Assassin's Quest

"He took to wandering at an early age, and settled there." The badgering was beginning to make me sweat a little. I could tell she knew it, too. "What part of Buck did you say your family came from?" I asked suddenly.

"I didn't say," she replied with a small smile.

Starling suddenly appeared at the door of the stall. She perched on the edge of it and leaned over. "Nik said we'd cross the river in two days," she offered. I nodded, but said nothing. She came around the end of the stall and casually tossed her pack down beside mine. She followed it to sit leaning against it, her harp on her lap. "There are two couples down by the hearth, squabbling and bickering. Some water got into their travel bread, and all they can think to do is spit about whose fault it is. And one of the children is sick and puking. Poor little thing. The man who is so angry about the wet bread keeps going on about it's just a waste of food to feed the boy until he stops being sick."

"That would be Rally. A more conniving, tightfisted man I never met," Kettle observed genially. "And the boy, Selk. He's been sick on and off since we left Chalced. And before, like as not. I think his mother thinks Eda's shrine can cure him. She's grasping at straws, but she has the gold to do so. Or did."

It started off around of gossiping between the two. I leaned in the corner and listened with half an ear and dozed. Two days to the river, I promised myself. And how much longer to the Mountains? I broke in to ask Starling if she knew.

"Nik says there's no way to tell that, it all depends on weather. But he told me not to worry about it." Her fingers wandered idly over the strings of her harp. Almost instantly, two children appeared in the door of the stall.

"Are you going to sing again?" asked the girl. She was a spindly little child of about six, her dress much worn. There were bits of straw in her hair.

"Would you like me to?"

For answer, they came bounding in to sit on either side of her. I had expected Kettle to complain at this invasion, but she said nothing, even when the girl settled comfortably against her. Kettle began to pick the straw from the child's hair with her twisted old fingers. The little girl had dark eyes and clutched a puppet with an embroidered face. When she smiled up at Kettle, I could see they were not strangers.

"Sing the one about the old woman and her pig," the boy begged Starling.

I stood up and gathered my pack. "I need to get some sleep," I excused myself. I suddenly could not bear to be around the children.

I found an empty stall nearer the door of the barn and bedded down there. I could hear the mutter of the pilgrims' voices at their hearth. Some quarreling still seemed to be going on. Starling sang the song about the woman, the stile, and the pig, and then a song about an apple tree. I heard the footsteps of a few others as they came to sit and listen to the music. I told myself they'd be wiser to sleep, and closed my own eyes.

All was dark and still when she came to find me in the night. She stepped on my hand in the dark, and then near dropped her pack on my head. I said nothing, even when she stretched out beside me. She spread her blankets out to cover me as well, then wiggled in under the edge of mine. I didn't move. Suddenly I felt her hand touch my face questioningly. "Fitz?" she asked softly in the darkness.

"What?"

"How much do you trust Nik?"

"I told you. Not at all. But I think he'll get us to the Mountains, For his own pride, if nothing else." I smiled in the dark. "A smuggler's reputation must be perfect, among those who know of it. He'll get us there."

"Were you angry at me, earlier today?" When I said nothing, she added, "You gave me such a serious look this morning."

"Does the wolf bother you?" I asked her as bluntly.

She spoke quietly. "It's true then?"

"Did you doubt it before?"

"The Witted part … yes. I thought it an evil lie they had told about you. That the son of a prince could be Witted … You did not seem a man who would share his life with an animal." The tone of her voice left me no doubt as to how she regarded such a habit.

"Well. I do." A tiny spark of anger made me forthright. "He's everything to me. Everything. I have never had a truer friend, willing without question to lay his life down for mine. And more than his life. It is one thing to be willing to die for another. It is another to sacrifice the living of one's life for another. That is what he gives me. The same sort of loyalty I give to my king."

I had set myself to thinking. I'd never put our relationship in those terms before.

"A king and a wolf," Starling said quietly. More softly she added, "Do you care for no one else?"

"Molly."

"Molly?"

"She's at home. Back in Buck. She's my wife." A queer little tremor of pride shivered through me as I said the words. My wife.

Starling sat up in the blankets, letting in a draft of cold air. I tugged at them vainly as she asked, "A wife? You have a wife?"