by Robin Hobb
She took a shuddering breath. “We shall do it, then. But … you must wait for me outside my chamber. I wish to fetch several scrolls to show him. I will be but a short time. ” She turned to Patience, spoke more loudly. “Lady Patience, might I ask you to finish these plants for me as well? I have something else I wish to attend to. ”
“Of course, my queen. I should be pleased to. ”
We left the garden, and I followed her to her chambers. I waited for more than a short time. When she emerged, her little maid Rosemary was behind her, insisting on carrying the scrolls for her. Kettricken had washed the soil from her hands. And changed her gown, and added scent and dressed her hair and was wearing the jewelry Verity had sent to her when she was pledged to him. She smiled at me cautiously as I looked at her. “My lady queen, I am dazzled,” I ventured.
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“You flatter me as wildly as Regal does,” she proclaimed, and hastened away down the hall, but a blush warmed her cheeks.
She dresses so just to come to speak to me?
She dresses so to … attract you. How could a man so astute at reading men be so ignorant of women?
Perhaps he has had little time ever to learn much of their ways.
I clamped my mind shut on my thoughts and hastened after my queen. We arrived at Verity’s study just in time to see Charim leaving. He was carrying an armful of laundry. It seemed odd until we were admitted. Verity was wearing a soft shirt of pale blue linen, and the mingled scents of lavender and cedar were lively in the air. It reminded me of a clothes chest. His hair and beard were freshly smoothed; well I knew that his hair never stayed that way for more than a few minutes. As Kettricken advanced shyly to curtsy to her lord, I saw Verity as I had not for months. The summer of Skilling had wasted him again. The fine shirt belled about his shoulders, and the smoothed hair was as much gray as black now. There were lines, too, about his eyes and mouth that I had never noticed before.
Do I look so poorly, then?
Not to her, I reminded him.
As Verity took her hand and drew her to sit down beside him on a bench near the fire, she looked at him with a hunger as deep as his Skill drive. Her fingers clung to his hand, and I looked aside as he lifted her hand to kiss it. Perhaps Verity was right about a Skill sensitivity. What Kettricken felt battered at me as roughly as the fury of my crew mates during battle.
I felt a flutter of astonishment from Verity. Then: Shield yourself, he commanded me brusquely, and I was suddenly alone inside my skull. I stood still a moment, dizzied by the abruptness of his departure. He really had no idea, I found myself thinking, and felt glad the thought remained private.
“My lord, I have come to ask a moment or two of your time for … an idea I have. ” Kettricken’s eyes searched his face as she spoke quietly.
“Certainly,” Verity agreed. He glanced up at me. “FitzChivalry, will you join us?”
“If you will, my lord. ” I took a seat on a stool on the opposite side of the hearth. Rosemary came and stood at my elbow with her armload of scrolls. Probably filched from my room by the Fool, I suspected. But as Kettricken began to talk to Verity she took up the scrolls one by one, in each case to illustrate her argument. Without exception, they were scrolls that dealt, not with the Elderlings, but with the Mountain Kingdom. “King Wisdom, you may recall, was the first of Six Duchies nobility to come to our land … to the land of the Mountain Kingdom, for anything other than the making of war upon us. So he is well remembered in our histories. These scrolls, copied from ones made in his time, deal with his doings and travels in the Mountain Kingdom. And thus, indirectly, with the Elderlings. ” She unrolled the last scroll. Verity and I both leaned forward in amazement. A map. Faded with time, poorly copied probably, but a map. Of the Mountain Kingdom, with passes and trails marked on it. And a few straggling lines leading into the lands beyond.
“One of these paths, marked here, must lead to the Elderlings. For I know the trails of the Mountains, and these are not trade routes, nor do they go to any village I know. Nor do they lie in conjunction with the trails as I know them now to be. These are older roads and paths. And why else would they be marked here, save that they go where King Wisdom went?”
“Can it be that simple?” Verity rose quickly, to return with a branch of candles to light the map better. He smoothed the vellum lovingly with his hands and leaned close over it.
