Fool's Assassin - Страница 75

К оглавлению

75

I watched his face, waiting. He lifted his hand, covering his mouth as he rubbed his bearded cheeks. Perhaps he was thinking, but to me he looked as if he were holding words in. He sighed again, heavily. “We were very good friends for a long, long time. We did hard things for each other. Risked our lives. Gave up our lives and faced death, and then faced life again. You might be surprised to find that facing life can be much harder than facing death.” He stopped talking and was silent for a time, thinking about something. When he blinked and looked back at me, he seemed almost surprised to see me. He took a deep breath. “Well. So when you said you had a dream with a pale man in it, and that he was dead, well … it was alarming.” He looked away from me, to a shadowy corner of the room. “I was a bit silly to take it so seriously, I admit. So. Let’s talk about your cousin coming, shall we?”

I shrugged. I was still mulling over his answer. “I don’t think I’ll have any questions about her until I’ve met her. Except … what is she going to help you do?”

“Oh, well, that isn’t quite decided yet.” He smiled evasively. I think the smile would have fooled anyone who did not know him as well as I did. “We’ll get to know her, and see what she’s good at doing, and then give those sorts of things to her to do,” he added brightly.

“Does she do beekeeping?” I asked in sudden alarm. When spring came, I did not want anyone except myself to touch my mother’s dormant hives.

“No. I’m quite sure of that.” My father sounded as emphatic in his response as I had been. I felt a sense of relief. He came and sat on the foot of my bed. It was a very large bed; it still felt as if he were across the room. My mother would have sat down beside me, close enough to touch me. Gone. The thought blew cold through me again. My father looked as if he felt that same chill wind, but he did not move closer to me.

“What happened to your pale friend?”

He flinched and then pasted a casual smile on his face. He shrugged stiffly. “He went away.”

“Where?”

“Back to the place where he had first come from. A land far to the south of here. Clerres, he called it. I don’t know exactly where. He never told me.”

I thought for a time. “Did you send him a message to say you missed him?”

He laughed. “Moppet, you have to know where a letter must go in order to send it.”

I hadn’t meant a letter. I meant that other kind of reaching out that he and my sister did. Since he had started holding himself inside his own mind, I heard far less of it than I once had. And ever since I had felt it tug at me and try to shred me away into nothing, I’d always hung back from trying to understand it. I’d felt him do it a dozen times at least in the last few days, but hadn’t really known to whom he reached or what he conveyed. Not his pale friend, though.

“Will he come back someday?” I wondered out loud. Would he come and take my father away from me?

My father fell into that stillness again. Then he slowly shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think if he was going to come back or send me a letter, he would have done it by now. He told me before he left that the work he and I were to do was done, and that if he stayed near me, we might accidentally undo it. And that would mean that all we had gone through would have been for naught.”

I tried to put this together in my mind. “Like the puppeteers’ mistake.”

“What?”

“That time the puppeteers came in the storm and Mother let them in. Remember? They set up a little stage in the Great Hall and even though they were very tired, they put on a show for us.”

“I do remember that. But what was the mistake?”

“At the end, when the Blue Soldier had slain the Boar with Red Tusks and freed the Rain Cloud so it could rain on the land and the crops would grow? The story was meant to stop there. But then, when they were folding the curtains, I saw the Blue Soldier dangling next to the Boar with Red Tusks, and his tusks were deep in the soldier’s vitals. So I knew that in the end, the Boar came back and slew the soldier after all.”

“Uh, no, Bee. That wasn’t part of the story at all! It was just something that happened when the puppets were put away.”

He didn’t understand at all. I explained to him. “No. It was the next story. Like your friend said could happen. An accident when it was all supposed to be over.”

He looked at me with his dark eyes. I could look into them to a deep place where things were still broken, never to be mended. My mother had always been able to make that broken part recede, but I didn’t know how. Maybe no one did, now. “Well. It’s late,” he said suddenly. “And I’ve wakened you and kept you awake longer than I intended. I just wanted to make sure that you weren’t worrying about your cousin coming. I’m glad you’re fine with it.” He stood and stretched.

“Do I have to obey her?”

He dropped his arms suddenly. “What?”

“Must I obey Shun Fallstar when she comes?”

