Hobb, Robin - Assassin 1 - Assassin' s Apprentice

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Assassin's Apprentice
CHAPTER ONE
The Earliest History
HISTORY OF THE Six Duchies is of necessity a history is of its ruling family,
the Farseers. A complete telling would reach back beyond the founding of the
First Duchy and, if such names were remembered, would tell us of Outislanders
raiding from the sea, visiting as pirates a shore more temperate and gentler
than the icy beaches of the Out Islands. But we do not know the names of these
earliest forebears.
And of the first real King, little more than his name and some extravagant
legends remain. Taker his name was, quite simply, and perhaps with that naming
began the tradition that daughters and sons of his lineage would be given names
that would shape their lives and beings. Folk beliefs claim that such names were
sealed to the newborn babes by magic, and that these royal offspring were
incapable of betraying the virtues whose names they bore. Passed through fire
and plunged through salt water and offered to the winds of the air; thus were
names sealed to these chosen children. So we are told. A pretty fancy, and
perhaps once there was such a ritual, but history shows us this was not always
sufficient to bind a child to the virtue that named it ...
My pen falters, then falls from my knuckly grip, leaving a worm's trail of
ink across Fedwren's paper. I have spoiled another leaf of the fine stuff, in
what I suspect is a futile endeavor. I wonder if I can write this history, or if
on every page there will be some sneaking show of a bitterness I thought long
dead. I think myself cured of all spite, but when I touch pen to paper, the hurt
of a boy bleeds out with the sea-spawned ink, until I suspect each carefully
formed black letter scabs over some ancient scarlet wound.
Both Fedwren and Patience were so filled with enthusiasm whenever a written
account of the history of the Six Duchies was discussed that I persuaded myself
the writing of it was a worthwhile effort. I convinced myself that the exercise
would turn my thoughts aside from my pain and help the time to pass. But each
historical event I consider only awakens my own personal shades of loneliness
and loss. I fear I will have to set this work aside entirely, or else give in to
reconsidering all that has shaped what I have become. And so I begin again, and
again, but always find that I am writing of my own beginnings rather than the
beginnings of this land. I do not even know to whom I try to explain myself. My
life has been a web of secrets, secrets that even now are unsafe to share. Shall
I set them all down on fine paper, only to create from them flame and ash?
Perhaps.
My memories reach back to when I was six years old. Before that, there is
nothing, only a blank gulf no exercise of my mind has ever been able to pierce.
Prior to that day at Moonseye, there is nothing. But on that day they suddenly
begin, with a brightness and detail that overwhelms me. Sometimes it seems too
complete, and I wonder if it is truly mine. Am I recalling it from my own mind,
or from dozens of retellings by legions of kitchen maids and ranks of scullions
and herds of stable boys as they explained my presence to each other? Perhaps I
have heard the story so many times, from so many sources, that I now recall it
as an actual memory of my own. Is the detail the result of a six-year-old's open
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absorption of all that goes on around him? Or could the completeness of the
memory be the bright overlay of the Skill, and the later drugs a man takes to
control his addiction to it, the drugs that bring on pains and cravings of their
own? The last is most possible. Perhaps it is even probable. One hopes it is not
the case.
The remembrance is almost physical: the chill grayness of the fading day, the
remorseless rain that soaked me, the icy cobbles of the strange town's streets,
even the callused roughness of the huge hand that gripped my small one.
Sometimes I wonder about that grip. The hand was hard and rough, trapping mine
within it. And yet it was warm, and not unkind as it held mine. Only firm. It
did not let me slip on the icy streets, but it did not let me escape my fate,
either. It was as implacable as the icy gray rain that glazed the trampled snow
and ice of the graveled pathway outside the huge wooden doors of the fortified
building that stood like a fortress within the town itself.
The doors were tall, not just to a six-year-old boy, but tall enough to admit
giants, to dwarf even the rangy old man who towered over me. And they looked
strange to me, although I cannot summon up what type of door or dwelling would
have looked familiar. Only that these, carved and bound with black iron hinges,
decorated with a buck's head and knocker of gleaming brass, were outside of my
experience. I recall that slush had soaked through my clothes, so my feet and
legs were wet and cold. And yet, again, I cannot recall that I had walked far
through winter's last curses, nor that I had been carried. No, it all starts
there, right outside the doors of the stronghouse, with my small hand trapped
inside the tall man's.
