Читать книгу The Farseer Series Books 2 and 3: Royal Assassin, Assassin’s Quest - Робин Хобб - Страница 25

Prince Verity chose to unveil his fleet of warships on the mid-day of Winterfest that decisive year. Tradition would have had him wait until the coming of better weather, to launch them on the first day of Springfest. That is considered a more auspicious time to launch a new ship. But Verity had pushed his shipwrights and their crews hard to have all four vessels ready for a mid-winter launch. By choosing the mid-day of Winterfest, he ensured himself a large audience, both for the launch and for his words. Traditionally, a hunt is held that day, with the meat brought in seen as a harbinger of days to come. When he had the ships pushed out of the sheds on their rollers, he announced to the gathered folk that these were his hunters, and that the only prey that would slake them would be Red Ships. The reaction to his announcement was muted, and clearly not what he had hoped for. It is my belief that the people wanted to put all thoughts of the Red Ships from their minds, to hide themselves in winter and pretend that the spring would never come. But Verity refused to let them. The ships were launched that day, and the training of the crews begun.

Nighteyes and I spent the early afternoon hunting. He grumbled about it, saying it was a ridiculous time of day to hunt, and why had I wasted the early dawn hours tussling with my littermate? I told him that that was simply a thing that had to be, and would continue to be for several days, and possibly longer. He was not pleased. But neither was I. It rattled me not a little that he could be so clearly aware of how I spent my hours even if I had no conscious sense of being in touch with him. Had Verity been able to sense him?

He laughed at me. Hard enough to make you hear me sometimes. Should I batter through to you and then shout for him as well?

Our hunting success was small. Two rabbits, neither with much fat. I promised to bring him kitchen scraps on the morrow. I had even less success at conveying to him my demand for privacy at certain times. He could not grasp why I set mating apart from other pack activities such as hunting or howling. Mating suggested offspring in the near future, and offspring were the care of the pack. Words cannot convey the difficulties of that discussion. We conversed in images, in shared thoughts, and such do not allow for much discretion. His candour horrified me. He assured me he shared my delight in my mate and my mating. I begged him not to. Confusion. I finally left him eating his rabbits. He seemed piqued that I would not accept a share of the meat. The best I had been able to get from him was his understanding that I did not want to be aware of him sharing my awareness of Molly. That was scarcely what I wanted but it was the best way I could convey it to him. The idea that at times I would want to sever my bond to him completely was not a thought he could comprehend. It made no sense, he argued. It was not pack. I left him wondering if I would ever again really and truly have a moment to myself.

I returned to the keep and sought the solitude of my own room. If only for a moment, I had to be where I could close the door behind me and be alone. Physically, anyway. As if to fuel my quest for quiet, the halls and stairways were full of hurrying folk. Servants were cleaning away old rushes and spreading new ones, fresh candles were being placed in holders, and boughs of evergreen were hung in festoons and swags everywhere. Winterfest. I didn’t much feel like it.

I finally reached my own door and slipped inside. I shut it firmly behind me.

‘Back so soon?’ The Fool looked up from the hearth where he crouched in a semi-circle of scrolls. He seemed to be sorting them into groups.

I stared at him with unconcealed dismay. In an instant, it flashed into anger. ‘Why didn’t you tell me of the King’s condition?’

He considered another scroll and, after a moment, set it in the pile to his right. ‘But I did. A question in exchange for yours: Why didn’t you already know of it?’

That set me back. ‘I admit I’ve been lax in calling upon him. But …’

‘None of my words could have had the impact of seeing for yourself. Nor do you pause to think what it would have been like, had I not been there every single day, emptying chamberpots, sweeping, dusting, carrying out dishes, combing his hair and his beard …’

Again he had shocked me into silence. I crossed the room, sat down heavily upon my clothing chest. ‘He’s not the king I remember,’ I said bluntly. ‘It frightens me that he could sink so far, so fast.’

‘Frightens you? Appals me. At least you’ve another king when this one’s been played.’ The Fool flipped another scroll onto the pile.

‘We all do,’ I pointed out carefully.

‘Some more than others,’ the Fool said shortly.

