I swallowed. “Oh. Thank you.” I could not even find the courage to ask what she had made me. Sweat was leaking down my spine despite the coolness of the dim room. She had not intended to threaten me, but her words reminded me how vulnerable I was to her. My assassin’s training went deep, I discovered. Kill her, suggested that part of me. She knows your secret and that makes her a threat. Kill her.
I folded my hands on the table before me.
“You must think me strange,” she murmured as she rose and went to a cupboard. “To be interfering in your life so when we have only met once or twice.” I could tell she was embarrassed, yet determined to give me the gift she had made.
“I think you are kind,” I said awkwardly.
Her rising had displaced Fennel. He sat on the floor, wrapped his tail around his feet and glared up at me. There goes the lap! All your fault.
She had taken a box from the cupboard. She brought it back to the table and opened it. Inside was an arrangement of beads and rods on leather thongs. She lifted it and gave it a shake and it became a necklace. I stared at it, but felt nothing. “What does it do?” I asked.
She laughed lightly. “Very little, I am afraid. I cannot make you seem un-Witted, nor can I make you invulnerable to attack. I cannot even give you something that will help you master your temper. I tried to make something that would warn you of ill feelings toward you, but it became so bulky and large, it was more like a war harness than a charm. You will forgive my saying that my first impression of you was that you were a rather forbidding fellow. It took me a while to warm to you, and if Hap had not spoken so well of you, I would not have given you a moment of my time. I would have thought you a dangerous man. So did many appraise you as they passed us in the market that day. And so, bluntly, did you later show yourself to be. A dangerous man, but not a wicked one, if you will excuse my judging you. Yet the set of your face, by habit, shows folk that darker aspect of yourself. And now, with a blade at your hip and your hair in a warrior’s tail, well, it does not give you a friendly demeanor. And it is easiest to hate a man whom you first fear. So. This is a variation on a very old love charm. I have made it, not to attract lovers, but to make people well disposed toward you, if it works as I hope it will. When you try to create a variation on a standard theme, it often lacks strength. Sit still, now.”
She walked behind my chair with the dangling necklace. I watched her lower it past my face, and without being told, I bowed my head so she could fasten it at the nape of my neck. The charm made me feel no different, but her cool fingers against my skin sent a prickling chill over me. Her voice came from behind me. “I flatter myself that I got this fit right. It must not be too loose or it will dangle, nor so tight it chokes. Let me see it on you now. Turn around.”
I did as I was bid, twisting in my chair. She looked at the necklace, looked at my face, and then grinned broadly. “Oh, yes, that will do. Though you are taller than I recalled. I should have used a narrower bead for that… Well, it will do. I had thought it might take some adjusting, but I fear if I tinker with it, I will take it back to its origin. Now, wear it with your collar pulled up, like so, so just a slice of it shows. There. If you are in a situation where you feel it might be useful, find an excuse to loosen your collar. Let it be seen, and folk will find you a more persuasive talker. Like so. Even your silences will seem charming.”
She looked down into my face as she tugged my collar more open about the charm. I looked up at her and felt a sudden blush heat my face. Our eyes locked.
“It works very well, indeed,” she observed, and unabashedly lowered her face to offer me her mouth. Not to kiss her was unthinkable. She pressed her mouth to mine. Her lips were warm.
We sprang apart guiltily as the door handle rattled. The door scraped open, and a woman’s silhouette was outlined against the day’s brightness. Then she came inside, pushing the door shut behind her. “Whew. It’s cooler in here, thank Eda. Oh. Beg pardon. Were you doing a reading?”
She had the same scattering of freckles on her nose and forearms. Clearly, this was Jinna’s niece. She looked about twenty or so, and carried a basketful of fresh fish on her arm.
Fennel ran to greet her, wrapping around her ankles. You love me best. You know you do. Pick me up.
“Not a reading. Testing a charm. It seems to work.” Jinna’s voice invited me to share her amusement. Her niece glanced from Jinna to me, knowing she had been excluded from some joke, but taking it genially. She picked up Fennel and he rubbed his face against her, marking his possession.
“And I should be going. I’m afraid I have several other errands to do before I am required back at the keep.” I wasn’t sure that I wanted to leave. But how interested I was in staying did not fit in at all with what I was supposed to be doing in Buckkeep. Most of all, I felt I needed a bit of time alone to decide what had just happened, and what it meant tome.
“Must you go so right away?” Jinna’s niece asked me. She seemed genuinely disappointed at seeing me rise from my chair. “There’s plenty of fish, if you’d care to stay and eat with us.”
Her impromptu invitation took me aback, as did the interest in her eyes.
My fish. I’ll eat it soon. Fennel leaned down to look at the food fondly.
“The charm seems to work very well, indeed,” Jinna observed in an aside. I found myself tugging my collar near closed.
“I really must go, I’m afraid. I’ve work to do, and I’m expected back at the keep. But thank you for the invitation.”
“Perhaps another time, then,” the niece offered, and Jinna added, “Certainly another time, my dear. Before he leaves, let me introduce Tom Badgerlock. He has asked me to keep watch for his son, a young friend of mine named Hap. When Hap arrives, he may stay with us for a day or so. And Tom will certainly have supper with us then. Tom Badgerlock, my niece, Miskya.”
“Miskya, a pleasure,” I assured her. I lingered long enough to exchange parting pleasantries, and then hurried out into the sunlight and noise of the city. As I hastened back to Buckkeep, I watched the reactions of folk whom I met. It did seem that more smiled at me than usually did, but I realized that might simply be their reaction to my meeting their eyes. I usually looked aside from strangers on the street. A man unnoticed is a man unremembered, and that is the best that an assassin can hope for. Then I reminded myself that I was no longer an Assassin. Nonetheless, I decided that I would remove the necklace as soon as I got home. I found that having strangers regard me benevolently for no reason was more unnerving than having them distrust me on sight.
I made my steep way up to the keep gate and was admitted by the guardsmen there. The sun was high, the sky blue and clear, and if any of the passing folk were aware that the sole heir to the Farseer crown had vanished, they showed no sign of it. They moved about their ordinary tasks with no more than the concerns of a working day to vex them. By the stable, several tall boys had converged on a plump young man. I knew him for a dullard by his flat face and small ears and the way his tongue peeped out of his mouth. Slow fear showed in his small eyes as the boys spread to encircle him. One of the older stablehands looked toward them irritably.
No, no, no.
I turned, seeking the source of the floating thought, but of course that availed me nothing. A faint snatch of music distracted me. A stableboy, sent hurrying about his tasks, jolted into me, then, at my startled look, begged my pardon most abjectly. Without thinking, I had allowed my hand to ride my sword hilt. “No harm done,” I assured him, and added, “Tell me, where would I find the Weaponsmaster?”