There is, in all honesty, no way to kill someone mercifully. There are those who count it no crime to drown an imperfect newborn in warm water, as if the infant will not struggle desperately to draw air into its lungs. Did it not try to breathe it would not drown. But they do not hear the screams nor feel the darkening of the mind that the child endures, so they have been merciful. To themselves. This is true of most ‘mercy killings’. The best an assassin can do is create a setting in which he does not have to witness the pain he causes. Ah, you will say, but what of drugs and poisons that send a man into a deep sleep from which he never emerges? Perhaps, but I doubt it. I suspect that some part of the victim knows. The body knows it is being murdered, and it keeps few secrets from the mind. The strangler, the suffocator, the exsanguinator may all claim that their victims did not suffer. They lie. All they may truly say is that the victim’s suffering was invisible to them. And no one returns to say they were wrong.
Merjok’s Two Hundred and Seventy-nine Ways to Kill an Adult
As I carried her body down the stairs, my little darling trotted before me bearing a candle to light my way. For one terrible moment, I felt grateful that Molly was dead and could not witness what I was demanding of our child. At least I had created a long enough diversion that she had not witnessed me killing the messenger. I had used the two blood points in her throat. When I first placed my hands, she had known what I was doing. Her blind and bloody gaze had met mine and for a moment I read relief and permission on her face. But then, as I applied the pressure, she had reflexively reached up to seize my wrists. She had struggled, fighting for a few more moments of pain-riddled life.
She was too weakened to put up much of a fight. She managed to scratch me a bit. It had been a long, long time since I had killed anyone. I’d never anticipated killing with arousal, as some assassins do. I’d never made it my joy in life, my fulfilment or even my cherished goal. I’d accepted it as my task in life when I was very young, and I’d done it, efficiently and coldly, and tried not to think too much about it. That night, even with the messenger’s initial permission, even with the knowledge that I was saving her from a lingering and painful death, was probably my worst experience as an assassin.
And here I was, making my small daughter a party to it, and binding her to silence. Had I sought righteously to keep Chade and Kettricken from dragging her into being a Farseer with all the attendant history? They certainly would not have exposed her to anything like this. I had been so proud of how long it had been since I’d killed anyone. Oh, good work, Fitz. Don’t let them put the burdens of being a Farseer on those thin shoulders. Make her an assassin’s apprentice instead.
On an estate like Withywoods there is always, somewhere, a pile of brush and branches waiting to be burned. All end up heaped somewhere out of the way. Ours was at the far side of the lambing pens in a pasture. I carried the bundled messenger and led the way through the tall, snowy grass and the winter night. Bee walked silently behind me. It was an unpleasant walk in the dark and wet. She followed in the trail I broke. We came to a snowy edged mound of brambly and twiggy branches, thorn bushes cut and thrown here, and fallen branches from the trees bordering the pasture that were too skinny to be worth cutting into firewood. It was an ample pile for my task.
There I set down my load, and the bundled body tipped unevenly onto the pile. I pulled the branches over her and made the pile more compact. Bee watched. I thought perhaps I should send her back, tell her to go to my room and sleep. I knew she wouldn’t and suspected that actually witnessing what I had to do would be less horrific than imagining it. Together, we went to fetch oil and coals. She watched me fling the oil over the branches and pour it generously over the wrapped body. Then we set it alight. The evergreen branches and brambles were resinous; they caught fire quickly, and their flames dried the thicker branches. I feared they would consume themselves before the body was gone, but the oily featherbed caught and burned well with a harsh stink. I brought more branches to throw on our bonefire and Bee helped. She was always a pale little creature, and the chill black night chalked her and the red firelight dancing on her face and shock of hair made her some strange little death sprite from an old tale.
The pyre burned well, the flames reaching up higher than my head. Their light pushed the night back. Soon my face was uncomfortably warm and my back still cold. I braced myself against the heat to push the ends of branches in and to add more to the conflagration. The fire spoke, crackling and hissing when I threw on a frost-laden branch. The flames ate our secret.