“There are several paths marked that go off into the Rain Wilds. If that is what all this green represents. None seem to have anything marked at the end. How would we know which one?” I objected.
“Perhaps they all go to the Elderlings,” Kettricken ventured. “Why should they reside in but one place?”
“No!” Verity straightened up. “Two at least have something marked at the end. Or had something. The damned ink has faded. But there was something there. I intend to find out what. ”
Even Kettricken looked astonished at the enthusiasm in his voice. I was shocked. I had expected him to hear her out politely, not to endorse her plan wholeheartedly.
He rose suddenly, paced a quick turn around the room. The Skill energy radiated off him like heat from a hearth. “The full storms of winter are upon the coast now. Or will be, any day now. If I leave quickly, in the next few days, I can be to the Mountain Kingdom while the passes can still be used. I can force my way through to … whatever is there. And return by spring. Perhaps with the help we need. ”
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I was speechless. Kettricken made it worse.
“My lord, I had not intended that you should go. You should remain here. I must go. I know the Mountains; I was born to their ways. You might not survive there. In this, I should be Sacrifice. ”
It was a relief to see Verity as dumbfounded as I was. Perhaps, having heard it from her lips, he would now realize how impossible it was. He shook his head slowly. He took both her hands in his and looked solemnly at her. “My queen-in-waiting. ” He sighed. “I must do this. I. In so many other ways I have failed the Six Duchies. And you. When first you came here to be queen, I had no patience with your talk of Sacrifice. I thought it a girl’s idealistic notion. But it is not. We do not speak it here, but it is what is felt. It is what I learned from my parents. To put the Six Duchies always ahead of myself. I have tried to do that. But now I see that always I have sent others in my place. I sat and Skilled, it is true, and you have an inkling what it has cost me. But it has been sailors and soldiers who I have sent out to put down their lives for the Six Duchies. My own nephew, even, doing the crude and bloody work for me. And despite those I have sent to be sacrificed, our coast is still not safe. Now it comes to this last chance, to this hard thing. Shall I send my queen to do it for me?”
“Perhaps …” Kettricken’s voice had gone husky with uncertainty. She looked down at the fire as she suggested, “Perhaps we might go together?”
Verity considered. He actually earnestly considered it, and I saw Kettricken realize he had taken her request seriously. She began to smile, but it faded as he slowly shook his head. “I dare not,” he said quietly. “Someone must remain here. Someone I trust. King Shrewd is … my father is not well. I fear for him. For his health. With myself away, and my father ill, there must be someone to stand in my stead. ”
She looked aside. “I would rather go with you,” she said fiercely.
I averted my eyes as he reached and took her chin in his fingers and lifted her face so he might see her eyes. “I know,” he said evenly. “That is the sacrifice I must ask you to make. To stay here, when you would rather go. To be alone, yet again. For the sake of the Six Duchies. ”
Something went out of her. Her shoulders sagged as she bowed her head to his will. As Verity gathered her to him I rose silently. I took Rosemary with me and we left them alone.
I was in my room, poring belatedly over the scrolls and tablets there, when the page came to my door that aftern
oon. “You are summoned to the King’s chambers, in the hour after dinner,” was the only message he gave me. Dismay rolled over me. It had been two weeks since my last visit to his chamber. I did not wish to confront the King again. If he were summoning me to say that he expected me to begin courting Celerity, I did not know what I would do or say. I feared I would lose control of myself. Resolutely I unrolled one of the Elderling scrolls and tried to study it. It was hopeless. I saw only Molly.
In the brief nights we had shared since our day on the beach, Molly had refused to discuss Celerity with me any further. In some ways it was a relief. But she had also stopped teasing me about all she would demand from me when I was truly her husband and all the future children we would have. She had quietly given up hope that we would ever be wed. If I stopped to think of it, it grieved me to the edge of madness. She did not rebuke me with it, as she knew it was not of my choosing. She did not even ask what was to become of us. Like Nighteyes, she seemed to live only in the present now. Each night of closeness we shared, she accepted as a thing complete, and did not question if there would be another. What I sensed from her was not despair, but containment: a fierce resolve that we would not lose what we had now to what we could not have tomorrow. I did not deserve the devotion of such a faithful heart.