Without thinking, my hand rose to tuck the pin tighter in my jerkin. I’d almost lost it today. It had made me think of all it had symbolized all these years. The King’s protection, for a bastard grandson that a more ruthless man would have done away with quietly. And now that he needed protection? What did it symbolize to me now?

‘So. What do we do?’

‘You and I? Precious little. I’m but a Fool, and you are a Bastard.’

I nodded grudgingly. ‘I wish Chade were here. I wish I knew when he was coming back.’ I looked to the Fool, wondering how much he knew.

‘Shade? Shade returns when the sun does, I’ve heard.’ Evasive as always. ‘Too late for the King, I imagine,’ he added more quietly.

‘So we are powerless?’

‘You and I? Never. We’ve too much power to act here; that is all. In this area, the powerless ones are always the most powerful. Perhaps you are right; they are who we should consult in this. And now,’ here he rose and made a show of shaking all his joints loose as if he were a marionette with tangled strings. He set every bell he had to jingling. I could not help but smile. ‘My king will be coming into his best time of day. And I will be there, to do what little I can for him.’

He stepped carefully out of his ring of sorted scrolls and tablets. He yawned. ‘Farewell, Fitz.’

‘Farewell.’

He halted, puzzled, by the door. ‘You have no objections to my going?’

‘I believe I objected first to your staying.’

‘Never bandy words with a Fool. But do you forget? I offered you a bargain. A secret for a secret.’

I had not forgotten. But I was not sure, suddenly, that I wanted to know. ‘Whence comes the Fool, and why?’ I asked softly.

‘Ah.’ He stood a moment, then asked gravely, ‘You are certain you wish the answers to these questions?’

‘Whence comes the Fool, and why?’ I repeated slowly.

For an instant he was dumb. I saw him then. Saw him as I had not in years, not as the Fool, glib-tongued and wits as cutting as any barnacle, but as a small and slender person, all so fragile, pale flesh, bird-boned, even his hair seemed less substantial than that of other mortals. His motley of black and white trimmed with silver bells, his ridiculous rat sceptre were all the armour and sword he had in this court of intrigues and treachery. And his mystery. The invisible cloak of his mystery. I wished for an instant he had not offered the bargain, and that my curiosity had been less consuming.

He sighed. He glanced about my room, then walked over to stand before the tapestry of King Wisdom greeting the Elderling. He glanced up at it, then smiled sourly, finding some humour there I had never seen. He assumed the stance of a poet about to recite. Then he halted, looked at me squarely once more. ‘You are certain you wish to know, Fitzy-Fitz?’

Like a liturgy, I repeated the question. ‘Whence comes the Fool and why?’

‘Whence? Ah, whence?’ He went nose to nose with Ratsy for a moment, formulating a reply to his own question. Then he met my eyes. ‘Go south, Fitz. To lands past the edges of every map that Verity has ever seen. And past the edges of the maps made in those countries as well. Go south, and then east across a sea you have no name for. Eventually, you would come to a long peninsula, and on its snaking tip you would find the village where a Fool was born. You might even find, still, a mother who recalled her wormy-white babe, and how she cradled me against her warm breast and sang.’ He glanced up at my incredulous, enraptured face and gave a short laugh. ‘You cannot even picture it, can you? Let me make it harder for you. Her hair was long and dark and curling, and her eyes were green. Fancy that! Of such rich colours was this transparency made. And the fathers of the colourless child? Two cousins, for that was the custom of that land. One broad and swarthy and full of laughter, ruddy-lipped and brown-eyed, a farmer smelling of rich earth and open air. The other as narrow as the one was wide, and gold to his bronze, a poet and songster, blue-eyed. And, oh, how they loved me and rejoiced in me! All the three of them, and the village as well. I was so loved.’ His voice grew soft, and for a moment he fell silent. I knew with great certainty that I was hearing what no other had ever heard from him. I remembered the time I had ventured into his room, and the exquisite little doll in its cradle that I had found there. Cherished as the Fool had once been cherished. I waited.

‘When I was … old enough, I bade them all farewell. I set off to find my place in history, and choose where I would thwart it. This was the place I selected; the time had been destined by the hour of my birth. I came here, and became Shrewd’s. I gathered up whatever threads the fates put into my hands, and I began to twist them and colour them as I could, in the hopes of affecting what was woven after me.’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t understand a thing you just said.’