Bee stood next to me, but not touching me, and we watched the messenger burn. It takes a long time to burn a body. Most of it we spent in silence. Bee had little to say, other than, ‘What shall we tell the others?’
I sorted my thoughts. ‘To Shun, we say nothing of this. She believes the girl left. We let Riddle believe the same. To the housekeeping staff I will say that you complained of itchy bites and I found vermin in your bed when I was putting you in it and decided to burn it immediately.’ I gave a small sigh and admitted. ‘It won’t be fair to them. I must pretend to be very upset with them. I will demand that every bit of your clothing be washed fresh, and new bedding brought for you.’
She gave a single nod. She turned her eyes back to the fire. I gathered another armful of branches and threw them onto the blaze. The half-burned limbs gave way under this fresh weight, crumpling down on the embered remains. The featherbed whispered away as downy ash. Were those blackened bones or blackened branches? Even I could not tell. The faint smell of roasting meat sickened me.
‘You are very good at this. You have thought of everything.’
Not a compliment I wanted to receive from my little daughter. ‘I used to have to do … special work. For the king. I learned to think of many things at once.’
‘And to lie very well. And not let people see what you are thinking.’
‘That, too. I’m not proud of it, Bee. But the secret that we heard tonight is not mine. It belongs to my very old friend. You heard what the messenger said. He has a son, and that son is in danger.’ Could she hear in my voice how peculiar I found this news? The Fool had a son. I had never been absolutely certain of his masculinity. But if a child had been born, it must have come from a woman’s womb. That meant that somewhere, that son had a mother. A woman who, presumably, the Fool had loved. I thought that I had known him better than any other person ever had. And yet this was something I never would have suspected.
The woman would be my beginning point. Who was she? I racked my brains. Garetha came to mind. She had been a gardener’s maid when the Fool and I were children. Even then she had been enamoured of him. As a youngster he had been a lithe and playful fellow, turning handsprings and flips and doing the juggler’s tricks expected of a jester. He had been quick-tongued. Often his humour had been cruel to those he felt could be well served by being taken down a notch or two. With the very young or those not treated kindly by fate he had been gentler, often turning his jests back on himself.
Garetha had not been pretty, and he had been kind to her. For some women, that is all it takes. In later years, she had recalled him, recognized him in his guise of Lord Golden. Had there been more than recognition? Had that been how he had persuaded her to keep his secret? If they had had a child, the boy would be in his mid-twenties now.
Was she the only possibility? Well, there were whores, and ladies of pleasure in plenty in Buckkeep Town, but I could not imagine the Fool frequenting them. It had to be Garetha … Then my thoughts stepped sideways, and I suddenly saw the Fool in a different light. He had always been a very private person. He might have had a hidden lover. Or a not so secret one. Laurel. The Witted huntswomen had made no secret of her attraction to him. He had spent years away from Buck, in Bingtown and possibly Jamaillia. I knew next to nothing of his life there, save that he had lived in the guise of a woman.
And then the obvious fell into place and I thought myself a great dunce. Jofron. Why had he written to her? Why had he warned her to guard her son? Perhaps because he was their son? I reorganized my memories of Jofron and the Fool. Close to thirty-five years ago, when the Fool found me, dying in the mountains, he had taken me to his little home. He’d had a little Mountain house that he shared with Jofron. He had moved her out when he took me in. And when he had left to go with me on my quest, he had left everything he owned there for her. I thought of how she had reacted to me the last time we met. Could I interpret her ways toward me as the reaction of a lover who had been spurned for a friend? She had seemed to enjoy showing me that he had written to her while sending me no word.
I reached back to those feverish days, remembering her voice, the adoring way she spoke of her White Prophet. I had deemed it a sort of religious fervour. Perhaps it had been a different passion. But if she had borne him a child, surely he would have known for a certainty. He had sent her messages. Had she ever replied to them? If he’d left a child there, the boy would be a year younger than Nettle. Surely not a child that needed my protection? And the grandson who had been there had looked nothing like the Fool. Surely if he were the Fool’s grandson, his White heritage would have shown somewhere. The Fool’s grandson. For a long moment, those words seemed impossible to fit together.
