Royal Assassin

I looked down at my hands. They were old and scarred. I closed them, watched veins and tendons bulge beneath the papery surface, felt the sandy resistance of my own swollen knuckles. I'm an old man now, I thought to myself. This is what it really feels like to be old. Not sick, where one might get better. Old. When each day can only be more difficult, each month is another burden to the body. Everything was slipping sideways. I had thought, briefly, that I was fifteen. From somewhere came the scent of scorching flesh and burning hair. No, rich beef stew. No, Jonqui's healing incense. The mingling scents made me nauseous. I had lost track of who I was, of what was important. I scrabbled at the slippery logic, trying to surmount it. It was hopeless. "I don't know," I whispered. "I don't understand any of this."

"Ah," said the Fool. "As I told you. You can only understand a thing when you become it."

"Is this what it means to be King Shrewd, then?" I demanded. It shook me to my core. I had never seen him like this, racked by the pains of age but still relentlessly confronted by the pains of his subjects. "Is this what he must endure, day after day?"

"I fear it is, my liege," the Fool replied gently. "Come. Let me help you back into your bed. Surely, tomorrow you will feel better."

"No. We both know I will not." I did not speak those terrible words. They came from King Shrewd's lips, and I heard them, and knew that this was the debilitating truth King Shrewd bore every day. I was so terribly tired. Every part of me ached. I had not known that flesh could be so heavy, that the mere bending of a finger could demand a painful effort. I wanted to rest. To sleep again. Was it I, or Shrewd? I should let the Fool put me to bed, let my king have his rest. But the Fool kept holding that one key morsel of information just above my snapping jaws. He juggled away the one mote of knowledge I must possess to be whole.

"Did she die there?" I demanded.

He looked at me sadly. He stooped abruptly, picked up his rat scepter again. A tiny pearl of a tear trickled down Ratsy's cheek. He focused on it and his eyes went afar again, wandering across a tundra of pain. He spoke in a whisper. "A woman in Siltbay. A drop of water in the current of all the women of Siltbay. What might have befallen her? Did she die? Yes. No. Badly burned, but alive. Her arm severed at the shoulder. Cornered and raped while they killed her children, but left alive. Sort of." The Fool's eyes became even emptier. It was as if he read aloud from a roster. His voice had no inflection. "Roasted alive with the children when the burning structure fell on them. Took poison as soon as her husband awoke her. Choked to death on smoke. And died of an infection in a sword wound only a few days later. Died of a sword thrust. Strangled on her own blood as she was raped. Cut her own throat after she had killed the children while Raiders were hacking her door down. Survived, and gave birth to a Raider's child the next summer. Was found wandering days later, badly burned, but recalling nothing. Had her face burned and her hands hacked oft, but lived a short-"

"Stop!" I commanded him. "Stop it! I beg you, stop."

He paused and drew a breath. His eyes came back to me, focused on me. "Stop it?" He sighed. He put his face into his hands, spoke through muffling fingers. "Stop it? So shrieked the women of Siltbay. But it is done already, my liege. We cannot stop what's already happening. Once it's come to pass, it's too late." He lifted his face from his hands. He looked very weary.

"Please," I begged him. "Cannot you tell me of the one woman I saw?" I suddenly could not recall her name, only that she was very important to me.

He shook his head, and the small silver bells on his cap jingled wearily. "The only way to find out would be to go there." He looked up at me. "If you command it, I shall do so."

"Summon Verity," I told him instead. "I have instructions for him."

"Our soldiers cannot arrive in time to stop this raid," he reminded me. "Only to help to douse the fires and assist the folk there in picking from the ruins what is left to them."

"Then so they shall do," I said heavily.

"First, let me help you return to your bed, my king. Before you take a chill. And let me bring you food."

"No, Fool," I told him sadly. "Shall I eat and be warm, while the bodies of children are cooling in the mud? Fetch me instead my robe and buskins. And then be off to find Verity."

The Fool stood his ground boldly. "Do you think the discomfort you inflict on yourself will give even one child another breath, my liege? What happened at Siltbay is done. Why must you suffer?"