Royal Assassin

Something went out of her. Her shoulders sagged as she bowed her head to his will. As Verity gathered her to him I rose silently. I took Rosemary with me and we left them alone.

I was in my room, poring belatedly over the scrolls and tablets there, when the page came to my door that afternoon. "You are summoned to the King's chambers, in the hour after dinner," was the only message he gave me. Dismay rolled over me. It had been two weeks since my last visit to his chamber. I did not wish to confront the King again. If he were summoning me to say that he expected me to begin courting Celerity, I did not know what I would do or say. I feared I would lose control of myself. Resolutely I unrolled one of the Elderling scrolls and tried to study it. It was hopeless. I saw only Molly.

In the brief nights we had shared since our day on the beach, Molly had refused to discuss Celerity with me any further. In some ways it was a relief. But she had also stopped teasing me about all she would demand from me when I was truly her husband and all the future children we would have. She had quietly given up hope that we would ever be wed. If I stopped to think of it, it grieved me to the edge of madness. She did not rebuke me with it, as she knew it was not of my choosing. She did not even ask what was to become of us. Like Nighteyes, she seemed to live only in the present now. Each night of closeness we shared, she accepted as a thing complete, and did not question if there would be another. What I sensed from her was not despair, but containment: a fierce resolve that we would not lose what we had now to what we could not have tomorrow. I did not deserve the devotion of such a faithful heart.

When I dozed beside her in her bed, safe and warm amid the perfume of her body and her herbs, it was her strength that protected us. She did not Skill, she had no Wit. Her magic was a stronger kind, and she worked it by her will alone. When she closed and bolted her door behind me late at night, she created within her chamber a world and a time that belonged to us. If she had blindly placed her life and happiness in my hands, it would have been intolerable. But this was even worse. She believed there would eventually be a terrible price to pay for her devotion to me. Still she refused to forsake me. And I was not man enough to turn away from her and bid her seek a happier life. In my most lonely hours, when I rode the trails around Buckkeep with my saddlebags full of poisoned bread, I knew myself for a coward, and worse than a thief. I had once told Verity I could not draw off another man's strength to feed my own, that I would not. Yet every day, that was what I did to Molly. The Elderling scroll fell from my lax fingers. My room was suddenly suffocating. I pushed aside the tablets and scrolls

I had been attempting to study. In the hour before dinner, I sought out Patience's chamber.

It had been some time since I had last called upon her. But her sitting chamber never seemed to change, save in the uppermost layer of litter that reflected her current passion. This day was no exception. Fall gathered herbs, bundled for drying, were suspended everywhere, filling the room with their scents. I felt I was strolling through an inverted meadow as I ducked to avoid the dangling foliage.

"You've hung these a bit low," I complained as Patience entered.

"No. You've managed to grow a bit too tall. Stand up straight and let me look at you now."

I obeyed, even though it left me with a bundle of catmint resting on my head.

"Well. At least rowing about killing people all summer has left you in good health. Much better than the sickly boy who came home to me last winter. I told you those tonics would work. As long as you've gotten that tall, you may as well help me hang up these lot."

Without more ado, I was put to work stringing lines from sconces to bedposts to anything else that a string could be tied to, and then to fastening bundles of herbs to them. She had me treed, up on a chair and tying bundles of balsam, when she demanded, "Why do you no longer whine to me about how much you miss Molly?"

"Would it do me any good?" I asked her quietly after a moment. I did my best to sound resigned.

"No." She paused a moment as if thinking. She handed me yet another bouquet of leaves. "Those," she informed me as I fastened them up, "are stipple-leaf. Very bitter. Some say they will prevent a woman conceiving. They don't. At least, not dependably. But if a woman eats them for too long, she can become ill from them." She paused as if considering. "Perhaps, if a woman is sick, she does not conceive as easily. But I would not recommend them to anyone, least of all anyone I cared about."

I found my tongue, sought a casual air. "Why do you dry them, then?"

"An infusion of them, gargled, will help a sore throat. So Molly Chandler told me, when I found her gathering them in the women's garden."