I pondered it as the flames ate her bones. The messenger’s words made little sense. If the Fool had fathered a child the last time he’d been in Buckkeep, his son would be a young man not a little boy. It didn’t make sense. The messenger had called the boy a child. I recalled how slowly the Fool had grown, how he had claimed to be decades older than I was. There was so much I didn’t know. But if it was the way of his kind to age slowly, perhaps the son he had left behind still appeared to be a child? Then it could not be Jofron’s son, who had fathered a boy of his own. Had he sent her a warning because he feared the hunters would pursue any child who might remotely be the Fool’s son? My mind ran in circles, trying to build a tower with too few blocks. Surely, if it was Jofron’s son, he could have told me, with dozens of clues that only I would recognize. Call him the Toymaker’s son, and I’d know him. But surely that was true of any son? The gardener’s boy, the huntswoman’s child … we’d known each other so well. Any child he’d left, surely he could have identified to me. If the Fool knew for sure where the child was … Was he sending me on a wild-goose chase to find a child reputed to exist on the basis of some obscure White prophecies? He wouldn’t do that to me. No. Almost certainly he would. Because he could believe that I could find such a child. Was it even the Fool’s son? I sifted the messenger’s meagre words again. An unexpected son. Once, he had told me, those words referred to me. And now? Was there another ‘unexpected son’ somewhere? Could I be certain this boy was the Fool’s son? Her knowledge of my language had been less than perfect.
‘Papa?’ Bee’s voice was shaking and when I turned to her, I saw that she had wrapped her arms around herself and was shivering with cold. ‘Have we finished?’ Her nose was red at the tip.
I looked at our fire. The last load of branches I had put on it collapsed suddenly. How much would be left of the girl? The skull, the heavier thigh bones, the column of spine. I stepped forward to peer into the heart of the fire. They were covered with ember and ash. Tomorrow I’d bring the bedding from the nurse’s bed in the room adjacent to Bee’s and burn it here. Tonight, it was enough. I hoped. I looked around us. There was a moon, but layers of clouds veiled it. An icy mist hung over the low and boggy pasturelands. What moonlight reached the ground there was claimed by the fog.
‘Let’s go back in.’
I held out a hand to her. She looked at it, and then reached up to put her small fingers in mine. They were cold. Impulsively I scooped her up. She pushed against me. ‘I’m nine. Not three.’
I released her and she slid to the ground. ‘I know that.’ I said apologetically. ‘You just looked so cold.’
‘I am cold. Let’s get back inside.’
I didn’t try to touch her again, but contented myself that she walked along beside me. I thought of the morrow and felt heavy with dread. It would be complicated enough without dealing with Shun and Riddle also. I dreaded that I must falsely report an infestation, for I knew the scurrying and scrubbing that would follow. Revel would be beside himself; the entire staff would be chastised. The laundering would be endless. I thought of my own room and winced. I’d have to subject myself to an invasion of housekeepers, or my accusations would ring false. And I did not want even to imagine Shun’s outrage and disgust at the idea that her bedding might harbour vermin. Well, there was no help for it. My excuse for burning Bee’s bedding in the middle of the night must be convincing. No avoiding the lies I must tell.
Just as there had been no way to avoid exposing Bee to all this cascading debris from my old life. I shook my head at how poorly I had protected her. All I wanted to do right now was to be alone and try to think through what it all meant. The thought that the Fool had reached out to me after all these years was overwhelming. I tried to sort the emotions I was feeling and was startled to find anger was one of them. All those years, with no word from him and no way for me to reach out to him. And then, when he needed something, this imperious and life-disrupting intrusion! Frustration vied with a terrible desire to see him after all these years. The message seemed to indicate that he was in danger, restrained from travelling or spied upon. Injured somehow? When last I had seen him, he had been so anxious to return to his old school, to share with them the end of the Pale Woman and all he had learned during his long travels. To Clerres. I knew no more of that place than its name. Had he come into conflict with the school? Why? What had become of the Black Man, his travelling companion and a fellow White Prophet? The messenger had made no mention of Prilkop at all.
