Assassin's Quest Read Online Free PDF Page B

to every thought he Skilled to Verity, or had from him. Once they knew what I was doing, serving as King’s Man, they began to Skill-spy on me as well. I did not know such a thing could be done. But Galen had discovered how, and taught it to his students. You remember Will, Hostler’s son? The coterie member? He was the best at it. He could make you believe he wasn’t even there when he was.”
    I shook my head, tried to rattle from it my terrifying memories of Will. He brought back the shadows of the dungeon, the things I still refused to recall. I wondered if I had killed him. I didn’t think so. I didn’t think I’d got enough poison into him. I looked up to find Burrich watching me intently.
    “That night, at the very last moment, the King refused to go,” I told him quietly. “I had thought of Regal as a traitor so long, I had forgotten that Shrewd would still see him as a son. What Regal did, taking Verity’s crown when he knew his brother was alive . . . King Shrewd didn’t want to go on living, knowing Regal was capable of that. He asked me to be King’s Man, to lend him the strength to Skill a farewell to Verity. But Serene and Justin were waiting.” I paused, new pieces of the puzzle falling into place. “I should have known it was too easy. No guards on the King. Why? Because Regal didn’t need them. Because Serene and Justin were leeched onto him. Regal was finished with his father. He had crowned himself King-in-Waiting; there was no more good to be had out of Shrewd for him. So they drained King Shrewd dry of Skill-strength. They killed him. Before he could even bid Verity farewell. Probably Regal had told them to be sure he did not Skill to Verity again. So then I killed Serene and Justin. I killed them the same way they had killed my king. Without a chance of fighting back, without a moment of mercy.”
    “Easy. Easy now.” Burrich crossed swiftly to me, put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me down in a chair. “You’re shaking as if you’re going into a seizure. Calm yourself.”
    I could not speak.
    “This is what Chade and I could not puzzle out,” Burrich told me. “Who had betrayed our plan? We thought of everyone. Even the Fool. For a time we feared we had sent Kettricken off in the care of a traitor.”
    “How could you think that? The Fool loved King Shrewd as no one else did.”
    “We could think of no one else who knew all our plans,” Burrich said simply.
    “It was not the Fool who was our downfall. It was I.” And that, I think, was the moment when I came fully back to myself. I had said the most unsayable thing, faced my most unfaceable truth. I had betrayed them all. “The Fool warned me. He said I would be the death of kings, if I did not learn to leave things alone. Chade warned me. He tried to make me promise I would set no more wheels in motion. But I would not. So my actions killed my king. If I had not been helping him to Skill, he would not have been so open to his killers. I opened him up, reaching for Verity. But those two leeches came in instead. The King’s assassin. Oh, in so many, many ways, Shrewd. I am so sorry, my king. So sorry. But for me, Regal would have had no reason to kill you.”
    “Fitz.” Burrich’s voice was firm. “Regal never needed a reason to kill his father. He needed only to run out of reasons to keep him alive. And you had no control over that.” A sudden frown creased his brow. “Why did they kill him right then? Why did they not wait until they had the Queen as well?”
    I smiled at him. “You saved her. Regal thought he had the Queen. They thought they’d stopped us when they kept you from getting horses out of the stables. Regal even bragged of it to me, when I was in my cell. That she’d had to leave with no horses. And with no warm winter things.”
    Burrich grinned hard. “She and the Fool took what had been packed for Shrewd. And they left on two of the best horses ever to come out of Buckkeep’s stables.