Fool’s Quest

I went back to Chade. He knelt by Crafty. The man was not dead. He was unconscious from being choked, and Chade was hamstringing him. He’d pushed the man facedown, pulled up the legs of his trousers, and cut the big tendons behind his knees. As I watched, he trussed the man’s wrists behind his back with a length of cord he materialized from his sleeve. Then with a grunt, he rolled Crafty onto his back. With those tendons cut, Crafty wasn’t going to stand, run, or fight. Chade was pale and breathing hard as he settled back on his haunches. I didn’t tell him to finish the man or ask him his intent. Assassins have a code of their own. Bee was at stake as well as Shun, and if this man’s attempt on us had to do with her abduction, then whatever we had to do to extract his information was acceptable.

Crafty was drawing deeper breaths, a scratchy sound. His eyelids fluttered, then opened. He gasped loudly and then looked up at us, me standing and Chade kneeling beside him with a bloody knife. Chade didn’t wait for him to speak. He set his knife to the hollow of the man’s throat.

“Who paid you? How much? What was your mission?” Chade spoke the words as if he were counting aloud.

Crafty didn’t answer immediately. I observed the standing stone. My roan stood at a distance, watching me closely. The other horses had bunched together, confused and taking comfort in her company. I suspect Chade did something with his knife because Crafty gasped high. I muffled my Wit so as not to share what he felt. I heard him struggle and then demand, “What did you do to my legs, you bastard?”

Chade spoke again. “Who paid you? How much? What was your mission?”

“Don’t know his name! He wouldn’t say!” The man was breathless with pain. “What did you do to my legs?” He tried to sit up, but Chade pushed him roughly back. I eyed the old man critically. He was still bleeding, the red melting the snow beside him. Soon, I’d have to intervene, if only to bandage him.

“What did he tell you to do? How much did he offer you to do it?”

“Kill you. Five gold for me, and two for any man who helped. He came to us in a tavern in Buckkeep. Actually, he came to the captain, but he cursed him and said no. Is he dead? Captain Stout?”

I couldn’t tell if it was fear or regret in his voice.

“Only me?” Chade asked him.

“Kill you. Kill you slow if we could, but kill you and bring back your hand. To prove it.”

“When?” I interrupted Chade’s questioning. “When did you get this job?”

He rolled his eyes to look at me. “In Buckkeep. Before we left. Right after we got word that we were leaving, that we would miss Winterfest to come out here. No one was happy about that.”

I spoke. “It’s not connected, Chade. Whoever bribed them had no way of knowing you’d be here: He’d have been hoping they could somehow kill you at Buckkeep. Bee and Shun were taken the same day they were bribed. And why send these traitors if they already had a force on its way here? It’s two different things. Kill him and let me see to your side.”

Chade shot me a look that silenced me. “What did he look like, the man who offered the money?”

“My legs hurt so bad, I can’t think. I want a healer before I talk any more. Sweet Eda!” He lifted his head a short way and then let it fall back in the snow. “You killed everyone? All four of them?”

“What did he look like?” Chade was relentless. The man was bleeding to death. Chade and I knew it, but Crafty seemed unaware of it.

“A tall man, but not thin. Tall, but with a stomach like a barrel. Just a Buckman, like any other. I don’t know. It was an easy deal. Bring the hand with your ring on it, the innkeeper at the Bawdy Trout gives us the money. When you showed up, it was like the gods handed you to us. So damned easy. If the captain had said yes, you’d be a dead man, and him, too.”

“Tell me about his teeth.”

“I’m not saying nothing more until you take me to a healer. I’m getting cold, so cold. What did you do to my legs?”

Chade set the tip of his knife to the man’s nostril. “Talk to me, or I cut your nose,” he said coldly. He inserted the blade up the man’s nostril until he felt the edge of it.

Crafty’s eyes went very wide. “His tooth, one of the front ones, was gray. Is that what you meant?

Chade nodded to himself. “Did he mention a girl?”

“The girl you stole. Yah. Said if we found her with you, we could have her. Or if we could make you tell us where she was. Said she’d make a good whore. Aaaaah!”

The nose is sensitive. Very sensitive. Chade had always maintained it was as good a target for torment as a man’s genitals—or better. Not only is there pain, but disfiguring a man’s face will affect him for the rest of his life. Crafty was writhing in the snow, one of his nostrils sliced open and bleeding profusely. He began to weep. Abruptly, I wanted this to be over.