The Fool had always loved riddles and puzzles, and loved his privacy even more. But this did not feel like one of his pranks. It felt more as if he had sent every bit of information he dared, inadequate as it was, and hoped that I would have the resources to find whatever else I needed to know. Did I? Was I still the person he hoped I was?
The strange part was that I actually hoped I wasn’t. I’d been a sly, resourceful assassin, capable of spying, running, fighting and killing. I didn’t want to do that any more. I could still feel the warmth of the girl’s skin under my thumbs, feel the feebling grip of her hands on my wrists as her struggling gave way to unconsciousness and then death. I’d made it quick for her. Not painless, for no death is without pain. But I’d made the pain much briefer than it otherwise would have been. I’d granted her mercy.
And I’d once more felt that surge of power that one gets when one kills. The thing that Chade and I never discussed with anyone, not even each other. The nasty little burst of supremacy that I continued to live when someone else had died.
I never wanted to feel that again. Truly, I didn’t. Nor did I want to wonder at how quickly I had decided to grant her the mercy of a swift death. For decades now, I had insisted that I did not want to be an assassin. Tonight, I doubted my sincerity.
‘Papa?’
An assassin flinched and turned his scrutiny on the small girl. For a moment, I didn’t recognize her. I struggled to find my way back to being her father. ‘Molly,’ I said, the word bursting from me, aloud, making Bee’s face grow pale so that her reddened cheeks and nose stood out as if splashed with blood. Molly had kept me safe. She had been the waymarker on a different path my life could take. Now she was gone and I felt as if I had fallen over a cliff’s edge and was hopelessly plunging toward ruin. And I had pulled my child over with me.
‘She’s dead,’ Bee said in a small voice, and suddenly it was real all over again.
‘I know,’ I said miserably.
She reached up and took my hand. ‘You were leading us off into the dark and the fog, toward the pasture. Come this way.’ She tugged my hand, and I realized I had been walked toward a misty forested strip of land beside the pasture. She turned us back toward Withywoods where lights shone dim in a few windows.
My child guided me home.
We moved silently through the darkened corridors of Withywoods. Across the flagged entrance, up the curved staircase and along the hallway we softly paced. I paused at the entrance to her room and abruptly recalled that she could not sleep there. I looked at her and hated myself. Her nose was a bright red button. She wore a winter cloak and boots, and under that, only a woollen nightdress. It was now soaked to the knee. Oh Bee. ‘Let’s get you a clean nightgown. Then you’ll sleep in my room tonight.’ I winced at the thought, recalling the boar’s nest that my room had become. No help for it now. I wanted every scrap of bedding in her room destroyed to avoid contagion from whatever horrid creatures the messenger had carried within her. I suppressed a shudder at the thought of the vicious judgment passed on her. So irrevocable. So their punishment for being a traitor was lingering and painful death, one that no apology or explanation would halt. I still was not sure who ‘they’ were, but already I despised them.
I kindled a candle at her hearth while Bee went to her clothing chest. Her nightgown dragged a wet trail on the floor. She lifted the heavy lid, wedged a shoulder under it to hold it open and began to rummage through the contents. I glanced around the room. The stripped bed looked stark and accusing. I’d killed a woman in this room tonight. Did I ever want my child to sleep here again? She might not be haunted by what I’d done for surely she had no idea of it. She would believe the messenger had just died of her wounds. But this killing would bother me for a long time. I didn’t want my daughter sleeping in the bed where I’d killed someone. Tomorrow, I’d broach the idea of moving her into a new room. For tonight—
‘STOP! Just stop, please! Leave me alone! PLEASE!’ It was Shun’s voice, rising to a shriek on the last word.
