Fool’s Assassin

“I would!” I declared with heartfelt enthusiasm.

“Then you shall. Your mother taught me much of these scents when I first arrived here. It is only fitting that I pass on what she taught me to you.”

I was perched on one of his arms, shaking with cold. He opened the door with his free hand and without a pause carried me through the entrance hallway and down the corridor, directly to my room. Careful had just finished building the fire, and he set me down in front of it.

“She is covered in snow! Lady Bee! Weren’t you under the wraps in the wagon?”

I was too tired to explain it. Revel spoke as Careful began to divest me of my wet clothing. “She’s chilled through. I’ll have Cook Nutmeg send up a tray of hot food and tea. Can you see to her other needs?”

She looked up at him with anxious eyes. “Lady Shun asked me to fetch in her purchases immediately. She wants my help in—”

“I will find someone else to help her,” Revel announced firmly. He strode back to the door, paused and then said, “Lady Bee, we have not been informed as to what befell your father and Riddle, and I feel much concern that they have not returned with you.”

He knew it was not his place to ask for information, but I knew now he was my ally and I shared freely the little I knew. “There was a beggar in the marketplace who spoke to me. When he hugged me, my father feared for me and attacked him, hurting him badly. Then he realized the beggar was actually an old friend of his. So he and Riddle used the Skill-magic to take the beggar through the standing stone on Gallows Hill back to Buckkeep Castle, where perhaps he can be saved.”

The two servants exchanged a look over my head, and I realized that my factual account probably sounded completely mad to them. “Fancy that!” Careful said quietly.

“Well. I’m sure your father knows what he is doing, and Riddle as well. A very practical man, that Riddle.” The tone suggested that my father was not always practical. It would have been stupid to disagree with that. He whisked out the door.

By the time Careful had helped me into my nightrobe I was shaking all over. It was my red nightrobe, the one my mother had made. Someone had laundered it and brought it to my room. She took a coverlet from the bed, warmed it before the fire, and then wrapped me in it. I didn’t protest but sat in the chair she pulled up to the hearth. There was a knock at the door, and a kitchen boy came in with a tray of steaming food. She thanked him and sent him on his way. As she set it out on a low table for me, I told her, “I didn’t forget you. I brought you presents from town.”

Her eyes lit with interest, but she said, “Tomorrow is soon enough for that, my lady. Tonight let’s get hot food into you and then get you into a warm bed. Your face is all red and white with cold still.” She lifted my gray-and-red shawl, hefted the heavy wool approvingly, and then put it to dry. As she put away my other things from my basket, she found the packages and the trinkets I had bought for her and immediately possessed them, thanking me over again for thinking of her. I thought of the kerchiefs I had bought for Revel. Would he truly like them? I thought of how he had smelled when he lifted me. I knew he would enjoy one of my mother’s candles. My heart hurt at the thought of parting with even one, but I knew I would do it. He deserved it. Careful helped me into my bed and then moved quietly around the room, setting it to rights, humming as she did so.

I think I fell asleep before she left the room. I woke, probably hours later, to a chamber lit only by firelight. I tried to make sense of the day. So much wonder and terror packed into one day, and then to be abandoned at the end of it! I wondered why my father had not taken me with him, and who the beggar was that he was so important. My father had claimed he was his old friend. How was that possible? There was no one of whom I could ask those questions. All around me the house was very still. I slipped out of bed and went to the window, opening the shutters. The sky was black and snow was falling thickly. It was very late at night, or very early. And I was hungry and no longer sleepy at all.

I was still chilled from the long ride home, with a cold that seemed to radiate from my own bones. I went to my wardrobe to find a wrap and discovered that someone had added a new robe for me. I took it out, and found it was made of soft red wool lined with wolf fur. And below where it had hung there were soft boots made just the same, but soled with leather. The moment I put them on, I felt both warmer and safer.

I went first to my father’s bedchamber, to see if perhaps he had already returned. I found no comfort there. His bed was empty and the room so rigorously tidy that it could have belonged to anyone. Or no one. “This is not his true den,” I said aloud but softly. I nodded to myself, knowing now where I must go to find my answers.