Fool's Errand

“I should kill you right now,” I snarled at him. From above, in the darkness, I heard questioning voices. “Be quiet!” I roared at them, and they ceased. “Get up,” I told my prisoner savagely.

“I can't.” His voice shook.

“Get up!” I demanded. I staggered upright without letting go of him, and then half hauled him to his feet. “Move!” I told him. “Up the hill, back to the cave. Try to run again, and I'll pound you bloody.”

He believed me. The reality was that my efforts with Nighteyes had drained me. I could barely keep pace with him as we clambered back up the rainslick slope. As we scrabbled and slid, a Skillheadache painted bolts of lightning on my eyelids. We were both caked with mud before we regained the cave. Once inside, I ignored Lord Golden'sanxious expression and Laurel's questions while I securely trussed my prisoner's wrists behind his back and bound his ankles together. I handled him viciously, the pounding pain in my skull spurring me on. I could feel Laurel and the Fool watching me. It made me feel both angry and ashamed of what I did. “Sleep well,” I hissed at him when I was finished. I stepped back from him and drew my knife from its sheath. I heard Laurel's gasp and the prisoner gave a sudden sob. But I only walked to the trickle of water to clean the mud from the hilt and sheath. I sloshed mud off my hands and then rubbed my face with cold water. I'd wrenched my back in the struggle. Nighteyes whined low in his throat, a worried sound at my pain. I clenched my teeth and tried to block it away from him. As I stood up, my prisoner spoke. “You're a traitor to your own kind.” Fear of death gave the boy a false courage. He flung his words at me, but I wouldn't even look at him. His voice rose in shrill accusation. “What did they pay you to betray us? What reward is there for you and your wolf if you bring back the Prince? Do they hold a hostage? A mother? Your sister? Do they swear that if you do this, they'll let you and your family live? They lie, you know. They always lie.” His shaking voice was gaining volume. “Old Blood hunts Old Blood, and for what? So the Farseers can deny that the blood of the Piebald Prince runs in their line? Or do you work for those who hate the Queen and her son? Will you take him back so that he can be denounced as Old Blood, and the Farseers brought down by those who think they could rule better than they?”

I should have been focused on what he was saying about the Farseers. Instead I heard only his denunciation of what I was. He spoke with certainty. He knew. I tried to brush his words aside. “Your wild accusations mean nothing. I am sworn to the Farseers. serve my Queen,” I replied, though I knew it was stupid to be baited into talking to him. "I will rescue the Prince, regardless of who holds him, or what they are to me

“Rescue? Ha! Return him to slavery, you mean.” The archer had transferred his glare to Laurel as if to convince her. “The boy with the cat rides with us to safety, not as a prisoner, but as one coming home to his own kind. Better a free Piebald than a prince in a cage. So you betray him doubly, for he is a Farseer whom you are sworn to serve, and Old Blood kin as truly as you are. Will you drag him back to be hanged and quartered and burned, as so many of us have been? As they killed my brother but two nights ago?” His voice was suddenly choked. “Arno was only seventeen. He had not even the magic, himself. But he was kin to Old Blood, and chose to stand with us, even to giving up his life for us. He declared himself a Piebald and rode with us. Because he knew he was one of us, even if the magic did not work for him.” He looked back at me. “Yet there you stand, as Old Blood as I am, you and your Witwolf beside you, and you would hunt us to the death. Lie all you wish, for you only shame yourself. Do you think I cannot sense you speaking to him?”

I stared at him. My throbbing head calculated what he had just done to me. By betraying me in front of Laurel, he had not only endangered me; he had taken Buckkeep from me once more. I could not return there now; not with Laurel knowing what I was. Horror had drained all color from her face. She looked as if she would be ill. I saw a shifting in her eyes when I glanced at her, a rearranging of her opinion of me. The Fool's face was very still. It was as if he struggled to conceal so many emotions that he was left wearing no expression at all. Had he already discerned what I must do? It was like a spreading poison. They knew I was Witted. Now it was not just the archer I'd have to kill, but Laurel, as well. If I didn't, I'd always be vulnerable.

Yet if I did, it would destroy all that was between the Fool and me. The assassin's conclusion to that was to kill him, too, so that he would never look at me with those deaths in his eyes.