Fool’s Assassin

I wore a simple tunic, sewn by my mother and made long enough to be modest, over a long-sleeved wool shirt. My tunic was belted at my waist with a leather belt and came to my knees. Below it, I wore only my woolen leggings and slippers. No one had ever suggested before that I was dressed like a boy, but now I recalled how the stable boys dressed. Not so different from me. Even the kitchen girls wore skirts, all the time. I looked at the cuffs of my sleeves. They were soiled with cobwebs and chalk from my earlier adventure. The knees of my leggings were dirty, too. I suddenly knew that my mother would have made me change my clothes before I came down to dinner with guests, into my red skirts perhaps. She would have put ribbons in my hair. I lifted my hand to my hair and smoothed down what was left of it.

Shun nodded. “That’s a little better. It was standing up like feathers on a bird’s head.”

“It’s too short to braid. I cut it because my mother died.” I looked at her directly for one instant.

Shun met my gaze coldly. Then she said, “I can only wish my mother were dead. I think it would make my life easier.”

I stared at her knees. Her words cut me and I tried to understand why. After a moment it came to me. She considered her pain more significant than mine. I felt she had said that her cruel mother’s life going on was a greater tragedy than my mother’s death. In that moment I hated her. But I also discovered another important thing. I could do as my father did: that is, lift my eyes and meet her gaze and let nothing of what I was thinking show in my face.

That thought surprised me. I studied her, saying nothing, and realized that she did not share my ability. Everything she felt at the moment was writ broad and plain on her face. Perhaps she thought I was too young to read her face, or that it was unimportant if I could. But she was not trying to hide anything from me. She had known her callous words would hurt me. She was miserable and resented being in my home and was irritated by being left with me. And in her misery, she was striking out at me because I was there. And because she thought I could not strike back.

I did not feel pity for her. She was too dangerous for me to pity. I suspected that in her thoughtless wretchedness she could employ cruelty such as I had never experienced from an adult. I suddenly feared that she could destroy all of us, and take whatever little peace my father and I had found. She sat there in her pretty clothes and pearl earrings and looked at me, so small and, she thought, very young, and dirty and common. Of course. She thought me the daughter of commoner Tom Badgerlock. Not the lost Princess of the Farseer family! Just the daughter of Withywoods’s widowed caretaker. Yet I had a home and a father who loved me and memories of a mother who had cherished me. None of that seemed fair to her.

“You’ve gone quiet,” she observed intently. She was like a bored cat poking at a mouse to see if it was dead all the way.

“It’s late, for me. I’m a child, you know. I go to bed quite early on most nights.” I yawned for her, not covering my mouth. In a softer voice, I added, “And self-pitying tales of woe always bore me, which makes me sleepy.”

She stared at me, her eyes going greener. She reached as if to tidy her hair and pulled out one of the long pins that secured it. She drew it between her thumb and forefinger as if to deliberately call my attention to it. Did she think to threaten me with it? She stood abruptly and I jumped to my feet. I bet I could outrun her, but dodging past her to the door might be a challenge. I heard a murmur in the hall and an instant later Riddle opened the door. My father was behind him. “Good night!” I called cheerily to them. I ran past a glowering Shun to hug my father briefly and then step back hastily. “It’s been such a long day, and so full of unexpected events. I’m quite weary. I think I shall take myself to bed now.”

“Well …” My father looked astonished. “If you’re tired. Shall I see you to your room?”

“Yes,” Riddle said strongly before I could reply. Shun was tidying her hair, smiling as she slid the pin back into her bound tresses. “She didn’t feel well earlier. You should see that she is tucked in warmly and that a nice fire is on her hearth.”

“Yes. I should,” he agreed. He was smiling and nodding, as if it were perfectly normal that I seek my bed at such an hour. Usually we stayed up late together, and often I fell asleep on the hearth in his study. Now he begged his guests to excuse him briefly, promised to return, and then took my hand as we left. I did not pull it free of his grip until the door was closed behind us. “What are you up to?” he demanded as we made our way toward the stairs and my bedchamber.

“Nothing. It’s night. I’m going to bed. It’s what children do, I am told.”

“Shun’s face was flushed.”

“I think she was sitting too close to the fire.”