LITMIR.BIZ

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you, Fitz, if you are not the King’s Man? What are you? Where would you go?’

      Where would I go, were I free? To Molly, cried my heart. I shook my head, thrusting aside the idea before it could sear me. No. Even before I had lost my life, I had lost her. I considered my empty, bitter freedom. There was only one place I could go, really. I set my will, looked up, and met Burrich’s eyes with a firm gaze. ‘I’m going away. Anywhere. To the Chalced States, to Bingtown. I’m good with animals, I’m a decent scribe, too. I could make a living.’

      ‘No doubt of it. But a living is not a life,’ Burrich pointed out.

      ‘Well, what is?’ I demanded, suddenly and truly angry. Why did they have to make this so hard? Words and thoughts suddenly gouted from me like poison from a festering wound. ‘You’d have me devote myself to my king and sacrifice all else to it, as you did. Give up the woman I love to follow a king like a dog at his heels, as you did. And when that king abandoned you? You swallowed it, you raised his bastard for him. Then they took it all away from you, stable, horses, dogs, men to command. They left you nothing, not even a roof over your head, those kings you were sworn to. So what did you do? With nothing else left to you, you hung onto me, dragged the Bastard out of a coffin and forced him back to life. A life I hate, a life I don’t want!’ I glared at him accusingly.

      He stared at me, bereft of words. I wanted to stop, but something drove me on. The anger felt good, like a cleansing fire. I clenched my hands into fists as I demanded, ‘Why are you always there? Why do you always stand me up again, for them to knock down? For what? To make me owe you something? To give you a claim on my life because you don’t have the spine to have a life of your own? All you want to do is make me just like you, a man with no life of my own, a man who gives it all up for my king. Can’t you see there’s more to being alive than giving it all up for someone else?’

      I met his eyes and then looked away from the pained astonishment I saw there. ‘No,’ I said dully after a breath. ‘You don’t see, you can’t know. You can’t even imagine what you’ve taken away from me. I should be dead, but you wouldn’t let me die. All with the best of intentions, always believing you were doing what was right, no matter how it hurt me. But who gave you that right over me? Who decreed you could do this to me?’

      There was no sound but my own voice in the room. Chade was frozen, and the look on Burrich’s face only made me angrier. I saw him gather himself up. He reached for his pride and dignity as he said quietly, ‘Your father gave me that task, Fitz. I did my best by you, boy. The last thing my prince told me. Chivalry said to me, “Raise him well.” And I …’

      ‘Gave up the next decade of your life to raising someone else’s bastard,’ I cut in with savage sarcasm. ‘Took care of me, because it was the only thing you really knew how to do. All your life, Burrich, you’ve been looking after someone else, putting someone else first, sacrificing any kind of a normal life for someone else’s benefit. Loyal as a hound. Is that a life? Haven’t you ever thought of being your own man, and making your own decisions? Or is a fear of that what pushes you down the neck of a bottle?’ My voice had risen to a shout. When I ran out of words, I stared at him, my chest rising and falling as I panted out my fury.

      As an angry boy, I’d often promised myself that someday he would pay for every cuff he had given me, for every stall I’d had to muck out when I thought I was too tired to stand. With those words, I kept that sulky little promise tenfold. His eyes were wide and he was speechless with pain. I saw his chest heave once, as if to catch a breath knocked out of him. The shock in his eyes was the same as if I had suddenly plunged a knife into him.

      I stared at him. I wasn’t sure where those words had come from, but it was too late to call them back. Saying ‘I’m sorry’ would not un-utter them, would not change them in the least. I suddenly hoped he would hit me, that he would give both of us at least that much.

      He stood unevenly, the chair legs scraping back on the wooden floor. The chair itself teetered over and fell with a crash as he walked away from it. Burrich, who walked so steadily when full of brandy, wove like a drunk as he made it to the door and went out into the night. I just sat, feeling something inside me go very still. I hoped it was my heart.

      For a moment all was silence. A long moment. Then Chade sighed. ‘Why?’ he asked quietly after a time.

      ‘I don’t know.’ I lied so well. Chade himself had taught me. I looked into the fire. For a moment, I almost tried to explain it to him. I decided I could not. I found myself talking all around it. ‘Maybe I needed to get free of him. Of all he’d done for me, even when I didn’t want him to do it. He has to stop doing things I can never pay him back for. Things no man should do for another, sacrifices no man should make for another man. I don’t want to owe him any more. I don’t want to owe anyone anything.’

      When Chade spoke, it was matter-of-factly. His long-fingered hands rested on his thighs, quietly, almost relaxed. But his green eyes had gone the colour of copper ore, and his anger lived in them. ‘Ever since you came back from the Mountain Kingdom, it’s been as if you were spoiling for a fight. With anyone. When you were a boy and you were sullen or sulky, I could put it down to your being a boy, with a boy’s judgment and frustrations. But you came back with an … anger. Like a challenge to the world at large, to kill you if it could. It wasn’t just that you threw yourself in Regal’s path: whatever was most dangerous to you, you plunged yourself into. Burrich wasn’t the only one to see it. Look back over the last year: every time I turned about, here was Fitz, railing at the world, in the middle of a fistfight, in the midst of a battle, wrapped up in bandaging, drunk as a fisherman, or limp as a string and mewling for elfbark. When were you calm and thoughtful, when were you merry with your friends, when were you ever simply at peace? If you weren’t challenging your enemies, you were driving away your friends. What happened between you and the Fool? Where is Molly now? You’ve just sent Burrich packing. Who’s next?’

      ‘You, I suppose.’ The words came out of me any way, inevitably. I did not want to speak them but I could not hold them back. It was time.

      ‘You’ve moved a fair way toward that already, with the way you spoke to Burrich.’

      ‘I know that,’ I said bluntly. I met his eyes. ‘For a long time now, nothing I’ve done has pleased you. Or Burrich. Or anyone. I can’t seem to make a good decision lately.’

      ‘I’d concur with that,’ Chade agreed relentlessly.

      And it was back, the ember of my anger billowing into flame. ‘Perhaps because I’ve never been given the chance to make my own decisions. Perhaps because I’ve been everyone’s “boy” too long. Burrich’s stable-boy, your apprentice assassin, Verity’s pet, Patience’s page. When did I get to be mine, for me?’ I asked the question fiercely.

      ‘When did you not?’ Chade demanded just as heatedly. ‘That’s all you’ve done since you came back from the Mountains. You went to Verity to say you’d had enough of being an assassin just when quiet work was needed. Patience tried to warn you clear of Molly, but you had your way there as well. It made her a target. You pulled Patience into plots that exposed her to danger. You bonded to the wolf, despite all Burrich said to you. You questioned my every decision about King Shrewd’s health. And your next to last stupid act at Buckkeep was to volunteer to be part of an uprising against the crown. You brought us as close to a civil war as we’ve been in a hundred years.’

      ‘And my last stupid act?’ I asked with bitter curiosity.

      ‘Killing Justin and Serene.’ He spoke a flat accusation.

      ‘They’d just drained my king, Chade,’ I pointed out icily. ‘Killed him in my arms as it were. What was I to do?’

      He stood up and somehow managed to tower over me as he had used to. ‘With all your years of training from me, all my schooling in quiet work, you went racing about in the keep with a drawn knife, cutting the throat of one, and stabbing the other to death in the Great Hall before all the assembled nobles … My fine apprentice assassin! That was the only way you could think of to accomplish it?’

      ‘I

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