“Well, she’s a woman grown, so she is to be respected by you. Just as you respect Tavia or Mild.”

Respect. Not obey. I could do that. I nodded slowly and slid down in my bed. My mother would have come to tuck the covers more closely around me. He didn’t.

He walked softly to the door, and then paused. “Did you want a story? Or a song?”

I thought about it. Did I? No. I had his stories, his real ones, to think about until I fell asleep. “Not tonight,” I said and yawned.

“Very well. Sleep, then. I’ll see you in the morning.” He yawned widely. “It’s going to be a big day for all of us,” he said, and to me it sounded more like dread than anticipation.

“Papa?”

He stopped just inside the door. “What is it?”

“You should trim your hair tonight. Or make it lie down with grease tomorrow, or however boys do that. It looks very wild now. And your beard is awful. Like, like …” I searched for words I had heard long ago. “Like a mountain pony with its coat half-shed.”

He stood very still, and then smiled. “You heard that from Nettle.”

“I think so. But it’s true.” I dared to add, “Please shave it off. You don’t need to look older, like Mother’s husband anymore. I want you to look like my father instead of my grandfather.”

He stood there, one hand touching his beard.

“No. She never liked it in the first place. You should cut it all off.” I’d known what he was thinking.

“Well. Perhaps I shall, then.” And he softly closed the door behind himself. 

Chapter Fifteen
A Full House

...

Wildeye was ever a reluctant Catalyst to her Master, for she regarded him as more tormentor than mentor. For his part, the old White was not pleased that his Catalyst was such a homely and resentful young woman. He complained in all his writings that fate had made him wait through most of his life for her to be born, and then when he did find her and make her his companion, she made his old age a trial to him. Nonetheless, as his darkening showed, he was able to complete some of the tasks that were appointed to him by fate, and when he died it was said that he had, indeed, set the world on a better path.

Shun arrived in the afternoon. She rode a trim little sorrel mare with white stockings, and Riddle accompanied her on a rangy white gelding. Her green cloak was trimmed with fur and draped not just her but half her mount. A mule followed laden with a trunk on one side and several boxes on the other. The sorrel’s tack was gleaming new, as was the trunk. So. Chade had provided the coin, and Shun had wasted no time in directing Riddle to take her to a larger market town. I suspected that the days since I had last seen her had been spent in acquiring these things. I wondered again what had precipitated such a speedy departure from wherever Chade had been keeping her that she had left her possessions behind. Had the attempt on her life been that dire? And who was her enemy that he could find her when neither Riddle nor I knew of her existence, let alone her location? There were still far more mysteries attached to this young lady than I liked.

I met them in the carriageway. My hair was brushed and my face stung from scraping the last remnants of beard off it. I’d found my last clean shirt and given my boots a hasty wipe with my dirty shirt. I needed to make time to bundle my dirty clothing and ask one of the servants to see to it. I had realized, with shame, that I’d never given a thought to such things before. Molly had seen to it that my wardrobe was kept in order. Molly …

I had decided my trousers were presentable and hastily left the room we once had shared. Why was I fussing over my appearance? After all, it was only Riddle and Shun.

I had hoped to have Bee at my side, but though I had called her when a boy came running to tell me that horses were coming up the drive, she had not answered me. Of late she had taken to disappearing within the house. Although she had begun talking more, I felt as if she said less to me. She still avoided meeting my eyes. I was accustomed to that, but not to the sidelong gazes she sent me, as if she were evaluating me and studying my responses. It was unnerving.

And I’d had no real time to devote to understanding it. A veritable deluge of work had drenched me in details. Winter always brings out the worst in a house. If a roof is going to leak, winter storms make it happen. Clogged chimneys filled guest rooms with smoke and stench. It seemed to me that just as I was already overwhelmed the manor turned on me and developed every imaginable problem. The crown provided Nettle with a generous allowance for her tasks as Skillmistress of Dutiful’s coterie. And Queen Kettricken had bestowed a further allowance for the upkeep of Withywoods as an acknowledgment of all that Burrich had done for the Farseer monarchy during his life. So there was coin to effect the repairs, but it did not make the noisy and unsettling process of having workmen come into the manor any more palatable to me. Nor lessen my irritation with myself that I had let it all go all summer.

75