Royal Assassin

Coming up the hill from town was Molly. Her servant’s blue dress flapped around her calves as she ran. And she ran heavily, unevenly, unlike her usual graceful stride. She was exhausted, or nearly so. “Fitz!” she cried out again, and there was fear in her voice.

I started to go to her, but the guard stepped suddenly into my path. Fear was on her face, too, but also determination. “I cannot let you go out of the gate. I have my orders.”

I wanted to smash her from my path. I forced my rage down. A struggle with her would not help Molly. “Then you go to her, damn you! Can’t you see the woman is in trouble of some kind?”

She stood eye to eye with me, unmoving. “Miles!” she called, and the boy leaped out. “Go see what is wrong with that woman. Quickly now!”

The boy took off like a shot. I stood, with the guard standing squarely before me, and watched helplessly over her shoulder as Miles raced to Molly. When he reached her, he put an arm around her and took her basket on his other arm. Leaning heavily on him, gasping and near weeping, Molly came toward the gate. It seemed to take forever before she was through the gate and in my arms. “Fitz, oh Fitz,” she sobbed.

“Come,” I told her. I turned her away from the guard, walked her away from the gate. I knew I had done the sensible thing, the calm thing, but I felt shamed and small from it.

“Why didn’t you . . . come to me?” Molly panted.

“The guard would not let me. They have orders I am not to leave Buckkeep,” I said quietly. I could feel her trembling as she leaned against me. I took her around the corner of a warehouse, out of sight of the guards standing gaping in the gate. I held her in my arms until she quieted. “What’s wrong? What happened?” I tried to make my voice soothing. I brushed back the hair that hung about her face. After a few moments she quieted in my arms. Her breathing steadied, but she still trembled.

“I had gone into town. Lady Patience had given me the afternoon. And I needed to get a few things . . . for my candles.” As she spoke, her trembling lessened. I tilted her chin up so that she looked into my eyes.

“And then?”

“I was . . . coming back. I was on the steep bit, just outside of town. Where the alders grow?”

I nodded. I knew the spot.

“I heard horses coming. In a hurry. So I stepped off the road to make way for them.” She started to tremble again. “I kept walking, thinking they would pass me. But suddenly they were right behind me, and when I looked back, they were coming right at me. Not on the road, but right at me. I jumped back into the brush, and still they rode right at me. I turned and ran, but they kept coming. . . .” Her voice was getting higher and higher.

“Hush! Wait a bit. Calm down. Think. How many of them? Did you know them?”

She shook her head wildly. “Two. I couldn’t see their faces. I was running away, and they were wearing the kind of helm that comes down over your eyes and nose. They chased me. It’s steep there, you know, and brushy. I tried to get away, but they just rode their horses right through the brush after me. Herding me, like dogs herd sheep. I ran, and ran, but I couldn’t get away from them. Then I fell, I caught my foot on a log and I fell. And they jumped from their horses. One pinned me down while the other snatched up my basket. He dumped it all out, like he was looking for something, but they were laughing and laughing. I thought. . .”

My heart was hammering as hard as Molly’s now. “Did they hurt you?” I asked fiercely.

She paused, as if she could not decide, then shook her head wildly. “Not like you fear. He just . . . held me down. And laughed. The other one, he said . . . he said, I was pretty stupid, letting myself be used by a bastard. They said. . .”

Again she paused a moment. Whatever they had said to her, called her was ugly enough that she could not repeat it to me. It was like a sword through me, that they had been able to hurt her so badly she would not even share the pain. “They warned me,” she went on at last. “They said stay away from the bastard. Don’t do his dirty work for him. They said . . . things I didn’t understand, about messages and spies and treason. They said they could make sure that everyone knew I was the Bastard’s whore.” She tried just to say the word, but it came out with greater force. She defied me to flinch from it. “Then they said . . . I would be hanged . . . if I didn’t pay attention. That to run errands for a traitor was to be a traitor.” Her voice grew strangely calmer. “Then they spit on me. And they left me. I heard them ride away, but for a long time I was afraid to get up. I have never been so scared.” She looked at me and her eyes were like open wounds. “Not even my father ever scared me that bad.”

I held her close to me. “It’s all my fault.” I did not even know I had spoken aloud until she drew back from me, to look up in puzzlement.

“Your fault? Did you do something wrong?”