Assassin's Fate

Never do what you can’t undo until you’ve considered well what you can’t do once you’ve done it.

This is our last hunt, old wolf. And as we have always done, we go to it together.

To Fitz and the Fool. My best friends for over twenty years.

There's something stalking us. Off to the side of the road, moving through the forest.' Kettricken smiled.

His cracked lips moved. Beloved. He couldn't say the word, but I knew it. And so did his Fool.

Vengeance took no account of innocence or right. It was the chain that bound horrific events together, that decreed that one awful act must beget another worse one that would lead to yet a third. It came to me, slowly, that this chain would never end.

We were one thing. A whole thing. You and I and Nighteyes. I felt a strange sort of peace. As if all the parts of me were finally in one place. All the missing bits that would make me a complete... thing.' I shook my head. 'Words don't read that far.

The problem is not that we forget the past. It is that we recall it too well. Children recall wrongs that enemies did to their grandfathers, and blame the granddaughters of the old enemies. Children are not born with memories of those who insulted their mother or slew their grandfather or stole their land. Those hates are bequeathed to them, taught them, breathed into them. If adults didn't tell their children of their hereditary hates, perhaps we would do better.

As if he hadn't always known he was loved the best. That he was the Beloved.

I lied!' I spat my whisper at him. 'I knew you read my journal. I knew you read my dreams. I wrote there what I thought would hurt you most! I lied to hurt you. For letting him be dead while you lived. For being loved by him more than he loved me!' I took a breath. 'He loved you more than he ever loved any of the rest of us!

Did you feel that?' I asked him. He smiled sadly. 'Fitz, I have never needed to touch you to feel that. It was always there. No limits.

And so the Wolf of the West rose from the stone! And so he will rise again if ever the folk of the Six Duchies call to him in need.

I felt a familiar squeezing in what I thought must be my heart. I had heard of being "heartbroken" or "heavy-hearted" but I had never known it was an actual sensation one felt when the whole world abandons you

He gave a final shake of his coat. 'I go to the hunt!

Well. Who wouldn't break? I broke. You broke.' 'And we both emerged stronger.' 'We both emerged', I modified his words.

It is worse than useless to do things halfway Bee, for then you think the work is done, but someone must come behind you later to do it all over again. Even if you must work much harder and get less done, it is better to do the whole task the first time.

-Just tell me. Do I break the future? -Oh, child. We all do. That is both the danger and the hope of life. That each of us changes the world, every day.

You can wait a very long time for them to give you your freedom. Taking it might be faster.

Leave that. Leave all that and join us here. There is no loneliness, no separation at all. No aching bones, no worn-out bodies. It's not what they told us, Fitz! All those warnings and dire predictions . . . faugh! The world will go on without us just as well as it did with us. Just let go. I'm holding you tight. Keeping you part of me. It's like learning to swim. You can't find out how until you're all the way into the water. Stop clinging to the bank, boy. You only tear apart when you try to hold onto the shore.

I wish they would all go away. Except the Fool. I wished he would join me. Somehow, I had always thought he would join me. Now, I could not recall why. Perhaps I had buried that in the stone.

There is a peculiar strength that comes to one who is facing the final battle. That battle is not limited to war, nor the strength to warriors. I've seen this strength in old women with the coughing sickness and heard of it in families that are starving together. It drives one to go on, past hope or despair, past blood loss and gut wounds, past death itself in a final surge to save something that is cherished. It is courage without hope. During the Red-Ship Wars, I saw a man with blood gouting in spurts from where his left arm had once been yet swinging a sword with his right as he stood protecting a fallen comrade. During one encounter with Forged Ones, I saw a mother stumbling over her own entrails as she shrieked and clutched at a Forged man, trying to hold him away from her daughter. The OutIslanders have a word for that courage. "Finblead", they call it, the last blood, and they believe that a special fortitude resides in the final blood that remains in a man or a woman before they fall. According to their tales, only then can one find and use that sort of courage. It is a terrible bravery and at its strongest and worst, it goes on for months when one battles a final illness. Or, I believe, when one moves toward a duty that will result in death but is completely unavoidable. That "finblead" lights everything in one's life with a terrible radiance. All relationships are illuminated for what they are and for what they truly were in the past. All illusions melt away. The false is revealed as starkly as the true.

Bee. Nothing happens to you. You happen to everything.

It's not the sort of thing one asks of a friend. He hasn't offered, and I will not ask it. I will not tear him that way. I am trying to let go. I don't know how.

Those were some astounding lies, cub. And the very last one the most inspired of all. You have your father's talent for it.

If he ever wanted vengeance on me for all I did, he has it now. This is the worst thing he could do to me. Now I know how it feels to be left behind. As I left him.

He spoke solemnly. “This is our last hunt, old wolf. And as we always have, we go to it together.

Die in your dreams, wake up insane.

How much do you understand?’ I demanded of her one afternoon. She cocked her head at me, met my gaze and demanded, ‘How much do YOU understand?

His face was so ravaged, it was like looking at death itself. Except for the smooth, silvered part of it. By creeping degrees, his human hand lifted. He turned it over, showing a bloody palm. His cracked lips moved. Beloved. He could not say the word, but I knew it. So did his Fool.