‘Stay here!’ I barked at Bee and left the room. Shun’s temporary chamber was at the end of the corridor. I was only a few steps down the hall before Riddle, in his nightshirt, knife in hand and his hair standing up in wild tufts, burst out of his room and into the corridor. Shoulder to shoulder, we ran. Shun’s voice rose again, ascending in terror. ‘I’m sorry you’re dead. It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my fault! Leave me alone!’
The door to her bedchamber was abruptly flung open and a wailing Shun sprang into the dim hall. Her auburn hair was loose about the shoulders of her nightgown. She had a knife in one hand, a fine and slender blade, and even in her terror she carried it as if she would know how to use it. She shrieked even louder at the sight of us running toward her. Then she recognized Riddle and breathlessly shouting his name, she ran into his arms, narrowly missing the knife he carried. She seemed not to notice when he caught her wrist and with a pinch made her drop her own blade.
‘What is it, what’s wrong?’ We were both shouting and in response she only wailed and hugged Riddle’s neck so tightly that I thought she would choke him. She had buried her face in his chest and he held his knife well clear of her in one hand while he awkwardly patted her back with the other. She was saying something over and over, but I could not understand her. I stooped and picked up her blade. I recognized the design as one favoured for assassin work. Evidently she had not felt her rudimentary training would protect her against a ghost. I tucked it away in my sleeve.
‘I’ll check her room. Keep her safe,’ I said to Riddle, but as I moved past them, she suddenly lifted her head and shrieked, ‘Don’t go in there! Don’t go in there! It’s his ghost, crying and crying! He blames me. Rono blames me!’
I halted, feeling a sick fear spread through me. I am not a superstitious man. I do not believe in ghosts. Yet I almost heard the distant wailing of a lost child. My heart sank and I welcomed Riddle’s word as he said to her, ‘It was only a bad dream, Shun. You’ve been through a lot, and you’ve carried a lot of fear this past fortnight. Here you are, in an unfamiliar house, wondering what shape your life is about to take. It’s only to be expected that you’d have a bad dream.’
She pushed away from him violently. Her voice was indignant. ‘It wasn’t a bad dream. I wasn’t able to fall asleep. I was lying in bed, thinking, and I began to hear the wailing. It’s Rono. The little wretch was always crying, always whining and begging. Anything sweet or delicious that was cooked for me, he wanted some of it. And even when he was told it was for me, he would keep begging, or he would just steal some of it. And that’s what got him killed!’ She was suddenly angry instead of frightened. ‘He stole from me and ate it, and he died. How can that be my fault?’
‘It wasn’t,’ Riddle immediately replied. ‘Of course it wasn’t. The blame falls on whoever was trying to poison you.’
Her sobs changed suddenly, and I wondered how I knew she had gone from terrified to comforted. Her face was buried in his shoulder and she clung to him, her arms wrapped around his neck and her body pressed close to him. He sent me an uncomfortable look over her shoulder. I tried not to scowl. I was not sure what he and Nettle were to each other, but even in this context, I did not like seeing him hold another woman. ‘I’ll check her room. Just to be sure there’s nothing amiss,’ I told him.
She lifted her face. Tears and snot had dismissed any beauty from her face. ‘I was not dreaming, as I was not asleep! Nor did I imagine it! I heard his crying!’
‘I’ll see to it.’
As I walked past Riddle, he passed his knife to me. He quirked one eyebrow in an abbreviated shrug. It was always better to be armed than not, in any situation. ‘I’ll put her in my room for the night,’ he offered.
‘You cannot leave me alone!’ she wailed.
There was deep resignation in his voice as he offered, ‘I’ll sleep across your threshold, just outside your door. If anything bothers you, I’ll be only steps away.’
I was already moving down the hall and did not hear the words of her choked objection. I halted outside the door of her chamber and settled myself. It could be anything or nothing, I reminded myself. I pulled the door open and looked into the room. I unfurled my Wit-sense, reaching out to investigate the room. Nothing. I sensed no human or animal within the chamber. It was not an absolute assurance that Shun had imagined an intruder, but it was reassuring to me.
