Royal Assassin

He considered a moment. "Because it is easier to ask of you than to ask Kettricken if she carries Verity's child. As far as I can determine, Regal has shared his favors only with himself of late, so that dismisses him. You or Verity, then, must be the father."

I looked at him blankly. He shook his head sadly for me. "Cannot you feel it?" he asked in a near whisper. He stared off in the distance dramatically. "Forces shift. Shadows flutter. Suddenly there is a rippling in the possibilities. A reordering of the futures, as destinies multiply. All paths diverge, and diverge again." He looked back to me. I smiled at him, thinking he jested, but his mouth was sober. "There is an heir to the Farseer line," he said quietly. "I am certain of it."

Have you ever missed a step in the dark? There is that sudden feeling of teetering on the edge, and no knowledge of how far you may fall. I said, far too firmly, "I have fathered no child."

The Fool regarded me with a skeptical eye. "Ah," he said with false heartiness. "Of course not. Then it, must be Kettricken who is carrying."

"It must," I agreed, but my heart sank. If Kettricken were pregnant, she would have no reason to conceal it. Whereas Molly would. And I had not been to see Molly in several nights. Perhaps she had news for me. I felt suddenly dizzied, but I forced myself to take a long calming breath. "Take your shirt off," I told the Fool. "Let's see your chest."

"I've seen it, thank you, and I assure you it's fine. When they popped the bag over my head, I presume it was to provide a target. They were most conscientious about striking nowhere else."

The brutality of what they had done to him sickened me into silence. "Who?" I finally managed to ask.

"With a bag over my head? Come now. Can you see through a bag?"

"No. But you must have suspicions."

He canted his head at me in disbelief. "If you do not know what those suspicions are already, then you are the one with your head in a bag. Let me cut a bit of a hole for you. `We know you are false to the King, that you spy for Verity the pretender. Send him no more messages, for if you do, we shall know of it.' " He turned to stare into the fire, swung his heels briefly, thunk, thunk, thunk, against my clothing chest.

"Verity the pretender?" I asked in outrage.

"Not my words. Theirs," he pointed out.

I forced my anger down, tried to think. "Why would they suspect you spy for Verity? Have you sent him messages?"

"I have a King," he said softly. "Although he does not always remember he is my king. You must look out for your king. As I am sure you do."

"What will you do?"

"What I have always done. What else can I do? I cannot stop doing what they command me to stop, for I have never begun it."

A creeping certainty shivered up my spine. "And if they act again?"

He gave a lifeless laugh. "There is no point to my worrying about it, for I cannot prevent it. That is not to say I look forward to it. This," he said, with a half gesture toward his face. "This will heal. What they did to my room will not. I shall be weeks picking up that mess."

The words trivialized it. A terrible hollow feeling welled up in me. I had been in the Fool's tower chamber once. It had been a long climb up a disused staircase, past the dust and litter of years, to a chamber that looked out over the parapets and contained a garden of wonder. I thought of the bright fish swimming in the fat pots, the moss gardens in their containers, the tiny ceramic child, so meticulously cared for, in its cradle. I closed my eyes as he added to the flames, "They were most thorough. Silly me. To think there was such a thing as a safe place in the world."

I could not look at him. Save for his tongue, he was a defenseless person whose only drive was to serve his king. And save the world. Yet someone had smashed his world. Worse, I suspected the beating he had taken was in revenge for something I had done.

"I could help you set it to rights," I offered quietly.

He shook his head tightly, quickly twice. "I think not," he said. Then he added in a more normal voice, "No offense intended."

"None taken."

I bundled the cleansing herbs with the pot of salve and the leftover rags from my shirt. He hopped off my clothes chest. When I offered them to him, he took them gravely. He walked to the door, stiffly despite his claims that they had only damaged his face. At the door he turned. "When you know for certain, you will tell me?" He paused significantly. His voice dropped. "After all, if this is what they do to a King's fool, what might they do to a woman carrying a King-in-Waiting's heir?"

"They wouldn't dare," I said fiercely.