Free Assassin's Quest by Hobb Robin Page B

magic to bring against you.”
    “He’d have found some excuse to kill me. Or just opportunity. He doesn’t really need an excuse to do what he wants.”
    “Perhaps. Perhaps not.”
    We sat watching the fire die. I reached up to my ear, fumbled with the catch on the earring. “I want to give this back to you.”
    “I would prefer that you kept it. Wore it.” It was almost a request. It felt odd.
    “I don’t deserve whatever it is that this earring symbolizes to you. I haven’t earned it, I have no right to it.”
    “What it symbolizes to me is not something that is earned. It’s something I gave to you, deserved or not. Whether or not you wear that, you still take it with you.”
    I left the earring dangling from my ear. A tiny silver net with a blue gem trapped inside it. Once Burrich had given it to my father. Patience, all unknowing of its significance, had passed it on to me. I did not know if he wanted me to wear it for the same reason he had given it to my father. I sensed there was more about it, but he had not told me and I would not ask. Still, I waited, expecting a question from him. But he only rose and went back to his blankets. I heard him lie down.
    I wished he had asked me the question. It hurt that he hadn’t. I answered it anyway. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said into the darkened room. “All my life, I’ve always had tasks to do, masters to answer to. Now that I don’t . . . it’s a strange feeling.”
    I thought for a time that he wasn’t going to reply at all. Then he said abruptly, “I’ve known that feeling.”
    I looked up at the darkened ceiling. “I’ve thought of Molly. Often. Do you know where she went?”
    “Yes.”
    When he said no more than that, I knew better than to ask. “I know the wisest course is to let her go. She believes me dead. I hope that whoever she went to takes better care of her than I did. I hope he loves her as she deserves.”
    There was a rustling of Burrich’s blankets. “What do you mean?” he asked guardedly.
    It was harder to say than I had thought it would be. “She told me when she left me that day that there was someone else. Someone that she cared for as I cared for my king, someone she put ahead of everything and everyone else in her life.” My throat closed up suddenly. I took a breath, willing the knot in my throat away. “Patience was right,” I said.
    “Yes, she was,” Burrich agreed.
    “I can blame it on no one save myself. Once I knew Molly was safe, I should have let her go her own way. She deserves a man who can give her all his time, all his devotion. . . .”
    “Yes, she does,” Burrich agreed relentlessly. “A shame you didn’t realize that before you had been with her.”
    It is quite one thing to admit a fault to yourself. It is another thing entirely to have a friend not only agree with you, but point out the full depth of the fault. I didn’t deny it, or demand how he knew of it. If Molly had told him, I didn’t want to know what else she had said. If he had deduced it on his own, I didn’t want to know I had been that obvious. I felt a surge of something, a fierceness that made me want to snarl at him. I bit down on my tongue and forced myself to consider what I felt. Guilt and shame that it had ended in pain for her, and made her doubt her worth. And a certainty that no matter how wrong it had been, it had also been right. When I was sure of my voice, I said quietly, “I will never regret loving her. Only that I could not make her my wife in all eyes as she was in my heart.”
    He said nothing to that. But after a time, that separating silence became deafening. I could not sleep for it. Finally I spoke. “So. Tomorrow we go our own ways, I suppose.”
    “I suppose so,” Burrich said. After a time, he added, “Good luck.” He actually sounded as if he meant it. As if he realized how much luck I would need.
    I closed my eyes. I was so tired now. So tired. Tired of hurting people I