Almost, it is like a puppet show beginning. Yes, I can see it thus. The
curtains parted, and there we stood before that great door. The old man lifted
the brass knocker and banged it down, once, twice, thrice on the plate that
resounded to his pounding. And then, from offstage, a voice sounded. Not from
within the doors, but from behind us, back the way we had come. "Father,
please," the woman's voice begged. I turned to look at her, but it had begun to
snow again, a lacy veil that clung to eyelashes and coat sleeves. I can't recall
that I saw anyone. Certainly, I did not struggle to break free of the old man's
grip on my hand, nor did I call out, "Mother, Mother." Instead I stood, a
spectator, and heard the sound of boots within the keep, and the unfastening of
the door hasp within.
One last time she called. I can still hear the words perfectly, the
desperation in a voice that now would sound young to my ears. "Father, please, I
beg you!" A tremor shook the hand that gripped mine, but whether of anger or
some other emotion, I shall never know. As swift as a black crow seizes a bit of
dropped bread, the old man stooped and snatched up a frozen chunk of dirty ice.
Wordlessly he flung it, with great force and fury, and I cowered where I stood.
I do not recall a cry, nor the sound of struck flesh. What I do remember is how
the doors swung outward, so that the old man had to step hastily back, dragging
me with him.
And there is this. The man who opened the door was no house servant, as I
might imagine if I had only heard this story. No, memory shows me a man-at-arms,
a warrior, gone a bit to gray and with a belly more of hard suet than muscle,
but not some mannered house servant. He looked both the old man and me up and
down with a soldier's practiced suspicion, and then stood there silently,
waiting for us to state our business.
I think it rattled the old man a bit, and stimulated him, not to fear, but to
anger. For he suddenly dropped my hand and instead gripped me by the back of my
coat and swung me forward, like a whelp offered to a prospective new owner.
"I've brought the boy to you," he said in a rusty voice.
And when the house guard continued to stare at him, without judgment or even
curiosity, he elaborated. "I've fed him at my table for six years, and never a
word from his father, never a coin, never a visit, though my daughter gives me
to understand he knows he fathered a bastard on her. I'll not feed him any
longer, nor break my back at a plow to keep clothes on his back. Let him be fed
by him what got him. I've enough to tend to of my own, what with my woman
getting on in years, and this one's mother to keep and feed. For not a man
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will-have her now, not a man, not with this pup running at her heels. So you
take him, and give him to his father." And he let go of me so suddenly that I
sprawled to the stone doorstep at the guard's feet. I scrabbled to a sitting
position, not much hurt that I recall, and looked up to see what would happen
next between the two men.
The guard looked down at me, lips pursed slightly, not in judgment but merely
considering how to classify me. "Whose get?" he asked, and his tone was not one
of curiosity, but only that of a man who asks for more specific information on a
situation, in order to report well to a superior.
"Chivalry's," the old man said, and he was already turning his back on me,
taking his measured steps down the graveled pathway. "Prince Chivalry," he said,
not turning back as he added the qualifier. "Him what's King-in-Waiting. That's
who got him. So let him do for him, and be glad he managed to father one child,
somewhere."
For a moment the guard watched the old man walking away. Then he wordlessly
stooped to seize me by the collar and drag me out of the way so he could close
the door. He let go of me for the brief time it took him to secure the door.
That done, he stood looking down on me. No real surprise, only a soldier's stoic
acceptance of the odder bits of his duty. "Up, boy, and walk," he said.
So I followed him, down a dim corridor, past rooms spartanly furnished, with
windows still shuttered against winter's chill, and finally to another set of
closed doors, these of rich, mellow wood embellished with carvings. There he
paused and straightened his own garments briefly. I remember quite clearly how
he went down on one knee to tug my shirt straight and smooth my hair with a
rough pat or two, but whether this was from some kindhearted impulse that I make
a good impression, or merely a concern that his package look well tended, I will
never know. He stood again and knocked once at the double doors. Having knocked,
he did not wait for a reply, or at least I never heard one. He pushed the doors
open, herded me in before him, and shut the doors behind him.
This room was as warm as the corridor had been chill, and alive as the other
chambers had been deserted. I recall a quantity of furniture in it, rugs and
hangings, and shelves of tablets and scrolls overlaid with the scattering of
clutter that any well-used and comfortable chamber takes on. There was a fire
burning in a massive fireplace, filling the room with heat and a pleasantly
resinous scent. An immense table was placed at an angle to the fire, and behind
it sat a stocky man, his brows knit as he bent over a sheaf of papers in front
of him. He did not look up immediately, and so I was able to study his rather
bushy disarray of dark hair for some moments.
When he did look up, he seemed to take in both myself and the guard in one
quick glance of his black eyes. "Well, Jason?" he asked, and even at that age I
could sense his resignation to a messy interruption. "What's this?"
