Royal Assassin

I was on the outskirts of Buckkeep Town before I overtook her. I knew her from behind, even if she had not been wearing her purple and white. She strode through the drifting snow with a fine indifference to it, her Mountain-bred flesh as immune to the cold as I was to salt breeze and damp. "Queen Kettricken! Lady! Please, wait for me!"

She turned and, as she caught sight of me, smiled and waited. I slid from Sidekick's back as I came abreast of her. I had not realized how worried I was until the relief flooded through me at seeing her unharmed. "What are you doing out here, alone, in this storm?" I demanded of her, and belatedly added, "My lady."

She looked about her as if just noticing the falling snow and gusting wind, then turned back to me with a rueful grin. She was not the least bit chilled or uncomfortable. To the contrary, her cheeks were rosy with her walk, and the white fir around her face set off her yellow hair and blue eyes. Here, in this whiteness, she was not pale and colorless, but tawny and pink, blue eyes sparkling. She looked more vital than I had seen her in days. Yesterday she had been Death astride a horse, and Grief washing the bodies of her slain. But today, here, in the snow, she was a merry girl, escaped from Keep and station to go hiking through the snow. "I go to find my husband."

"Alone? Does he know you are coming, and like this, afoot?"

She looked startled. Then she tucked her chin and bridled just like my mule. "Is he not my husband? Do I need an appointment to see him? Why should not I go afoot and alone? Do I seem so incompetent to you that I might become lost on the road to Buckkeep Town?"

She set off walking again, and I was forced to keep pace with her. I dragged the mule along with me. Sidekick was not enthused. "Queen Kettricken," I began, but she cut me off.

"I grow so weary of this." She halted abruptly and turned to face me. "Yesterday, for the first time in many days, I felt as if I were alive and had a will of my own. I do not intend to let that slip away from me. If I wish to visit my husband at his work, I shall. Well do I know that not one of my ladies would care for this outing, in this weather and afoot, or otherwise. So I am alone. And any horse was injured yesterday, and the footing here is not kind to a beast anyway. So I do not ride. All of this makes sense. Why have you followed me and why do you question me?"

She had chosen bluntness as the weapon, so I took it up as well. But I took a breath and tuned my voice to courtesy before I began. "My lady queen, I followed to be sure you had not come to any harm. Here, with only a mule's ears to hear us, I will speak plainly. Have you so swiftly forgotten who tried to topple Verity from the throne in your own Mountain Kingdom? Would he hesitate to plot here as well? I think not. Do you believe it an accident you were lost and astray in the woods two nights ago? I do not. And do you think that your actions yesterday were pleasing to him? Quite the contrary. What you do for the sake of your people, he sees as your ploy to take power to yourself. So he sulks and mutters and decides you are a greater threat than before. You must know all this. So why do you set yourself out as a target, here where an arrow or a knife could find you with such ease and no witnesses?"

"I am not so easy a target as that," she defied me. " It would take an excellent archer indeed to make an arrow fly true in these shifting winds. As for a knife, well, I've a knife, too. To strike me, one must come where I can strike back." She turned and strode off again.

I followed relentlessly. "And where would that lead? To your killing a man. And all the Keep in an uproar, and Verity chastising his guard, that you could be so endangered? And what if the killer were better with a knife than you? What consequence for the Six Duchies if I were now pulling your body out of a drift?" I swallowed and added, "My queen."

Her pace slowed, but her chin was still up as she asked softly, "What consequence for me if I sit day after day in the Keep, growing soft and blind as a grub? FitzChivalry, I am not a game piece, to sit my space on the board until some player sets me in motion. I am ... there's a wolf watching us!"

"Where?"

She pointed, but he had vanished like a swirl of snow, leaving only a ghostly laughter in my mind. A moment later a trick of the wind brought his scent to Sidestep. The mule snorted and tugged at his lead rope. "I did not know we had wolves so near!" Kettricken marveled.

"Just a town dog, my lady. Probably some mangy, homeless beast out to sniff and paw through the village trash heap. He is nothing to fear."

You think not? I'm hungry enough to eat that mule.

Go back and wait. I shall come soon.

The trash heap is nowhere near here. Besides, it's full of seagulls and stinks of their droppings. And other things. The mule would be fresh and sweet.

Go back, I tell you. I'll bring you meat later.

"FitzChivalry?" This from Kettricken, warily.