Assassin's Quest

Well, he would win tomorrow. He had coteries, did he not? Coteries of fine strong young men, coteries to make dragons for him, and him alone. The coteries were bound to him and the dragons would be bound to him. And he would make more coteries and more dragons, and more, until he had far more than Verity. Except Will had been teaching the coteries for him, and now Will was useless. Broken like a toy, the dragon bit his leg off when he flung him in the air, and Will had landed in a tree like a kite with no wind. It was disgusting. A man with one leg.. He couldn't stand broken things. His blind eye had been bad enough, but to lose a leg, too? What would men think of a king who kept a crippled servant? His mother had never trusted cripples. They are jealous, she had warned him, always jealous, and they will turn on you. But Will he had needed for the coteries. Stupid Will. It was all Will's fault. But Will was the one who knew how to wake Skill in people and form them into coteries. So maybe he should send someone back for Will. If Will still lived.

Will? Regal Skilled tentatively toward us.

Not exactly. I closed my Skill around him. It was ridiculously easy, like picking up a sleeping hen from its perch.

Let me go! Let me go!

I felt him reaching for his other coteries. I slapped them away from him, closed him off from their Skilling. He had no strength, he had never had any real Skill-strength. It had all been the coterie's power that he had puppeteered. It shocked me. All the fear I had borne inside me, over a year's time now. Of what? Of a whining, spoiled child who schemed to take his older brothers' toys. The crown and the throne were no more to him than their horses and swords had been. He had no concept of governing a kingdom; only of wearing a crown and doing what he wished. First his mother and then Galen had done his scheming for him. He had learned from them only a sly cunning as to how to get his way. If Galen had not bound the coterie to him, he would never have wielded any true power. Stripped of his coterie, I saw him as he was: a cosseted child with a penchant for cruelty that had never been denied.

This is what we have feared and fled? This?

Nighteyes, what do you here?

Your kill is my kill, my brother. I would see what meat we have come so far to take.

Regal squirmed and thrashed, literally sickened by the Wit-touch of the wolf against his mind. It was unclean and disgusting, a dirty doggy thing, nasty and smelly, as bad as that rat creature that scuttled in his rooms at night and could not be caught … Nighteyes leaned closer, pressed the Wit against him as if he could smell him all that way away. Regal retched and shuddered.

Enough, I told Nighteyes, and the wolf relented.

If you are going to kill him, do it soon, Nighteyes advised. The other one weakens and will die if you do not hurry.

He was right. Will's breath had gone shallow and rapid. I gripped Regal firmly, then fed more strength into Will. He tried not to take it, but his self-mastery was not that strong. Given a chance, the body will always choose to live. And so his lungs steadied and his heart beat more strongly. Once more I drew Skill into myself. I centered myself in it and honed its purpose. I turned my attention back to Regal.

If you kill me, you will burn yourself. You will lose your own Skill if you kill me with it.

I had thought of that. I had never much enjoyed being Skilled. I had rather far be Witted than Skilled. It would be no loss.

I forced myself to recall Galen. I called to mind the fanatical coterie he had created for Regal. It gave shape to my purpose.

As I had longed to do for so long, I loosed my Skill upon him.

Afterward, there was little left of Will. But I sat by him; and gave him water when he asked for it. I even covered him when he complained faintly of cold. It puzzled the wolf, my deathwatch. A knife across his throat would have been so much faster for both of us. Kinder, perhaps. But I had decided I was no longer an assassin. So I waited for his last breath, and when he sighed it out, I stood up and walked away.

It is a long way from the Mountain Kingdom to the coast of Buck. Even as the dragon flies, tirelessly and swift, it is a long, long way. For a few days, Nighteyes and I knew peace. We traveled far from the empty Stone Garden, far from the black Skill road. We were both too stiff to hunt well, but we had found a good trout stream and we followed it. The days were almost too warm, the nights clear and kind. We fished, we ate, we slept. I thought only of things that did not hurt. Not of Molly in Burrich's embrace, but of Nettle sheltered by his good right arm. He would be a good father to her. He had had practice. I even found it in me to hope that she might have younger brothers and sisters in years to come. I thought of peace returning to the Mountain Kingdom, of Red-Ships driven from the coast of the Six Duchies. I healed. Not completely. A scar is never the same as good flesh, but it stops the bleeding.