The guard gave me a gentle nudge on the shoulder that propelled me a foot or
so closer to the man. "An old plowman left him, Prince Verity, sir. Says it's
Prince Chivalry's bastid, sir."
For a few moments the harried man behind the desk continued to regard me with
some confusion. Then something very like an amused smile lightened his features
and he rose and came around the desk to stand with his fists on his hips,
looking down on me. I did not feel threatened by his scrutiny; rather it was as
if something about my appearance pleased him inordinately. I looked up at him
curiously. He wore a short dark beard, as bushy and disorderly as his hair, and
his cheeks were weathered above it. Heavy brows were raised above his dark eyes.
He had a barrel of a chest, and shoulders that strained the fabric of his shirt.
His fists were square and work-scarred, yet ink stained the fingers of his right
hand. As he stared at me his grin gradually widened, until finally he gave a
snort of laughter.
"Be damned," he finally said. "Boy does have Chiv's look to him, doesn't he?
Fruitful Eda. Who'd have believed it of my illustrious and virtuous brother?"
The guard made no response at all, nor was one expected from him. He
continued to stand alertly, awaiting the next command. A soldier's soldier.
The other man continued to regard me curiously. "How old?" he asked the
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guard.
"Plowman says six." The guard raised a hand to scratch at his cheek, then
suddenly seemed to recall he was reporting. He dropped his hand. "Sir," he
added.
The other didn't seem to notice the guard's lapse in discipline. The dark
eyes roved over me, and the amusement in his smile grew broader. "So make it
seven years or so, to allow for her belly to swell. Damn. Yes. That was the
first year the Chyurda tried to close the pass. Chivalry was up this way for
three, four months, chivying them into opening it to us. Looks like it wasn't
the only thing he chivied open. Damn. Who'd have thought it of him?" He paused,
then: "Who's the mother?" he demanded suddenly.
The guardsman shifted uncomfortably. "Don't know, sir. There was only the old
plowman on the doorstep, and all him said was that this was Prince Chivalry's
bastid, and he wasn't going to feed him ner put clothes on his back no more.
Said him what got him could care for him now."
The man shrugged as if the matter were of no great importance. "The boy looks
well tended. I give it a week, a fortnight at most, before she's whimpering at
the kitchen door because she misses her pup. I'll find out then if not before.
Here, boy, what do they call you?"
His jerkin was closed with an intricate buckle shaped like a buck's head. It
was brass, then gold, then red as the flames in the fireplace moved. "Boy," I
said. I do not know if I was merely repeating what he and the guardsman had
called me, or if I truly had no name besides the word. For a moment the man
looked surprised and a look of what might have been pity crossed his face. But
it disappeared as swiftly, leaving him looking only discomfited, or mildly
annoyed. He glanced back at the map that still awaited him on the table.
"Well," he said into the silence. "Something's got to be done with him, at
least until Chiv gets back. Jason, see the boy's fed and bedded somewhere, at
least for tonight. I'll give some thought to what's to be done with him
tomorrow. Can't have royal bastards cluttering up the countryside."
"Sir," said Jason, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, but merely accepting the
order. He put a heavy hand on my shoulder and turned me back toward the door. I
went somewhat reluctantly, for the room was bright and pleasant and warm. My
cold feet had started to tingle, and I knew if I could stay a little longer, I
would be warmed through. But the guardsman's hand was inexorable, and I was
steered out of the warm chamber and back into the chill dimness of the dreary
corridors.
They seemed all the darker after the warmth and light, and endless as I tried
to match the guard's stride as he wound through them. Perhaps I whimpered, or
perhaps he grew tired of my slower pace, for he spun suddenly, seized me, and
tossed me up to sit on his shoulder as casually as if I weighed nothing at all.
"Soggy little pup, you," he observed, without rancor, and then bore me down
corridors and around turns and up and down steps and finally into the yellow
light and space of a large kitchen.
There, half a dozen other guards lounged on benches and ate and drank at a
big scarred table before a fire fully twice as large as the one in the study had
been. The room smelled of food, of beer and men's sweat, of wet wool garments
and the smoke of the wood and drip of grease into flames. Hogsheads and small
casks ranged against the wall, and smoked joints of meats were dark shapes hung
from the rafters. The table bore a clutter of food and dishes. A chunk of meat
on a spit was swung back from the flames and dripping fat onto the stone hearth.
My stomach clutched suddenly at my ribs at the rich smell. Jason set me rather
firmly on the corner of the table closest to the fire's warmth, jogging the
elbow of a man whose face was hidden by a mug.