When I dozed beside her in her bed, safe and warm amid the perfume of her body and her herbs, it was her strength that protected us. She did not Skill, she had no Wit. Her magic was a stronger kind, and she worked it by her will alone. When she closed and bolted her door behind me late at night, she created within her chamber a world and a time that belonged to us. If she had blindly placed her life and happiness in my hands, it would have been intolerable. But this was even worse. She believed there would eventually be a terrible price to pay for her devotion to me. Still she refused to forsake me. And I was not man enough to turn away from her and bid her seek a happier life. In my most lonely hours, when I rode the trails around Buckkeep with my saddlebags full of poisoned bread, I knew myself for a coward, and worse than a thief. I had once told Verity I could not draw off another man’s strength to feed my own, that I would not. Yet every day, that was what I did to Molly. The Elderling scroll fell from my lax fingers. My room was suddenly suffocating. I pushed aside the tablets and scrolls I had been attempting to study. In the hour before dinner, I sought out Patience’s chamber.
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It had been some time since I had last called upon her. But her sitting chamber never seemed to change, save in the uppermost layer of litter that reflected her current passion. This day was no exception. Fall-gathered herbs, bundled for drying, were suspended everywhere, filling the room with their scents. I felt I was strolling through an inverted meadow as I ducked to avoid the dangling foliage.
“You’ve hung these a bit low,” I complained as Patience entered.
“No. You’ve managed to grow a bit too tall. Stand up straight and let me look at you now. ”
I obeyed, even though it left me with a bundle of catmint resting on my head.
“Well. At least rowing about killing people all summer has left you in good health. Much better than the sickly boy who came home to me last winter. I told you those tonics would work. As long as you’ve gotten that tall, you may as well help me hang up these lot. ”
Without more ado, I was put to work stringing lines from sconces to bedposts to anything else that a string could be tied to, and then to fastening bundles of herbs to them. She had me treed, up on a chair and tying bundles of balsam, when she demanded, “Why do you no longer whine to me about how much you miss Molly?”
“Would it do me any good?” I asked her quietly after a moment. I did my best to sound resigned.
“No. ” She paused a moment as if thinking. She handed me yet another bouquet of leaves. “Those,” she informed me as I fastened them up, “are stipple-leaf. Very bitter. Some say they will prevent a woman conceiving. They don’t. At least, not dependably. But if a woman eats them for too long, she can become ill from them. ” She paused as if considering. “Perhaps, if a woman is sick, she does not conceive as easily. But I would not recommend them to anyone, least of all anyone I cared about. ”
I found my tongue, sought a casual air. “Why do you dry them, then?”
“An infusion of them, gargled, will help a sore throat. So Molly Chandler told me, when I found her gathering them in the women’s garden. ”
“I see. ” I fastened the leaves to the line, dangling them like a body from a noose. Even their odor was bitter. Had I wondered, earlier, how Verity could be so unaware of what was right before him? Why had I never thought of this? How must it be for her, to dread what a rightfully married woman would long for? What Patience had longed for in vain?
“… seaweed, FitzChivalry?”
I started. “Beg pardon?”
“I said, when you have an afternoon free, would you gather seaweed for me? The black, crinkly sort? It has the most flavor this time of year. ”
“I will try,” I replied absently. For how many years would Molly have to worry? How much bitterness must she swallow?
“What are you looking at?” Patience demanded.
“Nothing. Why?”