‘Ah.’ He shook his head, setting his bells to jingling. ‘I offered to tell you my secret. I didn’t promise to make you understand it.’

‘A message is not delivered until it is understood,’ I countered. This was a direct quote from Chade.

The Fool teetered on accepting it. ‘You do understand what I said,’ he compromised. ‘You simply do not accept it. Never before have I spoken so plainly to you. Perhaps that is what confuses you.’

He was serious. I shook my head again. ‘You make no sense! You went somewhere to discover your place in history? How can that be? History is what is done and behind us.’

He shook his head, slowly this time. ‘History is what we do in our lives. We create it as we go along.’ He smiled enigmatically. ‘The future is another kind of history.’

‘No man can know the future,’ I agreed.

His smile widened. ‘Cannot they?’ he asked in a whisper. ‘Perhaps, Fitz, somewhere, there is written down all that is the future. Not written down by one person, know, but if the hints and visions and premonitions and foreseeings of an entire race were written down, and cross-referenced and related to one another, might not such a people create a loom to hold the weaving of the future?’

‘Preposterous,’ I objected. ‘How would anyone know if any of it were true?’

‘If such a loom were made, and such a tapestry of predictions woven, not for a few years, but for tens of hundreds of years, after a time, it could be shown that it presented a surprisingly accurate foretelling. Bear in mind that those who keep these records are another race, an exceedingly long-lived one. A pale, lovely race, that occasionally mingled its blood-lines with that of men. And then!’ He spun in a circle, suddenly fey, pleased insufferably with himself, ‘And then, when certain ones were born, ones marked so clearly that history must recall them, they are called to step forward, to find their places in that future history. And they might further be exhorted to examine that place, that juncture of a hundred threads, and say, these threads, here, these are the ones I shall tweak, and in the tweaking, I shall change the tapestry, I shall warp the weft, alter the colour of what is to come. I shall change the destiny of the world.’

He was mocking me. I was certain of it now. ‘Once, in perhaps a thousand years, there may come a man capable of making such a great change in the world. A powerful king, perhaps, or a philosopher, shaping the thoughts of thousands. But you and I, Fool? We are pawns. Ciphers.’

He shook his head pityingly. ‘This, more than anything else, is what I have never understood about your people. You can roll dice, and understand that the whole game may hinge on one turn of a die. You deal out cards, and say that all a man’s fortune for the night may turn upon one hand. But a man’s whole life, you sniff at, and say, what, this nought of a human, this fisherman, this carpenter, this thief, this cook, why, what can they do in the great wide world? And so you putter and sputter your lives away, like candles burning in a draught.’

‘Not all men are destined for greatness,’ I reminded him.

‘Are you sure, Fitz? Are you sure? What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? A sadder thing I cannot imagine. Why should not a mother say to herself, if I raise this child aright, if I love and care for her, she shall live a life that brings joy to those about her, and thus I have changed the world? Why should not the farmer that plants a seed say to his neighbour, this seed I plant today will feed someone, and that is how I change the world today?’

‘This is philosophy, Fool. I have never had time to study such things.’

‘No, Fitz, this is life. And no one has time not to think of such things. Each creature in the world should consider this thing, every moment of the heart’s beating. Otherwise, what is the point of arising each day?’

‘Fool, this is beyond me,’ I declared uneasily. I had never seen him so impassioned, never heard him speak so plainly. It was as if I had stirred grey-coated embers and suddenly found the cherry-red coal that glowed in their depths. He burned too brightly.

‘No, Fitz. I have come to believe it is through you.’ He reached out and tapped me lightly with Ratsy. ‘Keystone. Gate. Crossroads. Catalyst. All these you have been, and continue to be. Whenever I come to a crossroads, whenever the scent is uncertain, when I put my nose to the ground, and cast about and bay and snuffle, I find one scent. Yours. You create possibilities. While you exist, the future can be steered. I came here for you, Fitz. You are the thread I tweak. One of them, anyway.’