"Here, Burrich," Jason said matter-of-factly. "This pup's for you, now." He
turned away from me. I watched with interest as he broke a corner as big as his
fist off a dark loaf, and then drew his belt knife to take a wedge of cheese off
a wheel. He pushed these into my hands, and then stepping to the fire, began
sawing a man-sized portion of meat off the joint. I wasted no time in filling my
mouth with bread and cheese. Beside me, the man called Burrich set down his mug
and glared around at Jason.
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"What's this?" he asked, sounding very much like the man in the warm chamber.
He had the same unruly blackness to his hair and beard, but his face was angular
and narrow. His face had the color of a man much outdoors. His eyes were brown
rather than black, and his hands were long-fingered and clever. He smelled of
horses and dogs and blood and leathers.
"He's yours to watch over, Burrich. Prince Verity says so.
"Why?"
"You're Chivalry's man, ain't you? Care for his horse, his hounds, and his
hawks?"
"so?"
"So, you got his little bastid, at least until Chivalry gets back and does
otherwise with him." Jason offered me the slab of dripping meat. I looked from
the bread to the cheese I gripped, loath to surrender either, but longing for
the hot meat, too. He shrugged at seeing my dilemma, and with a fighting man's
practicality, flipped the meat casually onto the table beside my hip. I stuffed
as much bread into my mouth as I could and shifted to where I could watch the
meat.
"Chivalry's bastard?"
Jason shrugged, busy with getting himself bread and meat and cheese of his
own. "So said the old plowman what left him here." He layered the meat and
cheese onto a slab of bread, took an immense bite, and then spoke through it.
"Said Chivalry ought to be glad he'd seeded one child, somewhere, and should
feed and care for him himself now.
An unusual quiet bloomed suddenly in the kitchen. Men paused in their eating,
gripping bread or mugs or trenchers, and turned eyes to the man called Burrich.
He himself set his mug carefully away from the edge of the table. His voice was
quiet and even, his words precise. "If my master has no heir, 'tis Eda's will,
and no fault of his manhood. The Lady Patience has always been delicate, and-"
"Even so, even so," Jason was quickly agreeing. "And there sits the very
proof that there's nowt wrong with him as a man, as is all I was saying, that's
all." He wiped his mouth hastily on his sleeve. "As like to Prince Chivalry as
can be, as even his brother said but a while ago. Not the Crown Prince's fault
if his Lady Patience can't carry his seed to term ... ."
But Burrich had stood suddenly. Jason backed a hasty step or two before he
realized I was Burrich's target, not him. Burrich gripped my shoulders and
turned me to the fire. When he firmly took my jaw in his hand and lifted my face
to his, he startled me, so that I dropped both bread and cheese. Yet he paid no
mind to this as he turned my face toward the fire and studied me as if I were a
map. His eyes met mine, and there was a sort of wildness in them, as if what he
saw in my face were an injury I'd done him. I started to draw away from that
look, but his grip wouldn't let me. So I stared back at him with as much
defiance as I could muster, and saw his upset masked suddenly with a sort of
reluctant wonder. And lastly he closed his eyes for a second, hooding them
against some pain. "It's a thing that will try her lady's will to the edge of
her very name," Burrich said softly.
He released my jaw and stooped awkwardly to pick up the bread and cheese I'd
dropped. He brushed them off and handed them back to me. I stared at the thick
bandaging on his right calf and over his knee that had kept him from bending his
leg. He reseated himself and refilled his mug from a pitcher on the table. He
drank again, studying me over the rim of his mug.
"Who'd Chivalry get him on?" a man at the other end of the table asked
incautiously.
Burrich swung his gaze to the man as he set his mug down. For a moment he
didn't speak, and I sensed that silence hovering again. "I'd say it was Prince
Chivalry's business who the mother was, and not for kitchen talk," Burrich said
mildly.
"Even so, even so," the guard agreed abruptly, and Jason nodded like a
courting bird in agreement. Young as I was, I still wondered what kind of man
this was who, with one leg bandaged, could quell a room full of rough men with a
look or a word.
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"Boy don't have a name," Jason volunteered into the silence. "Just goes by
`boy.' "
This statement seemed to put everyone, even Burrich, at a loss for words. The
silence lingered as I finished bread and cheese and meat, and washed it down
with a swallow or two of beer that Burrich offered me. The other men left the
room gradually, in twos and threes, and still he sat there, drinking and looking
at me. "Well," he said at long last. "If I know your father, he'll face up to it
square and do what's right. But Eda only knows what he'll think is the right
thing to do. Probably whatever hurts the most." He watched me silently a moment
longer. "Had enough to eat?" he asked at last.
