Mother Northwind was silent for a long moment. “This man of yours, in place to kill the King,” she said. “You trust him?”
“As much as any man can trust another, yes,” Falk said. “He has aged parents. They are currently living in a cottage on my demesne, under the protection of my men-at-arms.”
“Even so,” Mother Northwind said. “If there is a weak link in your plan, surely it is there, in this Commoner… I presume he’s a Commoner?”
“Of course. Mageborn must account for their presence. Commoners. .. who notices the servants? And in any event, the King is well protected against magic. The assassination must be done by physical means.”
“Well. This Commoner. You cannot know if he has what it takes to strike down the King in cold blood until he does so.”
“If he does not, he knows what will happen,” Falk growled.
“But when the moment comes to strike the necessary blow, he may still falter. I would feel better if you would let me examine him-make sure he is the man for the job.”
Now that, Falk thought, is an excellent idea. “Please do, Mother Northwind. I should have thought of it myself. I confess I, too, would rest easier knowing our assassin is absolutely reliable.”
“So,” said Mother Northwind. “Three ‘examinations’ I must perform, not to mention this problem with your sprained shoulder.” She sidled closer. “If you’d just let me take a look at it, I’m sure-”
Falk, trying not to look as though he were in a hurry, stepped back. “Thank you, but I find it much improved.”
“It’s a miracle,” Mother Northwind said. “Praise the SkyMage!” She laughed. “I’ll show myself out.”
And after she was gone, Falk once more thought, That went well…
… although as always, after he’d spoken to Mother Northwind, his confidence was seasoned with the tiniest dash of doubt.
CHAPTER 23
The morning after her chat with Falk, Mother Northwind once more made the torturous descent to the please-don’t-call-it-a-dungeon. She asked to be let into Goodwife Beth’s cell first.
It was not a meeting she’d been looking forward to.
Beth, lying on the bed in Tagaza’s former cell with her arm thrown over her eyes, moved her arm as the door opened, then scrambled to her feet as the door closed.
“Hello, Beth,” Mother Northwind said. “Long time since we were last both in the Palace together, isn’t it?”
Beth blanched, and even put a finger to her lips, but Mother Northwind shook her head. “We are protected,” she said, holding up her left arm to show Verdsmitt’s antieavesdropping bracelet, “while I wear this.”
And suddenly Beth relaxed. “If you say so… Patron.” And then her face clouded. “I failed you, Lila,” Beth said. It was the first time Mother Northwind had heard her birth name spoken in more than twenty years. She was quite surprised by the pang she felt in response. “You sent the Prince to me for safekeeping, and I-”
“Not your fault, Beth,” Mother Northwind said. “Jopps betrayed you.”
“Jopps?” Beth’s brow furrowed. “He wasn’t even… oh!” And then her face changed again, went hard. “If I get hold of him, his nuts are paste.”
Mother Northwind chuckled. “You always did have a way with words, Beth.”
She and Beth went back a long way. When she had been an anonymous Palace Healer, Beth had been a serving girl. Their schedules had overlapped so that they were often eating in the kitchen together, and they’d struck up a friendship, Mother Northwind hearing everything about Beth’s family, about the young man she hoped to marry, about-
Well, it didn’t really matter what else she’d spoken of, did it? None of it had happened. Beth had developed a bad case of acne, something even Mother Northwind could not cure quickly, though she tried. Finding her face unappealing, the Mageborn chef had simply told her one morning to get out: out of the kitchen, out of the Palace. She’d been owed a month’s wages. She didn’t get them.
Beth’s husband-to-be had been furious at her for losing her precious job in the Palace, and had dumped her. She’d moved back in with her parents, but that had been short-lived. Within six weeks her father ran off with a woman from Berriton, taking the family’s small store of savings with him. Her mother wound up in a debtor’s prison shortly thereafter for failure to pay the rent to their Mageborn landlord.
The only reason Mother Northwind knew about those things was because the next time she’d met Beth, after she’d left the Palace and set up shop as a Healer in New Cabora, was at Tallule’s House of Perfumes, one of the busiest brothels in the city. Beth had been entertaining as many as ten customers a day (Mageborn as well as Commoners) in a desperate (and doomed, considering how much of her earnings went to Madame Tallule) effort to pay her mother’s debts, and not surprisingly had picked up an infection.
Mother Northwind soon chased that out of her body, but knew it was just a matter of time before something worse would claim Beth, or more likely that some customer, probably a drunken married Mageborn slumming in the Commons, would do something to her that couldn’t be set right… and she couldn’t let that happen. So she had hired Beth as her assistant. When it came to the kind of bawdy flirting that kept a man off-balance and less careful about what they said, Beth was a master, and ultimately Mother Northwind had set her up as a barmaid in a tavern inside the Mageborn enclave. If she chose to sell some of the traveling marketmen more than just beer and steak in order to help her mother, Mother Northwind didn’t care, as long as she got information from them as well as tips.
As Mother Northwind had begun to shape the Common Cause, trying to make it a solid foundation on which a new and more equitable order could be founded when she succeeded in destroying the MageLords, she had needed someone to serve as her second-in-command, someone she could trust explicitly, and Beth had met that need. Beth was the only person within the Cause to know that the sometimes-helpful Healer/Witch and the secretive mastermind Patron were one and the same.
Which made her doubly dangerous now… and what Mother Northwind needed to do doubly anguishing.
But Beth surprised her. “I know why you’re here,” she said bluntly.
Mother Northwind studied her. “You do?”
Beth made an impatient gesture. “I’m not stupid, Lila. I know the kind of powers you wield-I’ve seen you use them often enough. Falk is going to interrogate me. He’s going to torture me. And he is a master at it. I know, no matter how much I might try to fool myself, that I will tell him everything I know. And if I know the true identity of the Patron, if I retain any memory of our years at the Palace together, or how you got me out of Tallule’s or… or any of that stuff, he will get it out of me. So…” She swallowed. “So it’s important I don’t remember. Any of it. Not even… not even the good times.” A tear glistened at the corner of her eye, then traced a gleaming track down the curve of her cheek.
Mother Northwind sighed. “I’m so sorry, Beth… but yes. I’m close, so close to my goal… but I’m not there yet. And I’ll never get there if Falk starts to mistrust me. So…”
“All right,” Beth said. “All right.”
Taking a deep breath, Mother Northwind reached out her hand. But Beth pushed it away. “Don’t just touch me, Lila,” she said. She began to sob, great, wrenching sobs that shook her whole body. She moved closer and wrapped her arms around Mother Northwind. “Hug me, Lila. Hug me!”
Her own heart breaking, Mother Northwind gathered Beth in her arms
… and did what she had to do.
For several minutes they clung to each other. Then, exhaustion blackening the edges of her vision, she pulled away. Beth looked at her, puzzled. “Who are you?” she said. “Do I know you?”
“Just a Healer,” Mother Northwind said around the lump in her throat. “Just a Healer.”
“A Healer? But I’m…” Beth looked down at herself. “I’m not hurt. Am I? I mean…” She held up her hands, turned them over. “I feel all right.”
“You’re fine,” Mother Northwind said. But as she got up to cross the hallway to Anton’s cell, she thought, I, on the other hand, am not.
She paused in the corridor, taking a few more deep breaths, feeling some of her strength returning, but
