Nine: Assassin

Fitz scouts Tradeford’s gardens and walls during the Scarlet Ball and enters disguised as a tailor’s apprentice. He hides, prepares poisons, and steels his mind against the coterie. Confronted by guard Verde—one of his former tormentors—Fitz silently kills him and hides the body, then continues deeper into the manor.

Moving through opulent rooms, Fitz breaks into Regal’s wardrobe chamber and discovers another of Regal’s guards who witnessed his prior torture. He guts and kills the man, then methodically booby-traps Regal’s grooming items, gloves, shirts, scents, and hearth with varied toxins, intending delayed revenge if he cannot strike Regal directly.

Will senses the killing through the guard’s mind and weaves illusions, disorienting Fitz with false corridors and rooms until Burl and Carrod corner him with armed guards. As Will gloats, Fitz slices his own arm with a lightly poisoned blade to deny them capture, but the dose is too small to fell him quickly.

At Fitz’s despair, Verity thunders through the Skill, blasting the coterie. Will collapses and Burl and Carrod reel; guards falter. Compelled by Verity’s command to come, Fitz smashes through a window—discovering Will had kept him on the ground floor all along—and flees into the night.

Fitz seizes Regal’s horse, Arrow. Stableman Hands recognizes him, panics, and calls guards, forcing a hard ride through Tradeford. Passing the gruesome King’s Circle and caged, maddened beasts, Fitz escapes the city. At dawn he realizes he isn’t dying from the cut, sends Arrow back to mislead pursuit, and sets out on foot, driven by Verity’s summons.