I nodded, and he stood stiffly, to swing me off the table and onto the floor.
"Come on, then, Fitz," he said, and moved out of the kitchen and down a
different corridor. His stiff leg made his gait ungainly, and perhaps the beer
had something to do with it as well. Certainly I had no trouble in keeping up.
We came at last to a heavy door, and a guard who nodded us through with a
devouring stare at me.
Outside, a chill wind was blowing. All the ice and snow that had softened
during the day had gone back to sharpness with the coming of night. The path
cracked under my feet, and the wind seemed to find every crack and gap in my
garments. My feet and leggings had been warmed by the kitchen's fire, but not
quite dried, so the cold seized on them. I remember darkness, and the sudden
tiredness that came over me, a terrible weepy sleepiness that dragged at me as I
followed the strange man with the bandaged leg through the chill, dark
courtyard. There were tall walls around us, and guards moved intermittently atop
them, dark shadows visible only as they blotted the stars occasionally from the
sky. The cold bit at me, and I stumbled and slipped on the icy pathway. But
something about Burrich did not permit me to whimper or beg quarter from him.
Instead I followed him doggedly. We reached a building and he dragged open a
heavy door.
Warmth and animal smells and a dim yellow light spilled out. A sleepy stable
boy sat up in his nest of straw, blinking like a rumpled fledgling. At a word
from Burrich he lay down again, curling up small in the straw and closing his
eyes. We moved past him, Burrich dragging the door to behind us. He took the
lantern that burned dimly by the door and led me on.
I entered a different world then, a night world where animals shifted and
breathed in stalls, where hounds lifted their heads from their crossed forepaws
to regard me with lambent eyes green or yellow in the lantern's glow. Horses
stirred as we passed their stalls. "Hawks are down at the far end," Burrich said
as we passed stall after stall. I accepted it as something he thought I should
know.
"Here," he said finally. "This'll do. For now, anyway. I'm jigged if I know
what else to do with you. If it weren't for the Lady Patience, I'd be thinking
this a fine god's jest on the master. Here, Nosy, you just move over and make
this boy a place in the straw. That's right, you cuddle up to Vixen, there.
She'll take you in, and give a good slash to any that think to bother you."
I found myself facing an ample box stall, populated with three hounds. They
had roused and lay, stick tails thumping in the straw at Burrich's voice. I
moved uncertainly in amongst them and finally lay down next to an old bitch with
a whitened muzzle and one torn ear. The older male regarded me with a certain
suspicion, but the third was a half-grown pup, and Nosy welcomed me with ear
lickings, nose nipping, and much pawing. I put an arm around him to settle him,
and then cuddled in amongst them as Burrich had advised. He threw a thick
blanket that smelled much of horse down over me. A very large gray horse in the
next stall stirred suddenly, thumping a heavy hoof against the partition, and
then hanging his head over to see what the night excitement was about. Burrich
absently calmed him with a touch.
"It's rough quarters here for all of us at this outpost. You'll find Buckkeep
a more hospitable place. But for tonight, you'll be warm here, and safe." He
stood a moment longer, looking down at us. "Horse, hound, and hawk, Chivalry.
I've minded them all for you for many a year, and minded them well. But this
by-blow of yours; well, what to do with him is beyond me."
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I knew he wasn't speaking to me. I watched him over the edge of the blanket
as he took the lantern from its hook and wandered off, muttering to himself. I
remember that first night well, the warmth of the hounds, the prickling straw,
and even the sleep that finally came as the pup cuddled close beside me. I
drifted into his mind and shared his dim dreams of an endless chase, pursuing a
quarry I never saw, but whose hot scent dragged me onward through nettle,
bramble, and scree.
And with the hound's dream, the precision of the memory wavers like the
bright colors and sharp edges of a drug dream. Certainly the days that follow
that first night have no such clarity in my mind.
I recall the spitting-wet days of winter's end as I learned the route from my
stall to the kitchen. I was free to come and go there as I pleased. Sometimes
there was a cook in attendance, setting meat onto the hearth hooks or pummeling
bread dough or breaching a cask of drink. More often there was not, and I helped
myself to whatever had been left out on the table, and shared generously with
the pup that swiftly became my constant companion. Men came and went, eating and
drinking, and regarding me with a speculative curiosity that I came to accept as
normal. The men had a sameness about them, with their rough wool cloaks and
leggings, their hard bodies and easy movements, and the crest of a leaping buck
that each bore over his heart. My presence made some of them uncomfortable. I
grew accustomed to the mutter of voices that began whenever I left the kitchen.