I felt a sudden chill of foreboding. Whatever more he had to say, I did not wish to hear it. Somewhere, far away, a thin howl arose. A wolf baying at mid-day. A shiver ran up me, setting up every hair on my body. ‘You’ve had your joke,’ I said, laughing nervously. ‘I should have known better than to expect a real secret from you.’

‘You. Or not you. Linchpin, anchor, knot in the line. I have seen the end of the world, Fitz. Seen it woven as plainly as I’ve seen my birth. Oh, not in your lifetime, nor even mine. But shall we be happy, to say that we live in the dusk rather than in the full night? Shall we rejoice that we shall only suffer, while your offspring will be the ones to know the torments of the damned? Shall this be why we do not act?’

‘Fool. I wish not to hear this.’

‘You had a chance to deny me. But thrice you demanded it, and hear it you shall.’ He lifted his staff as if leading a charge, and spoke as if he addressed the full Council of the Six Duchies. ‘The fall of the Kingdom of the Six Duchies was the pebble that started the landslide. The soulless ones moved on from there, spreading like a bloodstain down the world’s best shirt. Darkness devours, and is never satiated until it feeds upon itself. And all because the line of House Farseer failed. That is the future as it is woven. But wait! Farseer!’ He cocked his head and peered at me, considering as a gore-crow. ‘Why do they call you that, Fitz? What have your ancestors ever foreseen afar to gain such a name? Shall I tell you how it comes about? The very name of your house is the future reaching back in time to you, and naming you by the name that someday your house will deserve. The Farseers. That was the clue I took to my heart. That the future reached back to you, to your house, to where your blood-lines intersected with my lifetime, and named you so. I came here, and what did I discover? One Farseer, with no name at all. Unnamed in any history, past or future. But I have seen you take a name, FitzChivalry Farseer. And I shall see that you deserve it.’ He advanced on me, seized me by the shoulders. ‘We are here, Fitz, you and I, to change the future of the world. To reach out and hold in place the tiny pebble that could trigger the boulder’s tumbling.’

‘No.’ A terrible cold was welling up inside me. I shook with it. My teeth began to chatter, and the bright motes of light to sparkle at the edges of my vision. A fit. I was going to have another fit. Right here, in front of the Fool. ‘Leave!’ I cried out, unable to abide the thought. ‘Go away. Now! Quickly. Quickly!’

I had never seen the Fool astonished before. His jaw actually dropped open, revealing his tiny white teeth and pale tongue. A moment longer he gripped me, and then he let go. I did not stop to think of what he might feel at my abrupt dismissal. I snatched the door open and pointed out of it, and he was gone. I shut it behind him, latched it, and then staggered to my bed as wave after wave of darkness surged through me. I fell face-down on the coverlets. ‘Molly!’ I cried out, ‘Molly, save me!’ But I knew she could not hear me, and I sank alone into my blackness.

The brightness of a hundred candles, festoons of evergreen and swags of holly and bare, black winter branches hung with sparkling sugar candies to delight the eye and tongue. The clacking of the puppets’ wooden swords and the delighted exclamations of the children when the Piebald Prince’s head actually came flying off and arced out over the crowd. Mellow’s mouth wide in a bawdy song as his unattended fingers danced independently over his harp strings. A blast of cold as the great doors of the hall were thrown open and yet another group of merrymakers came into the Great Hall to join us. The slow knowledge stole over me that this was no longer a dream, this was Winterfest, and I was wandering benignly through the celebration, smiling blandly at everyone and seeing no one. I blinked my eyes slowly. I could do nothing quickly. I was wrapped in soft wool, I was drifting like an unmanned sailboat on a still day. A wonderful sleepiness filled me. Someone touched my arm. I turned. Burrich frowning and asking me something. His voice, always so deep, almost a colour washing against me when he spoke. ‘It’s all good,’ I told him calmly. ‘Don’t worry, it’s all good.’ I floated away from him, wafting through the room with the milling of the crowd.

King Shrewd sat on his throne, but I knew now that he was made of paper. The Fool sat on the step by his feet and clutched his rat sceptre like an infant clutches a rattle. His tongue was a sword, and as the King’s enemies drew closer to the throne, the Fool slew them, slashed them to bits and turned them back from the paper man on the throne.

