Fool’s Assassin

He moved to the edge of the holly bushes and waited. The round woman seemed to be arguing with the man on horseback. She pointed angrily at the bodies and gesticulated wildly. Plainly she did not like how he was conducting his search. He was gesturing with his sword and shouting. Then, out of the house came the fog man. I recognized him from my trip to town. There he had been a gleaming light in the alley that people avoided. Today he was a pearlescent mist and, in the center of it, a plump man pale as a ghost. He turned his head slowly from side to side as he walked, and either my eyes deceived me or his eyes were the color of fog. A strange chill went through me and I shrank as small as I could, pulling my awareness back into myself. Putting up my walls, my father would have called it. I felt blind but if that was the price of invisibility I was willing to pay it.

“Bee?” Perseverance whispered, but I shook my head and kept my face turned in toward my belly. I do not know what he sensed but abruptly he took my wrist in a grip like ice. “Come with me. Come on. We’re going now. Together.”

But he did not take me toward the stables. Rather, we crept back the way we had come, remaining behind and under the bushes that landscaped that wing of Withywoods. I did not look up but merely followed where he dragged me. “Here,” he panted at last. “Stay right here. I’ll go to the stables. If I can’t find my da, I’ll bring the horses here. I’ll be moving fast and you’ll have to run out and jump for Priss’s back. Can you do that?”

I didn’t know. “Yes,” I lied.

“Stay here,” he told me again, and then he was gone.

I remained where I was, behind rhododendrons whose drooping green leaves were encased in ice and snow. After a long time, I lifted my eyes and peered about. Nothing moved. I could no longer hear the huddled captives, but the angry voices still teased at the edges of my hearing.

Revel was dead. My father was gone. Riddle was not here. FitzVigilant was dead. At any moment Perseverance could be dead.

And at that thought, I could not sit still. I was terrified of being killed, but even more terrified that my only ally might be dead and I would not even know it. How long would I sit here under a bush while his life was leaking out somewhere? I started panting, trying to get enough air to keep the blackness at bay. I was cold and thirsty and alone. I tried to think, to not do something stupid simply because I wanted to do something.

I took the dirtied cloak out of my jerkin front. I had not forgotten it. But I knew its limitations. It needed time to take on the colors and shadows. I could not fling it about my shoulders and run and hope to be unseen. Except that snow was white. It would not be perfect camouflage, I thought to myself as I spread it out on the snowy ground beside the bushes. I would be more like a white rabbit or a white fox; anyone with half an eye would see my movement, would see my feet and the tracks I would leave. But it would give me a better chance at reaching the stable than I’d had before.

The angry voices from the other side of the house grew louder, the man threatening, the woman unhappy but not pleading. Insistent, I thought to myself. She would have her way. I heard a scream, a man’s scream this time, and I wondered who had been hurt or killed. It was followed by a woman wailing. And wailing. And all the while, the cloak lay on the snow and mutated from the color of the darkness inside my jerkin to the color of the shaded and rumpled snow. I had never before paused to think that truly, all snow was not white. Now I saw that it was gray and dirty pale blue and speckled with bird droppings and bits of fallen leaves.

I crawled under it, not wishing to pull it back under the bushes and risk it taking on the colors of leaves and branches. It was sized for an adult, so there was ample fabric to wrap round me and drape my face. I clutched it at my waist and chin, leaving a small space for my eyes. I looked all around, and saw no one on this side of the manor. I darted from my shelter to the cluster of holly bushes where we had previously sheltered, taking care not to get to close to them. I froze where I was, considering the terrain between me and the stable. Should I crawl slowly across it? Make one fast dash? Earlier, the snow had been a smooth blanket over the low sward. Now I clearly saw the tracks that meant Perseverance had managed to cross it. Suddenly I knew he had waited for them to be distracted, perhaps by the man’s scream. I did not want to look at the captives. Their situation frightened me and made it hard for me to think. But I had to analyze my chances. The woman was still wailing. Was that enough of a distraction? I stood perfectly still and shifted only my eyes to look at the herded prisoners.