knew I had won.
If I had won against Regal, could I not win Molly as well? What stood between her and me? Jade? But Burrich had heard she had left Buckkeep Town, not wed. Gone penniless to live with relatives. Shame upon him, had Jade let her do so. I would seek her out, I would find her and win her. Molly, with her hair loose and blowing, Molly with her bright red skirts and cloak, bold as a red-robber bird, and eyes as bright. The thought of her sent a shiver down my spine. I smiled to myself, and then felt my lips set like a rictus, and the shiver become a shuddering. My body spasmed and the back of my head rebounded sharply off the bedstead. I cried out involuntarily, a gargling wordless cry.
In an instant Jonqui was there, calling Burrich back, and then they were both holding down my flailing limbs. Burrich's body weight was flung atop me as he strove to restrain my thrashing. And then I was gone.
I came out of blackness into light, like surfacing from a deep dive into warm waters. The deep down of the feather bed cradled me, the blankets were soft and warm. I felt safe. For a moment all was peaceful. I lay quiescently, almost feeling good.
'Fitz?' Burrich asked, leaning over me.
The world came back. I knew myself a mangled, pitiful thing, a puppet with half its strings tangled or a horse with a severed tendon. I would never be as I was before; there was no place left for me in the world I had once inhabited. Burrich had said pity is a poor substitute for love. I wanted pity from none of them.
'Burrich.'
He leaned closer over me. 'It wasn't that bad,' he lied. 'Just rest now. Tomorrow—'
'Tomorrow you leave for Buckkeep,' I told him.
He frowned. 'Let's take it slowly. Give yourself a few days to recover, and then we'll—'
'No.' I dragged myself up to a sitting position. I put every bit of strength I had into the words. 'I've made a decision. Tomorrow you will go back to Buckkeep. There are people and animals waiting for you there. You're needed. It's your home and your world. But it's not mine. Not anymore.'
He was silent for a long moment. 'And what will you do?'
I shook my head. 'That's no longer your concern. Or anyone's, save mine.'
'The girl?'
I shook my head again, more violently. 'She's taken care of one cripple already, and spent her youth doing so, only to find that he left her a debtor. Shall I go back and seek her out, like this? Shall I ask her to love me so I can be a burden to her like her father was? No. Alone or wed to another, she's better off now as she is.'
The silence stretched long between us. Jonqui was busy in a corner of the room, concocting yet another herbal draft that would do nothing for me. Burrich stood over me, black and towering as a thundercloud. I knew how badly he wanted to shake me, how he longed to cuff the stubbornness from me. But he did not. Burrich did not hit cripples.
'So,' he said at last. 'That leaves only your king. Or do you forget you are sworn as a King's Man?'
'I do not forget,' I said quietly. 'And did I believe myself a man still, I would go back. But I am not, Burrich. I am a liability. On the game board, I have become but one of those tokens that must be protected. A hostage for the taking, powerless to defend myself or anyone else. No. The last act I can make as a King's Man is to remove myself, before someone else does and injures my king in the doing.'
Burrich turned aside from me. He was a silhouette in the dim room, his face unreadable by the firelight. 'Tomorrow we will talk,' he began.
'Only to say farewell,' I interrupted. 'My heart is firm on this, Burrich.' I reached up to touch the earring in my ear.
'If you stay, then so must I.' There was a fierceness in his low voice.
'That isn't how it works,' I told him. 'Once, my father told you to stay behind, and raise a bastard for him. Now I tell you to leave, to go to serve a King who still needs you.'
'FitzChivalry, I don't—'
'Please.' I don't know what he heard in my voice. Only that he was suddenly still. 'I am so tired. So damnably tired. The only thing I know is that I can't live up to what everyone else thinks I should do. I just can't do it.' My voice quavered like an old man's. 'No matter what I ought to do. No matter what I am pledged to do. There isn't enough of me left to keep my word. Maybe that's not right, but that's how it is. Everyone else's plans. Everyone else's goals. Never mine. I tried, but…' The room rocked around me as if someone else were speaking, and I was shocked at what he was saying. But I couldn't deny the truth of his words. 'I need to be alone now. To rest,' I said simply.
Both of them just looked at me. Neither one of them spoke. They left the room, slowly, as if hoping I would relent and call them back. I did not.
But after they had gone, and I was alone, I permitted myself to breathe out. I felt dizzy with the decision I had made. I wasn't going back to Buckkeep. What I was going to do, I had no idea. I had swept my broken bits of life from the game table. Now there was room to set out anew what pieces I still had, to plot a new strategy for living. Slowly, I realized I had no doubts. Regrets warred with relief, but I had no doubts. Somehow it was much more bearable to move forward into a life where no one would recall who I had once been. A life not pledged to someone else's will. Not even my king's. It was done. I lay back in my bed, and for the first time in weeks, I relaxed completely. Farewell, I thought wearily. I would have liked to wish them all farewell, to stand one last time before my king and see his brief nod that I had done well. Perhaps I could have made him understand why I did not wish to go back. It was not to be. It was done now, all done. 'I am sorry, my king,' I muttered. I stared into the dancing flames in the hearth until sleep claimed me.
CHAPTER ONE. Siltbay
To be King-in-Waiting, or the Queen-in-Waiting, is to firmly straddle the fence between responsibility and authority. It is said the position was created to satisfy the ambitions of an heir for power, while schooling him in the exercising of it. The eldest child in the royal family assumes this position upon the sixteenth birthday. From that day on, the King- or Queen-in-Waiting assumes a full share of responsibility for the running of the Six Duchies. Generally, he immediately assumes such duties as the ruling monarch cares least for, and these have varied greatly from reign to reign.
Under King Shrewd, Prince Chivalry first became king-in-waiting. To him, King Shrewd ceded over all that had to do with the borders and frontiers: warfare, negotiations and diplomacy, the discomforts of extended travel and the miserable conditions often encountered on the campaigns. When Chivalry abdicated and Prince Verity became king-in-waiting, he inherited all the uncertainties of the war with the Outislanders, and the civil unrest this situation created between the Inland and Coastal Duchies. All of these tasks were rendered more difficult in that, at any time, his decisions could be overridden by the King. Often he was left to cope with a situation not of his creating, armed only with options not of his choosing.
Even less tenable, perhaps, was the position of Queen-in-Waiting Kettricken. Her Mountain ways marked her as a foreigner in the Six Duchies court. In peaceful times, perhaps she would have been received with more tolerance. But the court at Buckkeep seethed with the general unrest of the Six Duchies. The Red-Ships from the Outislands harried our shoreline as they had not for generations, destroying far more than they stole. The first winter of Kettricken's reign as queen-in-waiting saw also the first winter raiding we had ever experienced. The constant threat of raids, and the lingering torment of Forged ones in our midst rocked the foundations of the Six Duchies. Confidence in the monarchy was low, and Kettricken had the unenviable position of being an unadmired king-in-waiting's outlandish queen.
Civil unrest divided the court as the Inland Duchies voiced their resentment at taxes to protect a coastline they did not share. The Coastal Duchies cried out for warships and soldiers and an effective way to battle the Raiders that always struck where we were least prepared. Inland-bred Prince Regal sought to gather power to himself by courting the Inland Dukes with gifts and social attentions. King-in-Waiting Verity, convinced that his Skill was no longer sufficient to hold the Raiders at bay, put his attentions to building warships to guard the Coastal Duchies, with little time for his new queen. Over all, King Shrewd crouched like a great spider, endeavoring to