And here were Verity and Kettricken on another dais, pretty as the Fool’s doll, each of them. I looked and saw they were both made of hungers, like containers made of emptiness. I felt so sad, I’d never be able to fill either of them, for they were both so terribly empty. Regal came to speak to them, and he was a big black bird, not a crow, no, not so merry as a crow, and not a raven, he hadn’t the cheery cleverness of a raven, no, a miserable eye-pecker of a bird, circling, circling, dreaming of them as carrion for himself to feast on. He smelled the carrion, and I covered my mouth and nose with a hand and walked away from them.

I sat down on a hearth, next to a giggling girl, happy in her blue skirts. She chattered like a squirrel and I smiled at her, and soon she leaned against me and began to sing a funny little song about three milkmaids. There were others sitting and standing about the hearth, and they joined in the song. We all laughed at the end, but I wasn’t sure why. And her hand was warm, resting so casually on my thigh.

Brother, are you mad? Have you eaten fishbones, are you burned by fever?

‘Huh?’

Your mind is clouded. Your thoughts are bloodless and sickly. You move like prey.

‘I feel fine.’

‘Do you, sir? Then I do, too.’ She smiled up at me. Chubby little face, dark eyes, curly hair peeking out from under her cap. Verity would like this one. She patted my leg companionably. A bit higher than she had touched me before.

‘FitzChivalry!’

I looked up slowly. Patience was standing over me, with Lacey at her elbow. I smiled to see her there. She so seldom came out of her rooms to socialize. Especially in winter. Winter was a hard time for her. ‘I shall be so glad when summer returns, and we can walk in the gardens together,’ I told her.

She looked at me silently for a moment. ‘I have something heavy I wish carried up to my rooms. Will you bring it for me?’

‘Certainly.’ I stood carefully. ‘I have to go,’ I told the little servant girl. ‘My mother needs me. I liked your song.’

‘Goodbye sir!’ she chirped at me, and Lacey glared at her. Patience’s cheeks were very rosy. I followed her through the ebb and press of folk. We came to the foot of the stairs.

‘I forget how to do these,’ I told her. ‘And where is the heavy thing you wish carried?’

‘That was an excuse to get you away from there before you completely disgraced yourself!’ she hissed at me. ‘What is the matter with you? How could you behave so badly? Are you drunk?’

I thought about it. ‘Nighteyes said I was poisoned by fishbones. But I feel fine.’

Lacey and Patience looked at me very carefully. Then they each took an arm, and guided me upstairs. Patience made tea. I talked to Lacey. I told her how much I loved Molly and that I was going to marry her as soon as the King said I could. She patted my hand and felt my forehead and asked what I’d eaten today and where. I couldn’t remember. Patience gave me tea. Very soon I puked. Lacey gave me cold water. Patience gave me more tea. I puked again. I said I didn’t want any more tea. Patience and Lacey argued. Lacey said she thought I’d be all right after I slept. She took me back to my room.

I woke up with no clear idea of what had been dream and what had been real, if anything. My entire recall of the evening’s events had the same distance as events that had happened years ago. This was compounded by the open staircase with its beckoning yellow light and the draught from it chilling my room. I scrabbled out of bed, swayed for a moment as a wave of dizziness overtook me and then slowly mounted the stairs, one hand always touching the cold stone wall to reassure myself that it was real. About midway up the steps, Chade came down to meet me. ‘Here, take my arm,’ he commanded, and I did.

He put his free arm around me and we went up the stairs together. ‘I’ve missed you,’ I told him. With my next breath, I told him, ‘King Shrewd is in danger.’

‘I know. King Shrewd is always in danger.’

We gained the top of the stairwell. There was a fire in his hearth, and a meal set out next to it on a tray. He guided me toward both.

‘I think I might have been poisoned today.’ A sudden shivering ran up me and I shuddered all over. When it passed, I felt more alert. ‘I seem to be waking up in stages. I keep thinking I’m awake, and then suddenly everything is clearer.’