Burrich was a constant in those days, giving me the same care he gave to
Chivalry's beasts; I was fed, watered, groomed, and exercised, said exercise
usually coming in the form of trotting at his heels as he performed his other
duties. But those memories are blurry, and details, such as those of washing or
changing garments, have probably faded with a six-year-olds calm assumptions of
such things as normal. Certainly I remember the hound pup, Nosy. His coat was
red and slick and short, and bristly in a way that prickled me through my
clothes when we shared the horse blanket at night. His eyes were green as copper
ore, his nose the color of cooked liver, and the insides of his mouth and tongue
were mottled pink and black. When we were not eating in the kitchen, we wrestled
in the courtyard or in the straw of the box stall. Such was my world for however
long it was I was there. Not too long, I think, for I do not recall the weather
changing. All my memories of that time are of raw days and blustery wind, and
snow and ice that partially melted each day but were restored by night's
freezes.
One other memory I have of that time, but it is not sharp-edged. Rather it is
warm and softly tinted, like a rich old tapestry seen in a dim room. I recall
being roused from sleep by the pup's wriggling and the yellow light of a lantern
being held over me. Two men bent over me, but Burrich stood stiffly behind them
and I was not afraid.
"Now you've wakened him," warned the one, and he was Prince Verity, the man
from the warmly lit chamber of my first evening.
"So? He'll go back to sleep as soon as we leave. Damn him, he has his
father's eyes as well. I swear, I'd have known his blood no matter where I saw
him. There'll be no denying it to any that see him. But have neither you nor
Burrich the sense of a flea? Bastard or not, you don't stable a child among
beasts. Was there nowhere else you could put him?"
The man who spoke was like Verity around the jaw and eyes, but there the
resemblance ended. This man was younger by far. His cheeks were beardless, and
his scented and smoothed hair was finer and brown. His cheeks and forehead had
been stung to redness by the night's chill, but it was a new thing, not Verity's
weathered ruddiness. And Verity dressed as his men dressed, in practical woolens
of sturdy weave and subdued colors. Only the crest on his breast showed
brighter, in gold and silver thread. But the younger man with him gleamed in
scarlets and primrose, and his cloak drooped with twice the width of cloth
needed to cover a man. The doublet that showed beneath it was a rich cream, and
laden with lace. The scarf at his throat was secured with a leaping stag done in
gold, its single eye a winking green gem. And the careful turn of his words was
like a twisted chain of gold compared to the simple links of Verity's speech.
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"Regal, I had given it no thought. What do I know of children? I turned him
over to Burrich. He is Chivalry's man, and as such he's cared for ... ."
"I meant no disrespect to the blood, sir," Burrich said in honest confusion.
"I am Chivalry's man, and I saw to the boy as I thought best. I could make him
up a pallet in the guardroom, but he seems small to be in the company of such
men, with their comings and goings at all hours, their fights and drinking and
noise." The tone of his words made his own distaste for their company obvious.
"Bedded here, he has quiet, and the pup has taken to him. And with my Vixen to
watch over him at night, no one could do him harm without her teeth taking a
toll. My lords, I know little of children myself, and it seemed to me-"
"It's fine, Burrich, it's fine," Verity said quietly, cutting him off. "If it
had to be thought about, I should have done the thinking. I left it to you, and
I don't find fault with it. It's better than a lot of children have in this
village, Eda knows. For here, for now, it's fine."
"It will have to be different when he comes back to Buckkeep." Regal did not
sound pleased.
"Then our father wishes him to return with us to Buckkeep?" The question came
from Verity.
"Our father does. My mother does not."
"Oh." Verity's tone indicated he had no interest in further discussing that.
But Regal frowned and continued.
"My mother the Queen is not at all pleased about any of this. She has
counseled the King long, but in vain. Mother and I were for putting the boy ...
aside. It is only good sense. We scarcely need more confusion in the line of
succession."
"I see no confusion in it now, Regal." Verity spoke evenly. "Chivalry, me,
and then you. Then our cousin August. This bastard would be a far fifth."
"I am well aware that you precede me; you need not flaunt it at me at every
opportunity," Regal said coldly. He glared down at me. "I still think it would
be better not to have him about. What if Chivalry never does get a legal heir on
Patience? What if he chooses to recognize this ... boy? It could be very
divisive to the nobles. Why should we tempt trouble? So say my mother and I. But
our father the King is not a hasty man, as well we know. Shrewd is as Shrewd
does, as the common folk say. He forbade any settling of the matter. `Regal,' he
said, in that way he has. `Don't do what you can't undo, until you've considered
what you can't do once you've done it.' Then he laughed." Regal himself gave a
short, bitter laugh. "I weary so of his humor."
