Royal Assassin

Despite my skepticism for such signs, a shiver ran up me, setting the hair on my arms upright. Brawndy glanced away from me to the inner door of the chamber. I followed his eyes. Celerity stood there. The short dark hair framed her proud face and her eyes gleamed fierce blue. "Daughter, you have chosen well," the old man told her. "I wondered, once, what you saw in a scriber. Perhaps now I see it as well."

He beckoned her into the room, and she came in a rustle of skirts. She stood by her father, looking boldly at me. For the first time I glimpsed the steel will that hid inside the shy child. It was unnerving.

"I bade you wait, and you have," Duke Brawndy said to me. "You have shown yourself a man of honor in this. I have given you my loyalty this day. Will you take my daughter's pledge to be your wife as well?"

What a precipice I teetered on. I met Celerity's eyes. She had no doubts. If I had never known Molly, I would have found her beautiful. But when I looked at her, all I could see was who she was not. I had no heart left to give to any woman, let alone at a time like this. I turned my eyes back to her father, determined to speak firmly.

"You do me more honor than I deserve, sir. But, Duke Brawndy, it is as you have said. These are evil times, and uncertain. With you, your daughter is safe. At my side, she could know only greater uncertainty. What we have discussed here, today, some would call treason. I will not have it said that I took your daughter to bind you to me in a questionable endeavor, nor that you gave your daughter for such a reason." I forced myself to look back at Celerity, to meet her eyes. "Brawndy's daughter is safer than FitzChivalry's wife. Until my position is more certain, I pledge no one to me in any way. My regard for you is great, Lady Celerity. I am not a Duke, nor even a lord. I am as I am named, an illegitimate son of a Prince. Until I can say I am more than that, I will seek no wife, nor court any woman."

Celerity was clearly displeased. But her father nodded slowly to my words. "I see the wisdom of your words. My daughter, I fear, sees only the delay." He looked at Celerity's pout, smiled fondly. "Someday she will understand that the people who seek to protect her are the people who care for her." He ran his eyes over me as if I were a horse. "I believe," he said quietly, "that Buck will stand. And that Verity's child shall inherit the throne."

I left him with those words echoing in my mind. Again and again, I told myself I had done nothing wrong. If I had not reached forth to claim Buckkeep, another would have.

"Who?" Chade demanded angrily of me some hours later.

I sat looking down at my feet. "I don't know. But they would have found someone. And that person would have been far more likely to cause bloodshed. To act at the King-in-Waiting ceremony, and jeopardize our efforts to get Kettricken and Shrewd clear of this mess."

"If the Coastal Dukes are as close to rebellion as your report indicates, then perhaps we should reconsider that plan."

I sneezed. The room still smelled of bitterbark. I had used too much. "Brawndy did not come to me speaking of rebellion, but of loyalty to the true and rightful King. And that was the spirit in which I responded. I have no wish to overthrow the throne, Chade, only to secure it for its lawful heir."

"I know that," he said briefly. "Otherwise I – would go straight to King Shrewd with this ... madness. I know not what to call it. It is not treason, quite, and yet ..."

"I am no traitor to my king." I spoke with quiet vehemence.

"No? Let me ask you this, then. If, despite, or save us all, because of our efforts to save Shrewd and Kettricken, they both perish with the child unborn, and Verity never returns. What then? Will you still be so eager to cede the throne to the rightful King?"

"Regal?"

"By the line of succession, yes."

"He is no king, Chade. He's an indulged Princeling, and always will be. I've as much Farseer blood as he does."

"And so you might say of Kettricken's child, when the time came. Do you see what a dangerous path we set ourselves on when we set ourselves above our places? You and I, we swore to the Farseer line, of which we are but random shoots. Not to King Shrewd alone, or to a wise King alone, but to uphold the rightful King of the Farseer line. Even if he is Regal."

"You would serve Regal?"

"I have seen more foolish Princes than he become wise as they aged. What you contemplate will bring us civil war. Farrow and Tilth-"

"Have no interest in any kind of a war. They will say good riddance to us and let the Coastal Duchies go. Regal has always said as much."

"And he probably thinks he believes it. But when he finds that he cannot buy fine silk, and that the wines of Bingtown and beyond no longer flow up the Buck River to his palate, he will think better. He needs his port cities, and he will come back for them."

"So what are we to do? What should I have done?"