Chade nodded gravely. ‘I suspect it was the ash residue. You weren’t thinking when you tidied King Shrewd’s room for him. Many times the burned residue of a herb concentrates the potency of the herb. You got it all over your hands and then sat there eating pastries. There was little I could do. I thought you would sleep it off. What possessed you to go downstairs?’

‘I don’t know.’ Then, ‘How do you always know so much?’ I asked peevishly as he pushed me down into his old chair. He took my usual perch on the hearthstones. Even in my fuddled state, I noticed how fluidly he moved, as if he had somewhere abandoned the cramps and aches of an old man’s body. There was wind-burnt colour to his face and arms as well, the tan fading the pocks’ stigma. I had once noticed his resemblance to Shrewd. Now I saw Verity in his face as well.

‘I have my little ways of finding things out.’ He grinned at me wolfishly. ‘How much do you remember of Winterfest tonight?’

I winced as I considered it. ‘Enough to know that tomorrow is going to be a difficult day.’ The little servant girl suddenly popped up in my memory. Leaning on my shoulder, her hand on my thigh. Molly. I had to get to Molly tonight and somehow explain things to her. If she came to my room tonight, and I wasn’t there to answer her knock … I started up in my chair, but then another shiver ran up over me. It felt almost like a skin being peeled off me.

‘Here. Eat something. Puking your guts out wasn’t the best thing for you, but I’m sure Patience meant well. And under other circumstances, it could have been a life-saver. No, you idiot, wash your hands first. Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?’

I noticed then the vinegar-water set out beside the food. I washed my hands carefully to remove every trace of whatever had clung to them, and then my face, amazed as how much more alert I suddenly felt. ‘It’s been like an extended dream, all day … is this what Shrewd has been feeling?’

‘I’ve no idea. Perhaps not all those burning herbs down there are what I think they are. It was one of the things I wanted to discuss with you tonight. How has Shrewd been? Has this come on him suddenly? How long has Wallace been calling himself a healer?’

‘I don’t know.’ I hung my head in shame. I forced myself to report to Chade just how lax I had been in his absence. And how stupid. When I was finished, he did not disagree with me.

‘Well,’ he said heavily. ‘We can’t undo, we can only salvage. Too much is happening here to sort at one sitting.’ He looked at me consideringly. ‘Much of what you tell me does not surprise me. Forged ones converging still on Buckkeep, the King’s illness lingering. But King Shrewd’s health has declined much more swiftly than I can account for, and the squalor in his rooms makes no sense to me. Unless …’ He did not finish the thought. ‘Perhaps they believe that Lady Thyme was his only defender. Perhaps they think we no longer care; perhaps they believe him an isolated old man, an obstacle to be removed. Your carelessness has drawn them out, at least. And having drawn them out, perhaps we can cut them off.’ He sighed. ‘I thought I could use Wallace as a tool, lead him subtly through the advice of others. He has little knowledge of herbs of his own; the man is a dabbler. But the tool I left carelessly lying about, perhaps another employs now. We shall have to see. Still. There are ways to stop this.’

I bit my tongue before I could utter Regal’s name. ‘How?’ I asked instead.

Chade smiled. ‘How were you rendered ineffective as an assassin in the Mountain Kingdom?’

I winced at the memory. ‘Regal revealed my purpose to Kettricken.’

‘Exactly. We shall shine a bit of daylight on what goes on in the King’s chambers. Eat while I talk.’

And so I did, listening to him as he outlined my assignments for the next day, but also noting what he chose to feed me. The flavour of garlic predominated, and I knew his confidence in its purifying abilities. I wondered just what I had ingested, and also how much it coloured my recollection of my conversation with the Fool. I flinched as I recalled my brusque dismissal of him. He would be another I would have to seek out tomorrow. Chade noticed my preoccupation. ‘Sometimes,’ he observed obliquely, ‘you have to trust people to understand you are not perfect.’

I nodded, then suddenly yawned immensely. ‘Beg pardon,’ I muttered. My eyelids were suddenly so heavy I could barely keep my head up. ‘You were saying?’

‘No, no. Go to bed. Rest. It’s the real healer.’

‘But I haven’t even asked you where you’ve been. Or what you’ve been doing. You move and act as if you’d lost ten years of age.’

