I sank to my knees, then could not keep from toppling. I fetched up against my dead king’s lap. His cooling hand fell from the chair arm to rest atop my head.
“A stupid time for tears,” I said aloud to the empty room. But that did not stop them. Blackness swirled at the edge of my vision. The ghostly Skill fingers plucked at my walls, scraping at the mortar, trying every stone. I pushed at them, but they came right back. The way Chade had looked at me, I suddenly doubted that he would be back. Still. I took a breath.
Nighteyes. Guide them to the fox’s den. I showed him the shed they would emerge from and where they must go. It was all I could manage.
My brother?
Guide them, my heart! I pushed him feebly away, and felt him go. Still the foolish tears tracked down my face. I reached to steady myself. My hand fell at the King’s waist. I opened my eyes, forced my vision to clear. His knife. Not some jeweled dagger, but the simple knife that every man carries at his waist, for the simple day-to-day tasks he does. I took a breath, then pulled it from its sheath. I held it in my lap and looked at it. An honest blade, honed thin from years of use. A handle of antler, probably carved once, but worn smooth with the grip of his hand. I ran my fingers lightly over it, and they found what my eyes could no longer read. Hod’s sign. The weaponsmaster had made this for her king. And he had used it well.
A memory tickled at the back of my mind. “We are tools,” Chade had told me. I was the tool he had forged for the King. The King had looked at me, and wondered, What have I made of you? I did not need to wonder. I was the King’s assassin. In more ways than one. But I would see that I served him as I had been intended, one last time.