Royal Assassin

I had been blind for so long that it took me a moment to understand him. I knew Regal believed his mother had been poisoned. I knew it was one source of his hatred for me, and for "Lady Thyme." He believed we had carried out the killing. At the behest of the King. I knew it all to be false. Queen Desire had poisoned herself. Regal's mother had been overly fond of both drink and those herbs that bring surcease from worry. When she had not been able to rise to the power she believed was her right, she had taken refuge in those pleasures. Shrewd had tried several times to stop her, had even applied to Chade for herbs and potions that would end her cravings. Nothing had worked. Queen Desire had been poisoned, it was true, but it was her own self-indulgent hand that had administered it. I had always known that. And knowing it, I had discounted the hate that would breed in the heart of a coddled son, suddenly bereft of his mother.

Could Regal kill over such a thing? Of course he could. Would he be willing to bring the Six Duchies to the teetering edge of ruin as an act of vengeance? Why not? He had never cared for the Coastal Duchies. The Inland Duchies, always more loyal to his inland mother, were where his heart was. If Queen Desire had not wed King Shrewd, she would have remained Duchess of Farrow. Sometimes, when in her cups and heady with herbal intoxicants, she would ruthlessly suggest that if she had remained as Duchess, she would have been able to wield more power, enough to persuade Farrow and Tilth to unite under her as queen and shrug off their allegiance to the Six Duchies. Galen, the Skill Master, Queen Desire's own bastard son, had nurtured Regal's hatred along with his own. Had he hated enough to subvert his coterie to Regal's revenge?

To me it seemed a staggering treason, but I found myself accepting it. He would. Hundreds of folk slain, scores Forged, women raped, children orphaned, entire villages destroyed for the sake of a Princeling's vengeance over an imagined wrong. It staggered me. But it fit. It fit as snug as a coffin lid.

"I think perhaps the present Duke of Farrow should have a care for his health," I mused.

"He shares his older sister's fondness for fine wine and intoxicants. Well supplied with these, and careless of all else, I suspect he will live a long life."

"As perhaps King Shrewd might?" I ventured carefully.

A spasm of pain twitched across the Fool's face. "I doubt that a long life is left to him," he said quietly. "But what is left might be an easy one, rather than one of bloodshed and violence."

"You think it will come to that?"

"Who knows what will swirl up front the bottom of a stirred kettle?" He went suddenly to my door, and set his hand to the latch. "That is what I ask you," he said quietly. "To forgo your twirling, Sir Spoon. To let things settle."

"I cannot."

He pressed his forehead to the door, a most un-Fool-like gesture. "Then you shall be the death of kings." Grieved words in a low voice. "You know ... what I am. I have told you. I have told you why I am here. This is one thing of which I am sure. The end of the Farseer line was one of the turning points. Kettricken carries an heir. The line will continue. That is what was needed. Cannot an old man be left to die in peace?"

"Regal will not let that heir be born," I said bluntly. Even the Fool widened his eyes to hear me speak so plain. "That child will not come to power without a King's hand to shelter under. Shrewd, or Verity. You do not believe Verity is dead. You have as much as said so. Can you let Kettricken endure the torment of believing it is so? Can you let the Six Duchies go down in blood and ruin? What good is an heir to the Farseer throne, if the throne is but a broken chair in a burned-out hall?"

The Fool's shoulders slumped. "There are a thousand crossroads," he said quietly. "Some clear and bold, some shadows within shadows. Some are nigh onto certainties; it would take a great army or a vast plague to change those paths. Others are shrouded in fog, and I do not know what roads lead out of them, or to where. You fog me, bastard. You multiply the fixtures a thousandfold, just by your existing. Catalyst. From some of those fogs go the blackest, twisted threads of damnation, and from others shining twines of gold. To the depths or the heights, it seems, are your paths. I long for a middle path. I long for a simple death for a master who was kind to a freakish, jeering servant."

He made no more rebuke than that. He lifted the latches and undid the bolts and left quietly. The rich clothing and careful walk made him appear deformed to me, as his motley and capers never had. I closed the door softly behind him and then stood leaning against it as if I could hold the fixture out.