Assassin’s Fate

How could he think it sad that I had done that? I put it clearly. ‘I told you when I told my father. I killed them. It wasn’t evil, and I have no regret. It needed to be done, I was the one who was in the place and time to do it, and it was my task. So, I did it. I should have killed Vindeliar that night, too. It would have saved us all a great deal of trouble.’

‘Did you dream it?’ he asked hesitantly. When I stared at him, he said, ‘Did you have a dream that killing them was something you were supposed to do?’

I shrugged one shoulder. I seized the edge of the hammock and this time I got into it. I pulled up my blanket. It was summer above, but belowdecks, it was chill at night. I closed my eyes. ‘I don’t know. I have dreams. I know they mean something, but they are so strange I can’t connect them to what I will do. I dreamed a silver man carving his heart. The serpent spit was silver. Was that a dream of me carving Dwalia’s heart into death?’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said quietly.

That had been a recent dream. I felt better for having told someone. ‘I’m going to sleep now,’ I told him. I closed my eyes and ignored him. He did not move. It was very annoying. I’d hoped he would leave. I waited a long time and then looked through my lashes. I was going to tell him to go away. Instead I asked, ‘Did you love my father?’

He went as still as a cat. When he spoke it was with reservation. ‘I had a deep bond with your father. A connection I had with no one else.’

‘Why won’t you say you loved him?’ I opened my eyes to see his face. My father had given him all his strength, and this man would not even say he had loved him?

His smile was too tight, as if he were forcing a different expression to be a smile. ‘It always made him uncomfortable if I used that word.’

‘He did not use that word very much. His love was things he did.’

‘He never counted up the things he did for me, but he always remembered the things I did for him.’

‘So he loved you.’ Loved you so much he left me to take you to Buckkeep.

All expression fell away from his face. His peculiar eyes were empty.

‘He wrote long letters to you, but he had nowhere to send them. He missed you desperately. He loved my mother, but he always had to be strong for her. He had Riddle, too, and my brother Hap. But the things he wrote about in those letters were things he could not say to my mother, nor Riddle nor Hap. You left him, and all he could do was write them down.’

I watched him carefully and saw my barbed words hit and hold. I wanted to drive him away. I did not care that I hurt him. He was alive and my father was dead. I added, ‘You never should have left him.’

His voice and face were expressionless as he asked, ‘How do you know what he wrote?’

‘Because he did not always burn them every night. Sometimes he waited until the morning.’

‘So you read his private papers.’

‘I believe you read my journals?’

He looked startled. ‘I did,’ he admitted.

‘You still do. When you think I am deeply asleep, you have looked at my writing.’

He did not flinch. ‘You know that I do. Bee, you have endured much, but you are still a child. Your father gave you into my care. I promised to watch over you. Understand me, adults do what is best for a child. Parents especially have that obligation. It comes far before doing what you wish or what you might think is best. You have a White heritage; your dreams are both important and dangerous. You need to be guided. Yes, I read your journal, to know you better. I will read the dreams you write.’

My mind had snagged on his earlier words. ‘Do I get my White heritage from my mother?’ For I knew my father was Mountain and Buck, and nothing else.

‘You get it from me.’

I stared at him. ‘How?’

‘You are young to understand this.’

‘No, I am not. I knew my father and I knew my mother.’ I held my breath, waiting for him to tell a terrible lie about my mother.

‘Do you know how the dragons change the Elderlings? How they give them scales and colours? How their children are born sometimes with scales?’

‘No. I did not know they did that.’

‘You saw Rapskal, the scarlet man?’

‘Yes.’

‘A dragon changed him. A dragon loves him very much. So Heeby, the red dragon, added something of herself to Rapskal, and he changed. And Rapskal’s dragon, Heeby, has taken on much of his thoughts and ways.’

I was listening intently.

‘For many years, I lived alongside your father. I think we both … changed each other.’ I saw his thoughts wander into a different trail. ‘He said once that he had become the Prophet and I the Catalyst. I thought long about his words. I decided that I wanted it to be so. For once, I wanted to make the change. So I came to Clerres Castle and tried to be the Changer.’

‘You were not very good at it.’