Assassin's Quest

As an angry boy, I'd often promised myself that someday he would pay for every cuff he had given me, for every stall I'd had to muck out when I thought I was too tired to stand. With those words, I kept that sulky little promise tenfold. His eyes were wide and he was speechless with pain. I saw his chest heave once, as if to catch a breath knocked out of him. The shock in his eyes was the same as if I had suddenly plunged a knife into him.

I stared at him. I wasn't sure where those words had come from, but it was too late to call them back. Saying "I'm sorry" would not un-utter them, would not change them in the least. I suddenly hoped he would hit me, that he would give both of us at least that much.

He stood unevenly, the chair legs scraping back on the wooden floor. The chair itself teetered over and fell with a crash as he walked away from it. Burrich, who walked so steady when full of brandy, wove like a drunk as he made it to the door and went out into the night. I just sat, feeling something inside me go very still. I hoped it was my heart.

For a moment all was silence. A long moment. Then Chade sighed. "Why?" he asked quietly after a time.

"I don't know." I lied so well. Chade himself had taught me. I looked into the fire. For a moment, I almost tried to explain it to him. I decided I could not. I found myself talking all around it. "Maybe I needed to get free of him. Of all he'd done for me, even when I didn't want him to do it. He has to stop doing things I can never pay him back for. Things no man should do for another, sacrifices no man should make for another man. I don't want to owe him any more. I don't want to owe anyone anything."

When Chade spoke, it was matter-of-factly. His long-fingered hands rested on his thighs, quietly, almost relaxed. But his green eyes had gone the color of copper ore, and his anger lived in them. "Ever since you came back from the Mountain Kingdom, it's been as if you were spoiling for a fight. With anyone. When you were a boy and you were sullen or sulky, I could put it down to your being a boy, with a boy's judgment and frustrations. But you came back with an … anger. Like a challenge to the world at large, to kill you if it could. It wasn't just that you threw yourself in Regal's path: whatever was most dangerous to you, you plunged yourself into. Burrich wasn't the only one to see it. Look back over the last year: every time I turned about, here was Fitz, railing at the world, in the middle of a fistfight, in the midst of a battle, wrapped up in bandaging, drunk as a fisherman, or limp as string and mewling for elfbark. When were you calm and thoughtful, when were you merry with your friends, when were you ever simply at peace? If you weren't challenging your enemies, you were driving away your friends. What happened between you and the Fool? Where is Molly now? You've just sent Burrich packing. Who's next?"

"You, I suppose." The words came out of me any way, inevitably. I did not want to speak them but I could not hold them back. It was time.

"You've moved a fair way toward that already, with the way you spoke to Burrich."

"I know that," I said bluntly. I met his eyes. "For a long time now, nothing I've done has pleased you. Or Burrich. Or anyone. I can't seem to make a good decision lately."

"I'd concur with that," Chade agreed relentlessly.

And it was back, the ember of my anger billowing into flame. "Perhaps because I've never been given the chance to make my own decisions. Perhaps because I've been everyone's `boy' too long. Burrich's stableboy, your apprentice assassin, Verity's pet, Patience's page. When did I get to be mine, for me?" I asked the question fiercely.

"When did you not?" Chade demanded just as heatedly. "That's all you've done since you came back from the Mountains. You went to Verity to say you'd had enough of being an assassin just when quiet work was needed. Patience tried to warn you clear of Molly, but you had your way there as well. It made her a target. You pulled Patience into plots that exposed her to danger. You bonded to the wolf, despite all Burrich said to you. You questioned my every decision about King Shrewd's health. And your next-to-last stupid act at Buckkeep was to volunteer to be part of an uprising against the crown. You brought us as close to a civil war as we've been in a hundred years."

"And my last stupid act?" I asked with bitter curiosity.

"Killing Justin and Serene." He spoke a flat accusation.

"They'd just drained my king, Chade," I pointed out icily. "Killed him in my arms as it were. What was I to do?"

He stood up and somehow managed to tower over me as he had used to. "With all your years of training from me, all my schooling in quiet work, you went racing about in the keep with a drawn knife, cutting the throat of one; and stabbing the other to death in the Great Hall before all assembled nobles …. My fine apprentice assassin! That was the only way you could think of to accomplish it?"

"I was angry!" I roared at him.