Chade puckered his mouth. ‘Is that a compliment? Never mind. Such questions would be useless anyway, so you may save them for another time, and be frustrated then when I refuse to answer them. As to my condition … well, the more one forces one’s body to do, the more it can do. It was not an easy journey. Yet I believe it was worth the hardship.’ He held up a halting hand as I opened my mouth. ‘And that is all I am going to say. To bed, now, Fitz. To bed.’

I yawned again as I rose, and stretched until my joints popped. ‘You’ve grown again,’ Chade complained admiringly. ‘At this rate, you’ll even top your father’s height.’

‘I’ve missed you,’ I mumbled as I headed toward the stair.

‘And I you. But we shall have tomorrow night for catching up. For now, bed for you.’

I went down his stairs with the sincere intention of following his suggestion. As it always did, the staircase sealed itself moments after I exited it, by a mechanism I had never been able to discover. I threw three more logs on my dying fire and then crossed to my bed. I sat down on it to pull my shirt off. I was exhausted. But not so tired that I could not catch a faint trace of Molly’s scent on my own skin as I pulled my shirt off. I sat a moment longer, holding my shirt in my hands. Then I put it back on and rose. I went to my door and slipped out into the hallway.

It was late, by any other night’s standard. Yet this was the first night of Winterfest. There were many below who would not think of their beds until dawn was on the horizon. Others who would not find their own beds at all this night. I smiled suddenly, as I realized I intended to be part of the latter group.

There were others in the halls that night and on the staircases. Most were too inebriated, or too engrossed in themselves to notice me. As for the others, I resolved to let Winterfest be my excuse for any questions asked of me the next day. Still, I was discreet enough to be sure the corridor was clear before I tapped on her door. I heard no reply. But as I lifted my hand to tap again, the door swung silently open into darkness.

It terrified me. In an instant I was sure harm had come to her, that someone had been here and hurt her and left her there in the darkness. I sprang into the room, crying out her name. The door swung shut behind me and ‘Hush!’ she commanded.

I turned to find her, but it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. The light from the hearth fire was the only illumination in the room, and it was to my back. When my eyes did penetrate the darkness, I felt as if I could not breathe.

‘Were you expecting me?’ I asked at last.

In a little cat voice, she replied, ‘Only for hours.’

‘I thought you would be at the merrymaking in the Great Hall.’ Slowly it dawned on me that I had not seen her there.

‘I knew I would not be missed there. Except by one. And I thought perhaps that one might come seeking me here.’

I stood motionless and looked at her. She wore a wreath of holly upon the tumble of her hair. That was all. And she stood against the door, wanting me to look at her. How can I explain the line that had been crossed? Before, we had ventured into this together, exploring and inquisitive. But this was different. This was a woman’s frank invitation. Can there be anything so compelling as the knowledge that a woman desires you? It overwhelmed me and blessed me and somehow redeemed me from every stupid thing I had ever done.

Winterfest.

The heart of night’s secret.

Yes.

She shook me awake before dawn, and put me out of her rooms. The farewell kiss that she gave me before shooing me out the door was such that I stood in the hall trying to persuade myself that dawn was not all that close. After a few moments, I recalled that discretion was called for, and wiped the foolish smile off my face. I straightened my rumpled shirt and headed for the stairs.

Once inside my room, an almost dizzying weariness overtook me. How long had it been since I had had a full night’s sleep? I sat down on my bed and dragged my shirt off. I dropped it to the floor. I fell back onto the bed and closed my eyes.

A soft tap at my door jerked me upright. I crossed the room swiftly, smiling to myself. I was still smiling as I swung the door wide.

‘Good, you’re up! And almost dressed. I was afraid from the way you looked last night that I’d be dragging you out of your bed by the scruff of your neck.’

It was Burrich, freshly washed and brushed. The lines across his forehead were the only visible signs of the last night’s revelry. From my years of sharing quarters with him, I knew that no matter how fierce a hangover he might have, he would still rise to face his duties. I sighed. No good asking quarter, for none would be given. Instead I went to my clothes chest and found a clean shirt. I put it on as I followed him to Verity’s tower.

