He looked at me again, almost as if seeing me for the first time. "If you are wondering, Lanen, then yes, I hated it. And myself," he said, and dark bitterness dragged at his voice. "But even in such a profession there can be pride. I never caused pain once I learned how to avoid it; I never killed women or children; and I did not take just any work once I could pick and choose. Some I refused if I knew the victim, or if I felt in that small core of soul I had left that the death was undeserved. I was not always right, and I could not al ways choose—but when I could, I tried to keep some part of myself intact." He closed his eyes briefly and went on. "I lost the friends I had made in the company. Eight years of living and working together, and overnight they saw me as a creature they could not bear to speak to—one who killed in secret."
"I lived at the whim of those who paid me for many years, now on my own, now with others of like profession, and as time went on I grew harder of heart and smaller of soul, until I could barely stand to face a glass long enough to shave. I gave up the work—just for a while, I thought—and lived on my earnings for as long as I could, travelling where I would, working my way slowly back to the only place I thought of as home."
"When I finally got to my village, the first person I saw was Will Tanner, who used to sell hides to my father. He was old and half-blind, and I walked towards him about to speak. Then I realised what it was I had to say, and I knew I could not bear to corrupt this place with my presence. I left before sunset and never went back."
"I found I had nowhere particular to go, and even if my village was closed to me the countryside was mine to explore. So I wandered as the whim took me, learning more about the Kingdom of the North than I had ever known when I lived there. It took longer than I thought to go through my money, but when I was just turned thirty, not long past Midsummer's Day, I found myself without a copper to my name in a small town called Beskin, in the Trollingwood west of Eynhallow. Jamie's face relaxed, and the ghost of a smile crossed his face. "There was a man there, a blacksmith named Heithrek, with a good wife and many children. The eldest was a daughter he loved more than life. She had the height of the women of the north like her mother, though her hair was more golden than most. She was very like you, indeed, save for her arms." Even as he spoke his voice grew softer and his smile more his own. "She was truly her father's daughter! He had taught her the art of the forge and it showed. She was easily the match of any man in that village for strength and skill, so she would have none of them. She was leaving her home to seethe wide world. Ever she longed to see what lay beyond the horizon."
He glanced at me as if to ask had I heard the like before. "Her father hired me for a year, as a guard, to look after his daughter Maran Vena. It was a welcome change."
Maran Vena. That was my mother's name. My mother, who left me to shift for myself as best I could at Hadron's cold hearth. Jamie had been bodyguard to my mother.
"Old Heithrek was lucky to find me. I'm from those mountains myself, as I said. A man from anywhere else would have been horrified. In the North Kingdom the women are equal with men, sometimes rulers in their own right, but in the other three Kingdoms most men think of women as things to be protected, not people with their own ways. The idea of a woman setting out thus on her own would be scandalous."
"The mother was resigned, and it seemed to me almost glad to get this wild girl off her hands. But the blacksmith knew his daughter, and she knew her own mind. He never even thought to fear for her safety from me. I was no fool, I knew well enough those arms could fend me off even without the steel she bore. But she must sleep sometime, and there are rogues enough in the world."
"So, as I was down to my last few coppers, I swore fealty for as long as I had been paid, and we were ready to leave."
"I tell you, Lanen, I hope never to see another such farewell in this world. Both she and her fire-blackened father wept bitter tears as they embraced. As it happens it was a meet parting, but at the time I thought them the world's own babes. He was dead within the year, it was their last sight of each other. Somehow they both knew."
"We left at sunrise, headed east. She wanted to go explore the mountains, fool girl," he said, with a quiet smile, "so we set off while the good weather lasted. We tramped from foothill to high peak until autumn caught up with us." Jamie grinned. It was amazing to watch him, to see the pain that had so filled him leave as it had come. "I never did find out why she wanted to go up there. I suspect she thought if she got high enough she could see all of Kolmar spread out below her."
I kept silence, for I had had the same thought. More than once.
"We must have wandered over most of Kolmar in those three years. We joined a party going south to Elimar and travelled over the plains for a month, just so she could see the silkweavers at their task. We went north and walked the Trollingwood end to end—now there is a tale and a half for a winter's eve—then down to Sorun for Midwinter Fest, then over to Corli and up along the coast, then back across the width of the Four Kingdoms to the East Mountains."
"And through all our adventures, and they were a good many, she softened my hardened assassin's heart and broadened my shriveled soul. I came to love her, Lanen, as I have loved none but you since." He glanced shrewdly at me. "And you are well old enough now to know she loved me as well. She would not marry me, though I asked her many times, but we shared a bed for more than two years, and I have never known such joy before or since."
A wild hope rose in my heart, piercing and unexpected. Perhaps Hadron never loved me because I was not his daughter. Perhaps Jamie, all this time it was Jamie—
It was as if he read my thoughts. "And it's sorry I am, lass, but she was wise and never quickened from all our loving in those days. Ii was best for her, I suppose, but I have regretted it all my life."
My newfound longing died a swift death.
"Yet after three years, I knew her not half so well as I thought. We left the mountains to travel west again for the Great Fair at Illara in the autumn, and I swear we had no sooner arrived than she fell into Marik's arms."
I stared at him. "Marik? Who's Marik?"
"Marik of Gundar," said Jamie, his voice deepening with anger. "Son to Lord Gundar, a very minor noble in the East Mountain Kingdom. Marik's own father had thrown him out of the family, and Marik was just beginning to make his way as a merchant. I know only a little of what has become of him since, but I can't tell you for nothing that he was as nasty a son of the Hells as ever escaped the sword."
"What happened?" I asked. I was like a child at the foot of a bard, spellbound, listening to the tale of my mother's life unfold like a ballad. I had forgot Jamie's killing of the ruffian for the moment, forgotten all but the weaving of my mother's past.
Jamie sighed. "It's not a tale I relish telling." He poured himself the last of the ale—a small matter indeed—and glanced mournfully into the depths of the jug.
Despite myself I laughed. "You old liar! This is your way of getting another round out of me."
He smiled. "True enough, it wouldn't go amiss. But I'll have to get a few rounds out of me to make room first." I couldn't help myself, I grinned as I called for the ale. I stood and stretched, checked my still-damp clothes before the fire and turned them over, and visited the necessary myself. When I returned Jamie was seated at the table again, and as I sat down he leaned forward on his elbows, gazing into my eyes, searching for I know not what. He must have found it, though, for without further words he poured a fresh tankard for us bothand took up his tale.