Assassin’s Fate

I drew a deep breath of relief and sank into sleep. I did not bother to listen to the rest of their long farewells to the king and queen of the Elderlings. I would see my sister soon. And Riddle.

FORTY-FIVE A Princess of the Farseers

A grey man is singing in the wind. He is as grey as storm clouds, grey as rain on a windowpane. He is smiling as the wind blows past him. His hair and his cloak stream in the wind and tatter away. He tatters with them, until only his song is left.

I awakened from the dream smiling. It is a promise, and a good one. It will happen.

Bee Farseer’s dream journal

I was royal now. I did not much like it. I understood why my father had tried to spare me from it.

The journey through the Skill-pillar was uneventful. The horrid procession to it, and the endless farewells and the dragons trumpeting overhead that preceded it, were all extended agony. Oh, how stiffly I smiled, and curtsied and thanked everyone. I had begged for Per and they let me have him. I held tight to his hand on one side and to Clansie on the other, and through we went like a string of beads.

Only to discover that on the other side, there was a welcoming party gathered and there would be another procession, and a feast that night followed by music and dancing. I held tight to Per’s hand as they announced it. It was only when he said, ‘I feel dizzy,’ that I knew what I was doing. I let go of him then. Riddle had been standing beside me on the other side. He suddenly stepped between us and put one hand on my shoulder and one on Per’s. We both felt better for that touch.

So many things happened that day. I met my niece, formally, in front of everyone, with a curtsey on a dais. She was draped all in lace with pearls on it and had a tiny red face. Hope screamed through the entire introduction. Nettle looked very tired. Afterwards, we had to have tea and some food in a room full of ladies with extravagant dresses and too many perfumes.

When I said I was rather tired, they showed me a room and said it was mine. The beautiful wardrobe Revel had had made for me was there, with my old things in it. But when Caution came in and curtseyed to me, I shrieked and then cried and could only ask her if she was unhurt, if it was really her, for I had been convinced the raiders could not have left her alive. She began to sob, too, until the woman who had brought me there threatened to call for a healer to drug away our ‘hysteria’. I lost my temper and ordered her to go away. Caution latched the door behind her, and we wept alone until we managed to stop.

Caution said she was well recovered, but I knew she wasn’t. She had only arrived the day before I did. She was to be my maid here, she told me, as my sister had not wished life in Buckkeep Castle to be too great a change. But then she told me that Buckkeep Castle was immense and full of people and she was almost afraid to leave the rooms at night, and what was she, a simple country girl, doing in such a place?

I said I wondered the same thing for myself. She hugged me so hard I thought my ribs would crack.

She helped me out of my Elderling garb and then we had a tedious time of dressing me in crispy, rustling skirts that she assured me were the latest style from Jamaillia. I did not have lice but she said that was sheer luck for my hair was all tangles and mats despite Spark’s best efforts. I left a great deal of it in her comb. There followed a gathering in a room, and walking into a great hall full of people, and trying to eat dinner on a stage. Shun was seated three chairs away from me. She was Lady Shine now, in clothing even more gorgeous than she had worn at Withywoods. I wondered if she still scattered it on the floor of her room when she undressed. We looked at one another once, and then away.

I slept in a big bed in my new room and dreamed that I opened my wardrobe and Revel looked out from the mirror and thanked me for the kerchiefs I’d given him. I woke weeping. Caution came into the room. She slept in the bed beside me. We held hands all night.