"Oh," said Verity again, and I lay still and wondered if he were trying to
sort out the King's words, or refraining from replying to his brother's
complaint.
"You discern his real reasons, of course," Regal informed him.
"Which is?"
"He still favors Chivalry." Regal sounded disgusted. "Despite everything.
Despite his foolish marriage and his eccentric wife. Despite this mess. And now
he thinks this will sway the people, make them warmer toward him. Prove he's a
man, that Chivalry can father a child. Or maybe prove he's a human, and can make
mistakes like the rest of them." Regal's tone betrayed that he agreed with none
of this.
"And this will make the people like him more, support his future kingship
more? That he fathered a child on some wild woman before he married his queen?"
Verity sounded confused by the logic.
I heard the sourness in Regal's voice. "So the King seems to think. Does he
care nothing for the disgrace? But I suspect Chivalry will feel differently
about using his bastard in such a way. Especially as it regards dear Patience.
But the King has ordered that the bastard be brought to Buckkeep when you
return." Regal looked down on me as if ill satisfied.
Verity looked briefly troubled, but nodded. A shadow lay over Burrich's
features that the yellow lamplight could not lift.
"Has my master no say in this?" Burrich ventured to protest. "It seems to me
that if he wants to settle a portion on the family of the boy's mother, and set
him aside, then, why surely for the sake of my Lady Patience's sensibilities, he
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should be allowed that discretion-"
Prince Regal broke in with a snort of disdain. "The time for discretion was
before he rolled the wench. The Lady Patience is not the first woman to have to
face her husband's bastard. Everyone here knows of his existence; Verity's
clumsiness saw to that. There's no point to trying to hide him. And as far as a
royal bastard is concerned, none of us can afford to have such sensibilities,
Burrich. To leave such a boy in a place like this is like leaving a weapon
hovering over the King's throat. Surely even a houndsman can see that. And even
if you can't, your master will."
An icy harshness had come into Regal's voice, and I saw Burrich flinch from
his voice as I had seen him cower from nothing else. It made me afraid, and I
drew the blanket up over my head and burrowed deeper into the straw. Beside me,
Vixen growled lightly in the back of her throat. I think it made Regal step
back, but I cannot be sure. The men left soon after, and if they spoke any more
than that, no memory of it lies within me.
Time passed, and I think it was two, or perhaps three weeks later that I
found myself clinging to Burrich's belt and trying to wrap my short legs around
a horse behind him as we left that chill village and began what seemed to me an
endless journey down to warmer lands. I suppose at some point Chivalry must have
come to see the bastard he had sired and must have passed some sort of judgment
on himself as regarded me. But I have no memory of such a meeting with my
father. The only image I carry of him in my mind is from his portrait on the
wall in Buckkeep. Years later I was given to understand that his diplomacy had
gone well indeed, securing a treaty and peace that lasted well into my teens and
earning the respect and even fondness of the Chyurda.
In truth, I was his only failure that year, but I was a monumental one. He
preceded us home to Buckkeep, where he abdicated his claim to the throne. By the
time we arrived, he and Lady Patience were gone from court, to live as the Lord
and Lady of Withywoods. I have been to Withywoods. Its name bears no
relationship to its appearance. It is a warm valley, centered on a gently
flowing river that carves a wide plain that nestles between gently rising and
rolling foothills. A place to grow grapes and grain and plump children. It is a
soft holding, far from the borders, far from the politics of court, far from
anything that had been Chivalry's life up to then. It was a pasturing out, a
gentle and genteel exile for a man who would have been King. A velvet smothering
for a warrior and a silencing of a rare and skilled diplomat.
And so I came to Buckkeep, sole child and bastard of a man I'd never know.
Prince Verity became King-in-Waiting and Prince Regal moved up a notch in the
line of succession. If all I had ever done was to be born and discovered, I
would have left a mark across all the land for all time. I grew up fatherless
and motherless in a court where all recognized me as a catalyst. And a catalyst
I became.
CHAPTER TWO
Newboy
HERE ARE MANY LEGENDS about Taker, the first Outislander to claim Buckkeep as
the First Duchy and the founder of the royal line. One is that the raiding
voyage he was on was his first and only foray out from whatever cold harsh
island bore him. It is said that upon seeing the timbered fortifications of
Buckkeep, he had announced, "If there's a fire and a meal there, I shan't be
leaving again." And there was, and he didn't.
