Fool’s Assassin

We reached my room and he angrily gestured me back from the door. His lips were pulled back from his teeth, and his eyes were dark and wild. Wolf-Father was in them, and his anger was a killing anger that anything would threaten his cub. He halted at the threshold, and stared into the room that was lit only by the dying flames of the hearth. His nostrils were flared and he moved his head from side to side. Then he went very still. He advanced so slowly on the sprawled figure on my bed that it was as if only one small part of him moved at a time. He glanced back at me. “You defended yourself? You killed her?”

I shook my head. My throat was still dry with terror but I managed to say, “I ran.”

A terse nod. “Good.” He drew closer to my bed and stared down at her.

He stiffened suddenly, lifting his knife to the ready, and I heard her dry whisper. “The message. You must hear the message. Before I die.”

His face changed. “Bee. Bring water.”

There was only a bit left in my ewer. I went into the room where we had left her and found the tray with the untouched food. There was water for tea in a pot, gone cold. I brought it to my father. He had arranged her on my bed. “Drink a little,” he urged her, and held the cup to her lips. She opened her mouth but could not seem to swallow what she took. It ran out of her mouth and over her chin, washing the pink even paler. “Where did you go?” my father demanded of her. “We could not find you.”

Her eyes were opened to slits. The lids looked dry and crusty. “I was … there. In the bed. Oh.” She suddenly looked even sadder. “Oh. The cloak. It was the cloak. I was cold and pulled the cloak over me. It vanished me.”

I had ventured closer to the bed. I did not think she was aware of me; I thought perhaps she was blind now. My father and I exchanged skeptical looks. She moved her hand in a vague gesture. It reminded me of a slender willow leaf moving in the wind. “It takes on the colors and shadows. Don’t lose it … very old, you know.” Her chest rose slowly and then fell. She was so still I thought she was dead. Then she cried out as if pained by the words, “The message.”

“I’m here. I’m listening.” My father took her narrow hand in his. “Too warm,” he murmured. “Much too warm.”

“So hard to think. To focus. He made it … a pattern. Easier to remember. Not safe to write it down.”

“I understand.”

She sniffed in a breath. When she breathed out, little pink bubbles formed along her lip. I didn’t want to look at them and couldn’t look away.

“By four things, you will know I am a true messenger from him and trust me. Ratsy was on his scepter. Your mother’s name was never said. You served a man behind a wall. He took his fingerprints from your wrist.” She paused, breathing. We waited. I saw her swallow and she turned her face toward my father. “Satisfied?” she asked him faintly. “That I am a true messenger?” I was right. She could not see his face.

He jerked as if stuck with a pin. “Yes, yes, of course. I trust you. Are you hungry? Do you think you could drink some warmed milk or eat something?” He closed his eyes for a moment and went very still. “We would never have neglected you so if we had known you were still here. When we could not find you, we thought you had felt well enough to travel and left us.”

He did not mention that we had wondered if she was hiding somewhere in the house, hoping to kill us.

Her breath made a sound on every intake. “No. No food. Too late for food.” She tried to clear her throat, and the spill of blood on her lips went redder. “Not time to think of me. The message.”

“I can still send for a healer.”

“The message,” she insisted. “The message and then you can do whatever you wish.”

“The message, then,” my father capitulated. “I’m listening. Go on!”

She strangled for a moment and then pink slid over her lip and down her chin. My father wiped it tenderly away with the corner of my blanket. I decided I would sleep in his bed tonight. When she could, she took in air and said on a breath, “He told you. The old dream prophecies foretold the unexpected son. The one who sent me once interpreted them to mean you. But now he thinks perhaps not. He believes there could be another one. A son, unlooked for and unexpected. A boy left somewhere along the way. He does not know where, or when, or who mothered him. But he hopes you can find him. Before the hunters do.” She ran out of breath. She coughed, and spluttered out blood and spit. She closed her eyes and for a time, just tried to breathe.

“The Fool had a son?” My father was incredulous.

She gave a short, sharp nod. Then she shook her head. “His and yet not his. A half-blood White. But it’s possible he appears as a full White. Like me.” Her breathing steadied for a time and I thought she had finished. Then she took a deeper breath. “You must search for him. When you find the unexpected son, you must keep him safe. Tell no one you have him. Speak of your quest to no one. It’s the only way to keep him safe.”