Robin Hobb - Royal Assassin

"It is not my secret to share, but my king's," I told her gently. "Soon, I believe, it will have to be revealed to you. Until then—"

"Go," she dismissed me. She shifted uncomfortably on her couch. "As bruised as I am, at least I shall not have to feign misery. Only tolerance of a man who would seek to kill his unborn kin and torment his aged father."

"I go," I said quickly, sensing her rage building and not desiring to feed it. All must be convincing for this masquerade. She must not reveal that she now knew her fall had not been any clumsiness of her own. I went out, brushing past Lacey, who was carrying a tray with a teapot. Patience was on her heels. There would not be tea in that pot. As I went past the Queen's ladies in her antechamber, I took care to look concerned. Their reactions to the Queen's request that King Shrewd's personal healer be sent for would be genuine enough. I hoped it would be enough to draw Regal out of his lair.

I slipped into Patience's rooms and left the door just barely ajar. I waited. As I waited I thought of an old man, the herbs fading from his body and his pain reawakening in him. I had visited that pain. Given that, and a man relentlessly questioning me, how long could I remain silent and vague? Days seemed to pass. Finally there was a flurry of skirts and pattering footsteps down the hall, and a frenzied knocking at King Shrewd's door. I did not need to hear words, it was all in the tone, the frightened pleading of the women with someone at the door, then Regal's angry questions, turning suddenly to feigned concern. I heard him call Wallace from whatever corner he had been banished to, heard the excitement in his voice as he ordered the man to attend the Queen immediately, she was suffering a miscarriage.

The ladies clattered past my door again. I stood still, holding my breath. That trot, that mutter, that would be Wallace, laden no doubt with all sorts of remedies. I waited, taking slow quiet breaths, trying to be patient, waited until I was sure my ploy had failed. Then I heard the more deliberate strides of Regal, and then the running strides of a man overtaking him. "That's good wine, you idiot, don't jostle it," Regal rebuked him, and then they were out of my hearing. I waited again. Long after I was sure he had been admitted to the Queen's apartments, I forced myself to wait for another hundred count. And then I eased out of the door and went to the King's.

I tapped. I did not knock loudly, but my tapping was insistent and unending. After a moment or two a voice demanded to know who was there.

"FitzChivalry," I said boldly. "I demand to see the King.

A silence. Then: "No one is to be admitted."

"By whose order?"

"Prince Regal."

"I bear a token from the King, one on which he gave me his word that I would always be admitted to see him whenever I so wished."

"Prince Regal said specifically that you were not to be admitted."

"But that was before…" And I let my voice drop lower as I muttered a few meaningless syllables.

"What did you say?"

I muttered again.

"Speak up."

"This is not for all the Keep to hear!" I retorted indignantly. "This is no time to spread a panic."

That did it. The door opened a tiny crack. "What is it?" the man hissed.

I leaned in close to the door, looked up and down the corridor. I peered past him through the crack. "Are you alone?" I asked suspiciously.

"Yes!" Impatiently. "Now what is it? It had better be good!"

I lifted my hands to my mouth as I leaned toward the door, unwilling to let the slightest breath of my secret escape. The guard leaned closer to the crack. I gave a quick puff of my lips and a white powder misted his face. He staggered back, clawing at his eyes and strangling. In an instant he was down. Nightmist: it was quick, it was effective. It was also often deadly. I could not find it in myself to care. It was not so much that this was my shoulder-wrenching friend. This guard could not have stood in the antechamber of Shrewd's room and been totally unaware of what went on within.

I had reached in through the crack and was struggling to undo the chains that secured the door when I heard a familiar hiss. "Get out of here. Leave the door alone, just go away. Don't unlatch it, you fool!" I had a brief glimpse of a pocked visage and then the door was shut firmly in my face. Chade was right. It would be best for Regal to encounter a fully latched door, and to spend his time having his men chop through it. Every moment Regal was shut out was another moment that Chade had with the King.

What followed was harder to do than what I had already done. I went down the stairs to the kitchen, made friendly talk with the cook, and then asked her what the commotion upstairs had been. Had the Queen lost her baby? She banished me quickly to find folk to talk to who would know more. I made my way into the watch room off the kitchen to consume a small beer and force myself to eat as if I wanted to. The food lay in my stomach like so much gravel. No one spoke to me much, but I was a presence. The gossip about the Queen's fall ebbed and flowed around. me. There were Tilth and Farrow guards here now, big, slow-moving men, part of their dukes' retinues, hobnobbing with the Buckkeep counterparts. It was more bitter than bile to hear them speak avidly of what the loss of the child would mean to Regal's chances for the throne. It was as if they bet on a horse race.

The only other gossip that could compete with it was a rumor that a boy had seen the Pocked Man by the castle well in the courtyard. It was supposed to have been nearly midnight when the lad saw him. Not one had the sense to wonder what the boy was doing out there, or what light his eyes had used to see this vision of ill omen. Instead they were vowing to stay well away from water, for surely this omen meant the well had gone bad. At the rate at which they were drinking beer, I decided they had little to worry about. I stayed until word was sent down that Regal wanted three strong men with axes sent immediately to the King's chambers. That excited a fresh round of talk, and during it, I quietly left the room and went to the stables.

I had intended to seek out Burrich and see if the Fool had found him yet. Instead I encountered Molly coming down his steep stairs just as I had begun to climb them. She looked down at the astounded look on my face and laughed. But it was a short laugh, and it never reached her eyes.

"Why did you go to see Burrich?" I demanded, and instantly realized how rude my question was. I had feared she had gone seeking help.

"He is my friend," she said succinctly. She started to push past me. Without thinking, I stood firm. "Let me past!" she hissed savagely.

Instead I put my arms around her. "Molly; Molly, please," I said hoarsely as she pushed at me without heart. "Let us find a place to talk, if only for a moment. I cannot bear to have you look at me that way, when I swear I have done you no wrong. You act as if I have cast you off, but you are in my heart always. If I cannot be with you, it is not because I do not wish to."

She stopped struggling suddenly.

"Please?" I begged her.

She glanced about the dim barn. "We will stand and we will talk. Briefly. Right here."

"Why are you so angry with me?"

She nearly answered me. I saw her bite back words, then turn suddenly cold. "Why do you think that what I feel about you is the centermost pillar of my life?" she retorted. "Why do you think I have no other concerns but you?"

I gaped at her. "Perhaps because it is how I feel about you," I said gravely.

"It is not." She was exasperated, correcting me the way she would correct a child who insisted the sky was green.

"It is," I insisted. I tried to gather her to me, but she was wooden in my arms.

"Your king-in-waiting Verity was more important. King Shrewd is more important. Queen Kettricken and her unborn child are more important." She ticked them off on her fingers as if she were numbering my faults.