“Because I’ve asked you twice to get down so we can move the chair. We’ve all these other packets to hang, you know. ”
“Beg pardon. I didn’t get much sleep last night; it’s left me dull-witted today. ”
“I agree. You should start sleeping more at night. ” These words were uttered a bit heavily. “Now come down and move the chair so we can hang these mints. ”
I didn’t eat much at dinner. Regal was alone on the high dais, looking sullen. His usual circle of fawners clustered at a table just below him. I did not understand why he chose to dine separately. Certainly, he had the rank to, but why choose this isolation? He summoned one of the more flattering of the minstrels he had recently imported to Buckkeep. Most of them were from Farrow. All of them affected the nasal intonations of that region and favored the long, chanting styles of epics. This one sang a long telling of some adventure of Regal’s maternal grandfather. I listened as little as I was able; it seemed to have to do with riding a horse to death in order to be the one to shoot a great stag that had eluded a generation of hunters. It praised endlessly the greathearted horse who had gone to his death at his master’s bidding. It said nothing of the master’s stupidity in wasting such an animal to gain some tough meat and a rack of antlers.
“You look half-sick,” Burrich observed as he paused beside me. I rose to leave table and walked through the hall with him.
“Too much on my mind. Too many directions to think in all at once. I sometimes feel that if I had time to focus my mind on just one problem, I could solve it. And then go on to solve the others. ”
“Every man believes that. It isn’t so. Slay the ones you can as they come to hand, and after a while you get used to the ones you can do nothing about. ”
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“Such as?”
He shrugged and gestured downward. “Such as having a game leg. Or being a bastard. We all get used to things we once swore we could never live with. But what’s eating your liver this time?”
“Nothing I can tell you about just yet. Not here, anyway. ”
“Oh. More of those, huh. ” He shook his head. “I don’t envy you, Fitz. Sometimes all a man needs is to growl about his problems to another man. They’ve denied you even that. But take heart. I have faith you can handle them even if you think you can’t. ”
He clapped me on the shoulders, and then left in a blast of cold air from the outer doors. Verity was right. The winter storms were rising, if tonight’s wind was any indicator. I was halfway up the stairs before I reflected that Burrich now spoke to me straight across. He finally believed I was a man grown. Well, maybe I would do better if I believed that about myself. I squared my shoulders and went up to my room.
I put more effort into dressing than I had in a long time. As I did I thought of Verity hastily changing his shirt for Kettricken. How had he ever managed to be so blind to her? And I to Molly? What other things did Molly do for our sake that I had never realized? My misery returned, stronger than ever. Tonight. Tonight after Shrewd was done with me. I could not let her continue her sacrifices. For now, I could do nothing save put it out of my mind. I pulled my hair back into the warrior’s tail that I felt fully earned now, and tugged the front of my blue jerkin straight. It was a bit snug across the shoulders, but so was everything I owned lately. I left my room.
In the hallway outside King Shrewd’s apartments, I encountered Verity with Kettricken on his arm. Never had I seen them as they presented themselves now. Here, suddenly, was the King-in-Waiting and his queen. Verity was dressed in a long formal robe of deep forest green. An embroidered band of stylized bucks graced the sleeves and hem. He wore on his brow the silver circlet with the blue gem that was the mark of the King-in-Waiting. I had not seen him wear it in some time. Kettricken was dressed in the purple and white that she so often chose. Her gown of purple was very simple, the sleeves cut short and wide to reveal narrower and longer sleeves of white beneath them. She wore the jewelry that Verity had gifted her with, and her long blond hair had been intricately dressed with a net of silver chain junctured with amethysts. I halted at the sight of them. Their faces were grave. They could be going nowhere except to see King Shrewd.
I presented myself formally, and carefully let Verity know that King Shrewd had summoned me.
“No,” he told me gently. “I summoned you to present yourself to King Shrewd. Along with Kettricken and me. I wished you witness for this. ”
Relief flooded me. This was not about Celerity, then. “Witness for what, my prince?” I managed to ask.
He looked at me as if I were daft. “I ask the King’s permission to leave on a quest. To seek out the Elderlings and bring back the aid we so desperately need. ”
“Oh. ” I should have noticed the quiet page, all in black, bearing an armful of scrolls and tablets. The boy’s face was white and stiff. I would wager he had never before done anything more formal for Verity than wax his boots. Rosemary, freshly washed and clothed in Kettricken’s colors, reminded me of a scrubbed purple-and-white turnip. I smiled at the chubby child, but she returned my look gravely.