Firelight from the low-burning hearth coated the room in honey. The bedding had spilled from the bed and trailed her to the door. I moved inside, stepping softly and listening. What had she heard? For I suspected there would be a grain of truth at least in her complaint. Had the wind whistled through the chimney or past her window? But all was silent save for the muted crackling of the fire.
I lit a branch of candles and explored the room with them, checking behind curtains and under the bed and even in the still-empty clothing chests. They had been freshly cleaned and held only new sachets. They smelled of cedar and lavender and waited to be used. Shun had not unpacked so much as avalanched into the room. Clothing was everywhere, cascading from her baggage, draped across the foot of the bed and on top of the clothing chests. I scowled at her untidiness. Well, by tomorrow, her maid would be here, to set her to rights. Still it did not please me that a girl of her age did not even know how to be orderly in her unpacking. Her jewellery was scattered across the top of the small vanity, next to a bag of pink and yellow sweets.
Chade had obviously opened his purse for her, and she had taken full advantage of it. What sort of training had he given the girl? She clearly thought much of herself, but no trace of discipline or order did I find in her behaviour. How had he looked at her and considered her a candidate to be a spy, let alone an assassin? I wondered where he had found her and why she mattered so much to him. He’d hidden her pedigree well but I was determined to know it now. I’d sniff out his secrets. In my spare time. When I was not looking for the Fool’s misplaced heir. Or accusing my servants of vermin in the bedding. Or repairing the damage I’d done to my daughter. I had not been managing my old life very well. I could not imagine coping with Shun in addition.
I finished my search carefully, checking that the windows and shutters were tightly closed and that her maid’s adjoining room was innocent of all intruders. There was nothing there. I retreated from her chamber, trying to set my concerns about Shun aside for tonight. Tonight, I would take care of my immediate worries. Tomorrow would be time enough to think about adapting Shun to our simpler habits. Tomorrow … we were well past midnight. Today.
I took the lit candles with me and went down the hall to where Riddle stood in his nightshirt, his arms crossed on his chest. I had never seen the man look so stubborn. A rumpled kitchen maid, one of the village girls newly hired to help, stood nearby in her nightrobe and shawl, looking both sleepy and alarmed. Mild stood nearby, disapproval at this uproar stamped on her face. And Shun was complaining loudly. Mentally, I was thankful that Revel had not been roused. Tomorrow would be soon enough to put the house steward in an uproar.
Shun set her hands to her hips and glared at Riddle. Her dark curling hair was wild on her shoulders and her nightdress strained against her out-thrust chest. ‘No. I don’t want her sleeping beside me. And what could she do if the ghost came back? Riddle, you are supposed to protect me. I want you to sleep in my room!’
‘Lady Shun, that would not be appropriate,’ Riddle replied firmly. I had the feeling he was repeating himself. ‘You wanted a companion for the night? Here is Pansy, ready to serve. And I assure both of you that I’ll be right here, stretched across the threshold should you need any sort of assistance.’
‘Ghost?’ Pansy broke in, her sleepiness vanishing. She turned her shock and appeal on Riddle. ‘Sir, I beg you, the lady is right! I would be useless should a ghost come into the room. I’m certain I should faint dead away!’
‘I checked Lady Shun’s room. I assure you, there is no intruder and nothing to fear there,’ I announced firmly.
‘Of course there isn’t, now!’ Shun objected. ‘It was Rono’s little ghost, crying and accusing me! Ghosts cannot be found when you search for them. They come and go as they please!’
‘Rono?’ Mild laughed, and then said, ‘Oh, beg pardon, Lady Shun, but there is no Rono ghost in that room. The only ghost known to walk through those chambers is old Lord Pike. So his parents named him, but all the maidservants in the manor called him Old Lord Peek, for he dearly loved to catch a glimpse of any woman in her shift or drawers! My own mother told me that he would hide in th …’
‘No more stories tonight!’ I announced firmly. I already knew from the look on Pansy’s face that she would be giving her notice tomorrow. The suppressed amusement in Riddle’s eyes could not lighten my mood. All I wanted was to seek my own bed. I put authority into my voice.
