Three: The Quest

At dawn, Burrich quietly leaves the hut, ending years of guardianship. Fitz, shamed by their bitter parting, embraces the freedom to forsake others’ expectations and fixates on vengeance: he will kill Regal openly, coterie and all, believing himself already dead in all that mattered.

Through the Wit, Fitz and Nighteyes debate the hunt; Nighteyes equates Regal with a dangerous porcupine but accepts Fitz’s need. Fitz prepares for an overland journey by stockpiling food, crafting boots, assembling a scribe’s kit, and collecting herbs and poisons, anticipating Regal’s Skilled protectors and elfbark’s costs.

Simple days pass; hunting and idleness blur time until a dream of his torture jolts Fitz awake. He realizes weeks have slipped by as he slid toward wolf-life—filthy, unmoored, and feral. He forces himself back to human habits: washing, mending, shaving, and deciding to travel upriver. He finds a bundle Burrich secretly left—clothes, salve, coin, and a belt bearing a buck fending off a wolf—both aid and admonition.

Alone by the fire, Fitz questions whether killing Regal is right and considers seeking Verity. He decides to try the Skill despite trauma-hardened walls. With Nighteyes’s brusque prodding, he lowers his defenses, casts into the Skill-current, and calls Verity.

Fitz finds Verity faint in the Mountains and steadies him by lending strength, recalling how Shrewd once drew on him. Verity warns of spies and urges caution; Fitz vows to come to him after dealing with Regal. Exhausted but resolved, Fitz reflects on recent ruin—Shrewd’s death, Kettricken’s flight, his own burial—and resists Skilling to Molly, ending the night in aching solitude as a wolf’s howl echoes his despair.