. Nettle now resembled her mother more than she had ever resembled me. But this girl, despite the femininity of her features, echoed Verity and, eerily, me. My mind was assembling bits of knowledge into theory as fast as it could. A Farseer born. Younger than Dutiful, but too old to be his get. Certainly not mine. So whose? I felt as if the room had suddenly tilted. Whence had come this sprout on the family tree?

I waited for one of them to speak. I wondered at her slow stroll to the table. Chade would have interpreted that as insolence if I’d ever tried it, and a rap on the skull would have been the least reminder I would have received. But in her, he tolerated it. Something to mull.

As soon as she sat down, he said, “Report.”

She cast me one glance and then focused her attention on Chade. “He’s careless,” she said offhandedly. “His ‘disguise’ is pathetic. I bumped him twice before he noticed me. It was stupidly easy to get next to him. All he was thinking about was watching for you.” She swung her eyes to look at me, daring me to respond. “I could have killed him three times over, drugged him, or picked his pocket.”

That stung. “I very much doubt that. And I think that is the poorest excuse for a report that I’ve ever heard.”

She raised her brows at me. “All necessary information was conveyed.” She cocked her head at my old mentor and asserted, “If Lord Chade had needed more detail, he’d have asked me for it.” As she spoke, she rose and came around to my side of the table. I twisted my head to look up at her. She spoke to Chade in a very confident tone. “Tell him that he should let me touch him.”

Chade met my gaze then. “It’s safe. She’s one of ours.”

“In more ways than one, obviously,” I retorted. I heard a small exhalation of breath from her, but I couldn’t tell if I’d hit my target or she was amused by me. I sat still, but somewhere a wolf lifted his hackles and growled low.

I felt her light touch on the back of my collar, then the shoulder of my shirt. She leaned down to touch my hip, and then I felt her hand brush my ribs. As she drew her fingers away, my shirt followed them briefly. Then she set the pins out on the table. There were six of them, not four, each less than half a finger’s length. The heads were shaped like tiny green spiders.

“If I had nudged any one of them a bit harder, they would have pierced your skin.” She leaned closer, over my shoulder, and spoke by my ear. “Any of them could have been tipped with poison, or a sleeping dose. You’d have keeled over in front of the fire, just another drunk passing out, until no one could wake you again.”

“I’ve told you,” Chade said sternly. “Those spiders are a vanity that no assassin can afford. Never leave a mark that anyone might associate with you. I’m disappointed in you.”

Her voice tightened at his rebuke. “I merely used them in this instance to prove that I was the one who set them, not some other spy or assassin sent in before me. I would never use them on a task that was confidential or important. I only used them today to prove what I told you. He’s careless.” Her disdain burned me. She stood behind me, slightly to my left and added, “Sloppy. Anyone could kill him. Or his child.”

I hadn’t known I was going to do it. My chair overturned as I moved. I wasn’t as fast as I once was, but I was still faster than she was. She hit the floor on her back. My left hand gripped her right wrist with the small knife she’d pulled as she fell beneath me. My right thumb was in the hollow of her throat, pressing firm and deep, my fingers biting into the back of her neck. Her teeth were bared and her eyes bulging at me when I became aware of Chade on his feet over us.

“Stop it! Both of you! This is not why I brought you together. If I wanted either one of you dead, I could do it a lot more efficiently than setting you on each other.”