Assassin’s Fate

My father? Are you sure? I can lower my walls.

No! Do not!

I had begun to tremble. Was it possible? After all these months, after he had pushed me away? He has come to find me? Are you certain? Are you sure my father is near?

His reply was faint. No.

His presence faded like my hopes.

I carefully pondered what I knew.

I knew Beloved had come. That had been real. If he had come to rescue me, he’d made a poor task of it. He had only made things worse. They would whip him to death, and Prilkop, too. And we’d had no food because he had killed the guard who tended us, and Fellowdy had not thought to assign a new one. I wondered if Capra had died. I wondered if Coultrie and Vindeliar would convince Fellowdy that I had to be killed. I thought that Capra might have stood against them to keep me alive. But if she was gone, or badly hurt, they might come and get me. And kill me.

Was Prilkop already dead? They would kill him slowly, he’d said. Would they kill me slowly? I considered that very likely and the thought frightened me. I stood up, my heart pounding, my hand clasped over my mouth. Then I forced myself to sit back down. Not yet. It didn’t feel right yet.

I tried to put my thoughts in order. The crow had been real, because Wolf Father made me talk to him.

If Wolf Father was real.

I pushed all of that away. What did I know with absolute certainty? Coultrie and Vindeliar wanted to kill me. If they could convince Fellowdy, they’d do it.

That left only my path. The path that Prilkop had told me might not be a good one.

It was the only one I had. My only certainty. I could not depend on a talking crow or the dangled hope that my father might be near by. Me. I was what I could depend on. I was my only resource, and the path I had glimpsed was suddenly my true Path.

I felt regret for how my life had gone. I knew it was all over now. I would never sit at the kitchen table in Withywoods and watch flour and water become bread. Never steal scrolls from my father again, never argue with him. I would never sit in my little hidey-hole with a cat that didn’t belong to me. That part of my life had been very short. If I’d known how good it truly was, I would have enjoyed it more. But Prilkop was wrong. There had been no choice for me. Dwalia had taken all choices from me when she stole me and brought me here. There was still no choice.

It was silly, but I longed to tell him why he was wrong. To talk with him again. But I suspected he was already dead. I still whispered the words aloud. ‘You were wrong, Prilkop. The problem is not that we forget the past. It is that we recall it too well. Children recall wrongs that enemies did to their grandfathers, and blame the granddaughters of the old enemies. Children are not born with memories of who insulted their mother or slew their grandfather or stole their land. Those hates are bequeathed to them, taught them, breathed into them. If adults didn’t tell children of their hereditary hates, perhaps we would do better. Perhaps the Six Duchies would not hate Chalced. Would the Red Ships have come to the Six Duchies if the OutIslanders did not recall what we had done to their grandparents?’

I listened to the silence that followed my question.

Now it was past the turn of the night and venturing toward morning. Now it was time for my plan to be real. Time for me to set the world on my better Path.

I found the little tear in my mattress seam and winkled out my knife and the tethered four keys. I separated the keys. It was awkward to reach through the bars to insert each one in the proper hole and then turn it in the correct order. I was glad I only had to use two of them. It was still a slow process to find which two. Very carefully and quietly, I worked each key in the lock and then slid the metal latch. I opened the barred door just enough to put out my head. I saw no one in the open corridor.

Carefully, I closed the door behind me. I took the time to lock it with all four keys. Done.

For so long on the ship with Vindeliar, I had practised not thinking. And now as I moved silently down the walkway between the cells, I kept my mind as empty as I possibly could. I looked only at ordinary things. The tiles of the floor. The door. The handle. Not locked. Quietly, quietly. I stepped in something. Oh. The guard’s blood. Keep going. The stairs. The future I walked toward loomed ever larger, clearer and brighter. With every step I took, my certainty grew. But I pushed my certainty down, folded my Path small and private. Instead, I recalled the fragrance of my mother’s candle. I thought of my father, writing in his study every night, and almost every night burning what he had written.