Assassin’s Fate

A disappointing night. I slipped from my room and went very quietly to my father’s study. Last night, I had taken some of his writing from his desk. In them, I read of a day he spent with my mother, when they were very young. He wrote of reading to her something her mother had written for her, a recipe for candles. So strange to read such sentimental words from the pen of one who holds himself on such a tight rein. And he wrote something there that I had never known. On the night she summoned him to tell him that I would be born, when he followed her to the room where I would come out of her body, those were the candles she burned.

How could he not have told me such a thing? Was he saving it until I was older? Does it still exist, that precious writing of my grandmother’s? I put his pages back with the edges uneven, exactly as he had left them.

Tonight, when I heard him finally go to his bed, I went again to his study. I wanted to read again how tenderly he thought of her, how astounded he was on the night I was born, and how certain he had been that I would not live.

But the pages were not where he had left them. And when I stirred the dying fire on the study hearth, that I might have a bit more light to look for them, I saw their fate. I saw the words I recalled from the last page ‘I will ever regret’ curling on the page as the flames ate them. I watched them go, watched them forever lost to me.

Why, I wonder, does he write and then burn? Does he seek to banish his memories? Does he fear that writing it down makes it important? Some day, I hope to sit next to him and demand that he tell to me everything he can remember of his life. And I will write it down and never let the flames steal it.

From Bee Farseer’s journal

We reboarded Vivacia, but she felt like a different ship. Althea, Brashen and Boy-O were aboard, but Paragon’s crewmembers had disembarked. From overheard conversations, I knew that Brashen had seen that they had funds for their immediate needs and promised them that they would be paid their full wages in the next two days, and given recommendations for future work. For some of them, it had been years since they had lived ashore. Paragon had been their home, and most were already pounding the docks looking for a new berth on another ship.

‘Why must we leave so soon?’ Lant asked Boy-O. We had herded ourselves into the galley to avoid being in the way, and Boy-O had come in to give me a parcel that had been delivered to the ship. It had my name on it. It was wrapped in canvas and tied with string. The knots were complicated but I didn’t want to cut the string.