‘Mild, if you would, help Riddle to make up a pallet outside Lady Shun’s door. Lady Shun, if you wish a companion to share this chamber with you, then we are offering you Pansy. No one else. Pansy, you will be paid extra for this service tonight. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all. I am going to my own bed, now. There have been enough disruptions after a very taxing day.’
‘If Rono’s ghost throttles me in the night in vengeance for his death, I hope you will have a good explanation for Lord Chade as to how you failed in your duty to protect me!’
She threw the stony words at my back. I continued to walk away. I knew I was leaving the burden of sorting it out on Riddle’s shoulders. I knew he could handle it. And he’d had at least some sleep, and had not murdered anyone nor burned a body tonight.
I opened the door to Bee’s chamber. Empty. So she had had the sense to change her clothing and go to my room. I continued down the corridor. I opened the door to my room and stood still. I could feel that she wasn’t there. The room gave me no Wit-sense of her presence, only chill and emptiness. The fire had almost burned out.
I lifted my branch of candles high, trying to tell if she had been here. So far as I could tell, nothing had changed since I’d last left the room. Habit made me cross to the hearth and add wood to the fire. ‘Bee?’ I called softly. ‘Are you hiding in here?’ I dragged the rucked blankets off the bed to be sure she hadn’t burrowed in and fallen asleep. The ridged sheets and stink of sweaty male assured me that she would have found it an unappealing hiding spot. No. She had not been here.
I headed back to her room. All was quiet in the corridor. Riddle opened his eyes and lifted his head as I passed. ‘Just checking on Bee,’ I told him. I was reluctant to let him know that I’d misplaced my own daughter. Just the thought of what he would report back to Nettle about the disorder in my household made me wince. Ghosts and smoking chimneys and a half-trained staff were as nothing compared to misplacing Nettle’s small sister.
Candles held high, I entered her room. ‘Bee?’ I called softly. Obviously not on the bared bedstead. I knew a moment of fear. Had she crept into the bedding in the servant’s room? I hated myself that I had not taken it and burned it immediately. ‘Bee?’ I cried louder and two hasty strides carried me to the door of the adjoining chamber.
Empty. I tried to remember how it had looked when I had last seen it. Had not the bedding been less on the floor and more on the bedstead? I prayed to gods I scarcely acknowledged that she had not touched it. The room was so small that it was the work of a moment to be sure she wasn’t in it. I stepped out of it and then, horror-struck, rushed to her winter clothing chest. How often had I reminded myself that she needed something smaller with a lighter lid? I knew she had fallen into it, her head smashed, and then suffocated in the dark.
But all it held was her clothing, in pushed heaps and wads. Relief warred with worry. She wasn’t there. I felt a spasm of annoyance that her clothing was so ill kept. Had the servants abandoned this room when I chased them from mine? In so many ways I was failing my child, but most of all, in that I had lost her tonight. My foot nudged something and I looked down at a heap of wet clothing on the floor. Bee’s clothes. So she had changed here. She’d been here and now she was gone. So where could she be? Where would she go? The kitchen? Had she been hungry? No. She’d been unsettled, even scared. So where would she go?
And I knew.
I walked past Riddle, feigning a calm I didn’t feel. ‘Good night!’ I wished him wryly. He watched me pass, and then rolled to his feet in a fluid motion.
‘I’ll help you look for her.’
I hated his perspicacity, and welcomed it. ‘You take the kitchens, then. I’ll check my study.’
He nodded and was off at a trot. Shielding my candle flames, I followed. At the bottom of the stair, we went our separate ways. I doubled back to go to my private study. All was quiet and dark as I traversed the dark passageways. When I reached the double doors of the study, they were closed. All was still.