Royal Assassin

He set down his work, drank off his brandy, and then refilled his cup. He looked about his room. "You ask me, of course, because you have noted my rare success at providing myself with a fond wife and many children?"

The bitterness in his voice shocked me, but before I could react to it, he gave a choked laugh. "Forget I said that. Ultimately, the decision was mine, and done a long time ago. FitzChivalry, what do you think you should be doing?"

I stared at him morosely.

"What made things go wrong in the first place?" When I did not reply, he asked me, "Did not you yourself just tell me that you courted her as a boy, when she considered your offer a man's? She was looking for a man. So don't go sulking about like a thwarted child. Be a man." He drank down half his brandy, then refilled both our cups.

"How?" I demanded.

"The same way you've shown yourself a man elsewhere. Accept the discipline, live up to the task. So you cannot see her. If I know anything of women, it does not mean she does not see you. Keep that in mind. Look at yourself. Your hair looks like a pony's winter coat, I'll wager you've worn that shirt a week straight, and you're thin as a winter foal. I doubt you'll regain her respect that way. Feed yourself up, groom yourself daily, and in Eda's name, get some exercise instead of moping about the guardroom. Set yourself some tasks and get onto them."

I nodded slowly to the advice. I knew he was right. But I could not help protesting, "But all of that will do me no good if Patience will still not permit me to see Molly."

"In the long run, my boy, it is not about you and Patience. It is about you and Molly."

"And King Shrewd," I said wryly.

He glanced up at me quizzically.

"According to Patience, a man cannot be sworn to a King and give his heart fully to a woman as well. `You cannot put two saddles on one horse,' she told me. This from a woman who married a King-in-Waiting, and was content with whatever time he had for her." I reached to hand Burrich the mended halter.

He did not take it. He had been in the act of lifting his brandy cup. He set it down on the table so sharply that the liquid leaped and slopped over the edge. "She said that to you?" he asked me hoarsely. His eyes bored into mine.

I nodded slowly. "She said it would not be honorable to expect Molly to be content with whatever time the King left to me as my own."

Burrich leaned back in his chair. A chain of conflicting emotions dragged across his features. He looked aside into the hearth fire, and then back at me. For a moment he seemed on the verge of speaking. Then he sat up, drank off his brandy in one gulp, and abruptly stood. "It's too quiet up here. Let's go down to Buckkeep Town, shall we?"

The next day I arose and ignored my pounding head to set myself the task of not behaving like a lovesick boy. A boy's impetuosity and carelessness were what had lost her to me. I resolved to attempt a man's restraint. If biding my time was my only path to her, I would take Burrich's advice and use that time well.

So I arose each day early, before even the morning cooks were up. In the privacy of my room, I stretched and then worked through sparring drills with an old stave. I would work myself into sweat and dizziness, and then go down to the baths to steam myself. Slowly, very slowly, my stamina began to return. I gained weight and began to rebuild the muscle on my bones. The new clothing that Mistress Hasty had inflicted on me began to fit. I was still not free of the tremors that sometimes assailed me. But I had fewer seizures, and always managed to return to my rooms before I could shame myself by falling. Patience told me that my color was better, while Lacey delighted in feeding me at every opportunity. I began to feel myself again.

I ate with the guards each morning, where quantity consumed was always of more importance than manners. Breakfast was followed with a trip to the stables, to take Sooty out for a snowy canter to keep her in condition. When I returned her to the stables, there was a homey comfort in taking care of her myself. Before our misadventures in the Mountain Kingdom, Burrich and I had been on bad terms over my use of the Wit. I had been all but barred from the stables. So there was more than satisfaction in rubbing her down and seeing to her grain myself. There was the busyness of the stables, the warm smells of the beasts, and the gossip of the Keep as only the stable hands could tell it. On fortunate days, Hands or Burrich would take time to stop and talk with me. And on other days, busy days, there was the bittersweet satisfaction of seeing them conferring over a stallion's cough, or doctoring the ailing boar that some farmer had brought up to the Keep. On those days they had little time for pleasantries and, without intending it, excluded me from their circle. It was as it had to be. I had moved on to another life. I could not expect the old one to be held ajar for me forever.