There is an odd threshold, physical as well as mental. There have been but a few times in my life that I have been pushed over it, but each time, an extraordinary thing happened. That morning was one of those times. After an hour or so had passed, I stood in Verity’s tower room, shirtless and sweating. The tower windows were open to the winter wind, but I felt no chill. The padded axe Burrich had given me was but a little lighter than the world itself, and the weight of Verity’s presence in my mind felt as if it were forcing my brain out my eyes. I could no longer keep my axe up to guard myself. Burrich came at me again, and I made no more than a token defence. He batted it aside with ease, then came in swiftly, one, two blows, not hard, but not softly either. ‘And you’re dead,’ he told me, and stood back. He let the head of his axe sag to the floor and stood leaning on it and breathing. I let my own axe thud head first to the floor. Useless.

Within my mind, Verity was very still. I glanced over to where he sat staring out the window across the sea to the horizon. The morning light was harsh on the lines in his face and the grey in his hair. His shoulders were slumped forward. His posture mirrored what I felt. I closed my eyes a moment, too weary to do anything anymore. And suddenly we meshed. I saw to the horizons of our future. We were a country besieged by a ravenous enemy who came to us only to kill and maim. That was their sole goal. They had no fields to plant, no children to defend, no stock to tend to distract them from their Raiding. But we strove to live our day to day lives at the same time we tried to protect ourselves from their destruction. For the Red Ship Raiders, their ravages were their day to day lives. That singleness of purpose was all they needed to destroy us. We were not warriors, had not been warriors for generations. We did not think like warriors. Even those of us who were soldiers were soldiers who had trained to fight against a rational enemy. How could we stand against an onslaught of madmen? What weapons did we have? I looked around. Me. Myself as Verity.

One man. One man, making himself old as he strove to walk the line between defending his people and being swept away in the addictive ecstasy of the Skill. One man, trying to rouse us, trying to ignite us to defend ourselves. One man, with his eyes afar, as we squabbled and plotted and bickered in the rooms below him. It was useless. We were doomed to fail.

The tide of despair swept over me and threatened to pull me down. It swirled around me, but suddenly, in the middle of it, I found a place to stand. A place where the very uselessness of it was funny. Horribly funny. Four little warships, not quite finished, with untrained crews. Watchtowers and fire signals to call the inept defenders forth to the slaughter. Burrich with his axe, and me standing in the cold. Verity staring out the window, while below Regal fed his own father drugs. In the hopes of stealing his mind, and inheriting the whole mess, I didn’t doubt. It was all so totally useless. And so unthinkable to give it up. A laugh welled up from inside me, and I could not contain it. I stood leaning on my axe, and laughed as if the world were the funniest thing I’d ever seen, while Burrich and Verity both stared at me. A very faint answering smile crooked the corners of Verity’s mouth; a light in his eyes shared my madness.

‘Boy? Are you all right?’ Burrich asked me.

‘I’m fine. I’m absolutely fine,’ I told them both when my waves of laughter had subsided.

I pulled myself up to stand straight. I shook my head, and I swear I almost felt my brain settle. ‘Verity,’ I said, and embraced his consciousness to mine. It was easy; it had always been easy, but before I had believed there was something to lose by doing it. We did not meld into one person, but instead fit together like bowls stacked in a cupboard. He rode me comfortably, like a well-loaded pack. I took a breath and lifted my axe. ‘Again,’ I said to Burrich.

As he came at me, I no longer allowed him to be Burrich. He was a man with an axe, come to kill Verity, and before I could stop my momentum, I had laid him out on the floor. He rose, shaking his head, and I saw a touch of anger in his face. Again we came together, and again I made a telling touch. ‘Third time,’ he told me, and his battle-smile lit up his weathered face. We came together again with a jolt in the joy of struggle, and I overmatched him cleanly.

Twice more we clashed before Burrich suddenly stepped back from one of my blows. He lowered his axe to the floor and stood, hunkered slightly forward until his breath came easy again. Then he straightened and looked at Verity. ‘He’s got it,’ he said huskily. ‘He’s caught the knack of it now. Not that he’s fully honed yet. Drill will make him sharper, but you’ve made a wise choice for him. The axe is his weapon.’

Verity nodded slowly. ‘And he is mine.’