But family rumor says that he was a poor sailor, made sick by the heaving
water and salt-fish rations that other Outislanders throve upon. That he and his
crew had been lost for days upon the water, and if he had not managed to seize
Buckkeep and make it his own, his own crew would have drowned him. Nevertheless,
the old tapestry in the Great Hall shows him as a well-thewed stalwart grinning
fiercely over the prow of his vessel as his oarsmen propel him toward an ancient
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Buckkeep of logs and poorly dressed stone.
Buckkeep had begun its existence as a defensible position on a navigable
river at the mouth of a bay with excellent anchorage. Some petty landchief,
whose name has been lost in the mists of history, saw the potential for
controlling trade on the river and built the first stronghold there. Ostensibly,
he had built it to defend both river and bay from the Outislander raiders who
came every summer to plunder up and down the river. What he had not figured on
were the raiders that infiltrated his fortifications by treachery. The towers
and walls became their toehold. They moved their occupations and domination up
the river, and rebuilding his timber fort into towers and walls of dressed
stone, finally made Buckkeep the heart of the First Duchy, and eventually the
capital of the kingdom of the Six Duchies.
The ruling house of the Six Duchies, the Farseers, were descended from those
Outislanders. They had, for several generations, kept up their ties with the
Outislanders, making courting voyages and returning home with plump dark brides
of their own folk. And so the blood of the Outislanders still ran strong in the
royal lines and the noble houses, producing children with black hair and dark
eyes and muscled stocky limbs. And with those attributes went a predilection for
the Skill, and all the dangers and weaknesses inherent in such blood. I had my
share of that heritage, too.
But my first experience of Buckkeep held nothing of history or heritage. I
knew it only as an end place for a journey, a panorama of noise and people,
carts and dogs and buildings and twisting streets that led finally to an immense
stone stronghold on the cliffs that overlooked the city sheltered below it.
Burrich's horse was weary, and his hooves slipped on the often slimy cobbles of
the city streets. I held on grimly to Burrich's belt, too weary and aching even
to complain. I craned my head up once to stare at the tall gray towers and walls
of the keep above us. Even in the unfamiliar warmth of the sea breeze, it looked
chill and forbidding. I leaned my forehead against his back and felt ill in the
brackish iodine smell of the immense water. And that was how I came to Buckkeep.
Burrich had quarters over the stables, not far from the mews. It was there he
took me, along with the hounds and Chivalry's hawk. He saw to the hawk first,
for it was sadly bedraggled from the trip. The dogs were overjoyed to be home
and were suffused with a boundless energy that was very annoying to anyone as
weary as I. Nosy bowled me over a half-dozen times before I could convey to his
thickskulled hound's mind that I was weary and half-sick and in no mood for
play. He responded as any pup would, by seeking out his former littermates and
immediately getting himself into a semiserious fight with one of them that was
quelled by a shout from Burrich. Chivalry's man he might be, but when he was at
Buckkeep, he was the master for hounds, hawks, and horses.
His own beasts seen to, he proceeded to walk through the stables, surveying
all that had been done, or left undone, in his absence. Stable boys, grooms, and
falconers appeared as if by magic to defend their charges from any criticisms. I
trotted at his heels for as long as I could keep up. It was only when I finally
surrendered, and sank wearily onto a pile of straw, that he appeared to notice
me. A look of irritation, and then great weariness, passed across his face.
"Here, you, Cob. Take young Fitz there to the kitchens and see that he's fed,
and then bring him back up to my quarters."
Cob was a short, dark dog boy, perhaps ten years old, who had just been
praised over the health of a litter that had been whelped in Burrich's absence.
Moments before he had been basking in Burrich's approval. Now his grin faltered,
and he looked at me dubiously. We regarded one another as Burrich moved off down
the line of stalls with his entourage of nervous caretakers. Then the boy
shrugged and went into a half crouch to face me. "Are you hungry, then, Fitz?
Shall we go find you a bite?" he asked invitingly, in exactly the same tone as
he had used to coax his puppies out where Burrich could see them. I nodded,
relieved that he expected no more from me than from a puppy, and followed him.
He looked back often to see if I was keeping up. No sooner were we outside
the stables than Nosy came frolicking up to join me. The hound's evident
affection for me raised me in Cob's estimation, and he continued to speak to
both of us in short encouraging phrases, telling us there was food just ahead,
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file:///F|/rah/Robin%20Hobb/Hobb,%20Robin%20-%20Assassin%201%20-%20Assas\sin's%20Apprentice.txtAssassin'sApprenticeCHAPTERONETheEarliestHistoryHISTORYOFTHESixDuchiesisofnecessityahistoryisofitsruling\family,theFarseers.Acompletetellingwouldreachbackbeyondthefoundingof\theFirstDuchyand,ifsuchnameswer...

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